Zofia
Update Notes for January 13th
- Aves can now change their feather colors (To Gray/Red/Blue/White/Yellow)
- Fixed a weird issue where character's eyebrows would sometimes get the wrong material
- Fixed a rare UI issue
- Adjusted some distance field meshes as their shadows were incorrect
Update notes for Nov 3rd
Previous shading
DFAO enabled
Some other fixes and changes:
- Changed how the start-up splash screen worked as somehow the previous one would sometimes cause the game to not launch on Linux/SteamDeck
- Reduced some particle effects as they hurt performance on lower end systems
- Tweaked many of the large overhead lamps as they were set in a way that hurt performance on lower end systems
- Made several level tweaks to Prologue/Fort Pilt to increase performance in the village and the Fort
- Made several level tweaks to the Hub to increase performance
- Fixed several meshes which were not reducing level of detail at a distance
- Fixed an issue where Luna could interrupt the player and make their vision 'roll' to the side and get stuck like that until the next conversation
- Other minor level changes and bugfixes
Update Notes for Oct 11th
Fixes:
- Airship should now be in the correct location for clients if they travel far away from it while it was moving
- [The Abyss] The large elevator should now be in the correct location for clients if they travel far away from it while it was moving
- Fixed an intermittent issue where certain player armor didn't appear to replicate correctly to clients
- Clients can now hear skeleton hit noises again
- You can no longer trip on bone debris from skeletons
- Helmets from armored skeletons shouldn't disappear at certain angles anymore
- Made fire launch/trail sounds 50% quieter as they easily overwhelmed the audio environment
- Weapons with an attack cooldown will have their cooldown 'reset' when weapons are swapped. There is still a small equip delay before a weapon is ready. (This should make quick swapping between the Legion firearm -> Melee less quirky)
- [Gilded City] Added a 'swamp shortcut' to the city mid-section from the swamp entrance
- [Gilded City] Added more details and slightly easier platforming to the barren rooms connecting the 'swamp area' to the overgrown room
- [Gilded City] Fixed the ramp in the bath area as enemies couldn't climb in or out of the bath
- [The Ravines] Made a room's platform puzzle easier to solve, as well as added more lighting to make it easier to see
- Changed text to display 'No Chest Armor' as opposed to 'None', and similar verbiage with the head and leg armor
Balance Changes:
- IVO's firearm is significantly less accurate
- Bowmen and Riflemen are now slightly less accurate and so should be less of a threat at range
- Court Sword attack cooldown is now gone entirely (It was incorrectly set too high)
- Legion firearm has a slightly reduced cooldown between shots (2s -> 1.5s)
- Significantly increased XP gain when XP is gained constantly (Like when running or flying), Aves specifically should become more proficient at flying much quicker now
Zofia 1.0.11s
I've also gotten considerable feedback over the last two months and I've been looking into some of the suggestions very seriously.
Additions:
- Slightly altered some magic effects and added some new ones
Fixes:
- Removed an old 'magic shield' object that was still visible when it shouldn't have been
- [Gilded City] Gardener now disappears if the quest for that area is resolved
- Fixed some enemy hit effects not correctly playing
- Fixed an issue with Possessed Armors sometimes getting stuck on a specific attack
- Fixed a material issue with hay
- Fixed a human hair mesh that clipped through the player's head
- Reduced the overall volume of a few sounds
- Fixed dust magic's visual effects, it also now properly blocks enemy visibility, and for players blocks the ability to use magic when you're within the dust zone
Balance:
- Significantly reduced Possessed Armors with gun and sword to fire a lot less frequently if the player is out of range (0.4s -> 2.4s)
- Many melee enemies will attempt to hit things out of their way if conditions are met
- Melee enemies can now damage multiple players if they are caught in the strike (Previously damage was only applied to the player who was hit first)
Performance:
- Removed a character shader effect that was not supposed to be active in certain levels
- Optimized several materials
- Optimized some particle effects
Zofia Dev Talk #3 - Cursed Facts
1. All of the character's fingers are the same length.
In early development, characters were a bit more stylized and clunky looking, leading to bulky hands and feet. Whenever the art style was updated, the character's skeleton and animations got put aside while we focused on other things and was never able to fix it properly.
If you're an animator and you see other issues with the skeleton here, let me assure you the rest of the skeleton is much worse.
2. There is no true multiplayer online co-op limit.
While the store page says 1-4 players (because that's what we've tested), there isn't a hard limit set for co-op online multiplayer. This was originally intended in case there was a 4th or 5th player who wanted to jump in as well, but decided not to put a cap in.
I once had a glimpse of 16 player co-op and it was madness.
3. There was once an option to pick up Otters.
Early prototypes had the otters limited in how far they could jump (as they're tiny), so there was an interactable option for larger players to pick Otters up to make jumps for them. Likewise, an Otter could jump onto another player's shoulders.
Technical issues aside, this got dropped because this meant playing as an Otter could make some sections impassable.
4. [Most] Enemies are set up to be playable
We explored a 'counter-op' mode where some co-op players could play as enemies on player death. While kind of funny, the enemies don't have as much versatility as the player characters (such as the grapplehook, most magic, etc) and usually led to the counter-op players massively trolling the player characters.
5. Zofia isn't actually in the game.
The closest you can get to talking to titular character of Zofia is talking to her statue, which doesn't respond to you.
While Zofia has all of her dialogue in-game (though inaccessible), it became jarring as both Luna and Zofia would interrupt your progress to update you on the story, so we ironically put all of Zofia's story aside.
Anyways I hoped you've enjoyed these!
Zofia 1.0.10s (Hotfix #2)
- Fixed an issue where changed keybindings could break the inventory screen
- Changed the options menu to be a little easier to use
- Options menu will now show if you have unsaved video changes
- You can now adjust the scale of the game/inventory/dialogue UI in the options
- Fixed an issue where your field of view settings may get stuck zoomed in if you saved while under a zoomed effect
- The airship should now continuously go downward when holding the crouch key
- Fixed ghost's stagger animation playing over their death animation
- Fixed an issue where hitting 'continue' wouldn't usually put you back where you were
- The airship location is now saved and should load correctly when loading a game (This was originally set to always reset in case it was stuck or destroyed, but that shouldn't happen anymore)
Zofia Small Update 1.0.09s - Hotfix #1
- Fixed an issue where some sections of the UI could temporarily become unselectable because of UI events
- Fixed an inventory scaling issue
Zofia Small Update 1.0.09s
Additions:
- Possessed armors, ghosts, and some other humanoid variants now have a 'stagger' health where they will be staggered after a certain amount of hits, dependent on weapon/element type being used
- In some cases. humanoid melee enemies will attempt to clamber onto objects if the player is on something unreachable
- Depending on the attack, humanoid melee enemies may attempt to step forward when attacking to close in the distance while striking
- Added additional attacks for some enemies
- Added some new equipment that can be found within levels
- Updates to third person camera:
The camera can now be rotated 360 degrees around the player. Doing an action like blocking or attacking will turn your character towards the camera direction.
- Improved QuickSelect and UI:
Previously the inventory menu was split with the items on the left and the equipment view on the right - They've now been combined as there were monitor scaling issues that would cause them to overlap, and to make room for the expanded keyboard+mouse quick select.
- When playing on keyboard+mouse, the quick select now will allow you to have 7 items selectable (up from 3). If playing on gamepad, it will still use the original 3 item selector.
Fixes:
- Wood and stone magic has slightly more particles
- Updated animation rig and a few animations
- Added a blocking volume to the Abyss as you could see outside the map when spawning
- Looking downwards as an Otter should no longer clip
- Otter Sprint should no longer clip floor
- Otters now have less jitter in some animations
- Fixed bathtub collision
- Fixed a bug where the player would sometimes jump if shot with a rifle or arrow
- Added a slight difficulty adjustment to give a ~30% chance of gun/sword armor variants to spawn (instead of a sword wielding armor) when playing at default difficulty (Previously it was 0%)
- Added a slight difficulty adjustment to give a ~30% chance of a rifleman variant to spawn (instead of an archer) when playing at default difficulty (Previously it was 0%)
- Increased chances of grenadiers, ice knights, and regenerating knights to spawn when there are additional players
- Fixed a UI bug where it would slightly resize when switching tabs
- UI should now remember if you were using a keyboard+mouse or a gamepad previously when you load into a level
- Made some minor level changes
- Fixed a minor sound bug
Dev Talk #2 - What's next for Zofia
Here are some of things that have been brought up and that we're generally looking at:
- Melee Combat
Melee combat has a few quirks that may need addressing. Some weapons have good synergy between their light and heavy attacks, and others definitely do not. This has led to some weapons really only being used for 'light attack spam' while others may be used solely for ranged heavy attacks, which could probably use a tweak or two.
- Weapon's ability to stagger enemies is currently enemy dependent, making some of the slower weapons less viable, when really they should be at an advantage up close.
- Some of the attack animations could definitely get a little more 'weight' added to them as they feel just a little weak.
- Lastly, there were some weapon types that enemies use that aren't available to the player. I have had one of these weapon types requested multiple times so we're going to look into adding it (assuming it doesn't break anything).
- Enemy difficulty
Enemy variety and difficulty has a pretty wide range and needs some changes. I'm inclined to add new enemies rather than change the existing ones, as the current enemy roster has a 'lot' of very samey looking armored guys.
- Many of the ranged enemies are a little too easy as they're mostly stationary targets who just fire at will, so I'd like to add some mid/late game enemies that are much more difficult to hit.
- Many melee enemies were designed to strike at a single target. Some of them could use adjustments so they try to utilize area attacks more often to hit multiple nearby players.
- Many enemies do not have a strategy to reach or attack a player who is on top of something. (In early builds, the Legion possessed armors could use their grapplehook to pull the player down, but this was immensely unpopular as it didn't allow the player to run away.) Instead we'll probably test the AI having their own clamber ability, or giving them more ranged options.
- Additional difficulty options to get better enemy density or difficulty would be good here too.
- UI
UI is a constant challenge for me.
- I've had requests for more than 3 items in the quick select, as 1 is nearly always going to be for health potions, this only leaves 2 slots for other weapons/items. I'll be looking into adjusting this.
- There are a few unclear stats/buffs/debuffs, so I'll be looking into a way to see extended properties without cluttering up the inventory anymore (if possible).
- Magic
Magic could be extended. Some magic types don't see near as much usage as they should and most are somewhat rigid in their usage, so there are tweaks to be had here. This one is kind of broad and probably warrants its own post/discussion.
- Discord
I have had more than a few requests now for a proper Discord server, and my honest answer is that I'm not sure. We've bounced between the idea on having one and who would moderate it, but we're still a little in the air if that's a good idea or not as they can be difficult to maintain.
May 22nd Update Hotfix #1
- [Online] Going underwater should no longer cause the underwater effect for connected players
- [Gilded City] Water should now be normal murky levels (as opposed to very clear)
- [Fort Pilt] Fixed a hole in the map that allowed access to the secret hallway