Devlog #5: Trail Customization, Stats Screen and Quality of Life Changes.

Since the last development update, the game saw numerous behind the scenes changes in its code, as well as improvements to the UI and general user experience. Additionally, there's been a ton of work towards balancing World 2, making it more forgiving and less challenging.

Current Development Status

With the removal of Challenge Mode as outlined in the previous post, I've decided to put more focus into polish of existing features as well as improvements to the game feel.

High Refresh Rate Fixes

One of the biggest issues the game faced since the start of the first private alpha testing was poor support for high refresh rates. Controls felt sluggish and unresponsive, and the game exhibited stuttering on high FPS. I finally took time to address this, as well as adding an FPS bypass in the settings. Now, no matter what your frame-rate is, the character controls will always feel smooth and reliable.

Damage Feedback Overhaul

With the addition of accessibility settings that allow the player to control the amount of screen shake, there was no other way to inform whenever they took damage. I decided to fix this by adding obstacle-specific damage sounds, a reddish vignette, as well as a slight pitch shift effect to the music. The combination of these changes can be seen in the video below.

Trail Customization

Moving on to more exciting stuff, I decided to add trail customization into the game. They're unlocked using Fragments: secret collectibles hidden all over the game's levels. Here's how a portion of them looks like in-game.

Statistics Screen

On the technical side of things, I also slightly changed how the game saves progress, adding backwards compatibility. Previously, small changes to the save format rendered older saves virtually unusable, forcing everyone to reset progress. With this change, I can add new data to the save file, without ruining everyone's day.

This change was a part of the implementation of a new statistics screen that shows your overall progress. I'm also researching the possibility to include Steam leaderboards into the mix.

Achievements

Finally, the last new addition is the achievements! In reality, they were added a bit over a month ago, but recently I created the icons for them. Let me know what you think!

Closing Words and What's Next

The game sees swift improvements across the board, and I cannot wait to share more! Right now, my biggest priority is finishing World 3, but there are other things that I won't mention at this time.

I'm slowly starting to like how Jump Adventures shapes up, but its still hard for me to predict the new release date. I aim to enter a private beta stage somewhere in November with a main focus on bugfixing and small improvements, but no promises there.

In other news, I upgraded my audio setup. My aim is to stream more development, and frankly, judging by the last stream, the audio quality was subpar. Expect the next dev stream date announcement in the coming weeks!

Hope you liked the new devlog!

See you next time, Daniel.