SinaRun
Today is the 30th of December 2018.
Needless to say, that's a long time. Many of you probably moved on/forgot, some of you are probably disappointed or perhaps even angry (at me or the situation). The game must have been called "abandoned trash" or other names many times at that point.
And I guess, that's probably fair... Though to be honest I don't expect much of you to be in the latter categories, after all SinaRun is just a game, a random indie one at that. (I don't even know if many people will be reading this post)
However... It means a lot to me. Not necessarily because I LOVE the game that much (don't get me wrong though, I wouldn't have made this game if I didn't love and believe in it) but because it's my first real game, my first real project, the first real thing I poured a lot of time in. I've learned a lot about making games but also about myself while making this game.
Even when it will be finished (because it will) it probably won't be a big game a lot of people remember like the big indie titles, but still that's probably okay to me because I'll forever remember it and it will forever be one of my favorite game because again, it means so much to me.
I... don't want it to be in an unfinished state for the rest of my life. Everyone involved in this deserves better, you, me and hell, even the game does in some ways.
The last two years have been pretty rough for me. Definitely not as rough as some of the people out there but still a lot of struggle with being depress, not having any motivation to work on the game for various reasons, who am I as a person etc. You know, the usual stuff. Stuff happens, I guess.
Things have been going better these days, actually the last month or so was probably more productive than the last two years. I wish I could write my signature "haha" at the end of this sentence, but I think at this point, it wouldn't be too respectful.
I want to finish this game and I want to make new ones too! I want to show you people that I'm not just "running away with the money" or "giving up".
And finally: I hope there is still some people out there who just want to do the same levels hundreds of times in a row (only to get a slightly better time) because I'm making and finishing this game for you.
Thank you.
What I've been working on recently
What's new? Well, after spending September-October realizing (a second time) that I didn't really like school I started working on the next SinaRun update (and also updating my website, if you haven't seen it yet it's pretty cool!).
For this new update, my focus has been on improving the current content and overall polishing (I feel like I've said that before?). Of course, that doesn't mean there's no new content! But I must admit it wasn't the focus of this update.
Alright, let's start!
Better UI Controls
This update will include many improvements to the menus such as drop-down lists and checkboxes which should help navigating and selecting the right settings
This update also include keyboard and controller navigation and thus finally making the game fully playable with a controller. I would still (and will forever) recommend playing with KB/M but people should still be able to play with controllers if they want to!
Improved Maps
Polishing and improving the actual content (aka not the UI) is also something I really wanted to do for this new update. Above, you can see that Wanderer Hideout was (almost) completely remade with better visuals and (hopefully) more balanced gameplay. I won't spoil all the changes yet but others maps also received similar changes and overall I think it look pretty nice!
UI/UX and Maps updates are the two major points of the update, however these are far from being the only changes! More features and additions will be revealed up until the release. There's still a lot of work to do so no release date is planned yet but I hope to be able to release in the coming months or at least do beta tests (like the one I did in July) relatively soon.
I hope you people will enjoy all the changes and additions I've been working on for the last few months :)
Thanks for taking interest in the game!
Hotfix 1.5.3
As some of you might have noticed yesterday, my personal website princesseuh.eu domain expired and thus was not available. The situation is not fixed yet because of multiple reasons but for the moment I've setup a new domain : https://princesseuh.net
Once princesseuh.eu come back I will make it redirect to this new address and everything should be cool again! (and in case some of you are wondering, yes this kill the SEO)
Anyway! Today's patch fix a few minor issues you guys noticed and sometime appropriately reported in the last few days. Enjoy! Hopefully this is the last hotfix before the next content update
Changelog
General Changes
Updated my website address in the footer, credit etc.
Bugs Fixes
Fixed 'Status Bar' ingame font not scaling properly at low resolution
Fixed FPS counter not drawing at the right position at certain resolutions
Fixed Community Interest showing the wrong dev time
Updated missing Polish translations (Thanks Kamil!) (Spanish translations will follow.. Eventually I hope)
Hotfix 1.5.2
Yesterday I released an update, 1.5.1. Pretty much everything was smooth! However for a few users camera suddenly didn't work anymore. What happened?
The issue was caused by an invalid configuration regarding controller sensibility. The game tried to load the specified sensibility but the variable was unexpectedly empty! Since the sensibility is partly calculated in the script that manage the camera, the camera completely stopped working for users affected by the issue.
The issue was simply fixed by making sure the variable that contained the sensibility shouldn't be empty.
In the future I hope to make the configuration system more robust to avoid this kind of issue and at the same time allowing Steam Cloud support!
Changelog
Known Issues are the same as the previous update
General Changes
Developer time is now hidden in the bottom bar if there's no dev time on the current map
Bugs Fixes
Fixed misaligned "<" buttons in the level selection menu
Fixed camera not working for a few users who had outdated settings
New Update! 1.5.1
Basically the story is that they need to make a song in a day to please their producers who've been waiting for a few years for the duo first song, however under this basic almost comedy-like story the movie is actually about how the duo need to faces their issues, the fear of failure etc
The end song which is both the song they make for their producer in the movie and the last song you hear before the credits theme is about how they or what they make will never be unaccomplished no matter what happen. How is that relevant to SinaRun you might ask? I don't know. I just though it was interesting and fairly inspiring
Anyway, enough of this sad introduction!
Today update include changes to Elastic Light and others maps, many bugfixes and polishing there and there. There's not many changes that need to be detailed so the changelog should cover everything!
Changelog
Since this update (and the one before) fix exploits and bugs related to the leaderboards, I took the liberty to delete a few 'suspicious' times on the leaderboards.
Known Issues
Controllers might have issues on OSX and Linux
A few texts are missing in Spanish and Polish translations
Mouse cursor being visible and unlocked when it shouldn't is partly back
Slick Talk lights changes were partly reverted
White Roads bloom changes were partly reverted
Engine Changes
That might sound totally insane but I backported the entire game back to Unity 4. Unity 5 actually present too much issues that I don't really want to deal with for the moment at least.
Oh well. I guess I saved 700$. Everything that was broken due to engine changes should be back to normal! (anti-aliasing, colors etc). I must say backporting Elastic Light to Unity 4 was an interesting experience. I don't know if there was an 'intended' solution for this but I ended up writing my own thing. Was fun! In the end Elastic Light look almost the same on both version. (Though I had to find a way to do Height Fog on Unity 4 that didn't break transparent things and anti-aliasing too much)
General Changes
Re-enabled multiplayer and leaderboards
Removed the link to my Twitter in the menu, some users commented that it felt too mobile game-like and beside I didn't have enough room for this version number
Maximum shadow distance is now 225 (it was pretty destructive to set it higher anyway)
The 'Automatic' settings for resolution is now disabled when in fullscreen (it was intended to be used only in windowed)
Due to the engine changes, Post-AA is re-enabled by default (it look pretty okay in Unity 4. For Post-AA that is!)
Invert Sprint is now disabled by default (Left-over from testing. Sorry)
In Training F3 now allow you to hide the training UI. No-clip is now on F4
Controller Changes
LT and RT can now be used to sprint
(A) can now be used to jump
In the future I plan on adding rebinding or at least different layouts but for the time being these two changes should already help a lot!
Maps Changes
Fixed additional floating pillars in Slick Talk (specially at the end of the level)
Fixed clipping issues in maps where pillars reached kinda high (Slick Talk, Elevated Highground etc)
Slightly improved performance of some level previews
Golden Opportunity
Made a 'wall' sliiighty larger to make a shortcut easier and more consistent
Moved a pillar to allow for more creative jumps toward the end of the level
Moved a wall slightly out of the way toward the end to allow for a tighter turn
Blue Horse
Reduced shadow opacity to make it easier to see platforms (Thanks GoldenRoxGaming for his video!)
Blast Tendency
Moved a pillar after the first angled pillar (arch thing) jump to make it less frustating (and more consistent)
Elastic Light
Improved performances
Moved many platforms around to better balance the paths
It is now easier to get to the left path and you can now easily commit to the left path from the middle one (where previously you needed to fully commit to the left path at the beginning), in addition it take more time to start with the right path now to better balance the two. Merging to the right one from the center is still possible.
The right path is still not as interesting as the left one even though it's faster but these changes should already contribute toward a better balanced map (and also allow for more creativity from the center path). Further work will be done toward this in the future
UI Changes
Added padding to notes (fix issues where at some low resolution it looked like the text was overflowing)
Bugs Fixes
Fixed various typos in both English and French
Fixed a few crashes related to leaderboards
Fixed missing visual effects in some level previews (Unusual Downtown and Spiritual Era in particular)
Fixed Status Bar ingame not being aligned correctly with the menu at low resolution
Fixed option menu closing when rebinding the pause button
Fixed IP input field label being too small and thus causing two lines for no reason at low resolution
Fixed credits having major encoding issues and not scaling correctly at low resolution
Fixed resolution dialog being mis-aligned at low res (which lead to the scrollbar being hidden)
Fixed camera field of view bugging out in the settings menu when Invert Sprint was enabled (in-game)
Fixed spawn height for the last tutorial teleport
Fixed missing geometry in Community Interest level preview
Fixed Spiritual Era brigtness and bloom issues
Fixed an issue where audio didn't play in the main menu but worked fine in levels
Fixed a missing colon in the Spanish translation
Added missing translation in French
Hopefully you guys like the update! Next update should be a more content focused one hopefully. I have a few ideas for a new map..
New beta available!
As said earlier this year : I was pretty busy with personal things and I couldn't work much on SinaRun. Well. The great news is I'm still somewhat busy but managed to get some work done on SinaRun!
So that's nice. However the new update (1.5) still need some debugging, polishing and other things. Of course, I have testers but I figured it would be cooler if everyone could test and give feedback on the next update!
So there we go. Leaderboards and multiplayer are disabled in the beta
To use the beta branch simply go in the game Steam settings, 'Beta' tabs and in the drop down choose 'Beta Branch'. To go back to the normal version click the other button.
Now what's in this update you may ask? Lot of things! Maybe less than some of you expected, maybe more. Some of you will be happy, some will be crying! Actually it's a pretty bad update considering the amount of time since the last one..
Known Issues
- Some levels might look weird. Specially refering to the fog or colors
- This update introduce several anti-aliasing issues. I'll need to research a bit this because I'm not too sure how to fix it at the moment
- Level previews sometime doesn't represent the levels correctly (small visual issues)
- GUI Scaling is not finished and as such will cause issues at certain resolutions. Please report any issues!
- Shadows quality is somewhat lower than before
- Controllers might have issues on OSX and Linux
- Multiplayer is disabled in the beta (because it's broken)
- In a similar fashion to level previews : in the tutorial levels are not always represented correctly. While this is not intended, I don't particulary dislike it the way it is right now
Engine Changes
- Better performance all around! I didn't do many benchmarks but in the few ones I did the average FPS was much more stable and generally higher. Hopefully this is the case for everyone!
- Small visual changes! Unity 5 change the way fog work. Fog being used quite heavily in SinaRun it affect unintentionally how levels look. I tried to make them look as close as possible to what they used to look like but it was simply impossible for some (such as Slick Talk which use a big share of 'visual tricks' to look right). Addtional updates over time will come to fix the visual issues caused by the engine change but for the most part things work!
SinaRun now use Unity 5! Due to that many (non-intentional for the most parts) changes were made.
General Changes
- Added a new achievement (this was mostly to make 'environnement achievement' work. More achievement using this system will come in later updates)
- Maximum field of view is now 120
- The input settings now support mouse inputs. Which means you can now bind Jump to Mouse3 if you desire to! Scrollwheel is not supported as it doesn't work correctly in SinaRun since you need to hold the jump button to jump higher. Unlike CS:GO or Quake. But every button from Mouse0 to Mouse5 work!
- Added initial controller support. Please not that in addition to being unfinished this is only partial support and as such menus can't be navigated using controllers (yet!)
- The timer now start when the player leave the spawn position and not when the first key is pressed. This also means that on maps where the player start in the air, on a slope or anything that actually move the player the timer will start automatically (which is intentional for the moment)
- Added new settings to allow for X and Y axis to be inverted (I hope the guy who refunded the game because it was 'unplayable without invert axis' will rebuy it!)
- Default Field of View is now 85 (was 80 before)
- Removed the Equalize button in the input settings as it wasn't really useful and somewhat confusing
- Added new option to invert Sprint. If this is enabled you'll be running at sprint speed all the time and pressing the sprint button will slow you down to normal speed instead
Movement Changes
- Ground and Air Acceleration are now different based on if you're sprinting, running normally or walking. (As expected they are lower when not sprinting)
This is a change I've wanted to do a loooong time ago (it's been in my todo-list for almost a year!) and now it's finally there.
The acceleration while running normally is lower to prevent new users from being 'suprised' by the acceleration but still high enough to enable better players to stop sprinting when needed. As for the change to walking acceleration it's only to make it usable as the acceleration was waaay too high for it to be enjoyable when used.
Recently I've thought about a few possible new mechanics that would still fit the minimalist style while adding new skillful options to runs. I'll have to look into it more and maybe it won't ever see the light of the day but I'll keep you guys updated!
UI Changes
- Added experimental GUI Scaling. Need a lot more work but this is a great start
- Reduced margin between elements in menus
- Made several small changes to make sure the menu was adapted correctly for every resolution with the new GUI Scaling stuff
- Added quick notes in some menus to inform users of certain things (ex : Times not being saved in Training Mode)
It unfortunally didn't make it into this update but something I want to explore soon is tooltips for settings that can't be explained correctly in one line.
Good examples would be "Clear Input on Reset" or 'Crease'. These two in particular can be kinda hard to understand.
Map Changes
- Added a new map : Elastic Light
- Added cool looking height fog to Wanderer Hideout and Elevated Highground. Might be a bit 'too much' but I kinda like it
- Made Red Things a little bit bigger to make it more playeable with the updated physics of SinaRun 2 (aka this game)
- Moved Community Interest into the 'Main Line' category. Doesn't need any changes I think!
- Removed outdated effects in classic maps (Fish eyes, film grain, weird glow etc)
Slick Talk
- Improved overall performance
- Made a few visual tweaks to make it easier on the eyes (+ Unity 5 unintentional changes)
- Fixed a few floating platforms/pillars that weren't supposed to be floating
- General polishing (missplaced platforms, lack of decoration in certain area etc)
White Roads
- Reduced Bloom (this might not be noticeable due to the engine change. I'll do further tweaks after feedback)
Tutorial Changes
- Made phantom platforms a bit more transparent so new players don't confuse them with real ones
- Made the same change to spawn position I did back in 1.4.3 (to other maps) to make it much much easier
- Moved the spawn position a little bit in the second part (Golden Opportunity part) to allow players to move a bit before falling off
Bug Fixes
- Fixed some minor typos in the English translation
- Fixed mouse not being hidden and locked correctly after alt-tab in game
- Fixed an issue where shadows distance was saved incorrectly and led to shadows being disabled
- Fixed some level previews having incorrect geometry or missplaced objects
- Fixed an issue where performance when viewing Spiritual Era level preview was unusually low
- Fixed not being able to rebind a key to the key it was already binded to
- Fixed Back button in the Keybinds settings not going to the correct menu
- Fixed RightShift being unbindable and Left and Right Alt not binding correctly (they previously binded to CTRL Left&Right)
- Fixed an issue where the keybind would get stuck in 'Key already binded' even though the binding actually worked
- Fixed View Full Leaderboard button not opening the right leaderboard in some cases
- (Maybe?) Fixed issues where weird effects would happen when looking at literally nothing (aka no particles, platforms etc on the screen) when anti-aliasing was enabled
- Fixed various very rare issues related to wrong times being sent to the leaderboards or leaderboards not working at all. More work will have to be done toward this in the future. I added simple stats collecting to help debug these issues in the future. Hopefully it all goes well
SinaRun Discord Community
In light of the update coming soon-ish I want to bring the community a bit back together
Since the game itself doesn't have like a global chat of some kind (which would be quite a good idea actually. Maybe?) I thought about making a Discord server for the game!
If you don't know Discord is a text/voice service like Mumble, Teamspeak or Skype which become pretty popular recently. You can read more about it on its website : https://discordapp.com/
Here's the invite link : https://discord.gg/0sxTlVBVZkMwFYYr
Hopefully -unlike the subreddit- we will be able to build some kind of community there!
Hope some of you will come and talk or at least lurk!
Apologies about the lack of updates..
It's been a few months now since the last update. I'm terribly sorry about that. Recently I've been busy with a professional project and many others (I promise interesting! At least for me) things. And as expected when I'm not busy with these things I prefer relaxing doing random things than working on this (also laziness! Another problem that affect us all.)
I'm still working on the update and I still plan on releasing it as soon as possible! I've recently taken a few steps to prepare the beta part of it (Since it's a breaking update I would like to beta-test it before using the leaderboards and stuff on it)
As a way to show that I'm not just going away with the money and never coming back I'll be reducing the price of the game to 2.49$ USD until further notice. Effectively reducing the profit I'll make until I pick myself up and start working on this again.
Again, I'm very very very sorry. I hope you don't hate me too much for this! I promise I won't let you guys down
As always if you have any questions, feedbacks, ideas, problems etc don't hesitate to post in the forums, send me a mail, mention me on Twitter, post on the subreddit etc and I'll answer as fast as possible!
A big thanks to the users that send me messages with their feedbacks or questions. It really help getting motivated to work on this and I'm glad some people are able to enjoy the game even with the lack of updates!
Sorry.
Princesseuh
Preview of the 1.5 Update! Controller Support, Unity 5 upgrade etc.
Since the last update I've been hard working on my Path of Exile build the 1.5 update! I've talked a bit about the new features on Twitter and various other places already but here's a better preview of what's currently in and confirmed :
Input System update (Controller Support, mouse bindings and various fixes)
Two -very- common requests since release are controller support and the ability to bind things to the mouse buttons. Well both are in and functional for this update!
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
Mouse buttons are supported up to Mouse5. Controller support currently only work on Windows (and maaybe Linux?) and is intended to be used with an Xbox 360 controller. For DS4 and others stuff you'll most likely have to use third-party software. Sorry!
Please note that even though I did add it controller support is still not the intended way to play and I will always recommend you to play with a keyboard and mouse! Also it's partial controller support. You can't navigate the menus with it (yet!)
Since I was dealing with the input system I took the time to fix a few issues some of you had. Left/Right Shift and Alt are now bindable correctly and the game will no longer prevent you from rebinding the key to the key it's already binded to!
Unity 5 Upgrade
When I started SinaRun started months ago Unity 5 wasn't affordable for me (nor was it released actually if I remember correctly) but now with all the sales it's very possible. So I ported the game to Unity 5!
While the game obviously doesn't use the latest rendering techniques and pretty things that are possible in this age it's the kind of game that feel best played at either unlocked FPS or higher FPS than usual (similar to how some FPS feel better at high FPS. Like CS:GO for instance) so better performance are always welcomed! And Unity 5 does bring improvements in that regard.
I haven't done much benchmarks but the few I did showed very good improvement performance wise. Sometime even up to 150-200fps on my configuration! Pretty cool, huh? I hope this will fix issues for the few people that had performance problems on very very very low-end computers.
Now for the 'bad' part! Unity 5 changed a bit how things render due to fog and lights changes (because of their new PBR system) and unfortunately SinaRun is the kind of game that use fog and lights heavily to make things look great.
So some levels miiight have had a few unintentional changes. I've tried my best to make them look as close as possible to their previous version but sometime it was simply impossible. Oh well!
And more!
This update also include various fixes and features that you guys requested in the last month such as GUI scaling for lower res screens (and higher res screens as well), fixes to the various issues with the leaderboard etc etc.
This update doesn't include as much content as I would have liked to but the Unity 5 port took a little bit more time than planned! Next major update will be the Multiplayer overhaul which I hope will make multiplayer much much more fun!
I don't have any planned date for this update yet since there's still a bit of work needed to make sure everything work (the update might go through beta-testing as well to fix things up before full release)
See you by then! Hope you guys will like the update.
Exploration Sale!
-15% might not seems like the biggest of deals but considering the low price of the game it's still pretty cool! Obviously this is the biggest deal the game had so far considering it's not even one month since release.
Don't forget to share it with your friends that could be interested!