0.17.0 - Companion & Pyramid Update

This is the biggest Update ever! It contains a brand new level, which is the biggest, I've ever made so far. There are a lot of new elements, game mechanics and even a companion for George.

New in this release

Brand new level called "The Pyramid"

As the name suggests, George has to discover the depth of an ancient pyramid. And it's really depth! The deepest caves are filled with lava! This is the biggest level I've ever made. It consists of over half a million blocks, 20,000 sprites, 800 lights, 1,000 objects and tons of particle effects.

Fun fact:
If you actually built this level with clamping blocks, it would be around 8 meters wide and 4 meters high. When you want to show the complete level on a screen, you will need 17 by 14 Full HD monitors, which makes 238 monitors in total.

There are a lot of hidden rooms in this level, and riddles, which have to be solved, to pick up all items. George is very talkative in this level. I wrote a lot of text and recorded it with my voice (german only yet).

Companion called "Glimmer"

While exploring the depths of the pyramid, George finds hints, which will lead him to an ancient being, a creature of pure energy and light. George can free it from it's prison, and it will follow and help him. George gives him the name "Glimmer". Glimmer has several expressions and uses light and particles for them. He can follow the player, fly around, appear and disappear. He can also... no, you have to find out yourself ;-)

Gapless audio playback

Until now, i used mp3 compression for all audio files. Unfortunately this format cannot be used to playback gapless audio loops. There's always a little distortion (silence or plopp) at the end, when the playback starts from the beginning. As I don't want to distribute huge uncompressed audio files, I decided to store audio loops now in the free ogg vorbis format, which can be played without gaps. The audio engine of the game is now capable of loading audio files in this format.

Of course I did not recompress the existing mp3 files to ogg, which would decrease audio quality. I recreated all audio files from it's original source in it's highest quality within the DAW software Ableton, exported them and finally compressed them with ogg vorbis.

Everything on any plane

Sort of. Until now, all objects could only be placed on the same plane, as the player walks. This made totally sense, as in most cases, it's the player, who interacts with them. It wouldn't make any sense, to place a collectable coin on a background plane, which the player could never reach. But for some elements, it makes sense, for example particle or sound effects.

It is now possible to place any object on any plane., but I decided to limit this feature only to effect objects. You can now have sound on a background or foreground plane, and, of course, particle effects!

The plane of an object can be changed afterwards.

New HUD (Heads Up Display)

I replaced the old HUD, which showed health, lifes and points. The new HUD has some graphic elements and indicators, so you can better see your stats. Some elements are only displayed, when they are used. The amount of oxygen, for example, gets only shown, when the player is underwater.

New soundtrack!

I composed a brand new track exclusive for the pyramid level of this game!

new objects

• Crawling spider, which can spit a net over the player, which renders him immobile for some time. The spider can be smashed by jumping on it
• added PowerCell as new object. Using the flashlight can now drain the battery.
• Added a SpawnPoint object, which spawns new items, when it gets triggered. It can also play an effect sound. It shares the list of sound effects with the speaker
• added peach as collectable item
• MagicGround. This a dynamic ground object, which can appear or disapper over time or when toggled. It can also float up and down and can have different appearances
• GlimmerNode, a triggerable item, which controlls the behaviour of the new companion called "Glimmer".
• PlayerTrigger, a new triggerable item, which controlls some behavior of the player. It can drain or give health, remove items or disable/enable the player controlls
• Great elevator! Yes, it's exactly the same elevator as in my stopmotion movie! And it also has it's own soundtrack from the movie, when it is used.
• We have a new fruit: crispy peaches! The player will get some health and a few points, when he collects one.

Other changes

• Sprites now have a z-axis, and all parameters (color, z-axis, layer, plane and rotation) can be changed afterwards
• added new bricks and sprites
• added decal sprites
• Show scrollbar only when there are more elements than what is seen on screen
• slightly highlight selected sprite
• fixed or updated ui of many objects
• updated ui of laser barrier, the flickering can now be disabled
• TouchEmitter can emitt Scorpion, Scarabeus and other items
• Scorpion can fall to the ground
• small refactoring on particle system
• arrow can be initialy disabled and triggered during gameplay
• trigger can now enable or disable other objects
• added acceleration to slide and fixed collision detection, when sliding to the right
• introduced a global frame counter, which can be used by objects, to better detect, if a collision is new or ongoing
• Added a third sprite layer on the player plane, which gets drawn on the top over all objects
• Speaker can play one time audio effects, which can be triggered
• Speaker starts audio loops at random position
• Speaker can be used on other planes
• New ambient audio and audio effects
• Added speed parameters to AnimationCycle class
• finally added soundeffects for ladder climbing
• speed up animation when climbing a ladder and added soundeffects
• added soundeffects for dragging and falling crate
• added renderings of george with flashlight when sliding down a ramp
• better dragging of crates
• implemented one-time-option in switch
• Powercell and other items can now be added as initial items to a level
• After close of level dialog, some parameters get applied to running level immediately
• added sort method to ListWidget and ComboBox
• ui is now always rendered in 2k, so we don't need the resizeEvent anymore
• LevelEnd gate can now also be used as warp gate to another LevelEnd in the same level
• BreakingWall gets state disabled after it breaks
• collision detection of stamper can be disabled
• added debug submenu to the ui, where you can heal the player or add certain items
• reset player stats on level load
• Added soft gradient particles, which are perfect for smoke
• added isEnabled method to objects, which the LightSignal for example implements to signal, if it is on or off
• Objectwatcher uses isEnabled-Method instead of enabled Variable
• fireballs get distinguished by water
• amount of particles for fireball can be configured
• flight path of fireballs can be randomized
• reduced size of firecanon and other objects representation
• Added HealthDropReason "Etched"
• added engine load and frametime to statusbar
• optimization: don't draw object/dynamic lights, which are not in the viewport
• Moved avatar a bit upwards to the middle of the screen, so you can see more below the ground
• changed layout of message overlay a bit
• changed default for voicetrigger, so that it is not triggered by collision
• implemented pauseWorld feature for VoiceTrigger
• added Method to Player to disable/enable player control
• added some lightmaps
• initial direction of floater can be changed
• fixed/implemented test button for LevelModificator
• added lights to start scene
• player can now automatically walk in cut scenes
• implemented change of song with LevelModificator
• Visibility Menu automatically closes when it lost its focus

Bugfixes

• fixed changing the layer of an object
• fixed wrong spriteset name in Sprite editor and always scroll to top of list, when spriteset changed
• fixed an issue with the scrollbar, which affected ComboBoxes with many items
• fixed lightning of laser when always on
• fixed drawing issue of checkboxes and radio buttons
• fixed state and triggering of TouchPlateSwitch
• fixed notify of trigger
• fixed issue where an object could disappear forever, when a second object get's the same coordinates
• ppltk: fixed deletion of selected text in LineInput and TextEdit
• ppltk: fix TextChangedEvent when using copy and paste in TextEdit and LineInput
• fixed drawing of objects in editmode
• LightSignal emits light on the correct plane
• bugfix: when player dies unerwater with no air, and he respawns unerderwater, he starts with full air instead of dying again immediately
• fixed some audio files, which i accidently exported as mono
• fixed flashlight wenn george speaks
• fixed crash when a test button is used in a dialog, but no reset button.
• fixed possible crash when pressing F3
• fixed export of ColorGradient parameter
• some fixes on Wallenstein enemy
• fixed save of song in LevelModificator
• fixed loading of old speaker objects from old levels , especially test.lvl

You can find the download files below in the assets! There is always a release version for windows with an installer, and a file containing all the sources, if you want to compile the game on your own. See readme.md for further information, and instructions.

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