The Void Rains Upon Her Heart
v8.21a
-2 new Events (Total: 65)
-Moved around some unlocks
-Adjusted the behavior of Null Glacia's spikes
-Changed the wording of Null Glacia's battle tip
-Bug Fix: The Bonus Tetrid gift cap was unintentionally halved in all modes
-Bug Fix: Getting tetrid bonus gifts would reduce boss level in The Towers
-Bug Fix: The 12th and 15th gifts saved into the 7th Quickplay loadout slot would fail to load
Cardiac Event Recorder - Update #97
200 New Battles!
Alright, that is a huge exaggeration, but it's also kinda true! I'm going to walk you through what my last 3 weeks was like.
Last update, I added a new burden effect that flips how the safety bubbles work, so that you'd have to stay outside of them instead of inside. The problem is that this only affected about 15 battles in any meaningful way, and I wanted to get more out of this effect. So, I set up a system that can put the bubbles into any battle while this burden effect is active. At first, I was just going to make it place a few bubbles randomly on screen in every battle, but there are just so many unique fights, and it was causing problems with certain monsters. So, as I always do, I put in all the effort to make it unique to every single battle. This variant is now called a Repelling Battle, and all 107 monsters can have it!
While I was at it, I added another burden effect that adds full arena attacks and bubbles that you have to stay inside of just like normal. Of course, these bubbles had to be positioned differently in most battles, but I already had the whole system set up, so I did both variants together as I went through every monster. This variant is called a Wrathful Battle, and it applies to 94 monsters! In the future, I will add some extra effect to the remaining few battles that are already Rage Battles normally.
Now I had about 200 monster variants that would only appear if you had a couple of specific burdens. This kinda seemed like a waste, so I put these both of these effects on new sets of Bounty Gifts. That way they can sometimes appear in story mode too.
Then I was hit with an idea! What if there was a random stage in a story run that forced all the monsters to have one of these bounties? A special stage where every choice was a Wrathful or Repelling Monster. And so a new type of random event was born! These new Stage Events will give specific themes to all the monsters and gifts you have to choose from. Honestly, I can't believe I never thought of doing this before.
Speaking as the scope creeping developer of this seemingly infinitely sprawling game, there are 2 very important things about this new event type, especially for ME!
1) Stage Events are very quick and easy to make. They have no dialog to write, no art to draw, and all they do is arrange pieces of the game that I've already made.
2) I've decided that Stage Events will not have any specific achievement attached to them. Part of the scope creeping problem is that most things I add come with at least one achievement attached to them. Every achievement I add must eventually unlock something else in the future, so I really needed more dead ends for all the unlock chains! (Before anyone calls me out on it, there will be some generic achievements like "Encounter X total stage events" but that is very different than adding one for each event!)
I still had a little more than a week to go, so it was finally time to work on Chionotoh's event... But then Monster Hunter Wilds came out, and I didn't do any work at all last week! So, this is what you get! (If you're one of the few people wondering why this update is a few days late, I actually managed to pull myself away from Monster Hunter long enough release it on time, but as a beta. I needed some people to test and make sure the changes I made to the stage select generation didn't crash the game.)
Early Access updated game version to v8.21
Content Added
- 2 new Events (Total: 63)
- 6 new Bounty Gifts (Total: 43)
- 2 new Bonus Gifts (Total: 68)
- All monster battles that were not already fully rage battles have gained 2 different rage forms that can appear under certain conditions
Updates and tweaks
- Blizzard Veyeral's first phase is now a rage phase
- Changed the frequency of moving spikes in Totaria's 5th and 7th phases
- The Hyperfocus bounty gift is now unlocked from the start
- Scarlet's Burden gained a new effect and duration was reduced from 8 to 3
- Rage Duet's Burden has a new effect and duration was increased from 1 to 2
- Special Monsters and Gem Monsters can now appear with any blessed bounty instead of only the Mote Garden gift
- Updated the card art for Quick Mite, Love Mite, Glow Mite, and Star Mite
- All 3 bonus gifts of the Radiant Tetrid set have new art and now give additional motes of all types. They now add the same amount of score as all the other bonus tetrid gifts of the same ranks.
- The health values of any obstacles that must be broken to avoid taking damage will be scaled down if DPS is lower than expected
- Adjusted the mercy rates of bonus gifts becoming heals and panics. These rates were universal before, but now depend on story difficulty. All other game modes will use the same rates as Heavy Rain, which has a slightly lower rate for heals, but the same rate for panics as before.
Bug Fixes
- Bug Fix: The Gift Dynamo event should have been blocked by the unlikely case of having 0 tetrids available. The event title would play, but the event was still skipped as expected.
Upcoming Stuff
The next main focus is the remaining monster events, but I'll be throwing in new Gifts and Stage Events along the way. Just like with gifts, I have a bunch of ideas for stage events that I've just scrawled out, but no exact number on how many there will be.
9 monster events (not in order)
- Sandrome
- Voladrome
- Shanx
- Dendrohai
- Lavalin
- Chionotoh
- Ventra
- Storm Veyeral
- Blizzard Veyeral
The Quickplay rework beta as mentioned in the previous update notes (Update #96) will probably happen while working on these events, or maybe after they are all done. Then the 6 Tower Bosses will come after all the monster events, and the quickplay beta is done.
The next update will depend on wherever my whimsy takes me, but it will be on March 21st.
Thank you for playing!
ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː
v8.20a
-Added memory text to all the new blessings and burdens that were missing it
-Scarlet Burden duration increased from 7 to 8
-Bug Fix: You could receive multiple copies of the new upgrade gifts in The Towers mode
-Bug Fix: The Gift Dynamo could only generate rank 1 gifts
-Fixed some typos (and probably made more)
Voidentines Day Specail - Update #96 + Updated Roadmap
Anniversary
Happy 7th Birthday to The Void Rains Upon Her Heart! Seven years and a little bit of scope creep later, and the game is much bigger than I had envisioned at the start. We are currently in the middle of version 8 which is likely to be the largest one, at least in terms of time it takes for me to build it all. Down below I'll be detailing the rest of the plans for Version 8.
For today, I've added 2 new events to the towers. I know I've been saying there would be an event themed around removing a burden effect from yourself, but it somehow turned into something completely different. It's a perfect event for Valentines Day! It involves a lot of garbage and dumpster diving. The event host has a lovely personality too, you'll see.
All the newest monsters added since The Towers were introduced have also gained their Blessings and Burdens now. A lot of their burdens have silly new effects, so good luck with that!
Early Access updated game version to v8.20
Content Added
- 2 new events for the towers (Total: 61)
- 4 new dreams to fulfill (Total: 738)
- 8 new Blessings (Total: 130)
- 8 new Burdens (Total: 120)
Updates and tweaks
- Flip Flap's Burden has a new effect
- Sentinel 0x's Burden has a new effect
- Added a few more detailed hints for undiscovered gifts in the collection
- The Attributes page details now explain what happens when crit rates go above 100% better
- Dot has a new reaction to reaching max mood, and the event will end early if her mood is maxed before time runs out
- Falling Star and Shooting Star gifts are buffed
- The Star Shower gift is now unlocked by a dream again
- Switched around several unlock dreams for some gifts and Syncron's event
Bug Fixes
- None this time
Version 8 plans
Monster Events
First, I plan to finish all the remaining monster events. There are 9 monsters left to make events for. These are not in order, but I do want to finish them all before moving on to the Tower Bosses. Fortunately for me, most of these will involve variants of minigames that are already finished, so it will be all the dialog writing that takes the most time now.
- Sandrome
- Voladrome
- Shanx
- Dendrohai
- Lavalin
- Chionotoh
- Ventra
- Storm Veyeral
- Blizzard Veyeral
Quickplay Beta
Ever since I updated Endless Stress mode with the Love Power calculator, I realized the same sort of formula could be used in Quickplay mode to help balance it out better. The star system has a lot of flaws and the starting power that each heart has is impossible to balance. I was also very restricted when designing power gifts because of how they would affect Quickplay balancing. A simple example is how I could never make any 1 star gifts that give you a single stock denial shield, because it would instantly invalidate the Denial gift in quickplay. But if every shield filled in the same amount of quickplay power, then this situation could be avoided.
Sometime during the making of all the monster events, there will be a beta for these quickplay changes. There is a possibility that this idea doesn't go well, but if that happens I'll just scrap the idea.
Tower Bosses
I want to release all these bosses close together, so I'll be working on them all consecutively after all the events are done.
- Shamble Tower Boss
- Guardian Tower Boss
- Glyph Tower Boss
- Zaramech Tower Boss
- Glass Flora Tower Boss
- Veyeral Tower Boss
Endless Towers
After all the bosses are done, I'll finally add in the last endless mode. This is also where I'll add the event I had planned for Endless Stress too.
Minigames Mode
If you've ever found yourself wanting to play the all the bonding time minigames outside of story events, then I have good news for you. There will be a sort of quickplay mode for each minigame. It will probably involve earning high scores and medals too.
Final Adjustments
This is where I want to go through all the content in the game and make sure everything is where I want it to be. There's a lot that could go into this section, but most of it is just vague ideas to solve problems I have written down. It's mostly miscellaneous fixes to tiny problems that I've meant to get to for a long time. Basically, I want to clear out the "To Do" checklist right here.
A Little Bit of Story
Finally, I'll be adding a small amount of the missing story. First Defect's fake early access ending will be replaced by the real one. Her Heart and Defect (and their alters) will get their intros and ending scenes for Altered Story mode. There might also be a few extra bits added here and there. This should help me gauge how long it will take to finish all the story in Version 9!
The next update will be on March 7th with another monster event.
Happy Voidentines Day!
ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː
v8.19b
-Added a few more interactions to the newest event
-Soups will have names generated based on effects they give
-The game will ask you to choose a language at startup if it detects a custom language. This will only happen once.
v8.19a
-Added a new minigame to the newest event
-Added ending dialog and a several other character specific interactions to the new event
-The new minigame character sprites now change based on what character you are
-Soup effects now somewhat scale with karma up to 100, so they are less powerful if you get the event early in a run
-Added "My Notes" for the new event to the collection menu
Birthday Event Recorder - Update #95
New Event
It's my birthday today! So I'm giving you the gift of soup! Find out what that even means in the newest event!
This new event is a little late, and it's ALMOST entirely finished. There are a few parts that are missing or need some polishing up, but I really wanted to get something out today.
Early Access updated game version to v8.19
Content Added
- Most of 1 new event to discover (Total: 59)
- 1 new dream to fulfill (Total: 734)
Updates and tweaks
- The text on all cards is now truly centered, instead of based on the longest line
- In the No One's Gift and A Key To Love events, the gift no longer leaves the screen if you accept it
- Kiwi's event will now end early if you manage to get her mood maxed out before time runs out
- All gift types except Upgrade gifts are now put into a new subgroup in the collection
- Some dreams and rewards that mention gift types you haven't seen yet will be hidden on new save files
- The monster dream tutorial now mentions that you can press UP to view dreams
- For translations into languages that do not separate words with spaces, all text in the game should now add linebreaks correctly
- Bug Featured! Instead of fixing a bug that makes Lulu and Heliola's events trigger later than normal, they will now have a special reaction to it instead
Bug Fixes
- Amber could generate a set of obstacles that are impossible to pass
- Repeating one of Limbo's color phases in the same battle would sometimes fail to play the correct music layer
- Adjusting the music volume from the pause menu would not adjust the extra music layers from Limbo's battle
Upcoming Stuff
6 more bosses coming up in this order
- Shamble Tower Boss
- Guardian Tower Boss
- Glyph Tower Boss
- Zaramech Tower Boss
- Glass Flora Tower Boss
- Veyeral Tower Boss
12 events (not in order)
- Sandrome
- Voladrome
- Shanx
- Dendrohai
- Lavalin
- Chionotoh
- Ventra
- Storm Veyeral
- Blizzard Veyeral
- Towers: event similar to free gift event
- Towers: event where you can choose to remove a burden
- Endless Stress: shiny battle event
There will be a patch to finish up the missing parts of the newest event within the next week. After that the next one is planned for the game's anniversary on Valentine's Day February 14th!
Thank you for playing!
ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː
v8.18c
v8.18c - December 25th, 2024
-Added a new battle song for Limbo
-Rebalanced Limbo's treasure bullets so that more of them come out of her orbs and less from her final phase
-Slightly increased the quickplay medal goals for Limbo
-Slightly changed scene portraits for Defect
v8.18b
-Reverted GameMaker's version due to reports of music cutting out
-Fixed Typos
Cardiac Event Recorder - Update #94
New Event
I made a poll on Twitter and another in Discord for which monster's true form I should reveal next. My plan was to make the winner's event next, but Dot won on Twitter and Chionotoh won in Discord. To make it worse (for me), when I added all the votes together they tied exactly, with the last vote coming in with less than 1 minute left! So, I'm revealing both of them! Dot got her event, and Chionotoh shows up somewhere else for now.
The other major change is that I've increased the medal goals for Altered Story mode. It was brought to my attention that they haven't been updated since before several rebalances that have made the old goals easier to reach. The big 8.0 Towers update increased the average score from most common bosses. It also added Bounty gifts that were designed to increase score. (Although Bounties replaced an old mechanic where all special monsters gave out 25% more score by default.) Many of the new events can give out tetrid bonus gifts which also add to your score.
I don't see any new mechanics being added to change scores anymore, so hopefully this is the last time goals need to be adjusted. But as I always try to do, if you already had a radiant medal, then your score will be updated to match the new goal and you will keep your radiant medal.
Early Access updated game version to v8.18a
Content Added
- 1 new event to discover (Total: 58)
- 3 new dreams to fulfill (Total: 733)
Updates and tweaks
- Increased the score goals for medals in Altered Story. You will keep all your radiant medals, but other medals may have shifted.
- Dreams for story events are divided into a few more sub categories
- The 3 dreams for clearing story paths on Heavy Rain can now also unlock on Torrent Rain
- The game will always remember the last Tower you've selected during the session
Bug Fixes
- Alter Glacia's story dream did not increment at all since the previous update
Version 8.18a
Before I got to write out these patch notes for 8.18, another bug was reported and fixed
- Bug Fix: Split Veyeral's event would soft lock when a specific minigame was chosen
- Bonding time events will now end with an error message instead of soft locking if a similar type of bug is found later
Upcoming Stuff
6 more bosses coming up in this order
- Shamble Tower Boss
- Guardian Tower Boss
- Glyph Tower Boss
- Zaramech Tower Boss
- Glass Flora Tower Boss
- Veyeral Tower Boss
13 events (not in order)
- Sandrome
- Voladrome
- Shanx
- Dendrohai
- Lavalin
- Chionotoh
- Ventra
- Storm Veyeral
- Molten Veyeral
- Blizzard Veyeral
- Towers: event similar to free gift event
- Towers: event where you can choose to remove a burden
- Endless Stress: shiny battle event
I'm still in events mode right now so expect another one in the next update. I am aiming for January 10th for the next one.
Thank you for playing!
ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː ːradiantheartː