The day as arrived to let Solaroids: Prologue out into the wild. Early Access began today at approximately 2:40pm PST. I hope your as excited as I am -- this is a big step for me as a solo/part-time indie developer.

Many thanks to all those that helped with play testing and localization.

Most of my goals for hitting this milestone have been met, but there are a few stragglers.

Known issues

• Japanese translation is currently rough and incomplete both in game and missing from the store page. I expect this to be resolved over the coming weeks.
• The planned Turkish translation had to be put on hold.
• The game credit screen has not been translated yet, and some of the high score text. This should also be resolved in the coming weeks.
• Due to current steam limitations, only player 1 can submit to Leaderboards using a steam ID. All players only qualify for local high score tables even if you enter your steam ID as the name.
• No mouse support for menus.
• If you reconfigure the keyboard or controller controllers, they are not saved between games.
  

Issues / Feature Requests

It's my expectation that non one should encounter any serious issues, but we all know that is a silly expectation. Please post any issues you may encounter to the Issues sub forum.

Also I've created a Feature Requests sub forum, so please post any suggestions for enhancements and tweaks. I want the evolution of the game to align as much as possible towards what the community would like to see.

Early Access Tips

A full option menu will come later during Early Access, but there a a few hot-keys that can be used for some rudimentary options now:

• LeftShift+F1 - Toggles the bloom compositing effect on/off. If you happen to have a system with an extremely weak GPU, turning this off can remove some burden at the expense of some visual ambiance.
• LeftShift+F2 - Changes the music to a random selection within the Soundtrack.
• LeftShift+F3 - Cycles between system supported resolutions. This can also be useful for systems with weak GPUs. Solaroids defaults to the highest resolution supported.
• LeftShift+F4 - Toggles between fullscreen and windowed mode. There are some known cosmetic issues with windowed mode scaling on Linux/OS X at the moment.
• LeftShift+L - Cycles between supported languages. Currently this is the only way to access languages that steam doesn't support. For the current build this is Catalan and Serbian.
• LeftShift+Minus - Lowers music volume.
• LeftShift+Plus - Raises music volume
  

Notes:

• Pressing the Enter key or Start/Select/Options on a controller brings up the pause screen.
• From the Pause screen you can change the controller type by quickly pressing the left/right bumper/shoulder buttons.
• Playing the game starting at level 1 without continuing qualifies you for the "First Credit" Highscores/Leaderboards.
• Joining the game after level 1 or continuing qualifies you for the "Any Credit" Highscores/Leaderboards.
• Currently Solaroids supports levels 1-10 officially, though level 10 will "repeat" at that point allowing continued play indefinitely.
• Local Highscores are mirrored via Steam Cloud between your machines.
• I'm planning many other features, some of which are listed in the Early Access description in the store page.
• I'm planning to include Trading Cards, they just aren't ready yet.
  

I hope this is helpful. Please ask questions, and let me know what you think, and where I should head!

[ 2017-05-27 01:18:07 CET ] [Original Post]