Aether Drift - V. 1.12 RELEASE NOTES

Overview: Ah, about two months after release here comes the first wave of balance changes, optimizations, and additional content! This Update is rather minor, and focuses primarily on reworking the Tutorial System and miscellaneous quality of life updates.

GAME / GAMEPLAY CHANGES:

• BIG BONGO Parry Changes

  • Parrying a Drifter-Lancer will take its HP to 1

  • Parrying a Lancer the first time will deal half-HP to it, and permanently disable its shield

  • Parrying a Super Lancer the first time will deal ½ HP to it, and permanently disable its shield Devnote:"Even with the changes, these guys are still terrifying."

  • Drifter Lancer HP 3 -> 5

  • Drifter Lancer points from 95 to 115

  • ALL Lancer variants can't be parried once you've been hit by them. Resets each attack. Devnote:"This fixes the inconsistency on parrying, now you must respond to an attack, rather than get hit, and react by hitting reflect. Lancers now function exactly as other players do in Multiplayer."

  • Lancers now spawn with a shield active

  • Lancers now have an orange 'parry-me' shield variant

• Changed Super Speed Powerup to launch in facing direction, not walking direction on keyboard. Stays the same on Controller gameplay Devnote:"Since we tested this mainly on controllers, we didn't realize how obnoxious it was to use for a keyboard player."

• Made enemies spawn slower across the board

  • Crawl Timer From 19 seconds to 20 seconds

  • Slow Timer from 16 seconds to 17 seconds

  • Normal Timer: From 12.5 seconds to 13 seconds

  • Fast Timer From 9.5 seconds to 10 seconds

  • Normal Timer stays at 7.5 seconds

  • Made enemies spawn 2x faster if no enemies are currently alive

  • Timers are 1 second shorter on harder maps ( spike pit, zoa palace,d gauntlet )

• Added Shield Cooldown visuals for all shielded enemies, just like the player's

• Updated Tutorial Enemy visuals to reflect that they're alive entitites

• UI updates to show powerup button in-game on overlay ( two versions ( keyboard, and controller ) Devnote:"The button inputs for these are defaults, so they won't change visually if you have custom control schemes! Just be aware before swapping your controls."

MENU UI UPDATE:

• ( surrounded in big-black-box, W/ white box selectors )

• Added Version Number / Credits (bot-right)

• Disabled ‘H’ key input during gameplay to disable/enable hitboxes ( must now be done on main-menu, in misc-settings ) Devnote:"While we were testing, we could enable/disable hitboxes with 'H'. Obviously, this becomes an issue if some new player has 'H' in their name."

TUTORIALS SECTION:

Added a ton of new tutorials to the game, so new players have an easier time learning!

• Created textboxes that tell you what to do in the tutorials!

• Updated Basic Tutorials to include all game elements, and made them much clearer. Elements include:

  • Movement

  • Attacking

  • Dashing / Lunging

  • Shields

  • Lasers

  • Drifting

  • Phantoms

  • Phantom Walls

  • The Lurker

  • Reflect/Parry Tutorial

  • Powerups

  • Rifts

• Added a Powerup Tutorial

• Renamed Dash to Move-Dash and Lunge to Forward-Dash Devnote:"It seemed that Dash and Lunge were easily getting confused. Hopefully this makes it more clear what they do!"

• Character-Specific Tutorials

  • Jhin Tutorial

  • Krax Tutorial

  • Ming Tutorial

  • Yojimbo Tutorial

  • Rourke Tutorial

  • Quake Tutorial

OPTIMIZATIONS

• Added Graphics Option 'Graphical Effects' to disable some majorly intensive graphics operations (bg shader, aether shader) (USED TO BE 'PARTICLES' ) ->Replaces Aether Shader ( for Phantom world ) with simple black/white shader. Should run better on bad computers now. Not guaranteed to fix multiplayer for bad computers, just might add 10-20 frames.

BALANCE CHANGES:

Yojimbo Changes

• Increased Yojimbo's Base Movespeed from 6.25 to 6.5

• Allowed Yojimbo to gain rage off of phantoms

• Lowered Yojimbo's Charge Time from 2.5 seconds to 1.25 seconds

• Decreased Yojimbo's Charge Duration from 25 seconds to 20 seconds Devnote:"Bird Buffs! Bird Buffs! Bird Buffs!"

Ming Changes

• Lowered Ming's Charge Time from 3.2 seconds to 2.25 seconds

BUGFIXES:

• Fixed Bug where Lancers 'Headsup' flashes would continue to animate while paused, desyncing the reaction for parrying them

• Fixed multiple other sprites animating while paused. Includes: Quakebomb, Super Speed Effect, Player Dash Effect, Rourke Grenades, Powerups, Spawnpoints, Rourke Cards, Moons, and more!

• Pocket Moons would just keep going when paused. Fun fact. They DON’T anymore.

• Recompiled Entire Game to work with hidden camera/surface changes in GMS 2 v2.2.0 from v2.1.4 (Devnote: "Grumble grumble write better patchnotes next time pls grumble grumble" )

  • Fixed Lancers Arms being invisible

  • Fixed all players appearing invisible

  • Fixed Tutorial not working

  • Fixed Stunned Effect appearing underneath game

  • Fixed phantom player in top-left of game world

  • Fixed phantoms disappearing for no reason

  • Fixed random 200-300 frame drops for no apparent reason

  • Fixed Moons not showing up and not working at all anymore ( draw issue? )

• Fixed Rourke’s Lightning damaging Mobius The Infinite

• Fixed Training Dummies randomly being invincible

• Fixed Character Direction Snapping Weirdly in Multiplayer ( increased gamepad falloff from .25 to .35 ) and fixed GamePad controllers thinking they were mice

• Hopefully fixed Ear-Rapey nature of the Laser Powerup

Final Devnotes:"We're still unsure if everything has transferred over properly from old versions of Game Maker to this new version. Because the GameMaker changes were so vague, we're sure there's likely something there that we've missed. That being said, if you find a bug, please don't hesitate to tell us! We'll do our best to fix it! Otherwise, we hope you enjoy the best version of Aether Drift yet- good luck, and happy drifting!"- Rat.