Since 0.0.24, I’ve been hacking away at random stuff that has been bugging me about the game. Still very much in the prototype stage, but what’s there should work better now.

Let’s start with the bats:

• I redid the way bats pick the direction they fly when scared; they resist hard turns and will tend to run away from the player.
• Bats no longer pick a spot outside the level to to fly to.
• Added the missing calls that make fire burning out and doors opening update the shared bat navigation info.
• Fixed a crash where bats would point at an old version of the nav info if you retried a level.

There were a few bugs with player states

• Player can no longer open manual or swing equipment during cut scenes.
• Player can no longer get a game over during a cut scene.
• Player can no longer get stuck with a full fuel meter and their lantern out.

Then some UI and other polish:

• Levels have an ambience audio track that plays now. It keeps going when you get a game over to add atmosphere.
• Gamepad equipment prompts now use positional icons instead of generic “1” and “2” prompts, which weren’t accurate.
• The gems on the locked doors now animate away instead of just disappearing when you open the door.
• The last level has different music now.
• The regular dungeon music now has an added pad track for a little extra flavor.
• The manual has been rewritten to highlight the controls better and hopefully be more legible.
• The transition between levels is generally smoother; fades are timed better, you can see the bonus banners again, and loading delays are generally minimized to zero.
• Updated the icon for the game to include the hood tip update from 0.0.24.
• Finally, since I don’t know where else to mention it, I moved the feedback survey from Google Forms to surveyplanet.

I also fixed a bunch of other underlying technical issues to make future changes easier to complete. Classes start up again on Monday, so I don’t know when the next patch will be. I hope you had a good holiday, and that you’ll have a happy new year. Thanks for playing!