Fantasy Fairways
Final Release of Fantasy Fairways
This release doesn't have a new patch associated with it, but the last patch we put out in May has the game in a state we deemed ready to release. All of our initial goals as a, largely, student based team have been completed, and even though it took us a while to get the game to where we are now, we're happy with the final result. We have three beautifully illustrated courses implemented, fully customizable golf balls, several fun traps to play with, and all sorts of Steam integration that we hope you enjoy!
Unfortunately, this is likely the end of our support for this game. Our team has gone our separate ways, in fact most of the team that worked on this game have been off of this project for nearly two years. With full time jobs(and then some for some of us!) it became hard for any of us to dedicate time to this project, and we had to make the hard decision to end support and just push for a polished version of the game we had. While the bulk of the work was shared among the team, initially, the last few patches came from the work of a single developer, with some QA support from another member of the team. If there are any breaking bugs that are found and reported to us, I will happily do my best to resolve them in a timely manner, but by and large, our work here is done.
Fear not though! There are rumblings of more work to come from the team at Sweet Roll Studio. It may take some time, as we all work full time jobs(and then some!), but we're doing our best to create games that we find fun, and that we hope you all enjoy as well. This may have been our first foray into Steam releases, but it surely won't be our last.
Thanks for all your support, we hope you'll continue to support us in our future endeavors!
Minor Patch Released
Minor patch released this evening. This fixes a few bugs here and there.
* Fixed issue with level collision in a few Lucid Lake levels
* Fixed levels restarting while holding the space bar
Currently this patch is just deployed on Windows platforms, will be deploying on OSX shortly.
Welcome to Crystal Peaks
This is the biggest patch for Fantasy Fairways yet introducing a whole brand new course and a bunch of fixes and improvements across the board.
New Course: Crystal Peaks
* Enter the mountainous Crystal Peaks course. This course is focused on long distance travels, the levels inside Crystal Peaks are all longer than any previously released hole.
* 9 new holes each with their own bonus achievement and unlockable ball.
Improvements
* The UI has been revamped completely, this under the hood change results in a smoother experience. Consequently key remapping has been temporarily disabled, expect this back in a future patch.
* In game settings. You can now access your settings while in a course (was just main menu previously).
* ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM! You can now zoom in and out on courses (where needed) with a mouse wheel. This is probably the most requested feature to date.
* Speed up animations by holding the space bar.
* Gizmo physics have been made more consistent across the board--objects not behaving the same way should be far rarer.
* New details in Dream Links making it a little more lush and dreamy.
* Updated to Unity 2017.
Known Issues
* On OSX, tutorial videos are currently blank. We expect a fix for this shortly.
* The animation speed up feature causes the tutorial to reload constantly.
With this update we've also increased the price by 1 dollar--we expect our final launch price will be around 10$ so tell your friends to grab Fantasy Fairways now! Get in game and let us know what you think of Crystal Peaks!
Controller Support!
It's experimental and the user interface certainly is far from complete, but we wanted to get this out there for people to try.
Currently all prompts are for Xbox One controllers though we hope to support Playstation & Xbox 360 prompts in the near future.
We do not have an in-game layout yet for you to view so we are listing the control here, in this announcement. Listed below are Xbox buttons but the relative buttons on your Dualshocks et al should work just the same:
In-Game Controls:
Move/Navigate - Left Stick
Open Gizmo Menu - Left Trigger
Select Gizmo - Right Stick
Pick Gizmo From Menu - Right Trigger (Or Release Left Trigger while hovering)
Place Gizmo - A button
Pick Up Gizmo - A button while hovering over gizmo
Delete Gizmo - B button while selected
Flip Gizmo - X button
Fly to Next Gizmo - Up on Dpad
Fly to Previous Gizmo - Down on Dpad
Fly to Hole - Right on Dpad
Fly to Ball - Left on Dpad
Shooting Controls:
Start Shot - A button while hovering over cannon
Aim Shot - Left Stick
Fire Shot - A button
Menu Navigation:
Move - Left stick or Dpad
Confirm - A button
Back - B button
For the most part it's pretty standard stuff. Give it a shot and let us know how it goes!
We also updated to Unity 5.6 in this patch so let us know if you see any weird inconsistencies. One minor extra note is that we disabled the keybinding menu for the time being. This is a side effect of implementing our controller support--we messed up and accidentally killed our keybinding interface. Expect a fix for this shortly.
Steam Workshop, Achievements, Custom Mode, and Lots of Bug Fixes
Steam Workshop:
- Upload your own Fancy Balls to the steam workshop and download other custom designs from the community.
- In game, in the customize menu, click the "upload your own" button and upload your own image to the steam workshop
- Images must be 256x256 textures--they can be any shape or size and the game takes care of making them ball shaped
- Subscribe through the steam workshop interface here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/552690/workshop/ - This is still early days of workshop support so please let us know what you'd like to see. We're even thinking about a custom level editor
Achievements:
- In game achievements are now achievements in Steam, not every achievement is in Steam yet but we will have them all set up in the future
Custom Mode & Non-Circular Balls:
- A new mode is available in the game "Custom Mode"
- Change things like gravity and ball size, play with unlimited gizmos! Try out your own mode and bring the game to its limits
- Play with different shaped balls. Play with a box, a heart, or a star! You can find the drop down in the customize menu
New Tutorial Experience:
- We've update the tutorial to be a little more clear
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a lot of usability issues
- Fixed issue where orbital launchers became unusable
- Fixed issue where the ball would disappear shortly after shooting a ball
- Fixed some missing sound effects
- New soundtracks also added into underwater
- Adjusted camera pullback when aiming a shot
Patch Day
We're also looking to launch our steam workshop support sometime next week.
Patch Notes
[GAMEPLAY]
* The Orbital Launcher now previews the direction the ball will travel in when placing.
* You can press a button below the gizmo while placing to change the direction from clockwise/counterclockwise.
* Orbital Launcher now always launches in your chosen direction
* When aiming your shot, the camera will move if your pointer is at the edge of the screen--so you can always do max power shots
[BUGS]
* Fixed series of bugs where some custom balls were smaller than they were supposed to be
* Fixed a bunch of typos here and there
* Sometimes the ball could leave the level and still be visible--fixed
* Fixed issue where you could launch the ball and not be able to continue during a hole intro
* The secret code on the main menu is now right
* Several orbital launcher issues fixed
* End game screen now properly displays a variety of achievements you're close to unlocking instead of the same every time.
* UI Indicator in intro animation about using a button to make camera move faster
* Visual artifacts on some of the balls removed
Early Access Roadmap
First up is ironing out the biggest bugs. Expect frequent patching in the next few days--just a heads up that you will likely lose your unlocked balls a couple times during early access. Currently we know there are a lot of fun bugs you can get into with the Orbital Launcher gizmo and the Pulsar gizmo. These are next up on our revision list--they are responsible for a large portion of the bugs. With a game so reliant on physics interactions these ones can be problematic as they sort of "break" the balls physics.
The first major phase content updates will be rolling out the Steamworks support and proper controller support. This means steam achievements, trading cards, and workshop support. The workshop support will let you upload and download custom ball designs. You can actually check out the workshop now--we're finishing up the interface in game for you to upload these. Assets will be 256x256 square textures--we are also aiming to launch a way to create your own custom mode at this time. Complete with balls in all different shapes and sizes (yes--big ball mode is coming). Expect these updates starting in the next week or so.
After that we are moving onto a new course that takes place in a snowy mountain. We're excited to show more about this. April is the likely launch window for this.
After the third course, we want to add in a "back nine" to each of the three courses which would bring us up to 54 levels total. This puts us where we want to be for the actual launch of the game.
Other features and modes we will be working on as well:
* A "hard" mode that adds twists to the existing levels
* New gizmos--we hope to have about 10 when we're all done.
* Update the tutorial/new player experience
* More stats and achievements. Expect many, many, more balls to be able to unlock.
Then there is what the community wants as well. We're eager to hear people's feedback and ideas.
Fantasy Fairways--Now Available On Early Access
We'll be posting soon about an Early Access roadmap and the features/updates you can expect.
In the meantime join the discussion here on steam. You can report bugs and provide feedback and suggestions.
Beta & Early Access Soon
We will be launching the PC & OSX versions day 1 with Linux to come soon after.
Keep your eyes peeled for more updates!