This is a fairly sizable update featuring a rework of various online multiplayer menus, some new achievements, various quality of life additions, and bug-fixes.

New Pre-Game Lobby

The previous lobby has been completely re-done, instead of a small widget this is now a full size menu with access to lots of different information and function. For starters the quick chat is available on the side list rather than to side of the menu so have dedicated space to see messages. At the bottom of the menu is a brief description of the current game mode including what you have to do to win. You can via gamepad or the onscreen buttons at the bottom of the screen reach the full social menu if you wish to invite friends, block players, or send a friend invite. This menu now has a 'ready' system rather than direct host control for starting sessions. The host still has some control, as when the host selects ready the session will begin a 20 second countdown, if all bar one player has readied up this will be immediately cut down to 10 seconds, and if all players are ready then it will begin in 3 seconds. The point of this timer is give players a chance to perform any actions in the menu's if they need to without it holding up the game starting by any more than a few seconds.
By pressing tab or start button you can switch the menu view where you can instead of accessing quick chat be able to navigate the player list and inspect anyone as needed. Once you inspect someone you get direct access to any actions such as sending friend request or blocking. At the bottom of this page is also a more detailed breakdown of the settings the sessions have set. So if this were a custom session in particular you'd be able to see any changes to the standard preset the host had chosen if you've forgotten since reading via the session list info.

Reworked Online Multiplayer Scoreboard

On the scoreboard when playing in online multiplayer you will now have the ability to use quick chat in a right side panel. Previously on some small screens the menu would kind of get in the way when the chat was to the side. An option to reach the full social menu is accessibly by Y or by pressing the button at the bottom. To make room for this a slightly different stats layout features in this mode. You can press the view button to view scoreboard details as previous, and this will hide the quick chat to make room. On the details page you can inspect players in the same way as added on the new pre-game lobby menu.

Improved player inspect

This menu was introduced in the last update but has been updated to now include all the back-end support to offer a link the players steam profile (providing that player is playing on steam). If you open this while in a scoreboard or pre-game lobby you will see any relevant countdowns such as till next hole start or session start. This is replicated across all social menus.

Cross network leaderboards

This is in addition to existing steam leaderboards, but you will now be able to switch the menu on any menu where leaderboards are displayed between the current platform (steam) and a more global leaderboard set that includes players from anywhere. These global leaderboards obviously do not make use of Steam leaderboards so lack functions like being able to compete against another players ghost, or watch their replay. Your highest score (as well as ghost) will however be uploaded to both leaderboards going forwards (if you view the leaderboards or replay a particularly level this action will occur then). As previously mentioned, Golfing in Aether is only available on Steam but was developed in a way to allow cross network play so some day it may be available on consoles or other pc store fronts. I like supporting Steam specific features such as the leaderboards so you'll basically have both systems working along side one another with the default visible being Steam.

New achievements and icons rework

This update features 4 new achievements, two of which I felt offered a fun side challenge, and two others that are more of a progressional metric to track.
The first is "Speedrun", which is a reasonably difficult challenge of having to complete a 9 hole session in under 90 seconds. This only factors in actual gameplay time, so is the time stat shown on the scoreboard. You don't need any particular stroke count to complete this challenge, so using a mode such as race may be easier. You can use custom session settings and pick 9 levels you feel most confident in. Generally you'll want to have a bunch of levels that you can complete in around 5 seconds to free up some extra time for other levels that take longer than 9 seconds to complete. In testing it took me a few attempts as it is fairly difficult but as its a time focused one it isn't a long grinding one to complete.
The second achievement is "Barkie", which is a fun one where you have to complete a hole with a score of par after for whatever reason hitting a tree with your ball. Full size tree's or just stumps will count, but logs (like you find on the course itself) will not. You can do this in any mode including practice, but cannot use the reset or undo function after hitting a tree (as you've un-done your shot you'll have to hit a tree again for it to count). This is one you can chase after as a side challenge or you may end up with it someday following a questionable shot, as you only need par following it's not supposed to be particually difficult and just a bit of fun.
Next is "Fashionista", this is a straight up tracking achievement I've placed to really gauge how many players are making full use of customization. To complete this you just need to have any ball design other than the default white ball, as well as equipping any accessory / hat option other than the default none option.
Finally is "On the Green", which makes use of an added additional style XP rule where if your ball comes to a stop within the marked area surrounding the hole on your first shot you will receive an on the green bonus of 50 XP. I added this XP bonus as a way to highlight particually a shot in a hard level that would otherwise of been a hole in one if playing on easy (due to the sloped holes). The achievement will unlock when reach XP / Scoreboard menu following this action.
All the achievement icons have been reworked to feature a border showing their type. Bronze achievements are relatively easy to complete, Silver are more time or progression focused, and Gold offers some difficult challenges including the completionist achievement. The goal was always to offer a balanced mix of your standard progression types as well as some more unique fun side challenges to complete. I'm not against adding more in future but I would want those to fall more in the 'fun side challenges' category rather than progression. I deliberately avoided arbitrary ones for say getting birdies, bogies, par a hundred times as nobody wants that. Some progression or tick box achievements such as "watch a replay" or "reach XP level 3" are always necessary as it helps with gauging players interest. This lets more development be put either into better explaining how features work so more players know how to use it, or just focusing on features that players actually are using. I'm always open to hearing feedback on these. Long term I'd like to look at doing more with how achievements are represented in-game and perhaps offer some rewards for completing the actions that leads to them being earned.

Focus flag and level name widget behavior

When you use the focus flag button (middle mouse or right thumbstick press) after holding for a second or so the name of the level and any other relevant information will fade into view. This is the same widget that is displayed at the start of the session following the level sequence. This widget has also been tweaked to appear on each screen during split screen and fade out rather than disappear as it did previously when playing local multiplayer.

Skip Level Sequence during singleplayer

A requested feature, like with what was previously implemented for practice mode, you can now hold down either spacebar or A on gamepad (or equivilant) and be able to skip the level sequence. This will also work when playing a session with local players in any combination. However online multiplayer sessions do not feature skip behavior due to issues it could cause.

Level tweaks

The level short spring now has one of the flipper obstacles that was added in the dustbowl expansion. This I feel adds to the gameplay of the level, it was originally something I wanted to have feature. It also offers an additional route to getting a hole in one, to aid perhaps overly high previous difficulty. Various other previous levels I have gone back and improved sound placement, and several have various small tidy ups as well.
Levels that include the rotator obstacles have had their ground pieces reworked to fix a an issue that could occur where was possible for a player not able to regain input if the ball stopped in a particular spot where the rotator couldn't hit them, but were still considered in the bounds.

Various bug fixes

As this is a fairly large update please check the full notes below for all the changes made as its hard to mention everything, if you are aware of any issues then please let me know so they may be hotfixed. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/

Patch Notes

General

• Added change to flag raise detection on short spring.
• Added Speedrun achievement for completing a 9 hole session in under 90 seconds. This only factors in gameplay time (so from point of hole starting to holeout etc. not scoreboard/menu time), which you can see as a stat thats displayed on the scoreboard. You can do this with a custom level selection via custom session if you wish.
• Added new readying up system for multiplayer sessions to replace sole host starting. This behaves somewhat similar to existing scoreboard skip behaviour. The way this works is if the host sets ready the game will begin a 20 second countdown, alternatively if 50% of players (when total players is greater than 2) set ready this countdown will be set to 10 seconds. If all players go ready the session will begin immediately. As a note, existing behaviour is that any player whos idle during the first hole once they receive their 30 second countdown is removed from the session. This way youll never get stuck on that 1 player who doesnt ready up or just goes idle.
• Added ability to skip the level sequence in any offline mode similar to how practice behaves.
• Added ability to pause the game session when playing with local players in any hotseat mode.
• Added a tweak so when playing hotseat with local players, if a player doesnt take their turn they are made invisible again so dont overlap the next player taking their shot.
• Added a tweak so when playing hotseat if a player goes out of bounds while on the tee they are made hidden again.
• Added tweak to how FOV is handled with two player splitscreen as it was a little close.
• Added additional rule check for the situation where one play finishes a round while the other is still on the tee and thus hidden. Now when spectating the selected player will always be visible regardless of any override.
• Added ability to pull down previous leaderboard scores and xp stats to update save-games in case of a cloud save sync failure at platform level.
• Added an additional check for out of bounds water using different method to help with reliability.
• Added a remote play touch input configuration for mobile. I would recommend playing with some kind of controller but if you absolutely have to use purely touch input this will make it playable.
• Fixed values for Completionist and Around the World achievements not factoring in level totals from recent free expansion which introduced 10 new levels bringing total levels to 70 (not 60).
• Added new function where if you hold the flag focus button down for more than a second the level title (as shown at the start) will reappear. It will fade out again as you release the hold.
• Added fashionista achievement for both customizing your ball (to any configuration besides default white) and equipping a hat.
• Added additional style XP rule where if during a Hard level (i.e. without sloped holes) your ball comes to a stop within the marked area on your first shot you will receive an on the green bonus of 50 XP. You will not receive this as part of a hole in one, its simply a way to differentiate a shot that was close to being a hole in one. You will not be required to get the ball in the hole on the next shot to get this bonus, simply come to a stop in the marked area (usually marked in yellow on a hard level).
• Added On the Green achievement which makes use of the above mentioned on the green bonus.
• Added Barkie achievement, which you can get for hitting both par (or better) and a tree during a level. Note if you use reset/undo this will also undo registering hitting a tree. Trees and Stumps count, logs do not.

Platform

• Added new achievement icons featuring bronze, silver, and gold outlines which give a difficulty or value indicator of the achievement.
• Added an official touch controls controller config for Remote play on Phone and Tablet.

Environment

• Added Flipper from recent Dustbowl expansion to previous Short Spring Level. This is a balance to bring an additional little bit easier method to get a hole in one as well as at same time adds a fresh hazard to the level that can add a bit of challenge if you arent careful.
• Fixed a slightly incorrect fence collision.
• Fixed various physical materials to compensate physics at an engine level have shifted over time (things should be more consistent now as UE5 matures).
• Fixed a physical material generation issue on some ground pieces in some rotator configurations such as on What goes around, Downhill from here and Waterhole that could cause a ball to not trigger the power meter upon stopping.
• Fixed one of the grass physical materials not having the sufficient restitution.
• Added logs to list of meshes that wont block the camera.
• Fixed a small wall alignment issue on Ponds of rage
• Fixed sound placement of various levels from Leviathan Expansion.
• Fixed a scalability issue that could lead to a hole blocked on Whirly Fun preventing holeout.
• Fixed a small wall gap on boneyard.
• Fixed a small gap that could occur on some cornered walls.
• Fixed flag not rendering correctly for remote client players on Up, Down, and Around.
• Added unique surface type to differentiate between trees and logs.

Interface

• Added improvements to the subtitles on all main menus to show the current active platform player e.g. if playing on Steam your Steam name.
• Added tweaks to the news area on the main menu to be more consistent.
• Fixed editing an existing profile the text entry field would display a helper text in the wrong state.
• Added improvements to how alignment of scoreboard headers is handled at extreme or irregular resolutions.
• Added improvements to quick chat search when typing Japanese.
• Added character limit to quick chat search function.
• Fixed an issue where if you searched for quick chat message, sent it, then opened a fresh search and pressed a number key without typing the same message could be sent.
• Added new text strings (including localization) for all stats displayed on the scoreboard.
• Added ability to quick chat within the scoreboard with it visible when not in details view.
• Added replaced emoji set for quick chat using Noto fonts, this replaces previous emoji licenced from Twitter.
• Fixed an issue where vote skip would be shown if you had leaderboardless mode enabled in some game sessions when on the XP page.
• Added ability to open full player inspect menu from either session replay, recent players, or in detailed view on the scoreboard.
• Added ability to open the players steam profile from the player inspect menu.
• Fixed some inconsistent shadows on the main menu.
• Added tweaks to spacing of bottom glyphs to help fit more text on some smaller menus under localization.
• Added a change to how multiplayer custom sessions are setup by removing the session name option. Sessions are shown in the session list and info by player names anyway so this just simplifies things.
• Fixed an issue with very slightly inconsistent shading on some menu widgets.
• Added levelname console command which will display the current level name.
• Fixed some wrap behaviour on button glyphs when moving between some menu states.
• Fixed inconsistent corners on some description boxes.
• Added ability to open social menu from scoreboard.
• Fixed a padding issue with the quick chat search box in which some menu combinations an inconsistent spacing could appear.
• Fixed an issue relating to overlapping inputs that could potentially occur in some menus when using both a prompt and quick chat search at the same time.
• Fixed an issue where if you picked a local player profile for player 1 you would see the settings menu for primary profile and not that specific local profile.
• Added optional non-steam leaderboards which will work across all platforms. On leaderboards menus you can press the view button to toggle between seeing either global or platform specific (steam). Note that steam leaderboards make use of ghosts for other players whereas global do not. When viewing the leaderboards menu or completing a level the best score will be submitted to each leaderboard automatically, including copying an existing better leaderboard score from one to the other.
• Fixed an issue with playing in shared input competitive mode during offline where it could be possible to open more than one pause menu as any other player besides player 1.
• Added an indicator to all in-game menus that highlight the name of the player the menu relates to as well as whether this is a local or platform profile.
• Added additional text to pre-game lobby and scoreboard (as well as session replays) which indicate the account name the local player is tied to.
• Added an additional check to handle local players quick chat in split screen when playing with keyboard on player 1 to retain gamepad glyphs for other players.
• Fixed an issue where the HUD would be temporarily hidden while in local multiplayer and one of the players opened a sub menu from the game menu.
• Fixed some local player menus able to stay open in some combination when a round ends.
• Fixed some local player menu background blur having inconsistent sort order.
• Added a prompt explaining player was automatically removed from a session due to inactivity.
• Fixed some standalone scrollbars that had an inconsistent appearance during hover (theyd loose their round corners).
• Fixed an issue where it were possible if a local player left, on the next hole a name widget would be shown with invalid information. The widget for this player is now removed properly.
• Fixed some states where if players spammed the quick chat before game was properly loaded it was possible to trigger a message without a valid player name.
• Fixed an issue where player name was not visible on quick chat prompt when in sequence and playing with multiple local players.
• Added level title widget to each player screen during split screen and fade out.
• Added new achievements and updated achievement icons to the achievements menu.

Discord Server

Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.