Genre: Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Adventure, Indie
Striving for Light
Hotfix 0.8.2.4d
Thix update focuses on fixing frequent occurring crashes as well as some further bugs. Some further improvements have been added as well.
If you encounter any crash please report them to us so that we can fix them as soon as possible. If possible please also attach your settings and save files using the bugreport button in main menu or on our website at www.strivingforlight.com/bugreport
Improvements
If emerald staff is equiped no projectiles are displayed in the stats window to indicate that you don't have any projectiles when emerald staff is equipped
New save files now initially don't have any skill tree shards to not overwealm new players with the initial tutorials
Balancing
Glaring light damage scales with your projectile damage.
Bugfixes
Fixed a crash when entering a map and keybindings have been changed in a way that one action is not set to a key
Fixed a crash when trying to freeze chicken enemies
Glaring light effect can now be displayed multiple times to prevent hidden visual effect on fast attack speed or multiple glaring light stacks
Fixed heleja carrying weapon offset
Tooltips for each stat in the stats window has been fixed so that you can now get more information on the different stats.
If you encounter any bugs or issues please report them so that they can be fixes as soon as possible. The best way to engage in the ongoing development of Striving for Light is our discord:
This update fixes some of the most frequent crashes. If you encounter any crash please report them to us so that we can fix them as soon as possible. If possible please also attach yous settings and save files using the bugreport button in main menu or on our website at www.strivingforlight.com/bugreports.
Improvements:
Crab enemies and stone golem enemies now have red hitbox indicators
Added Dodge + Move hint in the tutorials to make it clear that dodge needs a move direction.
Performance improvements for enemy hit and enemy critical hit visual effects
Game now starts with windowed initialisation to prevent startup crashes on multi monitor setups (if you still have issues please send us your reports and describe your setup and attach your save and settings files)
Bugfixes:
Fixed a crash that occurred when picking up a weapon with +1 max health as weapon stat
Fixed a bug that could lead to a crash when defeating an boss enemy and collecting a key
Game now default uses original Striving for Light soundtrack instead of the Survival soundtrack on initial game start
Bursting skills now display correct damage numbers
Fixed damage numbers decimal values
Fixed locked initial characters in demo version on first run
Update 0.8.2.4
With this update we are focusing the sound effects of Striving for Light.
New Features:
Random Alternate Sound Effect Trigger System
Until now sound effect where rather static as each action was only firing the same sound effect sample. This could become annoying playing weapons with very fast attack speed like the dagger. With this update we are introducing a new alternate sound effect trigger system that not only picks a random sample from a pool of sound effects but also applies random small pitch shifts to the samples so that you will hear a differnt sound effect each action. So now fast dagger stabs will all sound individual and dynamic.
Brand New Sound Effects
Furthermore we have redesigned all projectiles, player skill effects and weapon sound effects and added plenty of new sound effects to the game. This combined with the new alternate sound effect system is adding so much more dynamic and depth to the sonic atmosphere of Striving for Light.
Improvements
Performance improvements for all projectiles
Bugfixes
Fixed a crash on older save files which did not have a character selected from the new character selection on an active run (v 0.8.2.4a)
Fixed a crash on character death on old save files without selected character from the new character selection (v 0.8.2.4b)
Fixed weird centipede movement where the enemy could end up accelerating and surrounding you (v.0.8.2.3a)
Fixed a crash that could occur on game startup with multi monitor setups and older save files. Now the saved screen resolutions are checked if they are compatible with the current monitor before loaded to prevent crashing the game on startup (v.0.8.2.3a)
Not satisfied with any mechanic or implementation of systems in the game? You encountered a bug or weird behaviour? Then please share your feedback with us so that we can make this game the best it can be! We are very open to feedback and are looking forward to hear your suggestions and follow the discussions on discord and steam forums!
If you encounter any bugs or issues please report them so that they can be fixes as soon as possible. The best way to engage in the ongoing development of Striving for Light is our discord:
Continuing the trend of our latest update we are now granting the shard of conjunction and the shard of change a new unique visual and sound effect which should make using those shards even more satisfying.
New Features:
Shard of Change has received a visual & sound effect on activation to make using shards more satisfying and improve feedback if the activation was successful. Using the Shard of Change now looks like this:
Shard of Conjunction has received a visual & sound effect on activation to make using shards more satisfying and improve feedback if the activation was successful. Reforging connections between nodes now looks like this:
Improvements
Pathfinder tooltips have been improved. The overall size of the pathfinder tooltips for the maps and map mods are now much smaller in size which will prevent making them flowing outside of the game window.
Vsync is now enabled by default on windowed mode to prevent micro stutters especially in capturing the game via capturing software like OBS
Bugfixes
Descriptions for different maps in the pathfinder are now back implemented into the game.
Fixed weird centipede movement where the enemy could end up accelerating and surrounding you (v.0.8.2.3a)
Fixed a crash that could occur on game startup with multi monitor setups and older save files. Now the saved screen resolutions are checked if they are compatible with the current monitor before loaded to prevent crashing the game on startup (v.0.8.2.3a)
Not satisfied with any mechanic or implementation of systems in the game? You encountered a bug or weird behaviour? Then please share your feedback with us so that we can make this game the best it can be! We are very open to feedback and are looking forward to hear your suggestions and follow the discussions on discord and steam forums!
If you encounter any bugs or issues please report them so that they can be fixes as soon as possible. The best way to engage in the ongoing development of Striving for Light is our discord:
Welcome Wanderers! We want to share our updated roadmap with you all so that you get some insight on what we have planed in our upcoming content updates until the full 1.0 release.
Lets start with a recap of the last 6 months of Striving for Light development.
Game development is a very dynamic process as we are constantly listening to player feedback and also schedule our updates according to how the game evolves over time. Some features might not bring as much value to players like others so we reschedule planed features to a later or earlied date. This not only affects the announced features but also features we only had in mind and not even announced yet.
So looking back at our last posted Roadmap from October last year we implemented most of the announced features along many further features we did not even have on the road map like adding legendary weapons, adding rare/epic weapons with random generated weapon stats or adding 6 new unique playable characters, map tiers, game difficulty settings, twitch& youtube integration, leaderboard build viewer and much more...
We specifically tried to re-schedule features to release as early as possible so that they will get as much testing-time as possible so that we can nail those core features like itemisation, weapon stats, characters and map tiers for endgame balancing for the 1.0 release. That said we did not forget about lore notes and more story content and the steam deck verification.
October 2022- February 2023
From the last posted roadmap until early this year we released 5 major content updates and over 30 patches and updates featuring plenty of new content including 5 new skills and 4 new weapons.
Survival Release and lessons learned for Striving for Light
We had some great ideas for a fun spin off and released an arena roguelite bullet-heaven game on the end of February 2023. This has proven as a great testing ground for performance optimisation and further QoL improvements like player effect transparency settings, new dynamic enemy health bars, player hit overlay effect, a completely new +20 minute rhythmic and intense alternative soundtrack, new colour coded damage numbers, and so much more. Those features are now all available in Striving for Light. If you haven't checked out the alternate Soundtrack option its available from the options menu.
This not even includes the countless new ideas we had because we were looking at Striving for Light from a complete different angle while designing a new & fun resource system that lets you directly jump into the action. We applied many of the lessons learned and rolled new variations into Striving for Light with a massive 0.8.1 update which was the biggest change we ever did to the codebase of a game ever. As announced this came with some more introduced bugs than on our usual content updates.
February - Present
After the release of Survival (in the last 50 days) we already released 2 major content updates and over 14 updates and patches which include 7 new added skills and 2 new weapons, playable characters, in game achievements, map tiers, game difficulty tiers, rare/epic weapon system with weapon stats and many more improvements.
New Roadmap --> 1.0 release
Just a few days ago we have released the hideout content update, adding 6 unique playable characters, new main menu, character selection, 3 new secret bosses with a new boss arena, UI overhauls, rare/epic weapons new crafting options and more and are already setting sails for the next content udpates.
That being said we want to ensure that all present content is in good shape and that remaining bugs are hunt down before we go full force onto the next content update. So we will take some time for bugfixes and improvements for especially those areas that could need some long awaited improvements and fixes.
A good example for this is the Shard of Refund algorithm which just now has received a complete rewrite to make refunding possible even on the most complex and difficult tree-shapes. Game development is not always straight forward and some implemented features turned out to simply be more complex than initially expected and just need more time to implement. As we focus on spending our development time on features that serve the majority of the playerbase first, improvements like this are split up along the regular updates to not have weeks without updates and then only an updated respec algorithm that only a few players deeply care about.
So whats on the horizon for next Striving for Light updates until the full 1.0 release:
Next to the pushed back features of the previous roadmaps we will start working on the new parallel secret dungeons that will let you aquire new set items that can be combined to grant you new & never seen before powers in the world of Striving for Light. These powers will be active abilities that are granted by the new set item types that require to actively trigger those abilities. Some of them might as well carry some passive abilities. These new dungeons will impose new challenges with great rewards. We will further implement new skills & weapons as we have always done. We plan to add at least one new map with new enemies and bosses and a new gatekeeper. Along the new map we are working on additional map and environment decorations to make the environments feel more alive and diverse. There will be more story content and more / new voice acting and we will implement steam achievements for the full 1.0 release.
As always this is just the bare bone planed features until the full 1.0 release of Striving for Light. Most likely there will be more features added as the game evolves and grows of the next updates. If you have suggestions always feel free to drop them on our Discord or the steam forums.
We hope that this gave you some insight into the past and future Striving for Light development.
You are invited to join the community on discord and discuss the future of Striving for Light with other players and participate in the ongoing development of Striving for Light.
With update 0.8.2.2 we are improving the Shard of Refund - Respec algorithm so that the shard should actually be able to refund every valid skill that does not disconnect other skill nodes from the origin.
Actully we are really excited about this new algorithm as this was not the most straight forward feature to implement. It took several iterations to make it working for all thinkable complex tree shapes and node connections. Previously you would find yourself using a Shard of Refund and the skill node would simply not be refunded if you had bad luck and the validator algorithm which is crawling along all the active branches of the skill tree got stuck on a dead end. The new algorithm should now be able to crawl the complete tree no matter how much dead ends and how complex the shapes and connections are.
This is the new algorithm in action:
The feedback we have received and also the gameplay we watched mostly showed that the Shard of Refund was the least used skill tree shard. Especially in endgame scenarios most players probably have given up hope that the Shard would actually work on important branches as the tree simply just got to complex for the old algorithm.
The new algorithm might now make the Shard of Refund an acutal useful tool to revert some early run decissions and respec depending on your weapon drops and how the skill tree evolves. Even in endgame scenarios you should now be able to rely on the Shard of Refund to fine tune your builds.
To celebrate this we have also implemented a new respec sound and visual effect that should make respecing feel more impactful and fun.
We have also implemented this effect for the Tree of Light.
Bugfixes:
Keybindings have been fixed and can now be accessed in game from the pause menu --> options menu.
If you encounter any bugs or issues please report them so that they can be fixes as soon as possible. The best way to engage in the ongoing development of Striving for Light is our discord:
Your current leaderboard rank is now displayed seperately above all leaderboard rankings. As the leaderboard list already is pretty long it is getting more and more time consuming to see your actual ranking. Furthermore only the top 300 entries are displayed. This feature makes it possible to see your leaderboard rank independently from being included in the top 300 or not.
Crafting Tutorial added. When you now collect your first weapon shard a new crafting tutorial will be displayed in the skill tree that introduces new players to all the different crafting options.
Bugfixes
Fixed locale dependent weapon stats display
Hotfix 0.8.2.1d
Bugfixes:
Fixed locale dependent display of weapon stats in the build viewer due to "." and "," decimal separators. Now for all locales the right weapon stat values should be displayed
Fixed always displayed weapon glow even on weapons that did not have any weapon stats
Fixed overflowed weapon stats unlock description
If Fullscreen and borderless mode is both set active
If fullscreen is active borderless mode is now always deactivated on game start as this might lead to crashes on the steam deck.
Fixed not unlocking difficulty tier after run was saved and loaded again
Fixed some not existing achievements triggering
Update 0.8.2.1c
New Features:
Constructs can now trigger all legendary on hit and on attack effects
Stats window and build viewer now also display weapon glow effects
Balancing
Constructs now have +2 resource cost and -50% attack speed (unintentionally they did not have any tradeoffs in the last few updates) Melee constructs now attack once each 2 seconds to allign them with range construcs
Bugfixes
Fixed a bug that could lead to a crash when interacting with the leaderboards
Hotfix 0.8.2.1c
New Features:
Constructs can now trigger all legendary on attack and on hit effects
Stats window and build viewer now display weapon glowing effects for legendary/rare/epic weapons
Balancing:
Melee constucts now have +2 endurance cost and -50% attack speed (was unintentionally 0 for both)
Melee constuct has now attack speed of 0.5 attacks per second to be equal as range constructs (was 1 attack per second)
Range constucts now have +2 energy cost and -50% attack speed (was unintentionally 0 for both)
Bugfixes:
Fixed a bug that could lead to crashes when viewing other builds on the leaderboards
