Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Alpha Build #3 Update

First off, my apologies for this being the first update in quite a while. The holidays were a busy time for us and we did not get as much time to work on Andrecca as we would have liked. For the last couple of months, however, we've been putting work in every chance we had and I'm very pleased to say that we're getting very close having Alpha Build #3 out to the public! It will be out this weekend at the earliest or end of next week (March 7th) at the very latest.


This update has been focused on making this demo feel more like a demo of a complete game. This means that we've been polishing up the existing content and adding in new features to make this Alpha build feel more like a complete experience of what the game will be in the end.

What's New? 


  • Level Select: Gone are the days of not being able to replay a level you beat unless you start another character! With this new feature, you'll be able to play and replay any levels, that you've unlocked, to your hearts content! 

  • Scoring System: Sure, you beat the level, but how well did you really do? Now you can find out! The scoring system will be based on the number on your speed, the number of enemies defeated, number of hearts collected, and how many lives you ended the game with. It will have a numeric score along with a 3 star rating system based on that score (think Angry Birds). Down the road, the stars will be used to unlock more difficult levels. Will you get 3 stars on all the levels?

  • Leaderboards: A scoring system would be pretty lonely without a leaderboard, wouldn't it? Now you can share your scores and compete against your friends and everyone across the globe! There is a leaderboard for each level and it is broken down by how many people played that level. For example, if you played Level 3 by yourself, your score would not be competing against a score that Becca and I got on that level when we played as a team. Once more testing and polishing has been done, we'll even run a contest to see who can get the top spot on certain levels, so get your practice in now! 

  • Bug Fixes & Polish I know, I know, this isn't new! But with every update, I just have to add that we're constantly trying to squish any bugs that come up and polish up what we can. While it hasn't been the main focus of this new build, it doesn't mean it fell to the wayside. It's still a huge priority to us and will continue to be, all the way through launch! 

Thank you to everyone for their patience and understanding with this newest build! You all have been great and we're looking forward to sharing even more great things with you in the future!



Current Alpha Build 3 Changes So Far: 

- Enemies can now get grabbed by the Spider.
- Enemies can now get stuck in Spider webs.
- Keystrokes will no longer trigger button presses while setting up keybindings or entering new player names.
- Fixed an issue with Level 23's tileset.
- Slightly tweaked Level 12.
- Fixed an issue with character animations not playing properly when respawning or being pushed.
- Bomb tiles should now properly flip tiles beyond locked tiles.
- Added new sound effects for Join Game, Leave Game, Select Character, Deselect Character, Cycle Character, and Move Cursor.
- Fixed an issue where music was not playing when the game started.
- Pressing X + Y + A + Start in game will restart the current level (offline mode only).
- Level 1 for all areas (except Haunted) are locked and unable to be chosen to play since those levels are not ready yet.
- Temporary tiles, such as the Heart Tile, will now only have a maximum life span of 10 seconds. This is to prevent them from being exploited to have a potentially infinite high score.
- Added profanity filter to names when creating/updating characters.
- Created temporary borders for unfinished areas.
- Added General Level & Boss Music to Level Select as placeholder songs.
- Fixed an issue with the Hair Type field being displayed on top of the name field in the Character Customization Menu.
- Added Level Select screen.
- Added Scoring System.
- Added Leaderboard System.
- Fixed an issue where two enemies would spawn per spawner at the start of a level.

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