In this update, weve introduced team and co-op game options as part of custom sessions. Additionally, weve added an extra XP level and new customisation unlocks. There is also an option for always-on player collisions as well as several other quality-of-life improvements.

Team and Co-op gameplay

When creating a custom session online or offline, you now have the option to choose team scoring options. In this system, all scores on a team are summed up and divided among the team members, with rounding.
There are several options available. The auto option can include two or four teams, while there its a single team option for cooperative play. If you prefer to manually select and assign teams, a custom option is also available.

When set to custom, in offline local play you pick a team on the player select screen. For online play teams are assigned in the lobby, to access this select the view button to switch menu pages. In both online and offline sessions, you can also opt to not assign players to a team, thereby treating them as individual players. This option enables you to play mixed teams against players.

Improved Player collisions and options

A requested feature was to allow always on collisions, we also found online play needed improvements to be able to accomplish this. A key change was making the collisions server sided (on the p2p host) so that there is a single point of authority rather than a miss-match of ball movements.
We have enabled collisions to be on always as part of the "Race" preset, but you can customise whether to be on or off, as well as only while moving, as part of custom session settings.

New XP Level

In this update we are introducing XP Level 6 to give something extra for players who have played for a long time to progress towards. The XP amount to complete this level is the same for each levels 4 and 5. When completed you will receive an additional three ball unlocks.

Spring Customisation Unlocks

For playing between March and end of May (while running this update) you will unlock the above customisation. Each feature a colour customisable design.

Bunny ears hat

We have added a bunny ears hat to the customisation available at the start of the game. The hat works particularly well with the Whisker ball customisation in the new XP level.

Various other improvements

In this update you will also find a number of other improvements such as tweaks to the camera to be smoother in certain situations when using the no bounce mode. There are also a number of fixes so check the full notes below. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/

Patch Notes

General

• Fixed an issue where leaderboard scores could be reported higher than they should be.
• Fixed various instances where master sound settings were not being respected. This included lava, an impact sound, and XP ticker.
• Added additional smoothing behaviour when camera is in 'no bounce' mode so it will not track ball as it goes into a sloped hole (and instead will remain at static height).
• Added a change to enable collisions between players during practice mode.
• Fixed an issue where resetting a replay wouldn't correctly orientate the ghost.
• Fixed an instance where you could loose input when skipping a level while in shared input mode.
• Fixed a logic problem where if you nudged a player into a hole and used skip level in the process.
• Added a sync mechanic for the level sequence playing where a client running faster hardware must wait for the host to complete loading.
• Added a tweak to reduce stuttering in level sequences on particually low end hardware by delaying ending the loading screen by a few seconds.

Customization

• Added rabbit ears hat.
• Added Shelly, Coil, and Waves as part of Spring unlocks.
• Added Whisker, Donut, and Streak to XP Level 6 unlocks.
• Fixed sun hat clipping at low quality / LOD levels.

Environment

• Fixed cup material friction to enable balls to stop quicker.
• Fixed a small wall gap on Center Path.
• Fixed a small wall gap on Putt Pendulum.
• Fixed alignment of some walls on Behind the Tee.
• Fixed a raised log on Up the Stairs.
• Fixed a wall gap on Speed Bump.
• Fixed alignment of a wall on Right Angle.
• Fixed placement of a log on Right Angle.
• Fixed Don't Fall In has a log raised too high.
• Fixed a small wall gap on Don't Fall In.
• Fixed some minor material detail on Rock Bottom.
• Fixed placement of a stump on Hole in Fun.
• Fixed a collision with ramp on Curve It.
• Fixed some minor material detail on Rail crossing.
• Fixed some minor material details on Cliffhanger.
• Fixed LOD quality on wall some wall pieces to ensure no stand-out brick gaps far from camera.
• Fixed rock placement on Bridge hole.
• Fixed a minor wall gap on Up, Down, and Around.
• Fixed flag raise radius on sinkhole being too small.
• Added new blocking volumes for camera so when in 'no bounce' smoothing mode the camera will not follow the players ball into out of bound pits e.g. water.
• Fixed a small collision issue on the first corner of Cauldron.
• Added a tweak to fences to make them fade out a bit further from the camera so your view is obstructed less by then. You can disable this feature in graphics settings by turning off proximity dithering.
• Added improvements to rock placement on leapfrog and crazy golf.
• Fixed an issue where an out of bounds part of a water wheel wouldn't reset the player.
• Fixed rock placement on What goes around.
• Fixed an issue where free camera wouldn't work when the game timer was set to none but free camera was still a percentage of the game timer. It will now be 50 seconds in this situation.
• Fixed rock placements on Deja vu.
• Fixed a small wall gap on Millpond.
• Fixed placement of rocks and log on Serpentine.
• Fixed some leaves floating, notably on Spin City.
• Fixed inconsistent Lilly appearance on Angler.
• Fixed appearance of rotators in distance levels.
• Added improvements to the replication of movers, these will now be exactly in sync. This is to accommodate for minor network time drift.

Interface

• Fixed an instance where returning to the main menu during split screen wouldn't promptly disable split screen while fading to white.
• Fixed new game menu having inconsistent icon.
• Fixed an issue where when player 2 pauses during split screen, background blur will overlap hole info.
• Added a change to hide some developer scores from leaderboard menus where testing was done on multiple different platforms (now only 1 will be shown).
• Fixed some rare quality issues with various text on XP screen.
• Fixed a potential issue where view button wouldn't work on some menus.
• Fixes scroll-bars out of alignment for session replay.
• Fixed appearance of some keys for replays.
• Added an adjustment to the contrast of some text such as 'its your turn'.
• Added various improvements to better support ultra-wide resolutions, e.g. 21:9. This includes tweaking how menus scale at extreme horizontal sizes and correctly highlighting these ratios in resolution settings.
• Added team option to custom session settings.
• Added a reorganisation of custom settings menus so they follow a consistent layout between online and offline.
• Added team selection function to player selection screen when using custom team options. Also added team selection to lobby when using custom and playing an online session.
• Fixed a navigation menu in progress saves menu.
• Fixed an instance where local settings wouldn't open.
• Fixed an issue where local players wouldn't be able to trigger the level name as part of focusing not the flag.
• Fixed an instance where the next hole number wouldn't display correctly while a spectator.
• Added a few changes to copywrite and credit screens.
• Fixed contrast of some faceplates.
• Fixed unnecessary countdown when using skip level in Hotseat.
• Fixed an issue where ending a turn could occur while in a menu didn't correctly transfer input.
• Fixed some instances where player names wouldn't appear in lobby right away.
• Fixed button to save progress save being incorrectly visible when watching a replay.
• Fixed opening social menu while on the scoreboard for the last hole could display a negative timer remaining for the level.
• Fixed instance where if in free camera and the player you were spectating completed the hole you would have 'free camera' displayed on the screen still while focusing on the flag.

[ 2025-04-09 15:58:37 CET ] [ Original post ]