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

What's Next? "OK wise guy, you've finally dropped some features and content I've been waiting for, what's next? Will we always have to wait this long now?" I hear you say across the void. Firstly, most updates should be somewhat more frequent again from now on. I'm going to aim to drop a patch at least once a month. Equally, I'm trying to be more careful when I do update the game that there are less bugs introduced overall. I've no doubt there'll forever be things I miss, but you should see a rise in quality on this front. As always, feel free to drop comments publically or privately to me via any method. As long as you're constructive I'll always listen at the very least! I'll be updating the Road Map in the next few days to reflect the recent pipeline changes. As for what's next, I think it's about time these characters took on some more life and personality don't you? So I'll be gradually animating all of the playable characters to better convey who they are and visually communicate their move properties better. Once I've done these me and my SFX guy can begin to look at doing SFX and Voice work for the cast to match their movements and style. This will be the main focus by far as frame by frame 2d animation is a very time consuming process, but to break things up I'll probably be making some small changes to the Hall of Fame to improve it overall. Realistically I'm expecting 1-2 weeks per character minimum here, and possibly longer if other life events take place... Personal Information This bit is mostly personal but I'm currently in the process of trying to swap my crappy day to day retail job I've been doing for years to fund my game dev, for an actual games industry job. If / when I get one, it's pretty likely ZONERS will take a backseat for at least a month whilst I bring myself up to speed with whatever software or development process said company wants to employ. The reason I'm doing this now is several: I need more money, I need more contacts, I want more knowledge & experience, working a physical retail job is slowly killing me!!! All this being said, I want to say right here and now, that ZONERS will be finished one way or another and I'm extremely grateful for the small pool of passionate support I already have. I'm confident that the end product is going to be worthy of the massive amounts of time I've poured into it.

[ 2023-01-27 19:39:35 CET ] [ Original post ]