Hello and welcome to the 7th Update since Early Access release, and the 3rd Minor Update.
Finally, after what feels like many aeons has past, I hunted down the source of the previously known "Out of Bounds Array" bug, and now it lays smote in the game code ...
I had previously fixed the crash that this bug had caused way back in Regular Update 1, however the exact cause of the bug remained illusive ...
They seek it here,
They seek it there,
This poor frazzled dev seeks it everywhere,
Is it in Cpp or is it in script?
That damed elusive - no wait it's a sfxEmitter!
I should have known, if in doubt, blame sfxEmitters ... When a lot of "stuff" was happening on screen, and it's a game where a lot of "stuff" is supposed to be happening, and the player inserted coins to open a parcel and buy SWAG, the audio effects for spawning the new SWAG could get out of order when ghosting to the client. A simple pause of a few milliseconds helps to prevent this, allowing every other FX to play in order without fighting each other for spawning and then deletion. Boy did the cause of this take some hunting down ...
This was not the only audio issues which I had previously discovered, upon Early Access release I had opted for a workaround of increasing audio distance to prevent the player object and the player camera (which is offset high above) from fighting for who was receiving the audio, which on a desynch could cause the audio to warble. This has now been correctly rectified in the code with the audio listener coming from the client's player object but using the screen rotation from the client's camera camera.
So, here, in no particular order, is the full changelog for this update.
Minor Update to version 1.5.8.3
Fix: Finally found the source of the Out Of Bounds Index Array when buying swag. If in doubt blame SFXemitters ... Swag/parcel buying audio now schedules off after 500ms. Crash for this issue had already been fixed in Regular Update 1, but the bug itself remained.
Fix: Audio listener now references the position of the player object but uses the camera/screen rotation.
Fix: Audio descriptions for area/radius of sounds are back to normal and workaround for audio issues based on camera position have been removed.
Change: Removed distance checks for Exit Node placement from Preload Group which was introduced to workaround the original audio listener bug which I initially mistook for something else and is now fixed.
New: Level 4 Enemy Boss Monster portraits for level, loading and saved game have been added. Thick thighs save lives.
And here is a little sneak peak of the next Regular Update, which will include a whole new level, new monsters, and a new Boss Monster to defeat. Level 6 is the "The Takiyasha Ornamental Water Garden" featuring an army of Stone Golems under the command of "Kaeru The Horticulturist" and her monstrous champion.
Level 6, gameplay test.
Early Access Regular Update TWO
Welcome to Regular Update number TWO! This will be the second of many updates, usually once a month, which adds to, improves and expands the game during Early Access.
This update features numerous fixes, improvements and balancing changes. Especially new is the chat hud, allow for players to talk to each other on screen when playing in Co-Op online multiplayer (default key is "u" but this can be changed in the remapping menu of Tutorial and Controls screen), and level 5 has had a big visual makeover.
Updated to version 1.5.7.1
New: Multiplayer ChatHUD working, at cosplay selection screen, in-game and post game end screens.
New: Multiplayer ChatHUD activation key defaults to "u". Chat options are currently not available via gamepad.
New: Multiplayer ChatHUD activation key can be remapped via Tutorial And Controls screen.
New/Change: Level 5 has a whole new post-industrial, overgrown aesthetic.
Change: Level 5 map title renamed to "The Overgrown Federal Genome Research Labratory" to match the new aesthetic.
New: Level 5 Boss special attack now has 3 randomized electric/lightning bolts.
Change: Level 5 Boss special attack explosions have large firey emitter removed as it hid the more subtle effects.
Fix: Level 5 Boss special attack recoil/arms animation now stops at the end of the special attack, previously it would keeping looping when it should not have been.
Change: Level 5 Boss special attack second and third explosions are now more randomized in location.
New: Level 5 introduces environmental hazards, this time in the shape of toxic leaks which feature the radiation warning symbol that radioactive elite monster leave upon death.
New: Level 3 Boss has portrait and loading screen.
Fix: Level 3 Boss has correct audio for melee attack.
Fix: Level 3 Boss Special Attack animation was missing half it's frames, now plays all the way through.
Fix: A medium/spit-attack spider datablock was wrongly named and thus less enemies were spawning in level 3 than expected.
Fix: Some transparent materials were using the wrong transparency and displaying bad edges.
Fix: Water Hazard's special attack final explosion rotating flash mesh now has normals pointing up so the player can actually see it.
New/Fix: Added extra checks for the "player curtain" to remove once the player has spawned, but I am pretty sure that the issues I found only happened in debug mode.
Fix: Crash on False Flag is active on victim Monster being killed when auto-cash function is used on deceased Monster attacker fixed ... and boy did this take some debugging.
Change: Rare Swag attack False Flag now has a 1 second delay before initiating incase the victim was killed in the original attack.
Fix: Array for ACHIEVEMENT 25 "WALLOP" now checks that client has it set if it already exists and a new level has loaded.
Fix: Array for ACHIEVEMENT 26 "ONE SHOT WONDER" now checks that client has it set if it already exists and a new level has loaded.
Fix: ACHIEVEMENT 26 "ONE SHOT WONDER" now checks that sourceClient is not an Ai due to False Flag swag attack being initiated.
Fix: Beating the Early Access build now drops the client at the success screen with the Main Menu, and displays client's score and their best ever highscore.
Change: Summer duvet has been stored and now Autumn duvet is on the bed for additional comfy.
Change/Balance: Nerfed "Sticky Plaster" Common Swag, timer now heals after seconds and resets after 60 seconds total, stacks reduce timer by 1 second, minimum 10 seconds.
Change/Balance: Nerfed "Sticky Plaster" Common Swag, heals 10 damage, stacks, caps at 50% maximum player health per 10 seconds.
Change/Balance: Buffed Sunrise's Special Evade with a 3 metre impulse and 2 second stun.
Change/Balance: Nerfed Southern Hospitality's Special Evade to 3 seconds from 4.
Change/Balance: Buffed Southern Hospitality's Special Evade with an extra second of invincibility to cover decloaking.
Change/Balance: Nerfed Water Hazard's Special Attack final explosion now checks for distance of last contact over 10 metres, previously 7.
Change/Balance: Nerfed Water Hazard's Special Evade now uses 50% more energy, maximum distance without buffs or modifiers is now 44 metres.
Change/Balance: Buffed Tank Spider (Level 3 enemy) damage bonus +50%, big monster with slow attack should do more damage.
Change/Balance: Buffed Genome Engineered Brute (Level 5 melee enemy) damage bonus +60%, big monster with slow attack should do more damage.
Change: Swag now spawns a further 2 units higher and has more vertical force to prevent automatic collisions with the player.
Change: Cosplay character statistics for special evade now include maximum Range of evasion without buffs or temporary/permenant swag modifiers out of 50.
Change: Reduced large Player Character and Monster Boss textures to more reasonable sizes to speed up loading.
Change: Removed unused textures to speed up downloading.
Change: If there are too many enemy spawned due to level/time challenge/clients/difficulty equation, Ai pending spawn are removed, but now all spawned Ai get small increase to damage bonus to compensate.
Fix: Mouse-over hints now correctly named in Statistics and Leaderboard screens.
Fix: Leaderboards got stuck in a loop if the local client's score was less than the highscore, should have been more than the highscore.
Fix: Leaderboard entries were being truncated to scientific formula by engine's 6 digit limit rounding; eg: 1.15734e+07 = 11573400, now passed as a string via details to be accurate; eg: 11573444.
Change: Level 5 rock mesh normal map renamed due to bad naming convention.
Change: Radar now has correct background bitmap.
Change: Removed Shipping Build flag from final executable because I still think it causes some instability, build now has a memory manager at cost of ~10% fps performance.
Fix: Sometimes an Out Of Range Array warning for NULL client ghost when charging swag/inserting coins, no longer crashes - still can't find out why it's returning NULL though :/
New: Console can be accessed via tilde key (US keyboard) or ` (UK keyboard) or whatever key is below Esc, above TAB and left of 1 (your keyboard).
Fix: Removed horrible printf radar debugging console spam which I had accidentally left in.
Change: console.log now saves the console log in main game directory, useful if anyone comes across a crash.
Level 5 revamp, though I have since dropped the ground fog that is in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp77uh6dUMc
See you next month for Regular Update 3!ːsteamthumbsupː
Minor Patch 2
Small update fixing a couple of things I overlooked in Regular Update 1.
Fix: Removed debug code line that was accidentally included that would spam the console with debug info for the whereabouts of other players in the radar.
New: Changed the image file for the radar background.
Next update is likely to be at the end of the month when it will be a larger, Early Access Regular Update 2.
Early Access Regular Update ONE
Welcome to Regular Update number ONE! This will be the first of many updates, usually once a month, which adds to, improves and expands the game during Early Access.
This update features numerous fixes and improvements, and has the feature requested player radar system, so that players can find each other in online Co-Op mode. This player radar also features a seperate icon for dead players who are awaiting resusitation.
Here is the full changelog, some of which includes the previous hotfix patch.
Updated to version 1.5.6.0.
New Feature Request: Multiplayer Radar System. Player locations are now displayed inside the "Nearest Swag Range Finder" (left side of the screen) and fade the nearer to the player. Dead players wanting resusitation have a different icon to alive players.
New: Randomized top-down camera rotation on player spawn so maps are now freshly rotated per player at level start.
New: Monster Boss portrait for Level 2 Boss; Lapin The Ranger, for level loading and single player saved game menu.
New: Current build of game is now visible as human readable string at Main Menu screen (bottom left).
New: New High Score screen at Main Menu when game ends if player has beaten previous personal best high score.
New: Multiplayer selection screen, added "local game version" to display when searching for hosts to join online.
New: Added a high score screen to the main menu.
Fix: Controls Menu now updates "Get Swag" button to correct remapping key - thank you for the bug report!
Fix: Gamepad "Start" Button now correctly activates the Steam Overlay if Steam is running.
Fix: Achievement "Tis But A Scratch" (receive > 1000 damage in a single attack) now only completes if the player survives the attack.
Fix: Radiation trigger now working and does damage to player's moving through it.
Fix: Mecha-Boris spawn timing was wrong and the Level 3 Boss would just sit there waiting, corrected to 2 seconds from 20.
Fix: Small, fast poisonous spiders now have missing poison attack for extra damage.
Fix: Multiplayer; fixed chathud not naming other player when they used a single item.
Fix: Leaderboard Top Score images now all rescale together, should help on 4K screens.
Fix: Swag classes (items, common, uncommon, rare) now display collection progress on new swag pickups.
Fix: Completed collections of Swag classes (items, common, uncommon, rare) now trigger achievement correctly, with extra check incase the player fullfilled the collection but missed the achievement.
Fix: Tsunami Rare Swag Attack now leaves decal correctly.
Fix: Tsunami Rare Swag Attack now only kills monsters and not game exe ...
Change: Achievements are now preloaded and checked against a local array system, checking steam servers in-game before unlocking an achievement seemed to take too long.
Change: Host disconnection warning now says that the Host has closed the server.
Change: Tightened ankle straps on Bikaver portraits (don't judge me).
Change: Tweaked level 3 Boss sprint attack effect.
Change: Mecha-Boris Level 3 Boss 50% more aggressive using minigun ranged attack, but still very inacurrate.
Change: Boss Monsters now have correct cashMultiplier variable, they were failing to drop enough loot.
Change: Boss Monsters bonus damage reworked to give more attack damage when levels increase.
Change: Minor upgrading of later level monsters' damage bonuses.
Change: Statistics Screen text horizonatlly rescales relative to screen size allowing more text characters to display.
Change: Leaderboards name fonts now allow longer names to be visible to ~40 text characters.
Hot Fix Patch 1.1
Forgot to push an extra file in the Hot Fix Patch 1, hence this tiny 16.7kb update.
Check for completed Swag classes for missed achievement now works.
Hot Fix Patch 1
Fix: Tsunami Rare Swag Attack now only kills monsters and not game exe when attacking Elite monsters.
Fix: Radiation trigger now working and does damage to player's moving through it.
Fix: Mecha-Boris spawn timing was wrong and the Level 3 Boss would just sit there waiting, corrected to 2 seconds from 20.
Fix: Small, fast poisonous spiders (Level 3) were missing their poison attack, now have extra damage.
Fix: Multiplayer; fixed chathud not naming other player when they used a single item.
Fix: Leaderboard Top Score images now all rescale together, should help on 4K screens.
Fix: Swag classes (items, common, uncommon, rare) now display collection progress on new swag pickups.
Fix: Completed collections of Swag classes (items, common, uncommon, rare) now trigger achievement correctly, with extra check incase the player fullfilled the collection but missed the achievement.
Fix: Tsunami Rare Swag Attack now leaves decal correctly.
Change: Southern Hospitality heavy attack nerfed due to bad maths, Damage Per Minute reduced by 9% to fit in with other playerable characters, energy reduced by 5%.
Change: Mecha-Boris Level 3 Boss 50% more aggressive using minigun ranged attack, but still very inacurrate.
Change: Boss Monsters now have correct cashMultiplier variable, they were failing to drop enough loot.
Change: Boss Monsters bonus damage reworked to give more attack damage when levels increase.
Change: Minor upgrading of later level monsters' damage bonuses.
Change: Statistics Screen text horizonatlly rescales relative to screen size allowing more text characters to display.
Change: Leaderboards name fonts now allow longer names to be visible to ~40 text characters.
Change: Multiplayer, added "local game version" to display when searching for hosts to join online.
Monsters Loot Swag - Now Available!
Monsters Loot Swag is now available for Early Access release!
Choose from an initial four cosplaying catgirls, each with unique abilities and blast your through the first 5 levels of the game, grabbing as much loot and swag as possible before facing a final showdown with the level boss to open the exit, either in single player or online Co-Op play.
It's The Final Countdown - Early Access Release 18th August 2022
It's the final countdown to the early access release of Monsters Loot Swag, shipping with the first half of the game complete, on 16th August 2022 at ~1pm PDT / 9pm BST / 10pm CEST (as long as my maths are right on those time zones).
So let's look at what it is actually shipping with as an Early Access title:
4 playable catgirl cosplaying characters.
Single player or online multiplayer Co-Op.
Levels 1-5 full playable.
Different Monsters for each level.
Individual Boss Monsters for each level.
All 108 swag and power-ups fully coded.
Art for 98% of power-ups.
And what early access actually means:
Updates will be monthly and should take ~10 months to complete, so final full shipping of the completed game is estimated as summer 2023.
Levels 6-10; total 10.
Individual Monster Bosses for levels 6-10.
Specific Monsters for levels 7 and 8, other monsters are complete but the levels are not.
2 or 3 swag/power-up abilities need specific art/models/animations which are related to each other.
A further 4 playable catgirl cosplaying characters; total 8, that will be unlocked once available and the player has reach a gameplay milestone; eg: has an achievement or steam stat.
6 Trials/Challenges/Mutagens are coded but not enabled, these are to be unlocked as the player progresses through the game, and as such will be available at the end of the game.
Souvenirs; souvenirs are coded but art is not finished, these are extra RNG collectables which Boss Monsters drop. Currently there is a blank page in the Swag and Statistics screens for this.
Steamworks for modding
So if an early access title of ever increasing levels of murderous twin-stick, swag collecting, catgirl monsters mashing sounds like your kinda thing, please wishlist Monsters Loot Swag!
This is Water Hazard, she enjoys gently trundling around fairways, sipping gin and tonic and clubbing alligators to death to try and get her ball back.
Water Hazard is a mix range, melee based playable character with a trio of hand-to-hand standard attacks, featuring good mobility, with good strength for knocking monsters out of the way. Her special attack is a slow but high damage attack which cuts through all enemies to the front and ends with an additional explosion at long range, whilst her evasion is simply to jump on a golf buggy and barge enemies out of the way.
Mouse Aim Cursor
From the feedback that I have gathered, one thing was unanimous - absolutely nobody liked the default mouse aiming system.
This has now been remedied to a control scheme that people requested, namely a visible mouse cursor or "aiming reticle" which the player rotates to. The larger the distance between the cursor and the player's facing direction, the faster the player turns. This also now works for gamepad and Steam Deck control, as all control types turn at the same rate, so no one scheme has any disadvantages over the others.
You can swap control between Keyboard+Mouse and Gamepad input at any time in-game, via the pause and options menu.
If you're playing on Gamepad and suddenly lose input because your mom is bent over hoovering infront of the screen and accidentally pulls it out, the control system will default to KeyBoard+Mouse, and the game will pause (unless in online Co-Op Multiplayer). Once you plug your Gamepad back in you can choose Gamepad input again from the Options Menu.
And if you're on Steam Deck you will notice absolutely no changes.
