Update - Changes to handling player height + small bug fixes
Hi everyone!
First, Root Beer On Tap is part of the Steam Winter sale! Get an additional 20% off of the usual $5.99 USD price!
Alright, now on to the new updates!
Calculating player height, and appropriate world scale, is now done at the start screen. The screen will ask you to T-pose when pressing the trigger while starting the game. Once you've done this the game world will scale to keep everything in the game at a more comfortable reaching distance than before. For those of you who had difficulty lifting the mugs onto counters quickly, this should help quite a bit. If you are around 5'9" (175cm) tall, nothing will change compared to before. An important note concerning this, there is currently no way to recallibrate world scale. You'll have to quit and restart the game if you want to change it.
the Grow/Shrink button has been removed from the arcade cabinet, as it is no longer needed.
Added a very short cool-down between quick teleport button releases. This should reduce the chance of the stick flying back too far and teleporting the player in the wrong direction. Please let me know if this problem persists, I will look at other options. You can also change the dead-zone settings in the SteamVR Input bindings. If you find settings that work extremely well for you I'd be curious to see them, so please do post them in the Discussion pages.
That's all for now. If you have any feedback on how player scaling works now let me know in the discussion pages!
Hypernoodle Games
Permanent Price Reduction - Root Beer On Tap is now $5.99!
Hi everyone!
I'll get right to it. The original price of Root Beer On Tap was high when compared to the amount of content present in the game. Therefore, the game's price has been permanently reduced by 50 percent, making it just $5.99 USD! I believe this new price more accurately reflects the scope and content of the game, throughout both Early Access and full release.
IMPORTANT - To those who bought the game at a higher price. First off, thank you so much for picking up the game and trying it out. I sincerely appreciate your support, and really can't thank you enough. As a token of my gratitude to you supporters of the game, I'd like to make you a promise. You will receive every future game developed by Hypernoodle Games for free, via a key sent to you via email. All I need from you who already purchased the game is two things. First, I need you to send me an email at jon@hypernoodlegames.com. I will keep your email address on record for the sole purpose of sending you keys to games in the future. Your email address will never be used for any other purpose.
Second, I need you to prove your purchase of the game prior to Dec. 16th, 2019. The best way to do this is to open Steam, go to Steam Support under the Help menu in the top bar, find Root Beer On Tap, and take a screenshot of the purchase date. Please include this screenshot in your email. You can crop it as is shown below. Mine says "Added to your Steam Library", but yours will list a purchase date.
Thank you for understanding, and thank you so much for picking up the game in it's early days of Early Access.
Alright, in addition to that announcement, Root Beer On Tap has been updated with the following changes:
Created new input binding files for any controller that has a thumbstick. this increases the deadzone for teleporting and should make it easier to crawl-teleport forward into a level without accidentally popping left or right instead.
Fixed crawl teleport placing the player in a possibly incorrect position after recentering or when using the "grow" mode.
Pressing the "grow" button now requires holding the button for a third of a second. This will hopefully prevent the button accidentally being pressed while the main menu loads. The button has also been changed to a physical one like the rest of the arcade cabinet, instead of a faked-physics button like the pause menu.
A prompt to always use wrist straps has been added to the first screens of the game. Safety first!
That's all for now. As always keep the feedback coming, it is always appreciated!
Thanks!
Update - Support for lefties and those who find the counters to be far too high
Hi everyone!
Root Beer On Tap has been updated! here's what's changed:
Support for lefties! You will be prompted to select your throwing hand from the main menu arcade screen when starting the game. Choosing left-handed will cause all root beer barrels to spawn to the player's right, leaving more space to throw with your left hand. Lefties let me know how this goes, I'm curious how it'll feel playing the game with the root beer barrels on the same side of the player as the customers.
An options menu has been added to the main menu. Here you can change your throwing hand setting, as well as change the level of throw assist. "Full" is the default and will be the best experience for everyone, other options are there for amusement but are not recommended.
Grow/shrink button on the main menu arcade cabinet. Those who are having significant trouble reaching the top of the counters or main menu controls can hit the grow button, which will increase the scale of the player throughout the game. I'm looking for feedback on whether or not the current player scale is too drastic for its purpose, so feedback on this is very appreciated.
Various small lighting changes.
That's it for this week! Thanks for taking a look!
Small Update - Changes to mug throwing + bug fixes
Hi everyone!
Root Beer On Tap has been updated! Here's what has changed:
Mug "Auto Aim" - Throwing mugs should be much easier now, as mugs will fly straight forward down the counter when you release them within a very wide angle tolerance. In the future I am open to adding an option to disable this for a truly "hard mode" but for the time being this update is the new default and only option for mug behavior. Those who have tried the Early Access Release version of the game, I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on this change!
Taps now fill mugs slightly faster.
Bug fixes to grabbing tips. When you grab a tip to start a "Can Can" dance, a higher percentage of customers will stop and cheer than before.
Bug fixes to crawl-teleporting. Crawl teleporting to a station instead of using the normal quick teleport is now much more accurate.
minor performance updates.
Please let me know what you think of these changes, and have a wonderful day!
Sojimne Hypernoodle Games
Root Beer On Tap Early Access Release Date!
Root Beer On Tap releases into Early Access October 29th!
I've been working on this game during nights and weekends for the past 16 months, and I'm very, very excited to get it into people's hands in this almost finished state.
A note on Early Access: Although I had previously stated on forums that I had no desire to launch Root Beer On Tap in early access, throughout the last few months it has been clear that it is impossible for me, as a solo developer, to achieve a 1.0 state of the game that I can be happy to call a full release without community feedback. I go into great detail about my goals for the early access period on the main store page for those who are interested.
I'm super excited to release this game, and I hope you all enjoy it. Make sure to wishlist Root Beer On Tap if you haven't already so that you'll know the moment it's released!
To press, streamers, and content creators: Please feel free to send preview key requests to jon@hypernoodlegames.com. In addition, the Root Beer On Tap press kit is available here: LINK TO PRESS KIT
I'm looking forward to the 29th, and for everyone to start serving up as many root beers as you can throw!
A beta update has just been posted to Root Beer On Tap! Here's what's changed:
Signs have been added to the end of each lane to more clearly show when mugs need to be thrown. Previously, on later levels it becomes hard to tell when a customer can be served, or exactly how many customers are waiting at the end of a long counter. The signs added to each lane of each level should alleviate this.
super-experimental LIV Mixed Reality Capture support. For real, 100% honesty, I haven't even tested it yet but it's in the build. Your results may vary, if anyone does test this let me know how it works. I will be further testing this before Early Access Release.
various other small changes, bug fixes, performance tweaks, etc.
Beta testers, as always feel free to leave feedback in the community discord channel! Hope everyone has a fantastic week!
An update to the Root Beer On Tap beta has just been pushed! here's what's included:
Customers will now give a small reaction to being hit by a mug of root beer. This is a result of feedback on the latest trailer, where the viewer thought this was a feature that already exists due to the reactions of NPC's catching empty mugs. So it exists now!
the "Lives" UI within each level now has the word "Lives" above or below it, hopefully making it more clear that it is in fact showing the player their remaining lives. Also a new graphic appears when the player is on their last life to make that more clear. Beta testers, let me know how this reads if you give it a go!
Root beer drains from mugs more slowly when tipped. - Changed per beta tester feedback
A few levels have been tuned for balance, as well as the above change hopefully making levels a little easier now that mugs will on average contain a little more root beer by the time they get to a customer. Beta testers, let me know how this goes!
Start screen now asks players to stand in the center of their play space before pressing a button. This is an initial recentering, so that the player will be set correctly according to that point in their space instead of the default SteamVR chaperone center. - Changed per beta tester feedback
Changes to NPCs that should improve performance slightly, as well as other performance tweaks.
misc. bug fixes.
Experimental HTC Vive Cosmos support! I've added binding for the Vive Cosmos Controllers, if any beta testers with a Vive Cosmos would mind giving it a try I'd greatly appreciate it, as I don't have the hardware myself. Thank you.
Also you may notice that I've pivoted to an Early Access release instead of putting out the full version of the game. I'll go more in detail about this in an upcoming announcement, but Early Access is going to allow for even more feedback on key aspects of accessibility, and will lead to a phenomenally better game once it's time for full release. Again, stay tuned for more on the subject of Early Access release.
Thanks! Sojimne Hypernoodle Games.
Beta update - Shaaaaaaaaaark
Hi everyone,
A small update to Root Beer On Tap has been uploaded! Here's what's included
Fixed bug in teleporting, should produce less unexpected teleports into random places caused by conflicts when trying to quick teleport and crawl teleport at the same time.
Possibly fixed the bug where after an update, or after the first install, the game would fail to play any audio until the game or SteamVR was restarted. - Beta testers please let me know if this problem persists.
removed unneeded post-process effects and optimized some game objects to gain some performance game-wide. - Beta testers, I'd appreciate your feedback on this one too, especially if you use something like fpsVR to monitor performance.
added sharks to the shipwreck level.
Beta testers, keep that feedback coming to the Hypernoodle Games Discord! I really appreciate it. And if you find this update and want to beta test the game, please join the discord so that you can get a Steam key to the game! Thanks!
Sojimne, Hypernoodle Games
Beta Update - Make it "Trailer" pretty
Hi everyone!
To go along with the updated Steam page, screenshots, and trailer, this latest beta update has a few changes to improve the look of the game, and correct some previously broken cosmetic things. Changes include:
Root beer particles pour from the mug more consistently, and pour at the correct angle out of the mug - Beta tester feedback
NPC foot movement should be much more believable, and stay stuck to the floor most of the time.
Performance improvements to NPC's.
Performance updates to the player hands, player, and many interactable objects.
Various other bug fixes
To those of you in the beta, give it a shot and see what you think! There's still quite a bit left to go as far as optimizing some of the levels, so if you notice one level hitching your system real bad, let me know about it in the Discord!
And as always, if you'd like to test the Root Beer On Tap beta, join the Hypernoodle Games Discord server to request a key!
Have a wonderful day everyone!
Beta Update - Windows MR Support, Levels, and more!
Hi there everyone!
It's been a few weeks, but I've got a big update today for all the wonderful beta testers! Including:
Support for Windows MR controllers! if you have a windows MR system and would like to join the beta, or try the beta out using that system, you now can! Please give the default bindings for Windows MR a try and let me know if there are any errors.
More levels! I've added a bunch of levels to the game for this update. Please note that some of these levels won't have background music yet, and some of them may cause some machines to go below frame rate on some machines. If you experience frame rate issues please let me know in the Hypernoodle Games Discord, and be sure to mention your system specs. Thank you for your help in identifying which levels most need optimizing.
Level progression! You'll now see the name of the level, and how far you are through the game before starting each level. This isn't quite 100% yet, you'll likely see a flash of the partially-loaded level at this time, just so you all know.
Fixed a bug where NPC's would spill all the root beer out of a mug immediately if the mug wasn't sliding perfectly straight when caught.
The above change made the NPC's drink speed more consistant, but generally just a bit faster. I've gone through and tweaked a few levels but do let me know of any huge changes in difficulty that you notice.
Added buttons to bonus levels, you can now choose to start the bonus level or skip it and go right back to throwing.
various other small fixes
That's it for now! As always, let me know of any bugs/crashes you find, and feel free to give any and all general feedback you may have! Please post it all to the Hypernoodle Games Discord. And if anyone who sees this is willing to Beta test the game, especially anyone using Windows MR, please do let me know over in the discord. Have a wonderful week everyone!
