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Gravity screenshot
Genre: Racing, Indie

Gravity

Update 2.7.1 - Titles and Badges

This update is a companion to the Event update from a month ago. For that update, I added events and rule-driven rewards. I promised titles and badges to participants in the event, and now the UI for that has arrived.

Titles and Badges



  • In the cosmetics menu, choose an active badge and an active title, or choose not to use them
  • See everyone's badge and titles if they have one equipped on the individual pack leaderboards, overall leaderboards, and in their profiles


Enhancements



  • Added a monospace font for use in time display, such as the split timer or times on the leaderboards
  • Added a fallback font for extended ASCII characters, improving the number of letters that can be shown with the big blocky font
  • Use better colors in the individual pack leaderboard entries, instead of the harsh previous colors
  • Small improvements to the UI of profiles, making the display of a player's name better


Performance



  • Rewrote the starry background from the ground up, improving framerate in the game and menus by 25-40%
  • Made player movement feel smoother by using better physics prediction to determine where the player would be under low framerate
  • Drastically reduced player jitter when using camera smoothing


Bug Fixes



  • Fixed camera smoothness not updating while changing settings mid-game. It previously only updated if you used escape to close the pause menu instead of the close button.
  • Fixed difficulty achievements not unlocking
  • Fixed buggy hover effect on a player's name in their profile
  • Starry background will no longer become laggier the longer you leave the game open in the menus

Halloween Event 2023

The Halloween Event lasts from midnight before Friday the 13th until midnight after Halloween, UTC. During this time, compete for the fastest time possible. Rewards will be granted to players for various criteria!

Reward Pool



  • 2023 Halloween Champion - Title awarded to first place
  • 2023 Halloween Top 10 - Title awarded to all top ten players
  • Golden Pumpkin - Badge awarded to the players in the top 5%
  • Silver Pumpkin - Badge awarded to the players in the top 25%
  • Pumpkin - Bade awarded to all participants
  • One additional hidden reward will be granted to an unlucky player!


Rewards Explanation


An update is coming very soon which will add two types of cosmetic unlockable items to the game: titles and badges. Titles will appear under your name on leaderboards, and badges will appear next to your name. You will be able to select one active badge and one active title at a time in your profile. I plan on dropping some titles for the existing player base, given based on their current stats.

Update 2.7 - Events

Halloween Event


This event adds the capability for me to create events, but that doesn't mean an event is immediately playable. The first event, Halloween 2023, will begin on Friday, October 13, and end November 1.

Major Features



  • Admin can create events, specifying event information, event colors, a time range, and a pack
  • Admin can create rules that drive event rewards. More on rewards below. For example, a rule might state that the top 10% of scores get a special badge.
  • An upcoming or active event will show on the main menu under News. It will also say how long until the event starts/ends.
  • The active event will display at the very top of the Official tab in the play menu. It will also be searchable like a normal pack.
  • Reworked the sidebar on the main menu. It allows the possibility of not having any news and hiding the news section. It hides the messages section if there are no messages for your user. It also hides the event section if there are no events active or in the future.
  • Allow the sidebar on the main menu to scroll if there are too many items on it to fit on the page
  • After an event ends, you will get a message on the main menu about the rewards you earned


Planned Features Coming Very Soon



  • When you open your profile, show the list of your badges and titles. You can pick a badge, and it'll show an icon on your leaderboard entries. You can also pick a title, and it'll show text on your leaderboard entries.
  • Badges and titles have an associated rarity value, which can be used in the future in creative ways.


Big Fixes



  • Instead of the fullscreen option using borderless windowed fullscreen, it will now use exclusive fullscreen. This will improve framerate and response time, allowing a higher degree of control.
  • Fixed the starry background lagging behind the player during teleportation, resetting the level, and switching to the win screen
  • Sound effects can now play at the same time, so each new sound doesn't cut off the old one. Try picking up a ton of keys quickly to see the difference!


Minor Fixes



  • Fixed the leaderboard going off-screen in ultrawide
  • Fixed the report feature on the backend, so I can once again see what packs you're reporting
  • Fixed a bug where using the escape button to close pack list menu would cause the back button in a different scene to take you back to the pack list menu
  • Fixed inconsistency with Main Menu vs Menu, making it Main Menu everywhere
  • Middle mouse button and right click will no longer trigger sound effects on clickable UI elements
  • Fixed jerky scaling effects on UI elements when hovering over them and hovering away before the animation is done


System Improvements


These system improvements will allow me more flexibility for adding features in the future, such as showing the date of a score in the leaderboards.

  • Store data on the date and time packs are uploaded
  • Store data on the date and time scores are submitted

Update 2.6 - World of Color

World of Color


This update primarily focuses on the pack editor, with some miscellaneous fixes and improvements elsewhere too.

Major Enhancements



  • Pick ANY color for your walls now, with a color picker tool
  • The fill tool now works instantly
  • Added an option to disable colored walls in the settings. Turning this on will cause all walls to appear light gray.
  • All your packs in the editor menu will sort by most recently edited, so you don't have to scroll to the bottom anymore
  • Loading and resetting packs is now 15-20 times faster. This is mostly noticeable on packs with lots of spikes, keys, goals, and portals.


Minor Enhancements



  • Link lines in the editor now have transparency so it's easier to see when they overlap each other
  • If you try to place two links on the same two endpoints, it will ignore one
  • Links that aren't valid will be removed when saving the level
  • Improvements to the UI in the pack overview editor
  • Making a new pack will jump straight into the editor


Bug Fixes



  • Changing tools while creating a link will clear the link in progress instead of creating a bad link
  • Quickly unpausing and pausing will no longer put you in a weird half-paused state
  • Tooltips should no longer get stuck on the screen
  • Paging left or right too quickly in the search area will no longer let you page past the last page or down to page zero
  • The page left button in the search area will no longer flash and then disappear when opening the community tab for the first time
  • Pressing escape from the win screen will now take you back to the pack on the play menu instead of going back to the main menu


System Upgrades


These are upgrades that make my life easier but users won't recognize them.

  • New pack file format: after launching the game for the first time, your local packs will all be converted to the new format. It uses a single JSON file for the entire pack rather than a folder with separate files for each level. Changing the file format was necessary for adding color palettes, so I went all out on the file format upgrade while I had the opportunity.
  • Updated the level editor scenes to use my scene manager system for passing data around when switching screens
  • Modernized a large percentage of my codebase to centralize major pieces of functionality and to make it easier to develop new features
  • News banner and message are only loaded once when you launch the game instead of every time you go back to the main menu

Ultrawide fixes in patch 2.5.5

After update 2.5, ultrawide monitors were unable to play because the button was off-screen. Before that, the experience for ultrawide wasn't great. Now, ultrawide monitors should have an equally awesome experience as 16:9 monitors.

Update 2.5 - Harder Difficulties

Impossible packs used to be impossible. Now they're a walk in the park for top players. People consistently put out packs much harder than the official impossible packs, so I added two new difficulties: Solar and Black Hole.

Solar difficulty should be beatable by any of the top players with lots of dedication, whereas Black Hole is reserved for the packs so hard that I would never have a chance. I added two new Steam achievements unlocked by beating each of these difficulties.

Enhancement Update 2.4.3

This update adds some enhancements for pack searching and other miscellaneous improvements.


  • Added a link to the uploader's profile next to their name in the pack selection screen
  • Added a button to clear search filters in the pack search tab
  • Updated the main menu sidebar to have a more aesthetic layout
  • Pack descriptions will no longer default to "Add a description", because half of the packs uploaded had "Add a description" as their description!
  • Added the escape hotkey to navigate back in the overall leaderboards and cosmetics menus
  • Fixed the buttons in the title bars sometime acting funky
  • Fixed the spawn particles not going away immediately when resetting a pack

Patch 2.4.2

This patch adds a fix and a few quality of life improvements.


  • Fixed a bug where you can click "Browse" in a user's profile before it finishes loading and it'll take you to the search tab with no filters selected.
  • Enhanced the profile screen to show a cleaner placeholder box while the data is loading instead of the awkward "No world records" and "? packs played"
  • Added the escape hotkey to navigate back on all screens with a back button, including the win screen, pack selection screen, profile, and leaderboards.
  • Added the escape hotkey on the tutorial to open the "are you sure you want to skip the tutorial" popup
  • In the level editor, aligned the Clear and Test buttons to the left to match the shape and size of the block selection buttons

Patch 2.3.1

Patch 2.3.1



  • Fixed bug where scores would be uploaded to the wrong pack if you select a different pack and then back up into the win screen
  • Fixed bug where sometimes custom packs would overwrite each other when you have more than 10
  • Packs in the editor now appear in order of creation
  • Added a check to make sure that the pack is no larger than 200x200 on upload

Update 2.3

Update 2.3: Achievements



Achievements:



  • Finish 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, and 250 packs
  • Play a beginner, easy, intermediate, advanced, expert, and impossible pack (6 separate achievements)
  • Create a pack with at least two levels
  • Get top 25%, 10%, 5%, 2%, and 1% in a pack
  • Die 10, 100, and 1000 times

Fixes/Changes



  • Better leaderboard icon
  • Critical bug with rejoining a different pack