Bonjour pinball fanatics! SSP2D has been updated with an honest to goodness content update!
Roughly, I've added a bit more variety of to the game by adding a ball roster, where different balls have different effects on the gameplay! Furthermore, a certain amount of progression has been introduced, as the balls are initially locked off until you meet certain conditions.
UPDATE NOTES
A ball selection screen has been added! Now, you may pick from your available roster of pinballs prior to starting a game!
In 2 player mode, both p1 and p2 select their own ball separately, so it's kiiiiind of like a character select screen I suppose.
A bomb ball has been added to the roster! You must reach the bonus round to unlock it! This ball has actual field effects, but I won't spoil the secret <3
A pocketwatch ball has been added to the roster! Get 100m in the bonus round to unlock it! This ball has been constructed from Major_Melon's February prize, thanks again man! This ball also has field effects, but I won't spoil this secret either <3
The game will now remember which balls you unlock with cheat codes, and the way cheat codes works has changed. Rather than enabling a particular ball for a particular session, entering a cheat code will enable that ball in the roster.
People who have already met the unlock conditions in previous play will have the balls unlocked automatically when they download the update.
FUTURE WORK
Proper destruction for bomb ball
Proper destruction for pocketwatch ball
Description pane scaling (add to GUI layer would do it I think).
As always, bug reports are more than welcome.
Stay frosty!
NCC Moore
Patch 7...
Hi guys! Another Friday, another patch!
PATCH NOTES!
So! Turns out I introduced a game-breaking bug when I added sound effect pausing in the last patch! Oops! This is the one related to the bonus round not ending correctly. I'll spare you the details, but it's fixed now!
My long-suffering and stalwart Linux users have had various, difficult to nail down problems for some time now. I've swallowed my pride and re-enabled Unity's default resolution and quality dialog for the Linux build. HOPEFULLY this fixes the problem... but frankly at this rate I'm not holding my breath. These problems (especially ones related to input gathering) are things Unity is SUPPOSED to do by itself. I know it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools, but I'm getting tired of chasing after 10 year old bugs...
Fixed a few visual glitches related to the appearance and layering of multiplier sparkles.
Fixed the colour of sticker prize boxes of a particular type.
Ball skins in the bonus round should actually work now.
As always, bug reports are more than welcome, just drop me a line in the forums.
And work continues on the planned Easter Update!
Stay frosty my friends.
Patch 6!
Hello all you beautiful people! Today's update has quite a lot to it (once again, kudos to Major_Melon for his extensive bug reporting)!
PATCH NOTES
Adjusted spawn depth of multiplier ball sparkles so that they are at the same draw depth as the ball. Corrected earlier inattentativeness.
Sound effects now pause while the game is paused, and unpause when the game is unpaused. All sfx are tagged, and called up by the pause/unpause subroutine.
In the bonus round field with the sideways playing field, the top bumper now produces sound correctly. That was a typo.
Also in the bonus round, For the field with the triangle bumpers, the round bumper in the middle now scales its score correctly. That was a missed checkbox.
Cumulative points leader boards - So this one is kind of interesting. Major_Melon's cumulative score exceeded the size of a 32bit signed integer, the integer data type used by Valve in the leaderboard system. To get around this, I have added a new cumulative points leaderboard, which measures kilopoints. You will need to play a game to have your entry in the new leaderboard instantiated, but it should work correctly. Let me know if there are any problems!
Linux display - OK, so I undid a kludge I was trying to use to address a long-standing problem with the game not starting up at people's monitor's native resolution. The kludge made the game unplayable on Linux, SO I HAVE TRIED A DIFFERENT KLUDGE!!! Apparently this is a very long standing issue with Unity (the bug report is like 10 years old), but this kludge was recommended in the comments of that bug report so maybe it'll work?! At any rate, I would really appreciate it if everyone would let me know if they have any more resolution-related issues.
April contest code is in, that'll be Easter weekend, and we're going for just straight score this time.
I've added sroger's prize for the March contest. If you want to know what it is, you'll have to ask him for the code! (maybe he'll be nice and post it to the forum)
So that's it! Just so you know, I'm planning on adding some content soon... and no it isn't another table. But stay tuned!
Patch 5
Hi everyone! This is a bug fixing patch, rather than a content patch. Thanks again to Major Melon for bringing these issues to my attention!
PATCH NOTES
Apparently it was possible to bounce the ball out of the cannon during the bonus stage attainment animation. I've put a collider in there that will spawn in once the ball enters the canon, so there should be no way to bounce it out now, short of breaking the physics system.
It was possible to reset the amount of steam power the player would have on re-entry to the bonus round by getting more steam power during the launch animation. I think this is mostly a problem when you bounce the ball out of the cannon, but it could be a problem with bombs too, so added some code that sets it to the right number during the bonus round results scene.
Adjusted layer depth of the bomb explosion visual effect. It should no longer be occluded by other game objects.
There was a bug where if you got more than 99 stickers of a single type (!) the last digit would blink. I've set a display cap of 99 for the sticker frame object. The number of stickers you get will still increment in the associated data file, it's just any number greater than 99 will show up as 99 in the gallery.
That's it for now folks! Keep the bug reports coming! ːsteamhappyː
Patch 4
Hi all! Another GERRRRRATE update coming your way!
Patch Notes:
So. Turns out there was a fairly major bug in the sticker distribution algorithm that was basically preventing the last row of stickers from getting assigned! I had previously assumed this was a drop rate problem, but it turns out it was far more sinister! (The original design was for 15 stickers, and some very old code still reflected this). Props to Major Melon for bringing this to my attention! It's fixed now! The "get all stickers" cheev is now actually achievable! ːsteamfacepalmː
Evidently, there was a bug where the engine speed was not getting set on loading when the setting is loaded from the options file, rather than using the in-game options. Thanks again to Major Melon for pointing this one out.
A very cool new ball has been added (accessible by cheat code!) Once again, I will leave the code distribution to our lucky winner, but I like this ball so much I might polish it up a bit more and make it an actual addition to the game, and add a ball select dialog to the game start, including selecting different balls for different players. That would be cool! Anyways, no idea when I'll get to it, but that's the plan! The other advantage of that would be I could gate the ball with getting to the bonus round or something, which might improve the game experience. People like unlockables, right?
Anyway, that's about it. Stay frosty!
March Contest Winners!
Hi Guys, time to announce our March contest winner! Just a reminder, that this contest was for hieght in the bonus round. Here's the rundown!
Major_Melon
sroger
dan.mccrackin
AnthonyCZ95
Everyone Else!
Basically, the rest of everybody is tied for 5th place because only 4 people were able to breach the bonus round! Oh well! Better luck next time guys!
So given that Major_Melon won the February contest, and despite his TRULY IMPRESSIVE score of 298m, he's unfortunately inelligible to win our fabulous prize this month. (Incidentally, my personal best is 240, or something like that).
Which means that the winner of the fabulous ball skin is none other than SROGER, with a score of 147m!
Congratulations to our lucky winner! And a big thank you to all of our participants! If anybody has any suggestions for what the next contest should be, please leave a comment!
NCC Moore
Contest Next Weekend! Joy! (Also Patch 3.1)
Hello all you lovely people! Please take note that our next contest will be happening the first weekend of March! Here are the rules!
The contest begins at 5pm next Friday (EST).
The contest ends at Midnight on the following Sunday (EST).
Whichever player manages to get the HIGHEST BONUS ROUND HEIGHT during this period of time will recieve a FABULOUS PRIZE with NO CASH VALUE!!!
There will be a new and independant leaderboard set up specifically for this contest, so that everyone can keep track of their progress!
If you just absolutely have to have the FABULOUS PRIZE, but also don't succeed this time, fear not! This will not be the last contest!
After the contest is over, I will attempt to reach the winner through Steam, but if I can't get in contact with the winner within a couple days, I will go for the next runner up, etc.
People who have already received a contest prize are not eligible to receive further prizes! They are still welcome to participate, but I'm going to select the best player who hasn't already won. This keeps it more interesting for everyone!
The winner will get a custom ball skin designed for them by me that will be included in the game for all time!
This basically means I will draw a picture, put it in the game, and you will be able to play with this picture as the ball.
The skin will be accessible in-game by means of cheat code from the title screen.
The picture can be of whatever you like, so long as it's not explicit or overly violent or drug-related, or anything like that. Basically, I reserve the right to say "can you think of something else you'd like maybe?"
This image will be an image, not an animation.
Before attempting the contest, please make sure you have the most up-to-date version of the game, or else your score probably won't be recorded! Which would be a shame! Speaking of which...
PATCH 3.1 NOTES:
The current build of the game is set up for the March contest (obviously)
I have yet again tweaked the shiny sticker drop rate to be just a bit more generous.
Apparently the "Game Over" music wasn't tied into the sound mixer, and was therefore exempt from the sound control added in the last patch! I fix!
Stuff I'm working on:
I finally heard from Major_Melon, and his idea for his prize is so cool I'm going to bend the contest rules just a bit, and give it some animation! I haven't decided yet, but I might go all the way with it and make it official! That would mean adding a ball selector to the options... we'll see.
Keyboard Remapping
More languages
Patch 3!
Hi everyone! Another great patch coming your way!
PATCH NOTES:
I haven't been happy with the number of people who've been able to make it to the bonus round. A great deal of the game's content is in the bonus round, but less than 1/4 of players are making it there. Therefore, I've made it a bit easier to get there. The bellows targets, which only used to activate "steam boost mode," which increased spinner steam output, now themselves provide steam power. This brings the total number of targets that increase steam power to 3. Hopefully this will make getting to the bonus round a bit easier.
In that same vein, I've increased the number of balls on Easy mode (note: ONLY on easy mode) from 3 to 5. This will hopefully give players a bit longer to build up their steam power, and hopefully make it to the bonus stage.
I forgot to change the label for the zoom level option in the last update. Things should be a bit clearer now.
You can now adjust the music and sound effects volume from the menu! This was the 2nd most requested feature, so hopefully everyone will get off my back now! (Just kidding, you guys are great!)
I've taken one more stab at fixing the fullscreen glitch. If anybody notices the game loading at an aspect ratio that doesn't match the monitor you're using, please let me know in the forums.
I've tweaked the camera, so that it tries to track the bombs as well as the ball when bombs have been spawned. It still gives a fairly high weighting to the ball, but it doesn't ignore the other balls completely anymore.
Due to difficultly communicating with Major Melon, I've awarded a prize to our runner up from the February contest. Major Melon will still get his prize (when he tells me what he wants). If you're reading this Major Melon, drop me a line! Leave me a message on the forum or something! Anyway, It's up to AceMatt whether or not he wants to share his super secret cheat code with everybody, I leave that to him.
As always, if you have any bug reports or suggests or whathaveyou, drop me a line on the forum, or leave a comment, or send a carrier pidgeon.
Features that are still in the works:
Keyboard remapping (harder than it sounds, not that I'm complaining)
Language support for Simplified Chinese.
February Contest Results!
Hi everybody! The contest results are in!
Of 24 contestants, the top five scorers are as follows:
Major_Melon
AceMatt
sroger
daveshere
Scotchopotamus
So our lucky winner is Major_Melon! Congratulations! And thank you to all our participants this weekend! You guys are the best ( ^_^)-b
Patch 2!
Hi all, Happy Groundhog Day! I've got another update coming your way!
PATCH NOTES
First and perhaps most importantly, the code for the contest this weekend is now live! If you want to participate in the contest, you will need to get this update!
The options menu has been rearranged slightly to make room for a new option!
SSP2D now has a windowed mode! You can switch in the options menu. I have also made the window resizable (not the default for Unity). NOTE: This is definitely a "use at your own risk" feature. I absolutely do not guarentee that the game will look right at asinine resolutions and aspect ratios, though it shouldn't crash or anything like that.
A previous bug that locked the game at sub-optimal resolutions and aspect ratios is now fixed. When the game launches, if it is in fullscreen mode, it will check that the game's resolution matches the computer's, and correct if necessary. This can also be fixed by means of switching to windowed mode and back again.
A couple minor bug fixes that I won't get into because I honestly can't remember them all. I think one of them was disabling the flipper sfx on the bonus stage when the machine is tilted...
As always, if you have any bug reports or suggests or whathaveyou, drop me a line on the forum.
List of things I'd like to add in the near future, but make no promises about when I'll get to them:
