It's a new year and Virtue's Heaven is still happening! What a time to be alive, truly.
Virtue's Heaven
Virtue's Heaven Development Update (January 2024)
It's a new year and Virtue's Heaven is still happening! What a time to be alive, truly.
Virtue's Heaven Development Update (November 2023)
Things are happening and they are good!
Virtue's Heaven Development Update (October 2023)
yes, the game still exists. I just couldn't do anything with it for a few Months. If you want to learn more about some of the reasons why things just came to a halt and where the game's going next, feel free to watch this Month's devlog:
Also here's the link to the "Metroidvanias are hell" blogpost I wrote back in July:
https://mokkograd.net/posts/2023-07-11-Metroidvanias-are-hell
Thank you for your patience!
Virtue's Heaven Development Update (May 2023)
Things are still moving forward, a bit slower than expected, but the direction is still good. This Month's video therefore isn't that much about progress, and more about me trying to unpack a specific thought I had a few days ago and that I thought might be interesting:
Virtue's Heaven Development Update (April 2023)
March was an important Month for this game's development, despite how little actual progress was made. More in the video below:
Virtue's Heaven Development Update (March 2023)
Another long video! Talking a lot about the Steam Next Fest experience, managing expectations and also car racing for some reason.
Virtue's Heaven Demo Update (February 16th)
Another small update to the Demo:
- Changed the Upwards Dash Tutorial, to make it maybe a bit less frustrating
- Changed the placement of some helping Birds
- Some tweaks to the Walljump
This is probably going to be the last update I'll do for this Demo, aside from fixing bugs that crash/break the game. The upwards dash tutorial now teaches you specific elements in sequence and I also changed the wording of the initial message, because I noticed that the previous message implied, that you *have* to press "up" after you started a dash, when actually you can just hold the input and then start a dash.
I hope this makes things at least a bit less frustrating for people.
The Walljump is going to remain a work in progress for the game, but I think it's fine for the Demo right now. I only fixed a problem that caused the game to crash and made it a bit less likely that you accidentally initiate a walljump, after performing a Dash.
My biggest problem with the automatic walljump is that it can lead to players unintentionally activating it, but I also understand why having a simpler initiation makes the overall movement a bit less complex.
I think I found a good balance, but I also haven't done a ton of testing with it so far. Still I'm comfortable enough with where it is right now, to just not touch it for a while.
As always, thanks for taking an interest in this game, and for all the feedback over the past week.
Virtue's Heaven Demo Update (February 13th)
[Insert empty "we heard your complaints" Gamedeveloper PR Statement]
- Wall jumps and Ledge Grabs now only require you to hold a direction
- Changed Tutorial messages regarding both mechanics
So I took notice that folks didn't like that you had to press a button to do a walljump and over the last day or so I've been thinking about ways to change it, while still maintaining the core idea, of it involving a deliberate decision.
You now initiate a walljump, when you hold your directional input, while colliding with a wall. However, you won't be stationary in that state, and instead slowly slide downwards. In order to remain stationary, you still need to press that evil "grab" button.
This way you can do quicker vertical movements, without having to hold a button down all the time, while still having an option to have a higher degree of control, if you need it. You also don't end up accidentally get stuck to a wall when you don't want to, since you need to hold your input for a few frames (3 to be exact) for the walljump to register.
Obviously this is a very quick change and I did not test it very thouroughly, so things might break. Please let me know, if you ran into any kind of strangeness. I also did not change the tutorial stage, so that frustrating vertical section is still there. I still hope the changed mechanics make it a bit less frustrating though.
Also I'm going to keep the demo up for at least another Month, so if you've bounced off of it before, feel free to maybe give it another go.
Virtue's Heaven Development Update: Steam Next Fest Edition
With the Next Fest being basically done, I figured why not do a video where I talk about how it went overall?
(Spoilers: It wasn't all that pleasant)
I also talk a bit more about how I want to make sure that the problems that have come to my attention are being dealt with properly.
Virtue's Heaven Demo Update
Thanks to everyone who has downloaded and played the demo so far.
I did smaller updates over the past few days, to react to some things that came to attention, but in regards to some larger issues that have become apparent over the days (especially this morning), I opted to actually do a proper news post about what I've just changed:
- Keyboard controls should now actually work. If you've already downloaded and launched the demo, you need to either go into the games save file (under "users/appdata/local/gbvirthavafteregx") and delete the "save.ini" file, or go into the options menu and hit the "restore default" option in the control menu.
- There was a crash that happened when you tried to grab onto a wall during a door transition. That was supposed to be fixed already, but apparently wasn't.
- It should be fixed now, if you still encounter it, let me know!
- I added an NPC in the tutorial stage that gives you an option to skip the rest of it.
I'm incredibly sorry for anyone who had to deal with the broken keyboard controls over most of this week. I made a bunch of mistakes while setting up the controls themselves and the system that handles the key-rebinding, which not only made the key-rebinding not work in places, it also obscured the problem on my end, so it only became apparent once other people tried to play the game.
I made the decision to let you skip the tutorial, because I keep seeing people getting stuck in it for very stupid reasons and I'd rather folks get a chance to look at what comes after it, even though they might not be fully prepared, than having them get stuck in a situation that just isn't very interesting.
As always, if something's not working/looks weird to you, please let me know!