So far, the biggest issues in LSD seem to stem from a lack of clarity in the UI and the admittedly shitty tutorial. This update attempts to fix this issue with some much needed QOL changes and an interactive, in-game tutorial.
NEW FEATURES
New Shiny Interactive Tutorial
Explains LSD's core mechanics. How to play as the monster, the human and what to do in three player rooms.
Better Death Screens
People were often confused why they died after rounds. The new death screens give a detailed explanation, including who killed them. These death screens also persist through the monster character picking phase.
Replay Voice Filter Toggle
This fun little feature adds a toggle button to the replays, which allows players to toggle the voice filter off and on for the recorded audio. Listening to your friends do their impressions of you without the filter is pretty funny!
UI CHANGES
Added an additional indicator in the lobby when the player is chosen as a human
It's now clearer when you are spectating through the addition of a SPECTATING indicitaor in the pre-game. Some players got stuck as spectators without realizing it, this should hopefully fix that.
Changed the three player room choice buttons colours to blue, so it's clearer that the player you click gets spared.
Made the replay UI snap-scroll to the replay that get's played and added a blue outline around it
BUG FIXES
Fixed room UI sometimes not showing up, particularly when playing with "randomize voices"
Fixed regular plebs sometimes getting deluxe skins applied to when playing with "randomize voices"
Some behind the scenes stuff that affected a small amount of players
I hope you enjoy these changes! As always, there are probably some additional bugs introduced by these new features, so expect some hotfix patches within the next couple of days.
~Leonhard
Current Bugs and Upcoming Features
With Lightspeed Dating hitting 10-reviews and getting some huge exposure at the same time, there's currently an unprecedented spike of players, and with it, of course, a spike of bug reports. When solo-developing a multiplayer game there is a tough choice between releasing in early-access, which allows some debugging before official release, but takes away the initial buzz and excitement that comes with a new launch, or launching directly into a full release without large-scale testing, risking a buggy product. Since Lightspeed Dating lives partially of the novelty of its central gameplay conceit, and I do not have the budget to create buzz for an early-access product, I've chosen to make it as complete as I can and then dive into the unknown. For the most part, this strategy has worked out well. The server is stable and the amount of game-breaking bugs is fairly limited in a regular session, but as always there are edge-cases a single tester simply can't find. This post is intended to serve as an "I-hear-you", as the bug-reporting feature does not allow me to reach out to the bug-reporters.
Currently Known Bugs
Server doesn't exist. It's currently not clear enough, that the player needs to enter a ServerID before pressing JoinServer, so a lot of players get stuck on this screen. In the next version the error message will be more clear, telling the player to enter a serverID.
Occasionally, the UI of a room fails to show up. As a developer, the word "occasionally" sends shivers down my spine, because it makes finding causes pretty difficult. So far I haven't been able to reproduce it, so I would ask that anyone that encounters this still reports it, so I can collect enough data to figure out why this happens. In the next version there will be some failsafe measures that hopefully should reduce its occurrence rate, and allow me to figure out what's going on.
The replay UI gets squashed. This is an old bug, that even shows up in our initial gameplay trailer, and I still haven't managed to fix it, because Unitys UI system is a bit messy at times. It's low priority, since it's mostly a visual problem, and will thus not be fixed in the next version. Hopefully I will figure out what causes it soon though.
The countdown when the monster picks its target doesn't show up. This one is owed to the recent UI overhaul and was an easy fix. Will be fixed in the next update.
Every time the game starts a player is immediately dead. This is more of a miscommunication issue, as the spectator screen currently says "You are dead", even when the player was spectating from the beginning. In the next version it will say "You are dead/spectating" to clarify to the player, that they perhaps left the spectating toggle on.
Upcoming Features (Within this week)
New Tutorial
This one is presumably the most desperately needed of all the new features, as (understandably) most players either miss the tutorial button in the main menu, or don't want to spend 10 minutes reading a wall of text before playing a game. I'm currently implementing an in-game tutorial that explains the game's central conceit, as well as some of it's more subtle intricacies, through an interactive info screen. Hopefully, this will clear up the game's central idea more.
Better Death Screens
To make it clearer to players why they died, I've implemented some more informative death screens, telling them who killed them and why. This should especially clear up when an innocent kills themselves by killing a human player.
Replay Voice Filter Toggle
As the voice filter often garbles players voices beyond recognition, and simply because it feels like a fun feature, there will be a toggle button to switch off the voice filters in the replays, allowing players to listen to the unchanged voice chat of the round. This isn't all that desperately needed, but will probably be pretty fun!
These features and bug-fixes should hopefully be released either today or tomorrow!
That's all for now, I hope you enjoy your time with Lightspeed Dating, despite some of its quirks and bugs. Please, do not hesitate to report any further bugs with the button in the bottom right corner or by joining our Discord channel and reporting them directly. Thank you for playing and have fun!
Hotfix: 8th of December 2022
Fix: Three player room always had monster as player A. Oops, Hope no one saw this one.
Fix: Buttons in three player room where sometimes mislabeled
Fix: Colored lights in three player room were swapped
The Pretty Update - 7th of December 2022
I started playing around with Unity's 2D lighting system this week, and once I started I somehow couldn't stop myself until I reworked the entire way I did graphics, lighting and the match UI. I hope you'll like these changes!
Reworked buttons to have a bit more of a holographic feel and added a new font for them
Reworked the info boxes to be better visible and look a bit cooler
Made a better looking timer with the same font as the buttons and a slowly decreasing bar underneath
Just generally tweaked and moved the UI around
Forced Unity to use high fidelity images for the character and background graphics, slightly increasing build size, but making them just look so much better on all resolutions
Reworked lighting system to use Unity's 2D Universal Render Pipe Line lighting, making the colors more vibrant and realistic
Made the colored lights also change sprites
Probably some other stuff I forgot about
Hotfix: 6th of December 2022
Fix: Added a "Replay corrupted" message Fix: Hopefully fixed the repeating "Replay not found" error, if not I made it easier to find out why it happens.
Features, Bug Fixes - 4th December 2022
It’s been a buggy, but exciting couple of days!
Thank you to everyone who has been reporting bugs, I’ve been doing my best to sort them out. This should take care of the most egregious and annoying among them. If you encounter any more, please don’t hesitate to either contact me directly or to use the bug report button in the bottom right corner of the screen.
CHANGES
Deprecated Mayhem mode to Beta status
I’ve been hearing about a lot of issues with the Mayhem mode, apparently it hasn't been tested enough, so I added a big red BETA signifier on top, so everyone knows what they’re getting into.
Added more questions
To make up for the deprecated feature in the Deluxe edition, and as a small apology to the deluxe LSD’ers who had to deal with the buggy Mayhem mode, I’ve added a bunch of questions to all the question packs. I hope you enjoy them!
Casual +5
Icebreaker +4
Deep +6
Edgy +13
Screen Settings
I added a full screen toggle as well as a resolution drop-down menu to the settings.
Deprecated replays to Beta status
Replays were the second feature to cause some trouble of these launch days, so I’ve also added a message here to inform people of its current status and to report bugs
BUG-FIXES
Fixed “Not enough players” error, even when there are enough players
This error made me particularly sad, because it’s prevented people from actually playing the game, which is obviously the last thing I want. The problem was basically that the game thought people were spectating when they really weren’t. It should be fixed now.
Fixed “Room not found” error
This usually seemed to happen after rounds were finished. It occurred, when the game thought you were hovering over the kill or spare buttons after a round already finished. Since this isn’t such a problematic thing for the game to think I simply disabled the error message.
Small bugs
Made the “socket” error message more informative (It occurs when the connection to the server can’t be established)
Fixed players getting into a room with someone they were disguised as in the Mayhem mode
Changed the “Not enough players” error message to encourage people to join our Discord server
COMING-SOON
Another character for the Deluxe pack
A win counter in the lobby
Thank you for playing, and I hope you continue to have fun with Lightspeed Dating!
Hotfix: 30th November 2022
Hotfix: Fixed infinite loop that would crash the server sometimes when listening to replays. Oops.
Launch Day, the Future, and Technical Q&A
Lightspeed Dating releases today! It's been a long and tough road to get here, but I could not be more excited to finally share this special little game with the world. It might not be the most stable and bug-free game out there, but I can assure you that it is absolutely one of the most fun and unique experiences that you can have with your friends.
If you find yourself enjoying Lightspeed Dating please consider giving us a Steam review! It helps us out a lot :)
Problems & Solutions
Having spent much of the last two years testing this beautiful mess of a game I really hope that I caught most of the bugs and quirks that would make this game Not Fun, but due to Lightspeed Dating's use of voice chat as gameplay, and the inherently fickle nature of audio, there are unfortunately some things that are out of my control. Here are some issues you might encounter when playing Lightspeed Dating and how to possibly fix them:
Wobbly or Hard to Understand Voice Filters
This one I've been fighting since the beginning of development. It's come a long way, but unfortunately it still comes up sometimes. Here are some things you can try to fix this problem, or at least make it less of an issue:
Change your Microphone - Low quality microphones seem to be the number one cause of this issue. If you have any other microphone lying around, be it in a headset or maybe even the in-built microphone in your laptop, I'd encourage you to try it out.
Move closer to your microphone - If you're far away, or if your microphone's volume is too quiet, the voice filter will have a hard time transforming your voice. Please try to either turn up your microphones volume or to move closer to your microphone when speaking.
Enable Low Quality Microphone Mode in the Settings - This is something I added specifically to combat the problem of wobbly or hard to understand audio, but it's more of a last resort than a guaranteed fix. I'd recommend the first two options before this.
The Voice Chat servers are unavailable. Please try again later.
This error message either means that the Epic Online Services Voice servers are offline (our voice chat provider), but sometimes also just means that you have to restart your computer. I have no idea why this happens, but it does, so there you go.
Mayhem is too much... Mayhem
The Mayhem game mode is still fairly new and still in active development. Trying to figure out all of the different combinations that make this mode too chaotic is a bit challenging, and you can be assured that it will get better as time goes on. Here are some things you can do to combat its extreme chaotic energy.
I would recommend absolutely everytime enabling the Judgement Room, as this will make the final round much less obvious. I've been toying with just making this a default setting when you enable the game mode, but I'm still deliberating on that.
Think carefully about who you disguise yourself as. Did you just watch as another player killed someone? Maybe don't disguise yourself as them in the final round if that player is the only one left alive.
Replays are out of sync, or not playing at all
The replay feature is at the same time the feature I am most proud of, but also the most ashamed of. Through some wonderful programming magic, I am able to provide this without saving them on my servers. This simultaneously protects your privacy, while also saving me a whole lot of server costs. However, this programming magic also makes the replays a bit fickle.
Sometimes, the replays might be out sync, other times their data gets lost in the aether. I hope you'll bare with me while I work out the kinks in this system, and I also hope you don't give up on it, as one of the most fun parts of this game is listening to the replays together after a round.
Future Features
There are a lot of things I'd like to have added before releasing Lightspeed Dating, but at some point you just gotta pull the lever. Here are some things planned for the immediate future (next couple of months).
More settings, particularly a full screen mode
An additional character for the Deluxe version
Overhaul of the Mayhem game rules
Overhaul of the menu UI (Particularly the close button has some pretty terrible UX right now)
A who-is-speaking indicator for the replays
Better Steam integration, particularly being able to invite friends and join servers through the Steam overlay
Also some features that I might want to add soon, but am unsure about when:
More game modes
More characters
Echo cancelation and better noise filtering
More questions
Do you have any question ideas? Come over to our Discord channel! We have a specific channel for question suggestions :)
Final Thoughts
Overall, I am very happy with what became of Lightspeed Dating. Even now, after continuously playing and testing this game for two years, I still have a ton of fun whenever I play it with my friends. When I first came up with this idea it wouldn't let go of me, simply because I wanted to see what it's like to play, so all of my initial personal goals for the development of this game have been met. However, I would still love it if as many people as possible have as much fun with it has I do. If there's anything I can do to make this experience more fun, don't hesitate to write me bug reports, feature requests or general misgivings to my Twitter account @LightspeedDatin. I will be glad to hear from you!
Release Date Announcement
Lightspeed Dating now has on official release date as well as a shiny new trailer!
Mark your calendars and tell your group chats, on the 30th of November it's finally out!
Demo Release!
The demo is out! Be among the first to try out Lightspeed Dating. Available for a limited time only, you can play an abridged, but still extremely fun, version of the newest social deduction game. Grab a couple of friends and find out who they really think you are!
This is essentially a beta version as well as a demo and is as such probably still very buggy. Please share all of the bugs you find with us by pressing the button in the bottom right corner of the screen! And don’t hesitate to let us know what you love and or hate about our game on Twitter or in our Steam Community, we’d love to hear from you 😊.
