With this update I wanted to work through a significant amount of my feedback-backlog, primarily focusing on features that were too big to "pick up" during focused-developement cycles, such as content updates. It doesn't tackle the entirely of my list, but takes care of most things that don't have roadmap-benefits to hold off until more content is fleshed out.
Let's get straight to todays changes:
- Added an option to restart your current generation, at the cost of resetting progress obtained throughout that generation. This feature is aimed for the min-maxers among you, to allow you to correct mistakes (ex: when you misconfigured an automation) at the cost of taking a bit more time
- Added a new automation behavior setting for experienced players: "Override exhausted", allowing you to automatically (temporarily) adjust automation priorities for cooking jobs when you lose access to the related resource job. Aimed to minimize manual intervention of runs for the very min-maxing ones among you, as well as offer some extra optimization potential for others
- You can now bookmark automations, causing them to appear in a new bookmarks-tab (similar to chapter tabs). This allows you to create a quick-overview of automations you may frequently change, without having to adjust things throughout multiple tabs. This option appears after unlocking the chapter 3 automations tab (because it doesn't offer much value earlier, and could overwhelm new players)
- The top-bar time tooltip now displays maximum health gain for the next generation in real time
- The hourglass tooltip now displays related completions as well, rather than just being visible in the reincarnation screen
- The maximum health tooltip on the reincarnation screen now displays more detailed information as to what contributed to the multiplier (if above 1), and what you haven't completed yet. Aimed to be both informative, and a reminder when you forgot something earlier in the game
- Added an option to display instinct levels gained during the current generation to the skill tooltips (Settings > General > Tooltip instinct gain)
- Added an option to change what instinct-data is displayed on the reincarnation screen, with options: "Level", "Multiplier" (default/what it always has been), "Both" (Settings > Visual > Instinct display)
- You can now click the top-left "view last generation screen" button in the reincarnation screen, causing it to stay enabled until anything is clicked, rather than only when hovering the button. This allows you to view tooltips at their final states
- Added an option to change the volume of the sound notification (if you have that enabled)
- Added an option to display an additional pause button at the top of the queue, mainly for mouse-only players that were bothered by the button positions changing as the queue size changes. The big pause button remains visible for its "edge of your eye" UX purpose, this setting just adds an additional small persistent-location button if enabled
- Slightly reworked a chapter 8 job (catch seals) look-ahead safety feature so that it gradually introduces itself as you get faster between generations. This aims to make it less "interruptive" early on, while staying true to its design intention to prevent accidental deaths for unfortunate automation setups as you pass that part increasingly faster
- Fixed a visual bug that caused maximum health to include newly rewarded health too early when reloading the game while the reincarnation screen was shown
- Fixed a bug that prevented a chapter 5 job (eggs) from automating, if it was below the prevent auto-refill priority and another job had automation disabled. It's almost poetic how the eggs are what automation keeps breaking...
- Fixed a bug that could cause eating as a result of a damage job to surpass your maximum health, if said food healed more than your maximum health
- Fixed a bug that could cause the auto-refill prevention setting to kick in when a manual action was visible but couldn't be started due to a missing requirement
- Added additional verification logic to the interface scale setting on launch, tackling an issue where it would incorrectly default to mid-scaling if the OS cache stored an incorrect scaling setting, or none at all
- Reworked the formula behind the screen scaling function, to reduce one pixel artifacts on various resolutions/scaling settings. One pixel lines with scaling can still slightly vary in when they become two pixel lines, but it should be far less frequent and limited to high screen resolutions
- Slightly adjusted the minimal screen sizes that are communicated to the OS, to better account for OS theme/window-manager additions such as top-bars at minimal size
- Added the --skipCloudSavePrompt launch parameter, for those that really don't want to enable Steam Cloud. I highly recommend against disabling Steam Cloud, but you can now stop the game from prompting you about it if you really want to
Some of these changes also form a preperation for future-features I'd like to add, such as the automation-override options internally being expandable to things like chapter 11 style content. However, it made more sense to flesh out more content before further polishing mechanics like that, as they could otherwise form creative constraints during content expansion. The same thing goes for Steam Achievements. I'm well aware that this is a highly requested feature, and one that I most certainly aim to add. But to determine a proper long-term value for Achievements, it feels more appropriate to hold off from defining them until the story is fleshed out further (possibly even completed).
[h2]So, what's next?[/h2]
With this done and live, I'll monitor bug-reports for a bit while starting the draft for new content. I've tested this update to a degree similar to most updates, so I don't expect many issues, if any at all. But I want to be well prepared to delve fully into content development again! Which will be the main focus for the next major update. I don't want to make too many specific promises as far as new content goes just yet, it's all far too subjected to change for that. But for those of you that want to stay posted as development progresses, I'll be moving back to the development diary during that development process!
Thanks for all the great feedback that largely inspired this update! Early Access is still pretty far from completed, but I feel that player feedback has already helped various aspects of the game reach a level of polish it wouldn't ever have without player participation!
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