Hello Avalicians! With summer almost here, we've been working hard on porting the game to consoles and addressing as many lingering bugs as possible. In the meantime, we have a juicy new update that not only includes a hefty amount of fixes and balance tweaks, but includes two new locations in Shuigang! Beyond the outskirts of town is an optional advanced tutorial to teach new players how to guard properly. Additionally, Chloe has now set up a campground before the Snowfields stage that makes it possible to buy items from her at the point where the player is blocked from returning to town. Thank you all so much for your support and feedback, we couldn't have polished the game this much without your help! General - Certain lore text has been added to a relevant location and can be read after a certain point late in the game. If the player has cleared the game, a certain relevant NPC will provide a hint on the text's location. - All music which previously lacked seamless looping now feature it. This includes boss tracks, map tracks, and a handful of stage and hub themes. - Fixed a handful of typos in places including the Royal Palace, the Battlesphere Lobby, Adventure Square, the Gallery, and the world map. - Some small adjustments have been made to sustaining damage from falling off-screen: Added 0.2 second input lock, players are now placed a bit farther from the ledge, the player's collision layer is now reverted, and momentum should now be stopped more reliably. - Changed some velocity values and jump flags on leaving water in an attempt to prevent the player from occasionally losing vertical velocity when leaving water or entering a dry bubble. - Petals spawned from a fire shield will magnetize to the player after a brief delay. - Fixed an issue where the player would have collision problems if they fell off-screen without touching solid ground since the start of the level. Lilac - Fixed Dragon Boost flame effect sometimes having an incorrect angle. Carol - Carol's bike will be stored if she restarts from checkpoint while riding it. - Can now short hop while rolling. - Fixed an issue where Carol would be direction-locked in midair if she Low Kicked onto a fuel can. - Increased Carol's guard time while on a bike by 5 frames. Milla - Can now short hop while holding out a shield or firing the Cube Blaster. Results Screen - Fixed an issue where the total crystal bonus would sometimes be off by one when the player used an item which reduced their total crystal bonus. - Fixed some math inaccuracies for the bonus percentage and crystal reward. - Fixed an issue where the tally in the results menu could be interrupted. Tutorials - A brief section has been added to the tail end of the Basic Tutorial which quickly addresses the Guard technique. - A brand new tutorial stage, Guard Trial, will now appear immediately after Shuigang. It is not required to clear this tutorial to progress. If the player doesn't have any game clear badges yet, a message will pop up asking the player if they would like to play the tutorial stage when they first overlap it on the Adventure Mode map. - Fixed a small issue in Carol's Basic Tutorial where the input for jump disc warps displayed incorrectly. - Fixed a small issue in Milla's Basic Tutorial where her Cube Blaster animation would not play. - Tutorial stages will now force Powerups off. - Fixed an issue where the waterfall in Neera and Carol's basic tutorial stages wasn't moving. World Map - A small hub area with a shop has been added just prior to Snowfields to allow players a chance to buy helpful items (at a slight markup). As players are unable to access the rest of the world map untill Snowfields is cleared, this gives them the ability to buy items during this point in the game. - Players can now press Left to go from Snowfields to the Guard Trial (it was previously only possible to navigate this way by pressing Down). - Fixed an issue where Palace Courtyard would not properly display the Vinyl icon in the Adventure Map. Cutscenes - If the player enters a cutscene zone when KO'd, the game will attempt to Revive the player on the spot if possible, adhering to revivals' rules and requirements. If Revival is successful, the cutscene will be activated properly and proceed as planned. This also should fix any player zombie-state bugs that render many interactable objects unusable when such situation occurs. This change does not apply to the cutscene in Palace Courtyard's boss arena. - Players are now given some invincibility during the starting transition time of a cutscene. - Oxygen and heat alerts should no longer play during cutscenes. - Water Splashes are now hidden and cleaned up on entering a cutscene. Royal Palace - Removed Bilinear filtering and possible compression from a couple of sky textures. Avian Museum - When the BG Motion setting is set to Minimal, the animation of the background in the hologram section will be static and the background itself will scroll slowly with the player's movement. Gallery - Turned around Discord 2's model in its exhibit so that its text isn't mirrored. Phoenix Highway - Aligned Stahp's laser closer to the satellite point; the laser's sprite no longer flips vertically when turning. The Battlesphere - It is now possible to skip the cutscenes which play each time a new time capsule is obtained. - Fixed an issue where battlesphere challenges displayed the incorrect rank. - Fixed an issue where completing Kalaw's Challenge in Classic Mode would not return the player to the correct scene afterward. - Fixed a bug where lighting displayed incorrectly during Merga's Eclipse Armor refight. Shuigang - Adjusted the position of a handful of NPCs to reduce chances of triggering a specific issue which occurs when interacting with two things at once. - Shuigang now features a Quick Shop option. Robot Graveyard - Zombie Troopers now stop spraying acid during the jump attack if they are in the air for too long. - Zombie Troopers are now affected by gravity when preparing to jump and during landing after the jump. - Fixed several areas where the player could potentially fall out of bounds. Snowfields - The windup for Serpentine's horizontal shooting attack has been increased (1/3 second to 1/2 second). - The timing for when Serpentine's missile attack fires has been adjusted to be more in-time with the alarm sound (which, due to it feeling like a countdown, previously had the potential to catch players off-guard when the missile launched before the third ring). - During his charge shot attack, Wolf Armor Serpentine will face toward the player to better indicate that the shot is going to head toward them. - Wolf Armor's claw attack now has a brief windup (with a longer windup during his final sneak attack). - The timing for Wolf Armor turning to face the player in the middle of the claw attack has been slightly adjusted such that it should now be easier to dodge his claw attack by guarding it while moving in the opposite direction. Conversely, to make the claw attack more threatening from great distances, Wolf Armor will travel further with each swipe if the player is far enough away (roughly one-third of the arena). However, he will not do this during his sneak attack. - During Wolf Armor's laser attack, the player will have a little more time (roughly 10 more more frames) to react when the lasers appear. Additionally, when he does the hovering version of the attack, he will move slightly slower and wait slightly longer (about 15 more frames) before beginning to aim. - There is now an extra delay after Wolf Armor fires his charge attack before he moves to his next attack, to help avoid situations where the charge ball and the following laser attack would overlap in particularly difficult-to-avoid ways. - To compensate for him being generally slightly easier to hit, Wolf Armor's health has been slightly increased (150 to 165). - The camera will now moderately follow Serpentine in both of his phases in Snowfields. Globe Opera 2 - It is now possible to cancel the forced guard effect from teleporters into another guard. Auditorium - BFF2000's rival holograms now deal damage to the player as intended. - BFF2000's body now deals damage during its lance attack. - The active time of BFF2000's dash laser has been reduced by 30 frames. - BFF2000's HP has been reduced from 320 to 280. - Fixed an issue where a checkpoint pop-up would appear after completing Auditorium. Palace Courtyard - Changed the lowest bridge terrain pieces from platforms to solids to prevent the player from accidentally falling through it on rare occasions. - Tightened borders and camera hotspot in the subway arena; same changes translated to the Battlesphere Duality's arena. - Tweaked cutscenes, setting SFX and VA to their proper channels and cleaning up animation events that were causing characters to have jittery transitions. - Extended the night skybox in the courtyard proper to fill the space left empty at the very top. - Moved and shrunk a contingency Exit Zone on the bottom of the base stage that could unintentionally teleport the player back to the ground if they manage to go too high in the courtyard proper; installed an additional pusher on top. - Tweaked Hijacked Police Car script's behaviour to stop it from sliding across the ground after being destroyed in rare cases. Tidal Gate - Fixed camera hotspots and pushers in Shell Growth's boss arena to fit the playable space tightly around the camera's borders and to fix the camera unable to scroll to the right where the Star Card is after the boss is defeated; same changes translated to the Battlesphere Shell Growth's arena. Paradise Prime - Added new collisions and adjusted existing collisions to make platforming around the hub less awkward. - Fixed typo: Pedro saying *Kumasta* instead of *Kumusta* in his greeting line. - Fixed typo: Lola saying "In truth: the tower is a *giant's* magnet, harnessing the power of ...". Sky Bridge - New background trees in the beginning segment now should visually smoothly rise from the ground instead of popping on the horizon, and the trees should now populate more uniformly across various target framerates. Nalao Lake - Slightly adjusted terrain to prevent a specific enemy from interacting with it in an unusual way. - Activating the last of the three combiners now gives the player some invincibility time to prevent them from dying before the cutscene starts playing and bugging out the subsequent segment. - Fixed a few minor enemy collision issues. Ancestral Forge - Fixed a small visual issue with one of the keyfish. Diamond Point - Minor adjustment to prevent potential collision issues. Inversion Dynamo - It is now possible to cancel the forced guard effect from teleporters into another guard. - Receiving teleporters will no longer teleport the player if they stay overlapped for too long; instead, the destination teleporter will wait for the player to stop touching it before it can teleport them again, preventing issues where the player could be potentially softocked. - Teleporters have been slightly adjusted so that their boost works as intended when the player is grounded. Other small changes have been made to help make the teleporters behave more smoothly, including camera movement tweaks. - Minor adjustments to enemy arrangement. - Fixed some small typos in the pre-boss cutscene. Merga - Supermoon health segments should now be properly aligned within the healthbar. Weapon's Core - Attempted to fix the boss weakpoint deactivating, presumably from being damaged too much before the healing phase, making the boss unable to receive damage. - The projectiles in the boss's bullet ring attack now precisely match the warning for the attack.