ZONERS v0.71 Patch Notes FIXES & CHANGES GAMEPLAY

• Fixed issue in cup where Tournament final stage would not be Stardom Stadium as intended
• Attempted to fix crash at the end of some mid match instant replays
• Fixed issue with spin on some Super moves (Urnest, Rhapsody)
• Crabhammers Hyper move max duration reduced from 360 frames to 300 frames
• Crabhammers Hyper move duration reduces by 10 frames every time the flippers connect
• Crabhammers Ball gravity direction set correctly

• Fixed crash when creating a new profile
• Fixed issue with Xbox Series S/X controllers being able to join multiple times in multiplayer

Heya everyone, v0.7 is here and with it comes the addition of the Replay Cinema. This room, accessible from the Museum Gallery was previously inaccessible, but now it's open for business. At the end of any Match Maker match you'll have the option to save a replay of the entire match. Once saved you can view this match with the same controls as when you watch back instant replays after a Zone Break!
Not content to just make the replay menu a normal menu, just like the rest of the game I completely overscoped and turned it into a cinema. You'll even get curtains close when you pause during the playback, and quiting the replay will take you back to the cinema in one nice smooth transition. There's also a bunch of fixes for a some other stuff that I noticed over the last month and a bit, and I'm experimenting with some minor gameplay balance tweaks. And so with this update, I now only have one more major feature to add to the game. This one will take a little while as it's quite a lot of work. Plus the holiday season beckons and there is other stuff I must do this month as a result. So sit tight, and I'll get this feature added early next year, followed by some sound work and just a ton of fixes for things I'm sure I've managed to miss up until now. Peace & Love, Paris x ZONERS v0.7 Patch Notes ADDITIONS

• Added the ability to save Match Maker matches as fully viewable replays from the now unlocked Cinema inside the Museum Gallery

• Reduced player hit pause after hitting a ball with a melee by 50%
• Doing a projectile during the end lag of a melee that has connected with a ball or projectile now reduces that projectile moves buffer frames to 1
• Reduced all characters projectile moves buffer, active and end lag frame lengths by approximately 25% on average
• Improved replays in general
• Fixed bug where going from the Parry Advanced Tutorial to the Clashes Advanced Tutorial wouldn't load the opponent character

• Fixed bug with Jan the Janitor in the museum gallery where they would get stuck in one of the non-idle animations
• Updated museum gallery paintings menu to include spot for Dum-E painting
• Renamed the Museum Gallery's "The Gallery" menu to "Vault"
• Fixed bug where Crabhammers' Hyper Move name wouldn't display correctly during activation
• Fixed issue with colour picker in player profile settings not working as intended at all after 2v2 was added to the game

• Fixed issue with Xbox Series S/X controllers being detected twice when connected

Hello lovely people, Paris here with a major game update. You read the title, you saw the picture, that's right, there's a new playable character to unlock in Zoners! INTRODUCING DUM-E... AGAIN?
Most of you would have encountered Dum-E when you used them during the games Basic and Advanced tutorials instead of one of the cast. In that mode, they had a very simple moveset designed to be easily used and understood by beginner players. And that moveset still exists... HOWEVER, once you've unlocked Dum-E for use in ALL modes, they won't play quite the same. MOVESET ROULETTE When you play as Dum-E in a Match Maker match or the Zoners Cup campaign, every single match your moveset will be randomised between all 9 playable characters. I'm not just talking about getting a single characters moves, I mean each individual one is randomised! For example, you might have Piro's Melee, Bzzt's Projectile, Ringressa's Super, Gluup's Hyper & Princess' Spin properties. You won't know what you've got until you start using it, only for everything to randomised the next character you face. This also includes Dum-E's original moveset in the randomisation, just for extra fun. You might be completely overpowered, or struggling to make it all gel, but that's half the fun! SO. MUCH. WORK. Being a 2D sprite based game, this required a LOT of forethought and execution in order to get functional. Some of the groundwork was laid for this last year when I completely rewrote how the moves were written and referenced. However, this gimmick makes Dum-E a real wild card that adds something unique to the cast you can't get from any of the others. STORY TIME And let's not forget they have their own story and ending in the cup too!
CONCLUSIONS Really glad to have this character properly playable in the game at last. If you want to know how to unlock Dum-E, read the patch notes below for the full details. There's also the usual smattering of fixes and tweaks, so make sure to see if any issues you had are covered. Hoping to get the next update out before the end of this month if everything goes to plan, so keep your eyes peeled. Peace & Love Paris ZONERS v0.6 Patch Notes ADDITIONS New playable character Dum-E is now unlockable. Dum-E is the training dummy character you use during the tutorials, and they are out for revenge! However, unlike their training mode form, the fully playable version of Dum-E has a unique gimmick. Every new match their Melee, Projectile, Super, Hyper and Spin type each individually get randomised to one of the 9 playable characters moves. You might be overpowered, or underpowered, who knows?! They also have their own cup storyline and a surprising ending screen. Unlock them from the shop via one of the following methods: Play a complete match on the Hologram House stage in Match Maker mode 10 times OR Complete the cup with all characters on any difficulty FIXES & CHANGES GAMEPLAY

• Fixed crash when projectiles that aren't the players destroy in the tutorials
• Fixed bug where King battle would only do same move
• Dum-E colours for various effects and UI changed

• Controls overview and "Player Ready" now displays in 2v2 Match Maker matches as well for up to 4 players
• When backing out of the Jukebox in the Gallery you can no longer go out of the gallery before the transition animation has played
• Fixed multiple bugs when using keyboard to name a new custom match template
• Hall of Fame colours collected stat now updates correctly
• Hall of Fame various misc stats updated to reflect game additions

• Playing 2v2 with 3 or 4 human players counts those additional players character uses to milestones
• One of the Stardom Stadium stage unlock in shop requirements has been reduced from completing the cup with every character to completing it with 4 characters
• Condenced save files into one "save.ini" file, excluding "options.ini". You will lose any current suspended cup progress and saved custom match templates from any previous updates as a result of this change the first time you boot the game, everything else should carry over and work as normal.

Hello my lovelies, First update in a while huh? I'm sure all 90 of you had me in your mind this whole time haha. I'm kidding of course, but hey, I'm ready to see this through now. Not a huge update today, but some enjoyable additions... New Intro
I finally got round to creating/implementing the last of the assets needed to create the brand new intro sequence. I'm pretty proud of it if I'm honest. Another one of my unnecessary flourishes I guess, but it helps better set the tone and point of the game! New Logos
My old individual and collective logos felt severely out of date considering all the changes I've been through. So I refreshed them to something that will now stick :) New Ref Animations
The match ref now has a few new animations in and out of matches just to add a touch more personality to this helpful character(s) New Sting Text Animations
When you score a Zone Break the old messy text is gone and a new full screen effect happens. On top of this there's also a new slomo text sting display for Extra Time and Sudden Death, just to add a bit more dramatic flair to your proceedings. New Ambient Stage Particles All stages now have new unique ambient particles on them to add a touch of extra atmosphere New Music A new song plays when you get the milestone notifications. What's Next? Well I'm on the finishing straight now. This update is a bunch of fixes and some smaller mostly aesthetic additions, but I've already put quite a few hours into the next update. That one will add a whole new character to play as! After that there are two major game additions to get implemented: Reply saving and viewing in the gallery cinema, and the tons of in game collectable trading cards to collect and view (complete with additional lore!) After after after that... It's getting the remaining missing sounds done and implemented, all the audio levels balanced (I'm aware they are all over the place currently), and then just a thorough bug fixing session. Until next time... Peace & Love Paris x ZONERS v0.5 Patch Notes ADDITIONS

• Brand New Intro animation
• Updated Paris Stalker & all in indie logos
• REF the Referee has new animations in and out of matches
• New match sting text animations for Zone Breaks, Extra Time & Sudden Death
• New unique ambient stage particles added to every stage
• Added music for when milestone and unlock notifications play

• Fixed issue where Piro's projectile would not be the right colour when playing with alternative colour palettes
• Fixed issue where characters would be drawn upside down when electricuted by Bzzt
• Crabhammers Hyper move ball gravity changes should now correctly revert when it ends, including if multiple of the same move are active
• Applied a general fix where some character's supers or hypers would not deactivate sometimes after a Round End. In some cases this would make the move untriggerable in future rounds
• Fixed crash when a gamepad got disconnected during a match and the game tried to pause for the disconnected player
• Character aiming and sprite rotation is now influenced by gamespeed
• Fixed issue where character sprite rotationg/scale would be incorrect during some specific hit pause contexts

• Fixed bug with bonus money for milestones when multiple milestones are triggered at once
• Fixed bug on first time playing when using keyboard input and selecting to view tutorial for the first time from the notification prompt
• Reset everyone's music collection to set the music data to be correct from now on with updated list
• Fixed bug in Museum Gift Shop where the very last possible item in a category would not be visible
• When selecting the Special Items category in the Museum Gift Shop, your selection will always start at the top of the available list of items
• Fixed bug in Academy when going back from Zoners Cup registration where the tab menu buttons would be wrong
• When returnting to Academy from a tutorial, the song display text now draws over the tutorial menu
• Fixed bug where Options menu would draw incorrectly if when accessing it from the Plaza and a milestone notification had appeared in the room beforehand
• Fixed position of menu REF when returning from Match Maker to Plaza
• Dialogue boxes now extended if max sentence length is too close to box width
• Fixed issue with loading Dum-E's pause screen moveset during tutorials and Crabhammers in all scenarios

• Optimised hit/explosion particle fx and improved colour behaviour
• Fixed missing text for Dum-E training character's Hyper move
• Fixed bug where match countdown start sound would play when king grants wish
• Fixed issue where if you started a Zoners Cup after playing Match Maker with player 2 using a palette colour other than the default one, the first CPU opponent would have the wrong colour
• Added missing music Artist credit in Intro sequence

Hey everyone, Dropping a hefty patch size wise this time (around 63mb). There's a metric ton of fixes, many of which are all thanks to bug reporting by the key art creator who created the gorgeous character hyper move portraits and most of the titlescreen art. Improved Bonus Games But that's not all, we've got revamped versions of all 3 bonus games, They are SO much more fun now. Totally worth unlocking them for freeplay in the Academy. They pay for themselves quite literally! Secret Tips I've added a bunch of Pro tips to certain screen transitions. These often bring up secret techniques or mechanics the game doesn't teach in the tutorial. There's 23 of them, so get reading. But if you're done with them and don't want to press 'A' to proceed anymore, you can turn these off in the options menu. Just go to Options -> Game -> set 'Show Tips' to off
Pause Screen Move Sets Now when you pause the game, in most circumstances, you'll be shown the pausing player's move set! Along with the move name, input and a short animation of it in use, you'll also get a brief description of how it works. Super useful when you're getting used to a new character's quirks, especially when you've gathered friends together :) Actually, most of the bulk of this patch download size wise is from this, as all the little move animations had to be image sequences to avoid platform compatibility issues and poor quality later down the line. I think it was worth it though as they go a long way to making the game more understandable. You can see what this looks like in the video linked below. Twitter Post With Video of New Pausescreen Movesets Conclusions As I said, there is TONS of fixes as well. Some of these are pretty major, so have a read through the patch notes if you're curious. My list of things left before v1.0 keeps slowly shrinking. A lot of the remaining elements are quite time consuming, but I'm determined to get them done. If you encounter any bugs or crashes please let me know so I can fix them!! Every time someone shares one in detail, I often track it down and fix it. I think next I might finally get round to adding in the new intro sequence I've had the assets for for a while. This will also mean I can update my splashscreen logos to better reflect the person I am today and the goals I have. It'll be personally satisfying as well as really making that intro POP. First impressions amirite? Haha. Well until next time amigos, Peace & Love, Paris x ZONERS v0.45 Patch Notes ADDITIONS

• Character moveset information is now visible when pausing the game. The information displayed will be dependent on which player paused the game. These have move names, a simple explanation and an accompanying animation
• One of 23 game tips are now displayed in some screen transitions. These tips mostly cover gameplay and some tell you things the game didn't tell you before! The game will wait for your input before carrying on. You can turn these off completely in the options menu.

• Bonus Games (All) - Current combo is displayed on holofield and not just in the top right
• Ring Rally - Targets now move constantly, and gets faster every 5 hits
• Ring Rally - New objects added to the back of your side of the court that slows the ball and drop its power level when the ball bounces into it
• Ring Rally - Scoring revised from (20*combo) for normal and (20*combo)+200 for bonus to (50*combo) for normal and (100*combo) for bonus
• Ring Rally - Attempted to fix issue where the ball could hit the ring target multiple times in one collision when it hit the edge from sharp up or down angles
• Sphere Smasher - You now get double points when hyper state balls blow up the bubbles
• Sphere Smasher - Bubble reset timers reduced from 10 seconds to 9 seconds
• Target Takedown - Changed combo system to be hitting consecutive targets within a time limit. This time limit is represented by a draining meter on the field and gets shorter the higher the combo.
• Target Takedown - Bonus coloured targets now only give 2x points rather than 3x
• Target Takedown - Base points per target changed from 5 to 10
• Target Takedown - Added 4 new types of target waves and changed the wave randomisation to a bag system rather than pure rng
• Target Takedown - Changed the explosive target sprites to a bomb like sprite and the target sprites to... targets!
• Target Takedown - Explosive targets no longer count towards a wave clear
• Target Takedown - Fixed issue where some projectiles like Gluup's would get stuck bouncing on the Projectile Bouncers in some instances
• Urnest - Fixed crash that could trigger when Urnest's Super connects with a hitbox that has just finished hitting a ball
• Urnest - Fixed bug on The Clawcade when possessing the ball with Urnest's Hyper move and touching a stage hazard bumper would cause it to get stuck
• Rhapsody - All notes in her projectile can now hit targets in the Target Takedown bonus game
• Rhapsody - Fixed issue where characters that were in the daze state from Rhapsody's Super when instant replay starts would still be stunned afterwards
• Crabhammers - Fixed issue where Crabhammers' Hyper move mech would still be visible after an instant replay
• Crabhammers - When using Crabhammers' Hyper move and the ball was at 0 speed, the ball will now fall towards the Player rather than getting stuck bouncing up and down vertically
• Crabhammers - Hyper move active portion reduced from 8 seconds down to 6 seconds
• Fixed issue where players or AI would move during instant replay match transitions
• Attempted to fix issue where ball would move whilst still in the reset state after a Zone Break
• Attempted to fix issue where round wouldn't start and player would be softlocked

• Changed the default starting position when entering the Academy Career menu to be on the Zoners Cup
• Fixed loading of bonus games from the free play bonus games menu
• Fixed issue where Target Takedown and Sphere Smasher were the wrong way round on the Bonus screen menu
• Removed highscore display during character select in bonus free play menu that was showing cup highscore
• Fixed issue where bonus game name wouldn't display when loading bonus game from free play bonus game menu
• Stopped issue where quickly entering and exiting the bonus games menu in the Academy could cause the looping sound of Sock spinning to stack up and never end
• Fixed issue where exiting career menu when Puppet hadn't returned to original position and re-entering would cause unintended behaviour
• Fixed bar tab menu when going back from zoners cup registration to career general menu
• Fixed issue where some menus wouldn't let you back out correctly under certain circumstances

• Fixed major issue where data wasn't being saved
• Added Dum-E Hyper Move key art and animation
• Added new energy strike effect when performing hyper moves
• Fixed issue where SFX volume affects music and sfx
• Fixed issue where match intro music would be affected by sfx volume rather than music volume
• Fixed issue where ball clash sound wouldn't be stopped if instant replay was ended during clash
• Stage specific sfx are now effected by the SFX volume
• Fixed issue where the holofield graphic for a Clash would be scaled incorrectly for one player
• Attemped to fix bug where sometimes music wouldn't play between rounds/matches until a Hyper move or Zone Break happened

- Fixed crashes during cup dialogue with certain characters - Fixed issue with Gluup's projectile explosions in Target Takedown bonus game

Greetings everyone! Today's update is a pretty exciting one. We've got tons of fixes and changes, a brand new tutorial & probably best of all a whole host of new FX work that makes matches in ZONERS even more satisfying. VFX
Every character now has brand new hit fx for all of their moves and a ton of moves have received additional animations like projectiles ending etc. These FX made in conjunction with Gabriel Lima have added a ton of impact and personality and finally remove some of the last match placeholder assets visually
New comic book style text effects appear alongside various actions in matches! These are exciting colourful additions that again add even more visual spectacle. I'll be allowing players to turn these off in a future update
These images genuinely don't do the new VFX justice or the breadth of the improvements. So you'll just have to jump in and see how they are! New Tutorial The Basic Tutorial has been completely redesigned and is way clearer and more in depth on all of the game's core systems and rules.
Before I didn't really explain the goal system or some of the details, and during testing I kept witnessing the same confusion and difficulty. I believe this was a big hurdle to people enjoying the game, and it felt kind of cheap compared to a lot of the rest of the package.
Across the whole game I've also introduced new control sprites for gamepad facebuttons that make the whole thing much clearer. I'm hoping the onboarding for the game is much smoother for people now :) Other Stuff There's also loads of other smaller stuff, like balancing and bug fixes. With the new FX the King boss match at the end of the higher cup difficulties is even crazier. That's if you're good enough to get there of course ;) Well check out the full patch notes below for a full list of what's shaking in v0.44. We genuinely are starting to get there aren't we? Let's do this thing! Love & Peace Paris ZONERS v0.44 Patch Notes ADDITIONS

• Brand new melee and shot hit FX for every character, including King boss battle
• New mid hit melee FX in 3 flavours (slash, blunt and magic)
• New comic book style sound texts added to tons of match actions
• Updated/Removed/Added new to the Holofield text gfx (such as Block, Super, Hyper)
• Completely reimagined Basic tutorial that much more completely and clearly explains how the game works

• Piro Hyper active period increased from 60 frames to 75 frames
• Ringressa shot now fires for its full duration but ends quicker when making contact with another player or ball
• Ringressa shot is now more accurate length and slightly stronger
• Ringressa shot has new effects at its end
• Ringressa shot should now be cleared if round ends whilst one is in the middle of firing
• Gluup projectile has destroy FX
• Gluup Daze animation was missing, has been readded
• Urnest projectile has new particle system attached
• Rhapsody Projectiles and Super have destroy FX
• Rhapsody Hyper shockwaves fixed issue where ball wouldn't be hit by last shockwave
• Rhapsody Hyper shockwaves travel 42% further
• Crabhammers bumpers and pieces now have hit and destroy fx
• Princess projectile now has destroy fx
• Dum-E Super now creates a cluster explosion effect for 60 frames where it stops and the life timer for each explosion is very slightly randomised making it more like a shotgun
• Dum-E Hyper has been changed so that rather than dashing forwards with the punch, they now throw the giant boxing glove punch ahead of them on their spring arm as a disjointed hitbox
• King Tennis projectile attack sprite updated
• King Tennis projectile no longer gets smaller during rally
• All King projectiles now have destroy FX
• King's Spear attack has been fixed so it collides with player again but also there's more time to react between it appearing and flying across the screen
• Fixed display of damage values to king when Hi-Res fonts are turned on in the options
• When deflecting projectiles the effected character will now skip to the end of their melee animation
• Stopped parries working on balls during match breaks (e.g during match start countdown)
• Changed Clash graphics to appear on top and not on the back holofield to make sure info can be seen
• Fixed Hologram House stage displaying in the wrong version when doing the tutorial.
• Fixed drawing of the goal points when using hi-res fonts
• Fixed drawing of aiming reticle when using KB+M controls during tutorials
• Edited the Melee & Projectile Spin Advanced Tutorials so you can no longer move or dash to make it clearer how to play
• Fixed issue with Clawcade bumpers not always "triggering" when ball bounces off them
• Goal shields now reset at the start of every round rather than wait for a timer

• Updated all instances where face button controls are displayed to show controller specific sprites (Nintendo, Xbox & Playstation) and not just generic unmarked diamond buttons
• Updated most holofield text fx with a new style
• Fixed audio ducking of character themes during cup dialogue emote sfx so it happens again
• Slightly brightened the blue text highlight that can appear in textboxes
• Fixed issue when quitting the cup in the middle of the King match battle and trying to do the training
• Fixed crash when setting a specific profile's automatic assist set ups in the profile options menu

• Font for Hyper Move name displays changed to brand new one
• Hyper move portraits and names now display in instant replays too
• Fixed a bunch of crashes that happened during instant replays

ADDITIONS

• Can now select Hologame House alternate version that appears in the Bonus Games as a stage variant. No gameplay differences
• Added "Tournament Unlock" button to the Options menu, under game settings. This unlocks all character colours and stages but disables saving until resetting the game

• Fixed the background displays on Hologram House to match the character palette swaps
• Fixed display of Hyper move names when starting a Hyper move with Hi-Res fonts turned on

FIXES & CHANGES GAMEPLAY

• Made it so the rhythm of fx and triggering of sfx for each character's melee when connecting with a ball is unique to each character
• Updated the melee mid hit sfx for each character so it's unique
• Fixed issue where playing a hazardless match maker match before playing a cup would make cup stages be hazardless

• Fixed issue where the default left shift key for left spin on keyboard and mouse controls wouldn't display sprite in various locations unless manually set by the player

• Fixed issue when playing on widescreen resolutions such as 21:9 where the right side of the screens display would be covered incorrectly
• Fixed various issues during a number of circumstances where black bars drawn to account for resolutions that aren't 16:9 would not cover all elements properly or would be drawn incorrectly

MENUS

• Fixed crash when trying to open the options menu after a single player match of some description (cup, training etc)
• Fixed textbox sizing and dynamic line length coding for character textboxes when using the hi-res fonts so that line are correctly placed and new ones made in a similar manner to the original pixel fonts
• Fixed display of the input keyboard when using the Hi-Res fonts options, where before the lettes would be abnormally large and make it impossible to discern
• Fixed display of other text elements when input/changing a name in profile menu with hi-res fonts turned on

• Fixed crash when starting a new game and it creating a new save file
• Fixed issue with game display when any size that isn't a standard width ratio. The game should now display correctly on all aspect ratios, even with multiple monitors
• Fixed issue where you couldn't drag around the windowed mode window when the last input was keyboard and mouse

Greetings ladies, aliens and all in between, It's time for v0.4 and with it we finally add all the additional plaza staff menu interactions and a couple of extra achievements are now unlockable. It's Good To Talk Now when you choose to chat to any of the menu characters you'll get a new menu with a whole load of new dialogue options to choose from! As you complete the cup with more characters you'll also unlock more dialogue for each of them. This dialogue is not only neat flavour text, some of it has some additional information and opinions of the other characters. I've also made this text all work better than it did before in both display and interaction. Nice! Achieving Greatness There's also two of the hidden achievements now unveiled and ready to unlock. One of them, "The Hidden Chest" is especially difficult and will require you reading dialogue to maybe solve a puzzle. "A puzzle?! In ZONERS?" Yeah, just a small one. I'm curious if anyone will solve it! What's Next? Probably fixing up the Bonus Games so they are more balanced and fun is next on the agenda. I'm also going to maybe take a look at redoing the Basic Training so it's much more engaging and makes a lot more sense. Love & Peace, Paris ZONERS v0.40 Patch Notes ADDITIONS

• Added many new dialogues for all the plaza menu characters. There is now multiple dialogues from the start and more will unlock as you complete the cup with more characters. This means there's a minimum of 8 new dialogues to see for Cent, Gossloth, Jan and Sock & Puppet
• Achievement "Chatterbox" is now unlockable by seeing all the staff character's dialogues
• Achievement "The Hidden Chest" is now unlockable

• When hovering on the "Chat" option on the bar tab menus, a pointer will display on the character you'll be chatting to
• When you select the "Chat" option from the bar tab menu, a new menu will appear that will let you select which dialogue you wish to view
• When chatting to any character in the menus, their textboxes will behave the same way as when viewing pre-match dialogue in the cup, allowing you to speed up the text and proceed as normal
• When chatting to any character in the menus they will now all have emotes display when appropriate
• Jan & Gossloth now have new non-talking idles when chatting
• Slightly adjusted behaviour of voices and animations when talking to plaza staff
• The Bonus Games option in the Academy registration is now selectable even if none of the bonus games have been unlocked by the player yet
• A secret has been added to one of the menus tied to the new achievement...
• Changed the display of locked bonus games slightly so the name of the game is still readable

Howdy all, Today I bring unto you 18 new stage variants to mess about with in Match Maker mode! What Are Stage Variants? You may remember when selecting stages that you could choose between hazardless and Type Alpha. With this patch, we introduce Type Beta and Type Gamma to all the stages with hazards/gimmicks. These change the layout, timing, size or movement of the various gimmicks, as well as sometimes goal sizes, to create new scenarios to mess around on. For example... Rememeber the cool portal stuff on Ring Research? Well in Type Gamma the entire ceiling and floor is a portal, making for absolutely wild plays. The following screenshots show Alpha, Beta & Gamma on The Clawcade as an easy to see example:


There's also a few small tweaks and fixes to some of the stages to improve how they play. Full patch notes below! What Am I Up To? Believe it or not, I spent most of January's dev time seeing how feasible getting a simple online implementation into ZONERS would be using Steam's API. I got something extremely rudimentary working and may continue working on it in the future to add to the public build at some point, but have decided to focus on getting some of the other bits done first so that the rest of the game's content and polish can be rounded off as intended. In order to maintain my sanity after years of working on ZONERS to... 76 sales... I've also begun putting a few hours into prototyping new game ideas so I can hit the ground running when ZONERS is done. In many ways, ZONERS is more feature rich and detailed than many complete indie multiplayer games already, but there's still a sizeable amount of things on my list that I'd love to get in the game before I call it quits. If I was working full time on the game, it'd probably only need a few months of focused work, but I increasingly get less and less dev time and so it's taking a while to finish off. Bit by bit, piece by piece, it's getting there! Peace & Love, Paris ZONERS v0.39 Patch Notes ADDITIONS

• Added 2 additional stage variants to 9 of the 11 stages (Circle Circuit through to Stardom Stadium). These are available in Match Maker without any unlocking required. When selecting your stage and choosing between hazardless and type alpha, you now have types beta and gamma as selectable! These take the existing hazard gimmicks from type alpha and change their layouts, frequencies or behaviours to create new scenarios to play on. In some cases the sizes of the goals various states will also be altered. Enjoy the 18 new stage scenarios this brings and find your favourites.

• Circle Circuit - changed direction of wheel arrows for type Alpha
• Circle Circuit - made it so projectiles are now effected by the wheels again
• Plazzma Penthouse - ball cannot be repelled by the magnet sides beyond a certain angle up or down to stop the ball getting stuck bouncing too vertically
• Ring Research - Type Alpha Portals made larger and now have a simple idle animation
• The Clawcade - Bumper collision masks tightened
• The Clawcade - Way players interact with bumpers fixed and improved
• Stardom Stadium - Fixed inconsistent delay between sides
• Fixed crash that could happen when playing a 1vs1 after a 2vs2

• When selecting a stage variant in the stage select screen, a new view of the variant is displayed over the galaxy map on the background screen
• Fixed the menu guide REF's opening dialogue in Match Maker, Academy & Museum Lobby
• Fixed bug introduced in last patch that made you unable to go back the right way when selecting the AI opponents in match maker

• Haunted Hangout - Fixed spectators sprites so that they have glow as originally intended
• The Clawcade - Fixed crab bumper display and animation during instant replays

ZONERS v0.38 Patch Notes FIXES & CHANGES GAMEPLAY

• You can now perform Blocks on stationary balls
• Fixed issue where ball would sometimes appear to jump randomly to another incorrect position when hit with the final part of a melee in some angled circumstances (more noticeable at non-standard sizes)
• Attempted to fix issue where ball would sometimes not complete being hit by a melee move if hit during the early parts of the active phase just on the edge of a character's range (more noticeable at non-standard sizes)
• Attempted to fix issue where players would become unable to block the ball after a zone break in some circumstances
• Speed clamp when electric status is applied to a player has been lowered
• Adjusted AI behaviour regarding dodging projectiles such that it should be less likely to get stuck in a loop or dodge projectiles that are not necessary to dodge
• Bzzt projectile buffer reduced from 14 ->10 frames, projectile active reduced from 10->8 frames, and projectile endlag reduced from 14-10 frames
• Bzzt projectile electric status time inflictions increased from 15->30 frames for normal and 30->60 frames for charged
• Gluup normal projectile end of life explosions can no longer be deflected
• Gluup Super ends after a set amount of explosions when connected with ball as originally intended
• Gluup Super doesn't do it's combo explosions if destroyed by another projectile
• Gluup Super no longer causes unintended hitpause during collision with ball that made it very hard to respond to
• Urnest Super gets cleared by other super's and hypers properly
• Urnest Super is now always "physical" during all phases as intended
• Urnest Super catches opponents during outward movement properly
• Urnest Super attempted to fix game sometimes getting "stuck" during certain interactions with this move. Please report specific circumstances if you encounter this again

• Fixed crash when completing cup with any character that isn't Piro caused by unintended corruption of character completion list. If your list is corrupted, it will be reset upon next starting the game
• Bar menu current selection has added animation

• Slightly Optimised instant replay system

FIXES & CHANGES GAMEPLAY Fixed crash when completing the Parry tutorial in advanced training and proceeding to the next training MENUS Updated sound during cup ending sequence to have a crowd and make the "See you next time/You're a true champion" happen when the results screen appears MISC Fixed crash that happens when playing on Core Castle and the scene transitions to the outside one

Happy New Year! Let's start it with a small bang by dropping the next ZONERS update. The main additions this time are an updated Cup Credits sequence & new power ups option in the custom match settings! POWER UPS
You can now customise your match settings to allow for power ups to randomly spawn during matches with a wide variety of effects! Check out the patch notes below for more details on how this works.
CREDITS
I've updated the credits assets with new artwork from Gabriel, showing a new celebration screen prior to the interactive credits which also now save your highscore! WHAT'S NEXT? The next update should include a bunch of Stage Variants to select in Match Maker mode. These will be variations on existing stages that have hazards that change the layout or functioning of the hazards to create even MORE more options! CONCLUSIONS So a relatively small update this time, but one that still adds yet another new way to play the game. Here's to a new year and the one in which ZONERS will reach v1.0?! Peace & Love, Paris [ZONERS v0.37 PATCH NOTES] ADDITIONS

• Added Power Ups option to the custom match options. This can be set to Off, Rare, Normal or Frantic frequencies and you can also alter the types of power ups that appear (All, Good, Bad, Always Random). When turned on, Power Up bubbles will randomly spawn in the field and bounce around. If a player touches it a temporary effect will trigger based on the icon. Effects currently include: Player Grow, Player Shrink, Move Faster, Move Slower, Add Zone Meter, Reduce Zone Meter, Electrocuted, Dazed, Frozen, Goals Smaller, Goals Larger, Goals Recharge, Goal Shields Destroy, Random
• Credits sequence now has winner with trophy & crowd leading into updated credits scroll with all new final assets

• Your highscore for the credits sequence is now saved and also viewable in the hall of fame data
• If the ball is not near you, you no longer move slightly in the direction you are pushing when a melee switches from buffer to charge/active phase. This is to create more consistency when trying to position yourself ahead of time, especially in non-typical match scenarios
• Fixed issue where characters that were larger than the default scale from custom match settings could get stuck on the centre line when moving from stand still
• Decreased the vertical size of Piro's melee hitbox

• Fixed issue with some custom match settings not saving and loading correctly
• Fixed display of Character with most Wins/Losses in the Hall of Fame Character Stats page

• Character sprites face right way during daze and electric status effects
• Stun smoke no longer produced during freeze status effect
• Player status effects now play back correctly during instant replays

Howdy all, Phew, what a mad couple of months it has been for me. Both physically and mentally a lot to tackle, but I'm doing well. I hope you've all had a good holiday season thus far. Well, it's about time I fixed a bunch of things as well as introduce some new ways to play and delicious new artwork! NEW MATCH TYPES There's now THREE new ways to play ZONERS in Match Maker! When you go to make a custom match ruleset, select the Match Type button and flick through the options to try these out. Block Break: Break your opponents regenerating blocks to score the points shown on them
Defender: Try and break all of your opponents blocks before they break yours!
Bomb Pass: The ball is now a bomb and will explode after a random amount of time has passed. Try to keep it on your opponent's side of the field. This one is particularly chaotic with multiple balls.
I've also made the Zone Breaker match type unlocked from the start. Full details on these new game types are in the Patch Notes below. New Artwork Amazing new art work of the characters by the End Card artist Kevin Butler has been put to good use for an amazing new title screen and lovely animations when triggering hyper moves. I've also used these to update all the Steam capsule assets etc. I think these encapsulate the flashy quality of the game nicely!

What's Next? The next update should come sometime in January. I'm hoping to add the update new updated Credits assets I've just received & a new Power Ups custom match option that will spawn random power ups during the middle of the match for even more unnecessary chaos! Further Ahead... Looking further ahead, I think it's time I accept that some of the content I was hoping to get into v1.0 might need to be pushed back to free post launch content if the game does OK sales wise. Development has taken much longer than I initially anticipated, and this is ignoring the huge amounts of time I devoted before EA launch. My life has changed dramatically in some ways, whilst also being stuck. I absolutely refuse to leave the game in an incomplete state, and I hope you can see from recent updates how much you can mess about with it as I continue to expand the ways you can play. I'll keep you all updated on the new targets when they get locked in, but I think the most likely thing that will be pushed back are some of the additional characters due to the sheer amount of work each one adds. Conclusion Well, there's a lot more in this update than I talked about above, so make sure to read through the patch notes. Have a great holiday period, however you do it, and I look forward to absolutely smashing the rest of this game out in the new year for you! Peace & Love, Paris ZONERS v0.36 Patch Notes ADDITIONS

• Added new Block Break match type to custom match settings - A column of blocks sits at the back of each player's side of the field. Hitting an opponents block with a ball scores you the amount of points on the block. The middle block scores the highest and the ones closest to the edges the least. Blocks disappear after being hit but respawn in line with the goal shield times
• Added new Defender match type to custom match settings - 15 blocks in 3 columns of 5 sit at the back of each player's side of the field (in default settings). Every time a block is hit by a ball it's destroyed for good, reducing your total by 1. If all of a player's blocks are destroyed they lose. Try to be the last one standing!
• Added Bomb Pass match type to custom match settings - The ball is a bomb! Once hit, a timer will be set and it'll begin counting down. If the bomb hits a back wall, 3 seconds are taken off its timer. If it's on your opponent's side when it explodes you'll score a point! First to a score of your choosing wins
• A brand new titlescreen has been added
• New animated character portraits based on the new titlescreen art displays when triggering hyper moves

• Piro shot no longer shrinks over lifetime and life span changed from 60 to 75 frames
• Fixed Clawcade crash introduced after changes for 2v2
• Updated ball gravity to be effected by custom ball speeds
• Fixed ball gravity variables getting messed up after Crabhammers hyper move
• During instant replays, the ball now correctly shows the effects and sounds for scoring a goal every time
• Fixed issue in clash tutorial where doing a melee straight after winning a clash would count towards the objective
• During King match, when King does Pet Turret and Shield move, sfx now play when the shield takes damage
• When using keyboard and mouse controls, the mouse cursor updates position to follow character's speed during active portion of melee move
• Fixed issue where game would freeze when completing matches of 2 rounds or more with infinite time
• Improved AI's ability to respond to attacks from close to the middle point
• Fixed bug where if you dashed the same frame you started the active part of a melee your hitbox would still be active
• When playing with more than 1 ball active and the multi balls are started again, all balls will set off with the same speed as intended

• Zone Breaker match type is now unlocked to use from the start and associated unlock milestones have been replaced with bonus money
• When changing match type a description of the match type is shown at the bottom
• When changing match type some settings update to a default value for that match type
• When choosing whether to load or save a template, the name of the template no longer is visible
• When saving a new template a new digital keyboard is displayed for name input with a gamepad
• Max template name length has been increased from 10 to 15 characters
• Fixed text scroll display in CSS when choosing mode other than Time or Score
• Updated the profile name input to a virtual keyboard for gamepads that matches the one used in custom match template name inputting
• Improved the "Outline Playfield" accessibility option
• Fixed issue introduced in last patch where you couldn't choose your profile in the Academy menus properly
• Fixed issue introduced in last patch where you couldn't navigate or leave the cup registration menus
• Fixed crash during cup dialogue introduced from last patch
• Fixed crash introduced in last patch that happened on some menu transitions
• Fixed crash when retrying Clash Tutorial
• Fixed crash in shop when buying certain character colours and going from the bottom to the top of the list
• Fixed Special Items menu from having a blank spot at the bottom
• Removed achievements associated with unlocking additional match types

• Urnest now does a silhouette like every other character on Core Castle stage during the background transition
• Princess' last colour palette cloak effect altered slightly
• Princess' cloak effect now properly displays on alternative palettes for her moves and end of match victory
• King's theme now correctly stops playing if you skip the pre-match dialogue
• Tons of small other fixes

Hey everyone, just a quick note from me, I'm aware there are some issues with the current build and have managed to fix most of them on my end already. Unfortunately, I updated the engine before posting a newer build and it broke some things which has delayed the fixes. It is coming as fast as possible, but working retail during Black Friday and Christmas has meant 11 hour shifts and such and honestly struggling to stay awake the few hours I have. On top of all the above, I recently made and hosted a 5 hour gameshow that ended in me coming out as trans in every area of life, and so I've been continuing what has been a whirlwind of a year in rather dramatic fashion I suppose. The creation of zoners and it's strange, queer cast, has been an instrumental expression of my own internal struggles, in my own, typically Paris way I suppose. And so, at least, I hope you can see the true heart behind my desire to represent all sorts of people as not just some cynical marketing attempt. All I can really do is apologise for the delays my personal life has had on the game since launch. Like a bus, all the changes and steps forward happen at once. I assure you all that ZONERS is very much pressing on the back of my mind and I haven't at all forgotten about it. The next update, along with fixing all the issues introduced in the last update, has a bunch of new match types to play the game in (as in brand new ways to play the game!) and a new fancy titlescreen, as well as some QoL updates and general tweaks. Then I have some new assets to use to work on a new Intro and make the Credits sequence proper. Lovely stuff. Thanks for your patience in the mean time. Let me know if you have any major issues. I hope I can do right by the small handful of you that have bought the game :) Love & Peace, Paris

Hey all,
Phase 2 has officially begun, and the first update is a doozy. I introduce to you the totally chaotic, probably completely unbalanced and unfair 2v2 to the match maker. Play with any combination of human and AI players in teams of two. To accommodate this mode I had to completely change how a whole boat load of inputs and variables are captured, but I think it's been totally worth it. Even just playing with CPUs I've had a great time. Speaking of which, you might have noticed the last few updates the AI was a bit broken (as in barely functioned). This patch makes it a lot more reasonable again thankfully as well as a few of the usual tweaks and fixes. Full patch notes below! Peace & Love, Paris [ZONERS v0.35 Patch Notes] ADDITIONS

• 2v2 mode is now selectable in Match Make mode! Play with 4 players or any mix of human and cpu opponents. After everyone has selected characters and a stage, you'll be able to pick a team in any combination of two you desire

• Bzzt - Reduced the distance the ball or projectiles with spin applied travel before their sharp angle turn
• Ringressa - shot can now be deflected by melees again and now under every circumstance as normal
• Rhapsody - Altered spin values slightly so it's a slower turn but at earlier distances
• Fixed issue with AI where it wouldn't release it's melee moves
• Fixed issue with AI where it would try and projectile when ball is moving towards it rather than away
• Fixed issue with AI where it would be able to aim backwards when on the left side of the field
• Lots of other small AI tweaks to generally try to improve behaviour
• King cup match hp reduced from 150 to 125 on Super Rank and 250 to 175 on Hyper Rank
• Fixed bug with default keyboard controls for spin being wrong

• Changed how the underlying controller detection works to accommodate 4 player
• Characters now bob in the match transition animation

Greetings all, v0.34 Today v0.34 of ZONERS goes live and with it we officially reach the end of Phase 1 of Early Access development. This is a smaller patch focused on animating the training mode character (Dum-E), adding two new advanced tutorial missions and tweaking/fixing a few gameplay and other issues.
Dum-E will become fully unlockable and playable at some point in the future, complete with a very unique gimmick that you can't see in the training mode! But you'll have to wait for this, as their gimmick is effected by the other characters... ooo the mystery! UPDATED ROADMAP So with Phase 1 complete, it's time to update the road map to better reflect the current status of the game and goals going forward. If you take a look at the image below, you'll see a number of things have been moved around, combined and even added.
As always, these are subject to change. Currently the only thing taken away from v1.0 is the Trials, which I am now aiming to add after launch, provided there is enough demand. In this same vein, it is quite possible 1 or 2 of those extra characters in Phase 3 get pushed to post launch too. We will have to see how fast development goes on the remaining tasks. For now, the focus is on adding new ways to play with Stage Variants, a special 2v2 mode & New Match types, as well as generally improving the other aspects of what's in the game to make everything as intuitive and clear as possible. INCREASED PRICE DELAY It's a constant point of deliberation in my own mind whether the price should actually go up as the game becomes more feature rich and complete. Looking at the state of the game, I've decided the price of the game will NOT be going up until the end of Phase 2. At this point, the game will be really quite polished, with a lot of fun to be had, and the final Phase being some pretty hefty additions that round the entire package out. I feel like this is a fair tradeoff. Well I best get cracking on with Phase 2. As mentioned in previous posts, this isn't going to be such a long dev time to get complete relative to both the content and personal issues I had during Phase 1. But do expect the same undulations in terms of larger patches and smaller ones as I work to increase the game's options and modes of play, and make the whole thing from start to finish feel extremely polished. Peace & Love Paris V0.34 Patch Notes ADDITIONS

• Dum-E's Idle, Move, Melee, Shoot, Super, Hyper, Hit, Stun, Wallstun, Quick Recover, Electric & Daze animations added
• Added Parry & Clash Advanced Tutorials
• Added Disable Melees & Disable Projectiles options to custom match settings

• Fixed bug with Ringressa's projectile where dashing through it would cause it to get removed instantly
• Ringressa projectile laser now has a fading effect after completing so it doesn't instantly visually disappear
• Ringressa projectile laser now updates visual distance properly depending on whats its path & calculates this in a more optimised manner
• Fixed bug where when exiting a match during Crabhammers' Hyper move the ball gravity would not be reset
• Dum-E base moveset Super move adjusted to have narrower spread, faster projectile speeds and shooter life span, making it more similar to a shotgun
• Drawing in a Clash no longer stuns both players, it just knocks them back
• Fixed issue where any situation with a ball gravity modifier would not account for pauses/slow downs in game speed
• Fixed bug in main tutorial where holding the Super move before releasing it would trigger multiple "ticks"
• Fixed crash in Ball Aura Advanced Tutorial when ball hit the projectiles
• Fixed bug where currently selected Advanced tutorial rank requirements were dependent on the one you started with if you chose "Next Training" at the end
• Fixed crash at start of King boss match
• Fixed and improved darken background accessibility setting and updated the default value. Your profiles will need to be remade after this patch
• Improved & optimised desaturate background accessibility setting

• In the custom match settings screen, moved the Disable Supers and Disable Hypers buttons to the Player category
• Fixed bug on advance tutorial select when holding the analogue in a direction that would stop the cursor from moving

• Updated the way character draw angles are handled when going from a moving to a idle state

Greetings all!
Today I bring to you v0.33 and along with it some exciting new changes. But first, Princess now has all of her animations and has been tweaked and balanced to improve her overall gameplay. Now the power she wields is much more evident! With this, all 8 of the base playable characters are now animated! Exciting stuff. This means we're finally drawing to a close on the end of phase 1 of the Early Access development, and more polish and content related goodies will start to be developed. More on that later. Next let's talk about two of the bigger changes/additions to the core gameplay... New Parry System You might remember that parrys in ZONERS were what happened when you dashed into a ball, and if you dashed the moment a ball was touching you you'd do a perfect parry. Well no more! Perfect Parries have been completely removed from the game, and what were once called a Parry are now called Blocks (with accompanying in game graphics). This change isn't just to remove something though, it is accompanied by a new mechanic which are the new Parry. Pressing the melee button the moment a ball is touching you will cause you to immediately return it in your chosen direction. This is a powerful but high risk move, especially at high speeds. This change was made to give the game more depth but also make the naming and behaviours more intuitive. New Clash System In ZONERS, when players melee a ball at the same time they enter a Clash state. Before this was resolved by both players mashing buttons as fast as they could. But this introduced some design balance issues as well as accessibility problems for a chunk of players. So after much though I redesigned the clash system to require one single, well timed press. Here's how it works: [olist]

Howdy all here with another update,
This time the main updates are Crabhammers animations, a few other smaller bits, and a ton of polish & bug fixes. Crabhammers Super move has been completely changed and their Hyper move tweaked to be more enjoyable to use. See the patch notes below for more information. Just Princess left for the base character animations! My sfx guy will be doing all the character VA work soon and there's much more to come over the next few months as well. Feel motivated to keep going and excited to get phase 1 of Early Access wrapped up pretty soon at last. ZONERS v0.32 Patch Notes ADDITIONS

• Crabhammers Move, Dash, Melee, Projectile, Super, Hyper, Hit, Stunned, Wallstun, Electric, Daze & Recover animations added
• Princess' Melee animations added
• Piro's Daze Animation added

• Urnest attempted to fix bug where game would hang in an infinite fx loop if Super has a ball and connects with player on last hit of melee
• Rhapsody Hyper Speaker time before automatically firing changed from 90 frames to 120 frames (2 seconds)
• Crabhammers Projectile Bumper now destroys normal projectiles that touch it and gets destroyed by special projectiles
• Crabhammers Super changed to "Claws for Thought". This Super summons one of the Crab Mechs claws at your Y position where it'll try to follow the opponents Y position for 180 frames (3s) before firing a laser across the whole horizontal width of the arena. If this laser connects with ANY player or ball (piercing), it will hit them in that direction. A powerful pressure tool with the danger that it can also hit the user!
• Crabhammers AI reduced amount tries to use Super move
• Crabhammers Hyper Mech flipper connections optimised
• Crabhammers Hyper Mech claw flipper angles adjusted so that the closer to the tip of the claw the sharper (more up and down) the return angle, where as before it was the same angle regardless
• Crabhammers Hyper Mech middle spring save changed to claw defend. Pressing any of the face buttons during the hyper will cause the claws to temporarily guard the middle. If the ball makes contact with the claws during this time the ball will be pushed away at a perpendicular angle by the claws shoving it
• Crabhammers Hyper move gravity properly reset after zone break
• Princess' Melee tweaked to behave more similarly to the other characters, removing multiple bugs and strange play behaviour
• Fixed crash when ball makes contact with the shot barrier after a zonebreak
• When playing with Zone Breaks turned off, hitting the final shield slows the ball down and reduces its level down
• Fixed bug where you could trigger Hyper moves in the middle of a Super in some instances and cause issues such as no longer being able to use the Super. Might be mostly exclusive to keyboard users
• Made possibility for AI aim error a little broader and more consistent
• Attempted to fix aiming issue with AI where it could change aim when it wasn't supposed to be able to during active part of melees or parrys
• Attempted to fix bug when playing against AI where after you score a zone break sometimes the AI would try to hit the ball and it would get stuck in its holding pattern
• Attempted to fix sporadic bug where sometimes when starting a match nothing would happen and players would be stuck in limbo

• Updated Piro's moving animation
• Urnest Projectile Charged FX position fixed
• Rhapsody Daze animation fixed
• Crabhammers Hyper move background colour changes properly when multiple Mechs are active
• Crabhammers Key Art colouring fixed and palette swapping updated to correct some errors
• Crabhammers 10th colour has been changed
• Visual iframe flashing stops when doing a quick recovery
• Stopped charging particles appearing straight away so if you immediately release a move it doesn't show any
• Fixed bug where players on the right side of the field would be facing the wrong way for one frame at the start and release of their melee attacks

The Update v0.31 of ZONERS is now available and finally makes Rhapsody a fun and engaging character to play as with a rebalanced, patched and aesthetically cool new self. The deeper we get into the roster it seems the more they are benefitting from all this animation and balance work!
There's also a bunch of other smaller fixes, mostly regarding the King boss battle in the cup as well as a few other bits and pieces. Read below for the full patch notes. What's Next The plan is to get Crabhammer's and Princess' melee animations done pronto so that one of my other artists (Kevin Butler) who did the beautiful end card art work, has all the necessary references to make some new art that'll be used for the titlescreen and a few other small places. Adding some juice! I'll then jump straight onto finishing the rest of Crabhammer's animations and moveset tweaks. Expect to see some changes to the core moveset here, particularly the Super which I remain unhappy with as a move. I'm really excited to show you all the fun things he'll do when animated. Slowly but surely the whole cast is being brought to life :D The BG and FX artist (Gabriel Lima) has been inundated with other work due his work on ZONERS, so there's a bit of a delay on the Credit's assets being updated and more FX work being done, but they guy works so hard all the time, you gotta give him his due! It'll be worth waiting for, I promise! v0.31 PATCH NOTES ADDITIONS

• Rhapsody Hyper, Hit, Stun, Stunwall, Ukemi, Electric & Dazed Animations added

• Fixed Gluup's projectiles doing additional hits on the King boss battle
• Fixed rhapsody's projectiles not connecting with the King
• Fixed issue with the drawing of the ball when the King is holding it in place
• Fixed issue where the king's pets could stick around after being beaten
• Fixed crash when the hitting the king with some projectiles at certain times and the game would try to grab a variable from a projectile that no long exists
• Fixed crash when suspending cup from within king battle
• Near Zone Break slo-mo no longer happens when the ball is moving away from the goal and also doesn't get stuck in slo-mo until the next gamespeed alteration like it sometimes used to
• You can now skip instant replays quicker by pressing the relevant button during the first screen transition
• Attempted to fix occasional bug where ball would begin moving at the start of a new round before the countdown had finished
• Ball's electrical status effect now ends after making contact with a player or goal
• Rhapsody's Super changed so no longer physical again but spin when contacted by projectiles or the ball to make this interaction more intuitive

• Increased Draft emote sprite size by redrawing it so it's more visible

• Stun smoke clears when performing a quick recovery for a wall smash
• Stun smoke no longer appears when electric
• Clashes now have speedlines

ADDITIONS

• Added Rhapsody's Melee, Projectile, Super & Dash animations and updated sprites for Rhapsody's projectile and super projectile

• Fixed crash when pressing melee during contact with with ball collision
• Amended keyboard aiming to account for fullscreen and window sizes greater than 720p
• Fixed issues with Rhapsody's projectiles sometimes destroying each other during hit stops
• Rhapsody's projectile notes now always display facing the correct way
• Rhapsody's Normal projectiles and Super can now be dodged with a dash as intended
• Rhapsody's Super now interacts with other projectiles in the normal way e.g it will destroy normal projectiles but can be stopped by other Supers
• Rhapsody's Super will now hit the ball as well
• Fixed bug with Rhapsody's Super where you could no longer use it for the remainder of the match if a round ended with them active
• Rhapsody's Super projectiles can now be returned with melees more consistently if you are in the active part of the melee. You will still be dazed if you try to auto-deflect

• Tweaked draw order and display of the middle shield

ZONERS v0.29 Patch Notes Fixed some major bugs, done some light balancing and added the first of Rhapsody's animations ADDITIONS

• Rhapsody Idle & Move animations added
• Middle shield effect appears when a player is near the centre line to more clearly show it cannot be passed

• Changed Piro's projectile so it gradually gets smaller over the course of it's lifetime so it's more obvious when it's about to end
• Reduced Bzzt's total dash travel distance
• Improved Urnest's Hyper move early discharge and reduced range it can begin ball possession
• Fixed some issues with Rhapsody's projectile not working as intended when fired at angles
• Fixed issue where sometimes perfect parries would not actually hit the ball with the melee even when triggered
• Reduced area of effect of perfect parries so you have to be more accurate
• Made it so that if you touch the ball during the start of the buffer of a melee you will stop the ball briefly stopping it from zipping passed you
• Touching an electrified ball from a bzzt move during the buffer part of a melee no longer causes the electric status
• Fixed bug introduced in last update that caused the instant replay function to not work as intended
• Fixed major bug that stopped bonus games working at all

• Updated Rhapsody's Key art and CSS icon to reflect new animations with microphone

• Improved Urnest's Hyper move presentation overall

Hello! It's good to be posting an update again after all this time. I'm officially back on the dev train and have been doing a smattering of additions, tweaks and fixes. This update has a fairly substantial patch note list but it mostly concerns QoL and polish. There are a few new additions to boost your gameplay though. UPDATE: Linux version of this update is now available too Urnest's Animations The main new stuff is all of the grumpy ghost Urnest's animations are now in game as well as the moves being generally tweaked and improved to add more clarity and fun to his moveset.
FX Work On top of that, the wonderful artist Gabriel Lima, who did all the background art until now, has been working on a whole bunch of FX work for the game, elevating the feel of the game. For the full list check out the patch notes below. Credit Where Credit's Due And finally, I've added in a playable credits sequence at the end of cup runs as an opportunity to score some extra money. This is skippable of course, but it does feature a brand new cheesey song by Bruises and yours truly, that I think you're gonna love. The assets on this one are placeholder, this whole sequence will be slightly expanded in the future, but for now it's perfectly functional and does the job. Of course, the new music is also unlockable after viewing the credits once. https://twitter.com/all_in_indie/status/1679613510341255169 Fixes Fixes Fixes As always, there are a whole host of fixes and minor changes that come as part of this update to improve your general experience. Read through the patch notes below to see the full extent of these. ZONERS v0.28 Patch Notes [ADDITIONS]

• Urnest Move, Dash, Melee, Shoot, Super, Hyper, Hit, Stun, Wallstun, Ukemi, Electric & Dazed Animations anims added to the game
• Added character specific aura effects for every character for when the ball has it's special aura that deflects projectiles and increases speed before slowing down
• Credits sequence at the end of the cup has been added with placeholder assets. This is an interactive sequence that can earn additional money. This will be slightly expanded upon in a future update to track highscores and have some other additional elements as well as proper assets. Features a brand new song which is also unlockable for the jukebox after viewing the credits once

• Urnest Super projectile can now make contact on it's way out
• Urnest Super projectile no longer has a gravitational vortex as it has a larger sprite hit box instead
• Urnest Super projectile will try to reach 15 speed even after being deflected by a weak move
• When possessing a ball using Urnest's hyper move, you can now press the dash, melee or projectile buttons to end the possession early and launch the ball in the direction you're aiming
• Changed the highest non-hyper state ball power level colour from black to white and added some rainbow effects when in this state
• Updated the basic ball aura to have two states that reflect speed and improved the special aura end animation fx
• Fixed issue where ball could still be hit by projectiles when in its special aura state
• Improved the visuals at the start of the Basic Training to make it more clear the player is supposed to move towards the targets
• Reduced the amount of score that is taken away when continuing from a loss in a cup
• Fixed crash when beating the King boss at the end of the cup
• In response to observations during testing over the years, when using a gamepad, letting go of the stick no longer resets your aim to straight ahead
• Fixed issue where when using KBM controls the starting aim is in the wrong place
• When using KBM controls and aiming, if your character has some momentum, the cursor will move relatively to the characters speed

• Fixed crash when completing an advanced training tutorial
• Updated the Character & Arena select menus to have new fixed position and improved character select icons and mini stage pics as well as simplify the character information that is displayed in the Match Maker
• Fixed bug where player 2 could not back out of being ready with their character
• Fixed a bug that meant player 1 couldn't select their character as quickly as player 2
• Fixed names of seer paintings in the shop not showing up correctly
• In the Hall of Fame changed the "special items collected" stat to "songs collected" and made it reflect total songs collected
• In the Hall of Fame fixed the win percentage calculations in the character match up chart
• Money breakdown displayed at end of a match maker game is now shown in correct positions

• Optimised drawing of ball auras
• Fixed small issue where the ball's fake self shadow effect would leave some unshaded pixels at certain angles
• The ball now hovers slightly up and down whilst tilting when in a 0 speed or goal paused state
• Updated ball wall hit and goal score fx
• The ball now leaves a small damage sprite relative to the material type of the wall when bouncing off a non-goal part of a wall
• Corrected the material type for some walls on some stages so the correct sfx play and vfx show
• Updated/added character dash fx including a small general animation for the brief window when a dash will parry
• Updated all smoke & dust fx
• Fixed issue when using alternative colour palettes where characters and objects that were associated with the palette would appear in base form when the character had flashing fx active in any capacity
• Fixed a number of issues of character colours & themes and other music not unlocking when completing the cups under certain circumstances

Hello all, Just wanted to update you on personal circumstances that are temporarily effecting development of Zoners. After the last update on the 5th of May, I had to focus all my energy on finding a new place to live and then subsequently moving into that new apartment as the tenancy for my previous place was due to end on June 3rd and I could no longer afford to stay there on my own since my ex partner left. As a result, there has been minimal time to work on the game. I have now successfully moved with the unpacking done and various bits sorted. However, I won't have Internet until June 17th. Therefore, it is unlikely much will be done before then. Once I've settled in properly I will begin working on the game again all the same and try and get some updates put at the regular pace of every month or two. I'd say the conservative estimate is to expect the next drop to be sometime in July. I'm keen to get back to it! Apologies for the delay, a result of effects from my earlier breakup, but it is an unfortunate element of being an indie dev that life circumstances can have a dramatic impact on your ability to work as you don't have a large team to make up for short fall. Nor am I funded and so continue to have to work an ever more demanding job for minimal pay. On the other hand, I'll have new music in the next update and will begin animating Urnest in line with the other recent character improvements. I'm hoping to add an interactive credits sequence in the next update too to earn extra points at the end of a cup. If not then the next larger update after should include that bit. There are also some errors in the Hall of Fame I wish to fix. I have begun working with Gabriel, my BG artist, on the in match FX as well, so we should see some nice improvements to the visual impact of a lot of elements in the coming months. I hope you look forward to the future updates and as always, if you're enjoying the game make sure to tell all your friends and family and help the game spread. Many thanks for your patience and understanding in the mean time. Peace & Love, Paris

Hello everyone, Paris back with another ZONERS update... Everyone's favourite genderless sentient goo has finally got the love they deserve in this update. Gluup is more or less fully animated and has a bunch of small balance changes and tweaks.
There's quite a bit more to this update than just Gluup's animations though. I encourage you to read through the patch notes below to get a sense of all the changes and fixes. Every update brings us an inch closer to the final game I envision. I hope I can continue to surprise and delight you with my hard work along the way. Peace & Love, Paris ZONERS v0.27 Patch Notes [ADDITIONS]

• Added Gluup's move, dash, melee, projectile, super, hyper, hit, stun, wall stun, electric & ukemi animations
• Added Jan's sweeping, sigh and chatter sfx
• Spectators added to the Hologram House stage's control booth
• Added multiple tiers of trophy threshold for the Hall of Fame stats, which includes a set of 4 new trophy designs that show up
• When finishing a match in match maker you will now see a breakdown of the bonus money you earned for it, similar to the way your earnings breakdown is shown in the cup mode

• Ringressa's Hyper animations changed slightly so the portal she spawns near her and her own draw angle are detached to better express what is happening. Also very slightly improved the animations for all parts
• Fixed some incorrect colour palette issues with Ringressa's Hyper
• Gluup's melee now has a fixed hitbox size rather than slightly growing over it's active frames
• Gluup's charged projectile now "powers down" to it's non-charged state after bouncing off a wall
• Gluup's Super projectile now explodes at the same pace whether it's contacted a ball or not and the actual projectile stays visible
• Gluup's Hyper move has been changed to "Buff Love". Gluup will pull three muscle poses, launching three hyper property rocket fists within 5 degrees of your aim angle that will linger about for a bit before launching off. This should be a much more consistent and dangerous move than how it was working before
• Fixed issue with Princess' melee not always connecting with the ball and also sometimes moving it around in unintended ways
• Changed Princess' projectile completely. It is now always tangible and moves a fixed distance before stopping temporarily in place and then firing off again. If spin was applied it'll stop in the same place and do the usual hold spin. Please note the sprites and values for this are not finalised, but I wanted to get it in game to get more live testing done
• Fixed a number of character's directional facing during Hyper moves
• Have tried to put in some extra checks on While loops in code to see if can avoid an instance one player had where the game hung for a few seconds when characters were moving near a wall
• Changed the way Bonus games are stored in suspended cup data so that quitting the cup and reloading save doesn't give you a different bonus game. If you have an existing suspended cup you will initially get the same game for both bonus games, but any new cups will have the proper behaviour

• Fixed some of the bonus money calculations at the end of a match maker match and made the category and numerical values justified left and right respectively
• The placement of the winner's sprite and the menu buttons alongside the bonus money are now changed depending on who won the match
• At the end of match menu any player can now interact with the end of match menu rather than just the winner
• Updated the medal sprites used in various places in the game to have proper spinning animations
• Updated the money symbol to have a proper spinning animation in most places it shows up
• Fixed issue where finishing an advanced training level would automatically progress to the menu screen without input from the player
• Rebalanced some of the Hall of Fame base thresholds for showing a trophy for that stat
• Fixed bug when getting a notification for unlocking some of the music the song name was displayed incorrectly
• Fixed some minor menu issues with the jukebox
• Fixed character highscore rim appearing in the wrong place in the Bonus Games freeplay menu

• Fixed Switch Pro Controller Plus button input after recent software updates broke it
• Fixed issue when switching type of controller from Switch Pro or Dualshock 4 to a standard Xbox or other gamepad where the start button wouldn't be updated back to the correct button

[FIXES & CHANGES] GAMEPLAY

• Fixed issue with Ringressa's Super when playing on the right hand side where it would suck in the ball or disconnect as if it was being placed by a left side player
• Fixed issue with Crabhammers Hyper where if it was active when an instant replay is ended it would invisibly slow the ball down during normal play until the next time it was used

• Bonus points for goals at the end of a match in the Cup mode are now for the total goals you scored and not just the goals you scored in the final round
• Fixed steam achievements not activating due to outdated steamworks extension
• Made all unlockable steam achievements no longer hidden in the steam menus

Hey all, chip, chip, chipping away at ol' Zoners over here when I get the chance.
INCLUDED This update includes a number of fixes, all of Ringressa's new animations, a change to Urnest's Super & probably the biggest addition of all the Museum Gallery is now open! (Full patch notes at the bottom!)
THE GALLERY In the museum Gallery you can view unlocked ending cards in the form of paintings that you've purchased from the Gift Shop, listen to over 30 unlockable songs from the game's soundtrack on the Jukebox or chat to Jan. In the future I'm planning to also include in this room the ability to view collectable trading cards and access the Cinema to watch saved match replays, but these are both quite a ways a way for now. The Gallery wasn't a planned feature until phase 3, but I wanted to give you players more to unlock and mess about with in the form of the endings and music and so I juggled it's implementation alongside various other bits and pieces. MARCHING ONWARDS Slowly but surely the game is really becoming fleshed out with content, more than game's of its type typically have, and yet we're still in Early Access! Of course it'll be up to you, the players, whether you think the content in the game adds to the style, world building and atmosphere of the game enough to raise it up your rankings, but I hope you continue to dip in from time to time and enjoy this ridiculous project. Next on my agenda is to continue working through the character animations. These animations add so much to the readability of each character, let alone personality, so I'm keen to get them done. It's a time consuming process as I animate each frame by hand, but when they're all wrapped up I'll be able to focus almost entirely on new content, so it's a worthy goal! Well until next time... Peace & Love, Paris ___________________ ZONERS v0.26 Patch Notes [ADDITIONS]

• Added Ringressa's Idle, Move, Dash, Melee, Projectile, Super, Hyper, Hit, Stunned, Wallstun, Ukemi, Electric & Dazed animations
• The Museum Gallery is now accessible from the Museum Lobby. In it's current state you will be able to view unlocked character end cards, listen to unlocked music and chat to Jan the Janitor. Please note that there are currently minimal/missing sfx for this room. More features will be added to this room in the future.
• Added 30+ unlockable songs to the Museum Gift Shop. These various songs will be become available in the Gift Shop after fulfilling various simple conditions in single and/or multiplayer. Once purchased go to the new Museum Gallery and listen to them as much as you want on the new in game Jukebox
• Added 8 character end cards to the Museum Gift Shop. Beating the Zoners Cup on any difficulty with a character will make a painting appear in the Museum Gift Shop that can be purchased and then viewed whenever you want by visiting the Museum Gallery
• Added one additional steam achievement for unlocking all of the available music

• Fixed bug where Bzzt's melee would always electrify the ball after one charged melee had been performed, instead of only during charged melees
• Ringressa's Super portal no longer disappears completely when being hit from behind by the ball, and instead disconnects temporarily
• Ringressa's Hyper move functions pretty much identically to before but instead of summoning one large portal, it summons a smaller portal that follows the nearest ball's Y position
• Urnest's Super has been modified so that when the conditions were met that would see it return along the path it was sent out, it instead is "released" and continues along the trajectory it was going before until it hits a wall. If it is dragging a player with it it will slam them against the wall. This should make it more intuitive to use and generally more dangerous and useful in more contexts
• Fixed a bug whereby trying to melee a ball being sucked into Urnest's Super would cause the game to get stuck infinitely creating explosions
• Fixed issue where Urnest's Super wouldn't travel as far as intended when it bounced
• Fixed issue where Urnest would be drawn slightly transparent when the rainbow glow of a full meter is on top of them
• Rhapsody Projectiles can now be deflected properly as intended and the front notes get destroyed by other projectiles
• Projectiles no longer get progressively smaller as they are deflected by melees
• Fixed light source issues with projectiles effecting players from too far away and always being at max strength

• Fixed a bug where unlocking the 7th colour for a character via the character usage in Match Maker method would not display which character's colour is unlocked in the notification
• Added scroll bar to the Hall of Fame stats viewers
• Fixed bug where the "new" indicator clearing for new shop items when hovered on would not be saved, meaning it'd always show up as "new"

[FIXES & CHANGES] GAMEPLAY

• Fixed numerous bugs that could trigger when trying to do a melee or projectile move during the end lag of a super or hyper move
• Fixed various issues where ball was snapping to unexpected positions when doing a melee and sometimes not getting hit as intended because of this
• Fixed a bug with Perfect Parries for a number of characters whose melee attacks hitboxes change over the course of the melee
• Added a small buffer of 3 frames from releasing a melee where you can still start a dash if you haven't connected with a ball and fixed issue where you couldn't dash straight away when in the buffer and charge phase of a melee
• Further balanced AI ball clash mashing ability
• Slightly improved AI's ability to aim at the ball when dashing
• Increased melee charge time for Bzzt
• Stopped Gluup's hyper missile from exploding because it's near any goal and now only when time is up or it's near opponent's goal
• Gluup's hyper missile now starts off at a slower speed and accelerates to it's max
• Fixed bug that would cause Crabhammer's Super objects to not despawn

• Fixed bug when going back from P1 vs CPU or CPU vs CPU to P1 vs P2 where the profile selection screen wouldn't display correctly
• Fixed bug where ball base power was not being saved in custom match templates
• Fixed bug where loaded custom match templates would show the wrong thing on the ball gravity button if the saved gravity was "OFF"

• Removed all the HPF and LPF versions of the match songs from the game and reduced the overall size of the game from 310mb to 266mb

[FIXES & CHANGES] GAMEPLAY

• Fixed crash on Advanced Training Ball Auras caused by changes to FX introduced in last patch
• Fixed numerous crashes on King boss battle caused by changes to FX introduced in last patch
• Fixed Ringressa & Princess' projectiles on Target Takedown spawning a child projectile when connecting with a bouncer not instantly destroying
• Ringressa & Princess' projectiles can now be deflected by melee attacks like other projectiles, creating a child projectile

• Fixed drawing of Sphere Smasher ball outline on Cup level progress screen
• Fixed bug where particles on match transition screen weren't drawing

• Fixed bug where bonus game highscores were being saved and checked for unlocks based on the total score after rank multipliers rather than before
• Fixed bug where sphere smasher and target takedown highscores and combos were being saved on each other's spots rather than themselves

[ADDITIONS]

• Improved the way the holofield distortion effects are done and added additional ripples for moving players, balls & projectiles
• Added Ringressa's Move, Dash & Projectile animations

• Fixed bug in Target Takedown when playing as Princess or Ringressa that would cause a crash
• Fixed font scaling for points when playing Bonus games with Hi-Res fonts option turned on
• Stopped multiple error warnings popping up on screen at once during tutorials
• Made some small changes in various places to try and fix a bug that one specific player is having in the melee spin tutorial
• Disabled super and hyper moves for advanced training lessons that shouldn't use it
• Improved Perfect Parry slightly removing some player and ball positioning bugs and making the melee animation skip to later in its animation cycle
• Reduced window for a Perfect Parry from 4 frames to 2
• When the electric status effect is applied to a player, the sprite will be now be drawn the correct way up
• Corrected error in code that meant AI would perform greater than intended at ball clashes at high levels and worse at lower
• Attempted to fix rare issue where AI would not move towards a still ball on their side
• Fixed a bug that causes crash during King boss battle sometimes when a goal is scored
• Increased hitbox of Bzzt during hyper move to cause less situations where they miss the ball

• Fixed a crash when mashing the confirm button as the end card art is first appearing
• Urnest outline draws correctly again in menus and dialogue etc
• When hi-res fonts are on the pause/end of match menu header backing is no longer off centre
• Changed advanced tutorial menu button numbering to be in Kliancish instead of stars

• Turned back on a layer on Plazzma Penthouse that was turned off by accident, making the goals and some other elements not visible
• Holofield text x position is clamped further to the right
• Fixed Bzzt's projectile charged shine on right side player to be in correct position
• Hit FX now produce a wider range of coloured glow particles

Work on the character animations is underway. First up we have Bzzt's new slick electrifying animations and general character balancing. I'm going to be tweaking a number of values and even whole moves as I go through each character to bring the overall standard and quality of the game up a few notches. Additionally I've added a brand new game mechanic, or rather a new wrinkle to an existing game mechanic. By dashing the moment you touch a ball you'll perform a Perfect Parry. This is a good mixup tool to add to your arsenal! Finally here is the updated road map:
As you can see, there's a lot more going on in this first phase now than originally planned, but it's good reasons now that I can see how development is going and how long certain things will take. Next on my hit list is Ringressa's animations. Quite a few of these characters are gonna really benefit from these animations so I can't wait to make my way through them. On the side, I have my background artist getting ready to work on the Museum Gallery. This set of features might not be available until the next phase depending on how long it takes to implement, but it might end up being pulled forward. We shall see! ----PATCH NOTES----- [ADDITIONS]

• Added Bzzt's move, dash, melee, projectile, super, hyper, hit, stun, wall stun & quick recovery animations
• Bzzt's super has been completely changed again. Using it now will cause a lightning bolt to begin to appear vertically at the opponents x position at the point of initial use. In 90 frames (1.5 seconds) the lightning strike will occur at that position for 15 frames electricuting the opponent if it touches it whilst active or adding the electric status effect to any balls that pass by it
• Added the "Perfect Parry" mechanic. By dashing the moment a moving ball is in contact with your character, you will perform a much quicker parry that's even quicker than a normal melee. It still has the usual restrictions of a regular parry (no ball aura, reduced ball speed etc), but could be a useful mixup to surprise opponents with

• Fixed bug where pausing a match during the last 5 seconds countdown would cause the announcer's voice to keep playing the current second voice clip on loop until the game resumed
• Added slight knockback from hitting the ball with an uncharged melee
• Fixed an issue with Ringressa's Hyper where you'd hit the ball multiple times

• Title screen characters and game logo now bob
• Menu song title in the academy now shifts up slightly when in the training menu so it doesn't occlude or get occluded by the training menu screen

• Changed the way the "Darken BG" profile setting works so that it darkens the holofield layer rather than a separate BG layer. I've also changed the default setting for this to be 50% when choosing no profile or creating a new one
• Fixed Bzzt's electrical particles so they correctly draw in the currently selected Bzzt's electricity colour
• Fixed dash angle drawing during the dash start up for every character
• Fixed hitstun, stun and wall stun image orientations for players on both sides of the field
• Fixed edge light drawing issue with projectiles happening when the projectile was effecting the characters lighting from too far away
• Fixed music duplication issue during the advanced tutorials from changes to the music filtering introduced from last updates

[ADDITIONS]

• Added Bzzt's move, dash, melee, projectile, super, hyper, hit, stun, wall stun & quick recovery animations
• Bzzt's super has been completely changed again. Using it now will cause a lightning bolt to begin to appear vertically at the opponents x position at the point of initial use. In 90 frames (1.5 seconds) the lightning strike will occur at that position for 15 frames electricuting the opponent if it touches it whilst active or adding the electric status effect to any balls that pass by it

• Fixed bug where pausing a match during the last 5 seconds countdown would cause the announcer's voice to keep playing the current second voice clip on loop until the game resumed
• Added the "Perfect Parry" mechanic. By dashing the moment a moving ball is in contact with your character, you will perform a much quicker parry that's even quicker than a normal melee. It still has the usual restrictions of a regular parry (no ball aura, reduced ball speed etc), but could be a useful mixup to surprise opponents with
• Added slight knockback from hitting the ball with an uncharged melee
• Fixed an issue with Ringressa's Hyper where you'd hit the ball multiple times

• Title screen characters and game logo now bob
• Menu song title in the academy now shifts up slightly when in the training menu so it doesn't occlude or get occluded by the training menu screen

• Changed the way the "Darken BG" profile setting works so that it darkens the holofield layer rather than a separate BG layer. I've also changed the default setting for this to be 50% when choosing no profile or creating a new one
• Fixed Bzzt's electrical particles so they correctly draw in the currently selected Bzzt's electricity colour
• Fixed dash angle drawing during the dash start up for every character
• Fixed hitstun, stun and wall stun image orientations for players on both sides of the field
• Fixed edge light drawing issue with projectiles happening when the projectile was effecting the characters lighting from too far away
• Fixed music duplication issue during the advanced tutorials from changes to the music filtering introduced from last updates

[FIXES & CHANGES] GAMEPLAY

• Slightly increased the range AI detects it can do a melee in some specific interactions to accomodate the way characters now shift slightly towards the ball
• Fixed a bug with the AI that would sometimes cause a crash
• Fixed ball clashes so the ball always moves in the right direction relative to who is winning
• Losing a ball clash now causes you to be stunned for slightly longer
• Added a small input buffer of 5 frames to the spin inputs when performing a melee, projectile, super or hyper move. This means if you release both the spin input and the melee charge at the same time, as frequently many players seem to do, you're much more likely to still do the spin
• Rhapsody projectile now draws the notes always the correct way round
• Rhapsody projectile no longer stuns the casting Rhapsody during their spawning at certain angles
• Fixed a bug with Rhapsody's projectile that would cause a crash if it hit a player
• Changed shape of Rhapsody's Hyper move soundwaves' hitboxes from box to elipse and increased hitbox size in a backwards direction slightly
• Made it so when Rhapsody's Hyper Amp connects with the ball, it causes the ball to be stunned for 15 frames and moves it to the amps position so it doesn't pass the amp before the soundwaves can effect it when travelling fast or at odd angles
• Crabhammers Hyper move mech now correctly exits the arena when ending, even if it's ended early
• Crabhammers Hyper move mech flipper claws no longer stay on the field invisibly effecting the ball's speed after being used once
• Crabhammers Hyper move flippers should no longer not return the ball in some cases after the move has already been used earlier in the match
• Reduced the audio ducking effect from goal scoring so the music volume isn't as greatly reduced
• Changed the way the in match music LPF and HPF effects are applied using GameMaker's new built in audio effects. Previously I had to achieve this by having multiple audio files for the same song and dynamically blending between them. If players are happy with the new sound I'll remove the old HPF and LPF audio files which should reduce the total game size by a decent amount. If not then I'll revert back to the old way
• Gameplay HUD now fades in at the start of a match/mode rather than instantly appearing

• Added win percentage to Hall of Fame character Match Up table
• Character Match Up table now highlights currently selected row making it easier to tell which character's win rates you are looking at

Intro Hey all, Paris here with a lovely big game update steamhappy Wow what a bunch of months it's been. Up until a couple of days I thought I was about to be homeless! 2022 honestly sucked an awful lot for me overall and the latter part of it really took its toll on me. And yet, I've been quietly working on the game in the background trying my best to live up to not only your expectations but my own too. Well I think it was probably worth taking my time as I've managed to include some features and changes that weren't planned until later phases (I'll be updating the road map in general soon to take into account everything that has been going on). Shall we tuck in? Patch Notes This is the biggest update so far and so it stands to reason it's also go the biggest patch notes list! The main additions are below, but if you want the full details on everything added, changed and fixed then simply click HERE

• New Stage - Stardom Stadium. This stage appears during the cup finals and can be unlocked from the gift shop after achieving one of several unlock conditions in single or multiplayer
  
• Hazardless Stage Variants - When selecting a stage in Match Maker, all stages that feature hazards can now be played "hazardless" by choosing the appropriate variant that appears on the screen
  
• Zone Breaker Match Type - You can now unlock the Zone Breaker match type to buy from the shop via several unlock methods. In this match type that first appears in a special battle, only Zone Breaks count towards a point! This match type works best with longer goal shield recharge times and can be selected in the custom match settings menu
• Cup Mode Endings - All ranks in the cup now have a proper ending dialogue scene and lovely end card art showing the chosen character enjoying life after their winning wish is granted. These collected end cards will later be viewable in the Museum Gallery via a future update
• Cup Mode Super & Hyper Ranks - The two higher difficulties are now selectable in the cup mode and feature additional challenges like an end of cup boss (on a special non-playable stage) and higher level CPUs. Some further work still needs to be done on CPU balancing in a future update
  
• Cup mode highscores for each character are now displayed on the CSS for the cup mode. This is your highest score across all ranks for that character
• After each stage in a cup a slightly more detailed breakdown of the additional score/earnings is shown. I've also added extra points for the number of goals you scored
• 50 Steam Achievements have been added to the game. Most but not all of these achievements concern things which are already attainable in game. There will be more added in the future to coincide with specific content drops and of course the few that can't be currently unlocked will become unlockable in the future
• Animated and reacting background spectators added to Primary Park, Circle Circuit, Plazzma Penthouse, Ring Research, Rec Room, Haunted Hangout, Nautilus Nights, The Clawcade & Stardom Stadium stages
  
• Added the museum version of the Main Theme to the museum lobby room
• Added the Gift Shop theme to the museum Gift Shop
• Ambience and gimmick sfx added to The Clawcade and Core Castle stages
• Added 6 new conversation emotes throughout the game's various dialogues: Yes, No, Pumped, Shout, Dot Dot Dot & Draft

[ADDITIONS]

• New Stage - Stardom Stadium. This stage appears during the cup finals and can be unlocked from the gift shop after achieving one of several unlock conditions in single or multiplayer
• Hazardless Stage Variants - When selecting a stage in Match Maker, all stages that feature hazards can now be played "hazardless" by choosing the appropriate variant that appears on the screen
• Zone Breaker Match Type - You can now unlock the Zone Breaker match type to buy from the shop via several unlock methods. In this match type that first appears in a special battle, only Zone Breaks count towards a point! This match type works best with longer goal shield recharge times and can be selected in the custom match settings menu
• Cup Mode Endings - All ranks in the cup now have a proper ending dialogue scene and lovely end card art showing the chosen character enjoying life after their winning wish is granted. These collected end cards will later be viewable in the Museum Gallery via a future update
• Cup Mode Super & Hyper Ranks - The two higher difficulties are now selectable in the cup mode and feature additional challenges like an end of cup boss (on a special non-playable stage) and higher level CPUs. Some further work still needs to be done on CPU balancing in a future update
• Cup mode highscores for each character are now displayed on the CSS for the cup mode. This is your highest score across all ranks for that character
• After each stage in a cup a slightly more detailed breakdown of the additional score/earnings is shown. I've also added extra points for the number of goals you scored
• 50 Steam Achievements have been added to the game. Most but not all of these achievements concern things which are already attainable in game. There will be more added in the future to coincide with specific content drops and of course the few that can't be currently unlocked will become unlockable in the future
• Animated and reacting background spectators added to Primary Park, Circle Circuit, Plazzma Penthouse, Ring Research, Rec Room, Haunted Hangout, Nautilus Nights, The Clawcade & Stardom Stadium stages
• Added the museum version of the Main Theme to the museum lobby room
• Added the Gift Shop theme to the museum Gift Shop
• Ambience and gimmick sfx added to The Clawcade and Core Castle stages
• Added 6 new conversation emotes throughout the game's various dialogues: Yes, No, Pumped, Shout, Dot Dot Dot & Draft

• During the buffer and charging portions of a player's melee, the character will automatically shift slightly towards the ball if it's within a fixed pixel radius and on their side of the arena. The exact speed and distance they travel is dependent on the characters speed stat and charge timer length. The intent behind this is to increase the focus on timing, aiming and decision making over twitchy precise character movement
• Dramatically increased the window of opportunity for melee clashes to happen so that if the active part of a melee is happening at all when another player tries to melee it will trigger a clash. Before this would only trigger if the last hit of both player's melees happened at almost exactly the same time, making it unusually rare
• Changed the way spin inputs are captured so that if a spin input was being held when the move triggers it's active phase, the spin modifier will still be applied. Spin direction can be changed up until the final contact with the ball or launch of a projectile, but will no longer be removed by letting go of both triggers at this point
• Changed the way the game captures input of analogue sticks for aiming so that small amounts of stick drift no longer cause a twitchy aim and that not inputting a direction always correctly shoots directly to the side even if the lack of input is after another an input
• Changed the aim so it is free moving within its range rather than being segmented into 10 degree chunks
• Changing your aim after whiffing a melee doesn't visually cause the aimer and character to sharply change direction
• Put in a fix that should hopefully stop the occasional instance where your aim would be locked after certain circumstances until you completed another move
• Added projectile trails to the holofield. This helps make it easier to see most active projectiles as well as adding an additional visual flourish to gameplay elements
• Updated and improved the melee spin tutorial so it's less fiddly and some bugs with the control display at the bottom are fixed
• Fixed an issue where if Ringressa's projectile laser was hit by another projectile, she'd no longer be able to create her projectile
• Ringressa can no longer use her Super to spawn a portal if one is already on the field. This is to stop panic spamming using up the zone meter by accident, and also encourage players to think about placement more carefully before using it
• Fixed an issue where Gluup would be temporarily invisible after hitting the ball with a melee attack, and the eyes and hyper explosion would sometimes not be visible either
• Improved how Gluup's Hyper missile works all round. When interacting with an opponent trying to hit it back your opponent will now need to work a bit harder to keep it away and it won't just disappear, whilst the overall behaviour is much more consistent and should maintain better game pacing
• Fixed an issue where if Rhapsody was hit when performing her Super but before all 3 vinyl projectiles were launched, you would no longer be able to perform her Super
• Changed Rhapsody's Hyper move so she now throws out an amp in the direction you're aiming. Either when the amp has contact with a ball or after 1.5 seconds (90 Frames) have passed the amp will then shoot out the 3 Hyper Shockwaves that used to come directly from Rhapsody. You can move freely after placing the amp. Previously the move was so fleeting and difficult to time making it an awkward long ranged melee of sorts. These changes should improve the move overall, giving it more active time on the field to take advantage of, whilst still requiring some thought to use effectively, and tying in nicely to Rhapsody's playstyle and character
• Fixed a bug where Crabhammers could no longer perform his super if first of the falling objects was taken care of before the second one spawned
• When Princess' projectile is hit by a melee during it's physical manifestation, the opponent must now hit the actual hand in order to deflect it, rather than any of the laser. Instead hitting the laser part will make it end faster and you'll be safe from harm
• Princess' projectile no longer gets destroyed by other projectiles during it's intangible phase
• Fixed an error that meant Princess wasn't able to deflect multiple projectiles and the range of her projectile deflection didn't match the melee one
• Corrected a bug where a bunch of moves and arena hazards that effected ball angles wouldn't remove any spin effects already on the ball, causing unintended and unpredicable ball directional patterns. If you come across this again, please report which interactions you think combined
• Fixed issue where round win indicators weren't being drawn correctly
• Added some small animated FX to the Zone Meter when using Super or Hyper moves to indicate the amount of meter being consumed
• Changed the way the switches and bumpers work on The Clawcade to make the chaos element of the stage more readable and fun. There is now only one bumper on each side. Each individual switch now can't be pressed for about 1 second after being pressed. Pressing a switch now causes the crab bumpers to gradually move to the other position the missing bumpers were in in an off state
• Updated monetary awards for Match Maker, Hologram Training & Cup modes to increase the overall payout

• Updated the colour blocks when selecting/buying colours to have the 3 main colours of the palette instead of 2
• Tweaked and updated the colours for all characters, some have changed completely, some changed spots and some are fixed. The main character colour used for certain ui and fx will now also update alongside to match the palette for every colour slot
• When choosing your character's colour palette you will no longer be refrained from scrolling higher than colour 3
• All 10 colours for every character are now unlockable in at least one method
• The throne that appears in the intro sequence now matches the design of the throne seen in the Core Castle and King's Quarters stage
• Fixed an issue where the Start button wasn't being detected in some menus
• Fixed issue when creating a new profile with a controller where you could go back out of the CSS without exiting and could not delete letters or confirm new profile
• Fixed an issue where pressing the Back button on the match end & cup game over screens would cause the menu to glitch and you'd be unable to select any menu options
• Fixed crash when trying to continue a suspended cup that was on a Bonus level
• Fixed an issue where your selected profile data would not apply when chosen for the cup mode, and it would instead use whatever the variables were last set at
• Fixed some issues with the "Special Items" menu category in the Gift Shop not correctly unlocking
• Fixed a bug where you'd get a "beat the cup for the first time on any rank" notification every time you beat the cup
• Fixed issue where completing cup with Crabhammers wouldn't correctly be saved and loaded in the Academy Cup CSS screen
• Edited the dialogue between Crabhammers & Princess in the cup mode in both combinations
• Fixed small bug that caused Nintendo Switch Pro controllers to start counting controller number in the top right of the main menus from slot 5. Let me know if this happens with other controllers. Still undecided how to number controllers when using a combination of wired and wireless, or perhaps I should be changing the gamepad icon in the top right to match the controller being used? If you have any thoughts or expectations then let me know!
• Added some temp sfx for milestone notifications/unlocks and now show any bonus money earned from this too

• Fixed issue where cars in the background of Haunted Hangout would have the wrong sprite in an instant replay
• Fixed issue where the Sphere Smasher ball's "self shadow" was cut off and not drawn correctly
• Changed the way the current song playing notification uis displayed slightly and added additional notifications for the menu songs
• Various other small tweaks and fixes across the game

• Animations for the playable characters
• Small improvements to the Hall of Fame

Hey everyone, Paris here, It's been a hot minute since I officially updated you all on the status of the next big update, so let's take some time to quickly dissect everything that is coming in the next big update, v0.2. OVERVIEW To start with, let me apologise for the extended delay getting this next patch out. My 6 year relationship came to an end a couple of months ago and has put a lot of strain on my living situation, slowing down dev speed. On top of this... well let's just say this next update that jumps from v0.17 to v0.2 contains more additions than all the updates from v0.01-v0.17 combined! What's that going to mean for you, the players? STAGES There will be 1 brand new unlockable stage called Stardom Stadium. In this stage set above the planet Klianc VIII, meteors and comets smash into the arena and pass through, knocking things as they go. This stage will always be the "Grand Finals" stage in the cup mode on all difficulties.
There will also be one other special stage, called King's Quarters, that only appears at the end of higher cup difficulties (more on this below). All stages will be playable in a Hazardless form, meaning if you want a straight gimmick free match, but don't want to be locked to Hologram House or Primary Park, you can get the vibes of any stage you want!
Background Spectators are being added to most of the stages. So far we have spectators on Circle Circuit, Plazzma Penthouse, Ring Research, Nautilus Nights & The Clawcade, with more being worked on for Primary Park, Rec Room, Haunted Hangout & Stardom Stadium. Most of these spectators will play a small reaction animation or two when goals are scored. They add extra flavour to the stages as well as giving an opportunity to see existing and new species that aren't the playable cast.
CUP The cup will be playable on Super & Hyper ranks, which add additional levels as well as higher CPU difficulty. Characters will have a conversation with the king about their wish at the end of any cup mode, and on higher ranks they will also have to defeat the king in a special boss battle that takes place on the King's Quarters stage. Cup end cards for all the playable characters that show them enjoying their wish will now appear at the end of the cup too!
MATCH SETTINGS A new unlockable Match Mode type called Zone Breaker will be available. In this mode, only Zone Breaks count towards your points. I recommend slower shield recharging times when trying this mode. MUSIC In addition to the new music that naturally appears on the new stages/boss battle, there's also going to be the Museum version of the Main Theme and the Gift Shop is finally going to have it's own theme. There's also some additional SFX & Ambiences added to some existing stages. OTHER I should also hopefully be adding some of the achievements as part of this update for you all to aim for. And of course, there's a bunch of miscellaneous changes and tweaks coming too!

[ADDITIONS]

• Keyboard & Mouse Support - Added full keyboard & mouse support throughout including key and mouse sprites. Gamepad is still recommended, but this is now a viable option for single and multiplayer! To accommodate this change, I recommend deleting any existing profiles as their settings will likely be incorrect. If you have suggestions for changes to the default keyboard control scheme then let me know! As an additional feature, you can set the left and right spin keys to be the same as another key when using keyboards, so for example the left and right movement keys can be for spin as well. This is because movement and aiming necessarily need to be separated using this control scheme
• Main Theme Academy Version - Added the Academy version of the Main Theme to the Academy menu. Going between the Plaza and Academy will change the song version currently playing to the same point in the song
• New clash mechanic - when two players connect a melee with a ball at the same time, you enter a clashing state where one player will triumph by mashing the melee button more, or a draw will happen causing both players to be stunned, if both are tied

• Fixed issue where destroying Bzzt's projectile early would cause it to still connect with other shots despite the fact it should be deactivated
• Gluup Super changes - now travels in a straight line with bounces and with no ball homing. Slightly faster move speed than before. Upon blowing up, from time or ball contact, it chains many more explosions further and faster, although will stop at a wall. Can now be melee deflected in both states correctly too just be sure to react fast enough!
• Fixed small issue where full left or up movement from a complete standstill with some characters caused no movement to actually happen
• Corrected issue in Advanced Training where text for the melee spin tutorial would display and the check marks at the bottom would only respond to the melee inputs

• Fixed long term drawing issue of the galaxy map in the CSS that would cause the edges of the galaxy to be overly faded

• Other small tweaks and fixes

• New unlockable stage to act as cup finals stage
• Cup mode end boss for super and hyper ranks
• Cup mode end/boss dialogues
• Cup mode end cards for all characters
• Main Theme Museusm version
• AI improvements

ADDITIONS

• Crabhammers now playable in cup
• Princess now playable in cup
• Clawcade Stage art added

• Fixed bug that caused crash when trying to rematch in cup
• Fixed issue where Ringressa's portals were not taking in the ball correctly
• Ringressa's portals no longer disappear when she's dashing
• Fixed wrong colour outline issue on Princess
• Fixed Princess' parry not connecting
• A few small AI tweaks
• General pre-match cup conversation tweaks and corrections

• Full keyboard input support (1 week)
• New stage to act as finals stage (2 weeks)
• Super and Hyper rank cup difficulties playable (1 month)
• Proper cup ending images (2-3 months)

ADDITIONS Rhapsody is now playable in the cup mode PATCHES GAMEPLAY

• Located & fixed major issue with the instant replay recording buffers that would cause a huge jump in memory usage after each instant replay. This fix will fix longer matches causing crashes and lead to full match replays being possible in the future. Some players might also find the game runs better now as a result
• Introduced visual central projectile barrier after a Zone Break. Because this now acts as other walls do whilst active, some bugs involving projectiles are now fixed, like Crabhammers projectile disappearing and being unable to be used when crossing the threshold after a zone break and projectiles like Princess' passing through the threshold
• Referee now appears in the right place holding the ball after a zone break
• After a Zone Break the Zone Meters no longer sometimes load as slightly below their correct before Break value
• Fixed issue where Crabhammers would be able to fire the projectile more times than projectile number settings
• Crabhammers projectile respawn adjustment - when directly hitting the ball, you must now wait a small number of frames before you can fire again
• Crabhammers Super can no longer be wasted by being spammed
• Princess melee can now detect and connect with Crabhammers super created falling objects
• Princess melee will do hand snap animation and hitbox in front even if it misses. Hitbox is also slightly tweaked. Some other small changes might have fixed a recurring issue where she couldn't hit the ball out of a paused state sometimes. If this happens again to you please report with circumstances just before this so I can try and locate the source!
• Princess Projectile - fixed collision issue against players where you could get hit even when no where near the beam and made some small adjustments to what happens to the projectile after it hits a ball so it fades out rather than instantly disappear
• Princess' Super can no longer be wasted by being spammed & the indicator for when the rewind happens now appears where the ball will return to rather than on the ball itself
• Circle Circuit - believe I've fixed a bug where the corner wheel gimmicks sometimes wouldn't trigger. Needs more testing. Please report back to me if this happens to you still
• Attempted to fix rare bug where ball would get stuck in place until a player hit it. Please report if this still happens to you

• Fixed small issue where returning to the Arena select screen from a match maker match would set the character's hyper move names incorrectly

• Made it so that when launching the game in windowed mode on windows and linux, if the window size is larger than the display height, the window will be scaled down to fit and capped at a max of 720p. Preventing issues some users had with the window being offscreen and unable to change things. This can then be changed in the in game options if required

ADDITIONS

• Urnest is now playable in the cup mode

• Stopped urnest drawing entirely black when viewing an instant replay
• Fixed an issue that caused Urnest's projectile to stop hitting the ball after one collision
• Fixed an infinite collision bug that could happen with Urnest's Super when opponent melees a ball that is being dragged by it
• Urnest's Super now drags opponents into the boundary line if it connects with them

• Steam screenshots should now actually work!
• Activating the steam overlay during a match pauses the game
• Fixed issue where the opening screens briefly showed an unintended sprite when changing rooms
• Fixed player 2 controller influencing player 1 menu options in the CSS
• Fixed issue where in CPU vs CPU both ai levels would display as the 2nd CPUs level
• Parts of the Pause screen no longer get covered by black bars
• During cup matches the opponent's headshot sprite in the top right now appears correctly
• Made it so finishing a cup clears your suspended save data so you can't keep earning unlimited money by reloading the end
• Clearing a cup now fills in the appropriate medal slots with the medal rank on the cup character select screen
• Number of other small misc. changes like double sided medals

Quick fix from abroad that fixes issues with CSS in P1 vs CPU and CPU vs CPU match maker mode. This fix applies to Windows only. Warning to linux users (including Steam Deck) that this issue will persist until I'm back from my partner's family's house. Massive apologies for the inconvenience until then.

ADDITIONS

• Gluup is now selectable as a playable character in the ZONERS cup mode

• Updated Pro Controller detection as gamepad name detection has apparently changed from "Pro Controller" to "Nintendo Switch Pro Controller" either in Windows or Gamemaker
• Initiate menu continue button sprite updates position based on currently detected controller i.e right face button for switch pro controller, down face button for xbox or playstation controller
• CPU vs CPU shows join prompt first in the CSS
• During pre-match dialogue if using hi-res fonts the Location/Sub-location and skip text displays at the correct size
• pre-match dialogue jumping movement reaction slightly improved
• Removed the blank test spanish language file as it caused issues for players with steam setup in Spanish even though I haven't allowed any translations yet

• Attempted to fix major issue after last patch where goals would no longer trigger until a new match was started
• Whilst there are still crashes to find and fix, I have temporarily changed the way cup saving is handled so that it is auto saved between matches and not lost on reloading. This means even if the game crashes or a bug stops progress, you will be able to continue where you left off. This is of course abusable and so will change later in development, but my main priority at the moment is letting the bugs cause as little damage to your fun as possible
• Attempted to fix a common freeze reported happening by one player on Plazzma Penthouse. I believe a while loop was sometimes getting stuck endlessly
• Ball can no longer begin to be hit by a melee hitbox and move out of it's range unless the parent player is broken out of the melee by being hit for example
• Fixed bug where if ball was in centre and hit by any character's melee and opposing player was Bzzt hits it with a super it would cause an infinite hit effect
• Urnest super can no longer be deflected before it becomes physical, sometimes causing infinite deflects
• Urnest super will now drag opponents along with it if for a bit if they connect with it
• Crabhammers projectile no longer becomes unusable after hitting opponent or centre line during zone break
• Crabhammers super fallers no longer stun opponent if they are doing a Hyper move
• Princess now faces the correct way when doing her melee if player 2
• CPU vs CPU no long crashes the game on match load

ZONERS v0.1.1 Patch Notes MENUS

• Fixed gamepad tester in opening message screen so it can be opened and also closed again
• "Delete Save Data" in the options menu now functions as it should without deleting data no matter the choice
• Fixed issue when doing player vs cpu with the control stick having no delay between menu movements on the CSS

• AI won't try to move ahead of ball if it's in a paused/held state
• The ball should be less likely to not get hit out of it's referee held state
• Princess melee now hits once from position around her, removing a number of bugs. This might change back in the future depending
• A melee clash with Princess no long causes an infinite crash loop
• Princess shot laser now has an outline like other projectiles
• Fixed issue that caused Ringressa's shot laser to still draw after clearing until used again
• Fixed issue where the Hyper move name view would get stuck on screen during a match
• Attempted to fix memory allocation crash for the replay recording object by resetting the recording buffer between rounds. This still might trigger if a match is left unattended in a draw, or a long round length is set. I will be looking into this further in the future.*
• Also atttempted to remove some issues of loading some recorded match replay data and getting a crash with a high id number

• Steam overlay and screenshots should now work correctly

And we're live! That's right, ZONERS is now available in Early Access. It's all go, go, go over on my end today as I still have to manage things whilst at my day job! But I've managed to fix the first set of bugs discovered (see below) and start interacting with people about the game. This patch should go live for all platforms very shortly. [PATCH IS NOW LIVE] So what's next? I'll begin by just maintaining what we have until Friday 5th of August, at which point I unfortunately have to make a week long excursion to Ireland for my partner's family (terrible timing... always T_T). I'll still be on hand to take bug reports and listen to feedback, but it's unlikely I'll be able to fix anything until I'm back. From that point on, I'll be hammering away at the first set of updates, which includes The Clawcade stage background, a brand new stage, super and hyper ranks in the cup, some initial achievements & of course gameplay tweaks and balance. I'll keep you all in the loop with where things are at, but I'd expect at least some of these within the first 30 days. In the mean time, if you manage to play with any friends or have good experiences, I'd love it if you could share them in the community, on social media, in steam reviews, or even just privately to me! It can be lonely work splitting my time between "Real job" and indie dev (we're talking 60 hour weeks!!!). I REAAAAALLY hope you enjoy your time with the game and I'm able to update it regularly enough to give you stuff to do. Thank you so much for putting your faith in me if you've bought it already. Love, Paris ZONERS v0.1.1 Patch Notes MENUS

• Fixed gamepad tester in opening message screen so it can be opened and also closed again
• "Delete Save Data" in the options menu now functions as it should without deleting data no matter the choice
• Fixed issue when doing player vs cpu with the control stick having no delay between menu movements on the CSS

• AI won't try to move ahead of ball if it's in a paused/held state
• The ball should be less likely to not get hit out of it's referee held state
• Princess melee now hits once from position around her, removing a number of bugs. This might change back in the future depending
• A melee clash with Princess no long causes an infinite crash loop
• Princess shot laser now has an outline like other projectiles
• Fixed issue that caused Ringressa's shot laser to still draw after clearing until used again
• Fixed issue where the Hyper move name view would get stuck on screen during a match
• Attempted to fix memory allocation crash for the replay recording object by resetting the recording buffer between rounds. This still might trigger if a match is left unattended in a draw, or a long round length is set. I will be looking into this further in the future.*
• Also atttempted to remove some issues of loading some recorded match replay data and getting a crash with a high id number

• Steam overlay and screenshots should now work correctly

And after the technical issues and a touch of stupidity on my part, ZONERS is now officially, for real this time, no really I mean it, launching tomorrow the 2nd of August 2022 at around 8am PDT! Wooo! Sorry to keep you all waiting, but I can't wait for you to get tucked in! I'll share with you the more immediate dev plans for the first month of Early Access tomorrow when I return from work. Until then, this is Paris, trying to get some sleep and sending you all "Love & Peace"

Release Date

Early Access Plans

• The game will release at it's lowest price, roughly half of it's final full release price.
• Provided there are no major hitches, every 4-6 months I will complete a "Phase" of development, which has certain development goals in mind.
• There will be 3 main phases, meaning Early Access will take about 12-18 months depending on life circumstances speeding up or slowing down development.
• When a phase is officially complete the price will be increased by a few /$.
• I will spam all my available channels the week before I do this so people have the opportunity to make a purchase decision before a price increase with fair warning.
• From Early Access launch up to and including v1.0 release, there will be exactly 3 price increases just as there are 3 phases.

Well I said the Linux version would probably be coming soon, and after a few restless nights surrounded by 3 different computers bug fixing, Linux support is officially here! Download it and give it a whirl for free. Due to my limited Linux knowledge and the wide array of distros available, it's possible you might encounter some weird bugs I haven't picked up on or performance issues I haven't seen on my end. Please let me know if this happens and I'll do my utmost best to help out, but please note I am limited to officially building to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS as per my engine's guidelines, and so depending on the cause, I might not be able to tackle distro specific issues. However, if you typically play games on your Linux OS, then you will probably be fine for the most part. v0.08.1 Patch Notes Platform Support - Linux versions of the ZONERS Demo are now available, and with that all future full releases of ZONERS will also come to Linux day 1! Menus Etc. - Changed the way gamepad detection is handled slightly to account for Linux specific concerns. - Updated the gamepad player no. icon in the top right of many menus to include a number, altered controller sprite and all LED configurations for players 5-8). This icon will now indicate player number based on the order connected gamepads are detected in. Note The Steam Next Fest Demo version of ZONERS will continue to receive free updates and fixes until sometime close to the Early Access launch (End of July 2022 pending) where it will then be removed. If you've enjoyed playing it, please give us a wishlist and share it with your friends. Every little voice together makes a ZOOOOOONE BREAK!

That's right, ZONERS is now going to officially be releasing for Apple Mac devices too! As part of that process I've made the recent demo available for macOSX. For full information on getting it running see below. So, "What about Linux?" I hear faintly echo from the void. Don't worry, I've not forgotten about it! Stay tuned for more information about that in the near future I reckon :) PATCH NOTES Demo v0.08 PLATFORM ADDITION - Mac OSX version of the demo is now available! As this game is not yet an officially signed Apple app, if you are using more recent versions of macOSX and the game is blocked when trying to open it, please follow these instructions in order to allow the game to run: https://help.yoyogames.com/hc/en-us/articles/216753558 Known macOSX Issues - Game doesn't recognise true resolution of Retina display. This is a limitation of not owning a paid Apple dev account. If there is enough demand, I will pay for one. - Manually scaling the window yourself will cause many visual glitches. If you accidentally do this, set the window size in the game options to undo you manual changes. - 1 frame flicker when entering a some new rooms. Am aware of the cause, will need some time to work around it GAMEPLAY - Character - Using Bzzt's Super will now cause them to dash continuously in your chosen direction. Connecting with the ball will trigger old behaviour consistently (no longer extra zigzags), where as hitting a wall will cause a small recovery period - Urnest Super is active at end point for longer now only travels back along path if it catches a ball or player - Rhapsody Super now spawns multiple dizzy inducing vinyls & added placeholder destroy sound - Rhapsody Hyper sound waves have less time between them and a new placeholder sound effect has been added for each one Gameplay - General - Sphere Smasher ball can no longer be lost outside of the arena - Fixed crash where ball would look for non-existing object during Sphere Smasher - Fixed the way the background is drawn on the Plazzma Penthouse stage so it displays correctly Menus etc - Added version number on titlescreen & demo indicator - Improved windowed mode mouse dragging for Windows versions - Fixed display of some background lights on CSS screen - Added small tab indicator in the bottom left of Match Maker & CSS menus that shows player count & overall match setting type (E.g P1 Vs Cpu & standard match icon)

v0.07 Patch Notes

• Fixed crash when trying to do a rematch after losing in a cup match
• Fixed opponent's character theme playing over the stage music when rematching a cup match
• Fixed issue with using Piro's Hyper during the Ring Rally bonus game

Another update with another bunch of fixes, balance changes and additions and some mac version news. Thanks to a couple of people for privately reaching out to me with bugs they've found. PATCH NOTES v0.06 GAMEPLAY - Character

• Piro Hyper vortex distortion effect clears into different distortion correctly at end
• Bzzt super can no longer get stuck on field
• Bzzt super does one less zig/zag shape
• Ringressa hyper angle for player 2 fixed and general ball connection issues after it passes through portal should now be resolved
• Gluup hyper moves slower, homes on ball, delay after being deflected before turning around, fixed interactions with hitboxes, no long stuns opponent when explodes and is destroyed when time is up on not last round of match

• Fixed issue with game getting stuck in a hit pause loop when two characters melee close to each other with a projectile in between them by pushing players away from each other gradually

• Improved intro song vocals
• Changed "Register" to "Career" in the Academy
• Choosing default in Match Settings & then going back to match settings no longer bugs out the p1/p2 shields recharge buttons and ball gravity is correctly set to off
• Default settings now correctly display 7s shield recharge time for global player shields
• Outline on Ref in CSS now scales with resolution correctly
• Ringressa key art outline displaying wrong colour fixed
• Added new match start, mid short & long, match end whistles

Demo v0.05 Patch Notes

• Added lots of animations for Piro
• Added particle trail to Piro projectiles and improved coding on his Super projectile
• Added projectile bounce and deflection effects
• Improved Hyper ball hit FX
• Minor gameplay tweaks & fixes

Hey all, I've been responding to private bug reports as well as just generally updating and tweaking the game and it's associated Steam demo relatively frequently, with the most recent patch being just a few minutes ago. Below is a general overview of all the tweaks and changes made since I launched the demo just over a week ago:

• Fixed soft locks during basic & advanced tutorials
• Fixed issue with display during matches scaling whole scene into view causing distortions and and losing panning
• Fixed issue with losing a match during the cup that would get you stuck with incorrect menu display
• Fixed display of text shadow during tutorials when at higher than 640x360
• Made it so changing the music volume in the options will also effect the intro music
• Fixed some crashes related to game looking for objects that no longer exist
• Added support for Dualshock 4 Controllers with associated sprites and button mappings
• Added support for Wireless Xbox One controllers when detected as "Bluetooth LE XINPUT compatible input device"
• Added support for keyboard typing of names for match templates and profiles
• Changed application icon to indicate it's a demo
• Added new melee & move animations for Piro
• Improved the small hit fx animation

Tired of waiting for the official start of Steam Next Fest? Well I've got good news for you! The ZONERS demo is now live featuring: - 4 playable characters & 5 stages in the single & multiplayer Match Maker mode - 2 difficulties & 1 playable character in the single player zoners cup mode REMOTE PLAY I tried remote play with one of my fans across the atlantic an hour ago and it was predictably laggy, yet we still had a blast. If the game does well enough, I'll be sure to invest in some proper online play support for you all, so make some noise if you like what you see!! BUGS & FEEDBACK If you downloaded the demo earlier today or yesterday, you might have had some issues in the cup mode when you lose. I've since updated the demo with a small patch which should fix a few things. But if you come across any other bugs, report them to me on here, via email or twitter and I'll get them fixed ASAP! Or if you just want to say hi, let me know what you like about the game, then don't be afraid to reach out either. Thanks for reading & happy gaming, Paris Director ALL iN indie

ZONERS is going to be participating in the Steam Next Fest next month in June and then FINALLY releasing into Early Access in July! To celebrate I've cooked up a fresh new trailer that shows off the many new additions and developments that have happened over the last year. Check it out below or on the Steam page! If you're looking forward to this game then make sure to share it whenever and whereever to help spread the word :) [previewyoutube=Iioz5JuT1AU;full][/previewyoutube]