(I'm going to start posting the silly random version names from now on)
- This update introduces some minor fixes, one significant one though, is now when you fall off the Wheely wheel, the game actually will end as it should.
- I'm not sure if I covered this in the last update, but Tap Out will keep going if there's a player still alive, rather than ending as soon as there's only one player left. This should make it a little more enjoyable to play and shouldn't end so soon if you are playing with someone who is new to the game.
- I also added the ability to hit the spacebar in the continue screen, which takes you to the troubleshooting page for controller problems on Steam. This should hopefully help new players get into the game. Although the continue page looks as janky as some dodgy website ad from the early 2000's.
- And most importantly in this update is the testing of leaderboards!
Don't get toooo excited just yet though, you can't see your scores or anybody else's at the moment, but any time you guys play a mini-game with survival mode, your scores will be stored on a leaderboard, which I can see at least, and I'm judging you all very harshly, MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!!
I will be adding a visible "top 10" leaderboard or something along those lines for you guys to see at some point, but for now, it's pretty exciting knowing that leaderboards will actually be a thing, especially for those of you who love to be competitive.
It took quite a LOT of fiddling around to make leaderboards even work, and they aren't perfect, they store only whole numbers, so you won't be beating anybody by 0.05 of a second sadly.
Thanks guys!
You guys ROCK!
Tap Out is smoother for clients.
I have made Tap Out a lot smoother for client players now.
Rather than the player teleporting upward, the client simulates the movement on their end, and is then synced with the server. Due to how physics works in games online, this is still not perfect, and I will try to improve it more if I see the opportunity to do so, but Tap Out is now much more playable for clients. YAY!
I have also added an extremely important and necessary health warning at the start-up screen ;)
Thanks guys!
YOU ROCK!
HOTFIX - Dodgy and Tap Out fixes
Hello my fellow metal heads!
Sorry about that last Hot Fix and following little updates afterwards. It broke Tap Out and Dodgy, but this hot fix remedies these issues!
TAP-OUT IS IMPOSSIBLE!
Not anymore. This was because the testing I did in the early hours before releasing the update, were within the editor, which unfortunately shows VERY different results to the compiled version of the game, quite often it's like guess work. Tap Out actually works now, I have tested on 2 different PC's of different performance, and even played on battery mode on a laptop to make sure it ran properly and it's ALL GOOD :D Online, the client still appears a bit jerky, I'm not entirely sure of how to solve this just yet, but the main thing is it works without the client being launched into another dimension...or at least I think it does. Testing these things on a local network isn't a great way to represent typical online play.
DODGY IS....SLOW
For the same reason as Tap Out being broken, Dodgy got broken too. WOOPS! The balls were moving suuuuuper slow, but not anymore! I adjusted their values so they aren't as fast as usual, as I want players to actually make it to the end of the mini-game without dying immediately. Let me know if you guys think it's too hard. If it's too easy, do the survival mode, the game will keep going until you're eliminated, and the ball spawning frequency ramps up to 1 ball every 0.75 seconds after 1min 30, so it gets really hectic! Dodgy, at this stage, remains really buggy online, with lag causing the energy balls to teleport all over the place. The way it works is the server tells clients whenevever there is a change in velocity on the balls, and then simulates that velocity on the client. The problem is when things get out of sync, things start getting real messy. I will eventually try to resolve the lag on this mini-game. It is a huge technical challenge, but I think I will overcome it.
IN ONLINE MODE, PLAYERS APPEAR DEAD, BUT ARE ACTUALLY STILL ALIVE?
This was caused because on the client's side, if it LOOKED like they got hit by something lethal, the client would trigger a death sequence for the client's version of that player. However due to desync, the server's version of the hazard was in a different place, and the player never got hit at all, so they still exist on the server, and are perfectly healthy. I put a blocker in front of all hazard death triggers so that they only happen on the server. NO MORE INVISIBLE PLAYERS YAY!
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I also began to work on leaderboards this morning, but sadly, after hours of work, the scores just do not show up on the leaderboard in Steam. This isn't a major priority right now, but I thought it would be fun for you guys to compete with one another's scores.
Thank you all again for your patience, and I apologize for breaking Tap Out and Dodgy in the last Hot Fix.
Let me know if you all run into any problems.
YOU GUYS ROCK!
HOTFIX - Steam friend invite/join, Tap Out, Dodgy and online menu fixes.
I thought I'd get this update out before I head off to bed. (at 1am again).
FINALLY! Steam friend invites!
You need to be in an online lobby obviously for this to work, but you can simply hit the Y button and it will bring up the steam friends list in the Steam overlay, then invite your friends from there.
I intend to eventually make this into a proper in-game user interface, so you won't even need to open the Steam overlay which will be great!
Online menu makes more sense
While this is really just super place-holder stuff (I will eliminate all 2D UI!), there's some changes I made based on what I saw from a Twitch stream where the players were confused at how to use a toggle/tick/check box. So NOW when you check or uncheck the "Online/LAN" box, it will show either Online, or LAN. The same goes for the Public/private box.
I also replaced the text at the top middle of the online menu, so when you are creating a server, it says "CREATE" and when you are browsing, it says "BROWSE", because "ONLINE" wasn't really useful, you already know you're in the online menu, you don't need reminding haha.
I intend to replace these with 3D animated assets and make it way more obvious as to what is going on.
Also, I added the ability to hit the B button to go back out of the online menu rather than having to click the back button in the lower left corner.
Dodgy physics aren't as dodgy
I limited the velocity that the energy balls can move around at, this will prevent impossibly fast balls that are as a result of physics glitching. I also made the ball physics independent of frame-rate, so no matter how high or low your FPS is, the balls will remain consistent in speed. This should also help with reducing latency issues online where the server might be running at 165fps, but the client is running at 30fps, and they would see balls in 2 very different locations, resulting in death from invisible balls. There's still going to be lag issues, but this is a good step forward.
Tap Out clients no longer fly into another dimension Something that I found was common in online games is players would be tapping away while the counter counts down, then there's a bit of lag, then the clients get yeeted upward. This should no longer happen. This was due to a build up in force applied when the round started, and thus sent players too fast upward. Using the same velocity limiting technique as Dodgy, the Tap Out movement can no longer surprise a certain threshold, and feels much better to play.
Tap Out is too easy eh?
Ok....Tap Out was NEVER easy, but for those who get the hang of it, and DO find it too easy, I added "Powermode" to Tap Out. At the tutorial screen, as the host, hit the Y button/Triangle and you can enable POWER MODE.
Powermode speeds up the acceleration rate of the camera, and also increases the tap difficulty by 60%, so you guys are all gonna get one muscly finger....or you'll get RSI....either way, this mode is for those who like a real hard challenge.
REMOTE PLAY DOES NOT WORK AND IS NOT SUPPORTED
I have contacted steam in regards to this, and they are trying to remedy the problem. Due to how Metal Heads handles Input (so 8 players is easily done without messing around with XInput), Remote Play just does not work at all sadly. I did untick the box in Steam to say that the game does NOT support remote play, but when people play the game, they get a pop-up saying to invite friends to a remote-play session, which is very misleading, and has caused some people to get real annoyed because they can't get it to work.
While it's not my fault, I still want to apologize for this inconvenience, I should have noticed it sooner and contacted Steam support sooner, but I didn't... :( --------------------------------------
That's all folks!
Thank you all so much!
ROCK ON!
HOTFIX - Server menu, Oh balls characters, Tap Out, and connectivity.
If you guys haven't already gotten the latest update, restart steam and grab it now.
You will see the version name down the bottom right on the main menu says: "Yog-edy Bog-edy! #2"
What does this Hot Fix actually fix?
TAP OUT IS TOO FREAKIN HARD!!!
Not anymore... If your frame-rate is high, Tap Out became more like a work-out and made you want to tap out because of how difficult it was to get any lift. This was as a result of the physics being independent on frame-rate. This also means that you should no longer get launched into the next dimension at Mach 10 because of dropped frames.
WHY IS MY METAL HEAD SHOWING ABOVE THE BALL IN OH BALLS?
I forgot to remove the metal head mesh from a test I was doing (sitting metal heads inside of the ball). Oh Balls had visible character meshes glitching inside of them and while this wasn't a problem gameplay-wise, it was annoying to see. There is fixed.
WHY CAN'T I CLICK ON ANYTHING IN THE ONLINE MENU SOMETIMES?
When going to the ONLINE menu at the main menu, if you clicked on the Search button and then closed the search window, you couldn't click on anything else. This happened due to the UI blocking click events, even though the UI wasn't visible. This is now fixed.
MY CONTROLLER DISCONNECTED AS THE HOST, NOW MY SERVER IS BROKEN :(
Hopefully this won't happen anymore! I am here to save the day! If the host player loses connection on their controller due to a fault cable, or faulty controller, or if the cable simply gets unplugged for whatever reason. They remain in the 1st slot, and when they plug their controller back in, they can resume control after a few seconds. The host also cannot hold the 'back/share' button to un-join now. While it isn't obvious that this is even a feature (I will add a controls screen at some point!), it breaks the game if the host disconnects or unjoins their gamepad, only to then have a random person join the server and take over that host's slot. Disconnection on the host is blocked now, and therefore the problem SHOULD be fixed.
OTHER NEWS
Thanks to the update, and adding a wishlist button, as well as the Yogscast Tiny Teams festival, Metal Heads is now on page 7 of the most popular demo's, and is moving forward every day! This is because you are all downloading the game, and more importantly, WISHLISTING it :)
Prior to the addition of a wish-list button, people were downloading, and not wish-listing the game (don't worry, I do this all the time), I had about 200 wishlists in 3 months, which is really bad. Just yesterday alone though, 1032 of you wishlisted Metal Heads and I'm getting hundreds of downloads each day rather than tens of downloads, and this blows my freakin mind!
You guys ....you are simply the best, you ROCK!
If you are having any issues, or any further bugs, do not hesitate to let me know on the forums. And if you have any suggestions and ideas, or just want to show off your epic skills in the various mini-games, please post on the forums and let everyone know how awesome you are! I check them daily to make sure none of you are being ignored!
It's with excitement and a tonne of anxiety and nervousness that I announce that Metal Heads is participating in the Yogscast Tiny Teams festival here on Steam.
Basically this festival has a bunch of hand-picked games from the content creating behemoth that is Yogscast. There will be a whole bunch of content creators who pick and choose what games they would like to show-case during the festival, and Metal Heads is in that pool of games. You can check out the event page
What does this mean for you? I'm unlocking .....THREE new mini-games for you guys to try during the week, then after that, I'm locking them back up again, so be sure to get in and give the mini-games a try! What are these mini-games?
- Roasted - Termination Trail
and
- Tap Out
(although it's not finished it may be a littttttle bit laggy to try and play online but...give it a try? [previewyoutube="or6oUScd8fk;full"]
I may end up doing some live-streams during the event and potentially may be getting interviewed or have Metal Heads put into the spotlight.
I'm SUPER excited about this, but I'm also really nervous as I have no idea what level of exposure this will give Metal Heads and I have no idea exactly what will be happening during this event, it's all rather ambiguous, but that's kind of exciting too.
Having spoken to developers who have gone from not being noticed AT ALL, to suddenly getting thousands of followers on social media, along with a plethora of downloads, wishlists etc, it may be very overwhelming, but ...my body is ready (I hope).
I did some bug fixes too, it's really late (early?) so don't really want to list them right now as my eyes are sealing shut while I type, but things like the mini-game music doubling up when a mini-game would end has been fixed. There's also tutorial music now so it doesn't feel so empty and boring anymore in the tutorial. And some other QoL stuff that isn't SUPER noticeable, but it's there.
Thank you all once again, without your support, Metal Heads may not even have gotten this opportunity! And I hope you guys have fun playing the unlocked mini-games! If you play Tap Out, brag about your high scores on the forums (the walls in the game have numbers on them)..see if you can last for the entirety of the SAWEEEET music track that it comes with.
Remember if you haven't wishlisted Metal Heads on Steam, it would mean a great deal to me if you could, it'll keep you guys up to date, but will also help with exposure.
YOU GUYS FREAKIN' ROCK!
IT'S OVER 9000!!!! (over 10,000 actually)
This is a quick announcement, but if you didn't get it from the title, the Metal Heads alpha demo has reached over 10,000 downloads which is INCREDIBLE and just blows my freakin' mind how awesome you guys all are!
Let's spread the news about the game, tell your friends about it and play the demo for FREE.
Now, for everyone who reads this, if you haven't wishlisted the game, it would help MASSIVELY if you could wishlist it. But don't feel bad if you don't. Every wishlist gives me warm fuzzy feelings, and that helps with my productivity as corny as that may sound, it's true, it genuinely gives me those lovely endorphins and motivates me even more to push onward and upward.
Also who can guess what kick-arse metal band, and what album is this announcement art is based off/inspired by?
YOU GUYS ROCK!
BUG FIX UPDATE! THE ONLY GOOD BUG, IS A DEAD BUG!
Today is a great day, it is a day of victory and celebration, a day where there are ....less bugs.
Okay okay, once again, I'm terrible at this speech thing, but THERE IS A BIG FREAKING BUG FIX UPDATE!
Not only that, but there's some new content to whet your appetites!
I have been working super hard to test as many annoying possible combinations that could cause bugs as I possibly can. There are still a few that remain, but I can't bear the thought that you guys are all still fighting with the big bugs, I must save you!
First up, THE NEW STUFF!
Don't get your hopes up too much, there's not going to be any more mini-games added to the demo, but there are a few new heads to choose from, along with a new mini-game mode added to Falling Apart....which is basically a new mini-game in itself!
FALLING APART SURVIVAL MODE AND EXTREME LAG FIX
Sad that you can't play Falling Apart in solo mode? Well now you can, and it's brutally fun!
While it is still not finished yet, Falling Apart survival will drop tiles in patterns on the arena, and you will need to use concentration and timing to safely jump and avoid falling into the molten metal below.
This is also hilarious fun with multiple people, but I warn you, it is in it's early stages, as is incredibly difficult, especially when lag is factored into the gameplay when playing online, but I will work towards reducing/removing that at some point.
Aside from survival mode, Falling Apart got some much needed network performance increase. I won't go into detail as to why the performance was so bad, but let's just say I durped and leave it at that.
NEW METAL HEADS!
BUGS SQUISHED!
Since the list is so vast and trying to get all of the fixes listed would take a while to do, I will summarize the fixes.
The focus on this update was to fix up the game breaking bugs caused from connecting and disconnecting, joining and un-joining, crashing and re-loading, and joining mini-games at various times.
There were issues where player counts would get messed up, both in the lobby, and during mini-games, and this was caused by a number of things, normally from new players joining or leaving. Sometimes players would spawn duplicates, so sometimes there would be 2 or more of 1 character in the level, this should be fixed now.
When the server crashed, or the server host suddenly exited the game via ALT+F4 or another method, the clients would be returned to a black screen or something else, and their game would be messed up, this is no longer the case, now if players are dropped back to the main menu for whatever reason, the game will restore to the state that the game was in before joining a server. This means no more needing to ALT+F4 out of the game to resolve these annoying issues.
There were other bugs in regards to players losing control when someone would join, or disconnect and rejoin, or drop into the game and join....it was just messy and painful, drop in-drop out is NOT fun to work on haha.
The scoreboard still has some minor issues with it, but nothing that should impact gameplay at all in any significant way. I will be working on getting some smaller hot-fixes out over time too.
The bugs aren't ALL fixed, there are still some really annoying ones that remain, but the online multiplayer connectivity is almost 100% stable.
There are obviously noticeable lag problems still with many of the mini-games, but over time I will work towards reducing this lag with things such as lag compensation and more client based synchronization techniques.
I will begin working on more mini-games again so that there are at least 30 for launch, then the board game mode, followed by character customization and other features. I have given myself a pretty short deadline and these bugs have been holding me back significantly.
This is typically the kind of thing that big companies do with teams of people, so please bear with me while I power on ahead.
OTHER NEWS:
I RECEIVED AN EPIC MEGA GRANT FROM EPIC GAMES!!!
What does this mean for Metal Heads?
It means that I have been able to finally quit my day job so that I can work on Metal Heads even more than I was and be financially stable. It also means I can properly afford to pay for more of Andy Gillions incredible work on Metal Heads. I honestly don't think I can call this a solo project anymore. While I may be the only DEVELOPER working on the game, he is quite literally putting the METAL, into Metal Heads, and without his incredible musical talent, the game may not have such awesome music. Thanks Andy!!!
I don't have days off, and I work anywhere from 8 - 18 hours a day, most days I work 14-16 hours however.
I am determined to make this the next best party game, and the Epic Mega Grant gave me the nudge I think I really needed to get it to that point.
Epic Games has really helped out in a big way here!
Also if you haven't yet done so, please...
WISHLIST THE GAME
(there is now a wishlist button in game)
It actually helps a LOT, giving it more exposure and helping me understand how many of you actually want to buy it when it eventually releases. It also helps expand the player base, which means more people to play online with, however it's probably best to organize play sessions with your friends until I sort out some of the very important online multiplayer features like being able to kick/ban players, inviting friends from Steam directly etc.
FINALLY, I want to...
THANK YOU ALL
You guys help with every download, and every wishlist you make, and it fills my heart with happiness to see that so many of you are playing my game, so thank you!
8 player mini-game madness with the developer!
Hey guys!
Metal Heads is doing one big, organized live-stream on the 22nd at 7:30pm AEST
22nd at 9:30AM GMT 22nd 11:30AM CET 22nd 2:30AM PT (check your time-zone in google to find out when the stream will go live for you)
Join in for some utter chaos and madness as 8 people play through all of the mini-games, plus maybe some mini-games you haven't seen played online yet...if I can get them working in time!
If you guys want to mingle with other metal heads, and join in on the fun, the best way to do it, is via the Discord server found below:
You may also get an opportunity to play along with us if you join in on the Discord and show your interest. Which i'm really excited to do, as I want to meet you guys and talk with you all live, I think it will be super fun!
If you wish to support Metal Heads and stay up to date, the best thing to do is Wishlist it on Steam right now, download the demo, and follow Metal Heads on social media, such as:
I'm super sad that the Steam Games Festival is coming to an end, but I'm also super excited to be sharing in the fun with you all, because you guys are amazing and super supportive, despite the demo having some nasty bugs in it at the moment. Thank you for sticking with me, thank you for your patience, I couldn't ask for a better fan-base, you're absolutely amazing :D
Pipemare pipes are ALMOST fixed!
Just a quick update to let you all know that the pipes in Pipemare are almost completely fixed. You should no longer see segments of pipe just not even there anymore except on some occassions, under specific circumstances, the first starting pipes are invisible.
I hopefully should have it 100% fixed in another day or 2, but also focusing on fixing up more important issues like player counts being broken if someone drops into a game in progress, or if their gamepad disconnects and reconnects, etc.
