An Untitled Update

To coincide with the public release of this blog - and just because I felt inspired to do so - I've created a massive update for my year-and-a-half-old platformer An Untitled Story.

Before I get started rambling on about what I added/removed/fixed/broke, you can download the new version at the usual place.

And a PSA of sorts: I can't test the entire game when I make changes, so beware of bugs (yes, possibly even game-melting fatal errors). I did my best to stamp them all out, but I know there has to be a few hiding somewhere. I'm only one man. Get in touch with me if you find a bug, and hopefully I can iron out any of 'em, if they exist, in a minor update next week or so.

Also, if you're transferring in your old savefiles, please, back them up. It's officially backwards compatible and I tested the crap out of this feature in particular, but some savefiles are too important to risk and AUS deletes savefiles that appear to be tampered with (I probably should've taken that functionality out, now that I think about it).

Anyway, here's the changelist:

New Content:

• Added a third toughness upgrade.
• Added rectangle foreground effect to every room in Blancland.
• Added new rooms and areas (14 new rooms total).
• Added 5 new hearts.
• Added a book to Library.

Difficulty Rebalancing:

• Made it so you can hurt the Grotto eye boss without divebombing on Regular and Simple.
• Added one bubble to the last room of DeepDive before BlancLand on Regular, and two on Simple.
• Made the next purple ball in the BlackCastle jumping puzzles partially visible.

Misc. Changes:

• Changed the Heist Mode font.
• Toughness upgrades on ability pause screen are now numbered.
• Changed the pink bird font.
• Halved time you need to hold up or down for quick-scroll on pause menus for abilities/hearts and slowed down scroll speed.
• Added quick-scroll to teleport select screen.
• Changed Crystal Ball/Floretta font.
• Made the RainbowDive sign text box a bit more attractive.
• Changed boss music on Insanity mode.
• Made the player always bright red on Insanity mode.
• Added markers to some rooms in The Curtain and CloudRun, so you can see when the moving platforms turn around.
• Moved BlackCastle and FinalClimb over two squares, to the edge of the map.
• Added version number display to main menu.

Bug Fixes/Optimizations:

• Fixed countless memeory leaks related to the particle system.
• Fixed transparency bug with the transition to the pink bird conversation cutscene.
• Fixed area name field being too small for some area names.
• Fixed slight visual mismatch between two DeepDive foreground images.
• Fixed being able to get stuck by beating FireCage before getting the teleport ability.
• Fixed small fish in DeepDive getting stuck in frozen enemies and freaking out (now they're destroyed if they get stuck).
• Moved player color update code out of step event to reduce CPU use.
• Refactored teleport destination data storage to reduce memory use.

As you can see, there's quite a few changes and additions. The most tedious of all was patching up the holes in the particle system, but it had to be done sometime. The most fun was creating the new areas. I added 14 new screens in total, 13 of which are within 2 new areas.

Adding new screens to an already-complete "Metroid-vania" game was a unique challenge. Going into this task, I had several goals I wanted to achieve:

• Provide a fresh challenge for AUS vets, as a reason to revisit and rethink the game.
  
• Create visually unique new rooms with interesting (implied or stated) backstory, so the player wants to find and explore the new screens.
  
• Add more optional, secret content to the game.
• Fit the new areas well into the overall flow of the game, from the perspective of a first-time player.

I've also made some small changes to polish the look and feel of the game (changing fonts, enabling more comfortable navigation of some menus, etc) and to rebalance the difficulty in several places.

The Grotto eye boss in particular was changed. I've had tons of players email me asking how the hell to damage the boss. I'll admit it is a bit player-unfriendly. For the uneducated: to hurt him you have to wait until he jumps out of the water, then divebomb onto his eye. Some (apparently many) players will try simply jumping onto the eye, to no avail, and conclude they must have to hurt him some other way not involving the eye at all (perhaps a complex system of levers and pulleys?). This could be because most players will have just earned the divebomb ability when they reach this boss, and it may not be properly inserted into their attack vocabulary just yet.

Regardless, the Grotto eye is the gatekeeper to FireCage, DeepDive and their respective (incredibly important) upgrades, so this had to be cleared up. I decided to make the divebomb unnecessary on the Simple and Regular difficulty levels.

The rest of the changes are things that should've been in the original game, but I missed for one reason or another. It was fun composing a new boss track for Insanity mode, to give those hardcore players some kind of incentive to struggle through it.

Update: Some very dedicated players have already pointed out the bugs in v1.10.  Some were pretty game-breaking, so I decided to quickly whip up v1.11 with them fixed.  That's uploaded now, thanks guys!

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed crash after beating final boss if you shoot at the right moment.


• Fixed being able to leave the final boss after starting the fight.


• Fixed the crystal ball not giving you hints if you have 90 or more hearts.


• Fixed BlackCastle Heist stage being unlocked at 90 hearts, rather than all hearts.


• Fixed ending screen showing wrong totals for hearts and abilities.


• Fixed crash on playing a Heist mode stage containing red energy.