Alpha 1.3 will address one of the most requested/suggested things from feedback of playing the Next Fest demo, and that’s the addition of ambient sounds. There will be features still absent given the alpha state of the game, but given the number of requests for this I decided to bump this up in priorities. Also included in this update is two new levels to complete as well as a new ball customization which I will be showing off in screenshots below.
Environment Sounds
Sounds included target a range of elements such as wind, birds in trees, and the creaks of old waterwheels turning – there’s quite a few things introduced. There are also more impact sounds for different surfaces, such as for when in a pipe.
Feedback Sounds
Varying applause sounds depending on how many strokes you take to get into the hole have been added. Also, for the XP Screen there are now ui sounds for the XP being counted and rank awarded. The XP screen itself has been tweaked with more distinctive icons for the rank you've been awarded.
Two New Levels
"Goofy Golf" (shown above) and "See You On The Other Side" (Shown at the top of this article). These are an early, and a late game level, with the later featuring a handful of ways of completing plus room for many more creative routes.
A pass on lighting and general graphical quality has also been done. This includes improving exposure for darker areas and terrain blending for rocks.
Meet The Monarch
A new ball customization has been added, featuring a whole set of colors to choose from. This is loosely based on a monarch caterpillar in similar styling to the ladybug and bee already in the game.
Let me know of any feedback you have about the additions in this update and if you are enjoying the game please don't forget to add it to your wishlist.
Added “See You On The Other Side” Level. Late game level featuring a handful of ways of completing plus room for many more creative routes.
Added “Goofy Golf” Level. An early game course featuring a multi-hole ramp, can you find the hole in one?
Added tighter camera angle for when entering the cup (scoreboard screen etc.) so background parts of the level don’t overlap with the camera.
Added applause when entering the hole, this features several different samples and will vary in intensity depending how well you score (as well as extra for randomness).
Added XP screen sound effects with additional effect when you earn an S Rank.
Added an additional fallback camera reset system to catch any balls that slip through when leaving a hole they just entered and not returning the camera.
Fixed a micro-delay in text handling for initial countdown message in the scoreboard.
Added changes to rank thresholds following XP changes over last few updates. C rank and S rank increased by 50XP to be 300 and 800 XP. This is to give more meaning to ranks in general, S Rank should take some effort to obtain and C Rank shouldn’t be just handed to you. Remember you can see how other players achieve these scores via watching ghosts from the top leaderboard players (or your friends) in practice mode.
Fixed where you can change your power while already launching the ball which wasn’t intended. I may balance time XP more in future, but I think with this loophole closed it’s a start and does close the gap between inputs. Will watch this change and see how things go.
Added a few improvements to Async disk read for initial loading of the game.
Customization
Added ‘Monarch’ (caterpillar) ball customization in various custom colors.
Environment
Added a tweak so the default brightness increasing the visibility in shaded areas of levels. You can tweak the brightness under Graphics Settings if you need further adjustments.
Added a form of terrain blending with rocks so they appear more seamless with terrain.
Fixed logs not working with terrain blending.
Added ambient sounds to all levels for wind, birds, waterwheels, windmills, water flowing, flag and more. These vary in placement with several samples in use.
Added entering and impact sounds for pipes.
Fixed some floating petals on Mid-hole Madness.
Fixed a tree placement and a few on Getting Tee-ed Off.
Fixed minor ground flicker in Mind The Gap where a piece of track was overlapping.
Interface
Fixed some padding issues with the scoreboard header so everything is aligned correctly.
Discord Server
Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.
Weekly Roundup #2 - Difficulty levels and hole out animations
Hole Out Animations
First up is a look at the new end screen 2D animations you'll see for Birdie, Par, Hole in One etc. The idea came about from remembering the short animations you would typically see at some bowling alleys after you knock down however many number of pins; it adds a bit of fun to what otherwise would be pretty much a static graphic or text.
Dynamic Difficulty
The way a standard game works is levels are picked from different pools of early, middle and late. Then the final level in sequence of that set will be a kind-of 'boss' level through being slightly more difficult than normal. One of the changed elements is the flat hole shown above rather than the typically sloped holes found. The difficulty is also indicated by the color of the tee and flag; with red being standard, and yellow indicating its a more challenging stage.
I am looking at allowing Players having the option to play games completely on harder level layouts so there can be the right level of gameplay for everyone.
Discord Server
Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.
Weekly Roundup #1 - New Trailer and Discord server available
Gameplay Trailer
Today I want to start with showing off the new trailer! The idea behind this was to show off different players perspectives as they each complete different levels. It's pretty short and i'll definetly be looking to do a longer one at somepoint, but would be curious to know what you all think? :)
New Levels
In the trailer there were new levels that previously haven't been shown off before as well as a good look at the procedural course layouts with the floating islands in the background.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_ovVWvh5B4 Above is some un-cut gameplay footage from of the levels showing different routes you can take. Definetly open to feedback what you think of these :)
Discord Server
You can now join the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects. The above graphic was made last week with an alternate version being used on the store page to advertise this.
Originally this was created out of the desire to create something for playing on the big screen in split screen play with freinds and family. It had to be accessible too, so it would appeal to everyone, be it all age groups or just people who weren't really used to playing games. Not being a chore to set up each time was also high on the priorities.
At first this was really something as simple as having something where the game would be fully playable with the gamepad; including the ability to type player names via an on-screen keyboard. But this soon evolved into wanting to store these player names and other customizations to a local profile for easy recall, as it’s no fun having to spend a good 5-10 minutes setting up everyone’s customization each time you want to play.
Per player gamepad settings were soon also needed as for those of you who also use a stick inversion can relate to how annoying it is when games don’t give you the option; leaving either you with the poor choice of switching settings constantly or take it in turns to have backwards camera controls.
The idea for the floating islands came about more out of practicality at first when looking to solve the common problem where players get confused by tons of hole flags and other elements densely packed into a small area. This combined with a minimalistic HUD makes the screen less cluttered and game overall more straight forward to play.
An additional step to truly answer the question of ‘Where do I go?’ lead to opening levels with a sequence showing the route from start to finish for the specific hole. It will only last for no more than five to ten seconds, so helps with players who may quickly loose attention or simply want to skip it.
What direction is the game going?
One key feature with this game is looking developing around the idea of procedural courses. Sure, map editors can be fun, but when you just want to get a game out at Christmas or other family occasions for a few rounds, you neither want to be messing with that nor do you want to play the same course over and over.
Because each hole is its own floating island, there can be essentially a pool of these islands that the game picks from. These are tagged with various difficultly levels for placement in the overall course.
Plus, because courses are separated into individual holes, no longer do ‘new courses’ need to be made 18 holes at a time; instead, new holes individually can be created and fed into the procedural pool for selection. As a solo developer for this project, this opens up to updates for new content being able come regularly rather than maybe one new course every few months.
And yes there will of course be ways to play fixed playlists or play indivdual courses as well. It is certainly recognised for those of you who want to have tournaments or events the random isn't best suited.
The game will feature 16 player online multiplayer with the ability to play either in real time or in hotseat mode (take in turns). Local play has four player split screen mode in addition to hotseat.
Release date?
The game is scheduled to be released later this year, but I hope to get this in your hands much sooner with a playable demo during the next Steam Next Fest in June. It's important to me to collect all your feedback through demo's and beta tests long before release. There will also be no early access, this will be a complete game at release (with the hope to snag most bugs with pre-release beta's).
Can I ask about…? What about...?
If you have questions or suggestions then I’m happy to hear them, either reply in comments or take it to a dedicated Q&A discussions post here. You are also free to create individual threads on the forums around specific suggestions and I’ll do by best to keep track of those.
I fully intend to follow up with several more posts over the coming months covering the specifics of various features and keep you all apprised of how the game is progressing.
In the meantime, please don't forget to follow this game for news items and/or wishlist it.
