0.4.2 Minor Update + Development Log

Like many of you, we prefer working on new content such as skills, modules, or Boss expansions. However, because of this focus, we accumulated a significant number of bugs and usability issues up until March of this year.

Consequently, from April to early May, we dedicated about a month to fixing these issues and optimizing the game. While these improvements might not be as exciting as new content, we want to share this process of adjustment and refinement with you.

Intermittent occurrence of unknown Critical Issues?

We have addressed several "Critical Issues," which we define as bugs that prevent normal gameplay or significantly degrade the player experience.

However, if such issues cannot be reproduced, it may consume a significant amount of time to fix them. Therefore, we want to first introduce various issues that were previously left unaddressed and then share the current status of the fixes with you.

Collision and Boundary Stability Optimization

• Intermittently flying out of the map when using Wire Axe.

• Characters moving outside map boundaries during low-stance attacks at high attack speeds.

• Moving out of the map when using displacement skills or rolling against walls in specific maps.

The above are issues that have received a large amount of player feedback and reports. This phenomenon is more likely to be triggered especially in cases of rapid movement. When the character's movement speed is too fast, players may potentially sink into the gaps between grids, thereby leading to abnormal position determination. Therefore, we have already gradually carried out optimization work throughout several previous fixes.

In this update, we added a predictive correction mechanism that detects and fixes unsafe positions in advance. However, this does not mean that the issues have been completely solved. While we continue to optimize these protections, we encourage further feedback if these issues persist.

Steam Cloud Save Stability Optimization

We received reports of Steam Cloud sync issues, particularly in environments like PC cafes or players’ portable devices.

Since Steam Cloud synchronization usually happens after a game session ends, abnormal shutdowns or immediate power-offs can lead to failed syncs.

We suggest waiting a moment after exiting the game to confirm Steam Cloud has finished syncing. This is a temporary workaround to reduce the risk of lost progress while we work on permanent optimizations.

Ongoing improvements include:

• Send a more explicit "file saved successfully" signal via the Steam SDK

• Implementing up to 3 automatic retries if a cloud sync fails.

Because save data directly affects everyone's game progress, we will continue to monitor feedback and improve stability.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused and thank all players who provided feedback.

Visibility Optimization

Phase 2 Boss Battle

We adjusted the visibility and rhythm of the Phase 2 Boss.

The Phase 2 Boss was originally designed around high-speed action and the alternation of offensive and defensive control. The goal was for players to react quickly and use rolling and jumping to seize opportunities to counterattack within a short window.

However, the fight sometimes felt more "Soulslike" than "Roguelike," creating a steep difficulty curve. Especially when switching from a regular battle to a boss battle, the overall difficulty increases significantly, leading to a large difference in the experience between players of different skill levels.

To alleviate this issue, we previously extended the recovery time of some attacks, providing easier-to-identify attack opportunities. However, while this improved the judgment of attack timing, it also diminished the high-speed rhythm and the enjoyable back-and-forth combat that the second phase of the boss should have.

Therefore, the focus of this optimization is not simply to increase the time available for openings, but rather to adjust the boss's attack patterns to be clearer.

• Removed excessively long recovery frames that were previously added.

• Optimized VFX for attack paths and movement directions.

• Improved visual clarity for skills with ambiguous ranges.

• Added Sci-Fi themed effects to make the direction and scope of attacks more intuitive.

• Adjusted some attack VFX to be more realistic, making it easier to judge the actual attack size and danger range.

The goal is not to reduce the boss's speed or simply weaken the difficulty, but rather to help players better understand "why I’m hit," "where to dodge," and "when to counterattack."

With clearer attack animations, it's easier for players less familiar with action games to learn and understand the mechanics, while experienced players can more naturally enjoy the original high-speed combat rhythm without unnecessary and lengthy output interruptions.

In the future, we will continue to maintain the speed and tension of boss battles while minimizing the experience stress caused by unclear information and continuously optimizing combat performance.

New Visibility Option: Added VFX fade effect based on Visibility Mask RT

OVIS LOOP is a roguelike action game featuring a large amount of overlapping skills and special effects. As a build gradually takes shape, the skill effects on the screen also increase; in certain situations, the player's own skill effects may obscure enemies or their attack hitboxes.

Therefore, we have been continuously performing VFX optimizations, hoping to make it easier to identify enemy attack paths and ranges. However, due to the inherent characteristics of the roguelike genre, even if attacks are designed clearly and magnificently, they may still become difficult to distinguish in high-density effect environments.

In particular, the "Infinite Lightning" build currently used by many players is powerful and fun in itself, but it is also one of the typical examples that significantly reduces combat visibility.

Therefore, this update adds the [Visibility Options], which are as follows:

• Highlights enemy outlines when they are overlapped by player skill effects.

• Adjustable intensity settings in the options menu.

• The higher the intensity, the clearer the enemy's position and form ; the lower the intensity, the closer it is to the original visual presentation.

• This feature is implemented based on Visibility Mask RT; as it may pose a performance burden in certain environments, it is disabled by default.

This option is not a feature that all players must use, but rather an auxiliary tool provided for who find it difficult to judge enemy positions or attack ranges due to excessive special effects during combat.

Of course, we also understand that in roguelike games, as a build reaches its limit, there are times when precisely identifying enemy movements is indeed unnecessary. But at the same time, we believe that when players wish to obtain combat information more clearly, they should be provided with the corresponding right to choose.

In the future, while maintaining the magnificent combat performance and the fun of build growth in OVIS LOOP, we will continue to refine these optional visibility auxiliary mechanisms.

Bug and Fix Content Summary

This update also includes a large number of bug fixes and optimizations, summarized as follows:

• Combat Operation Optimization

  • Normal attacks can now be canceled via jumping.

  • However, jump canceling is currently not supported while in a skill state. During testing, we found instances where skills were being canceled unintentionally, so this feature is temporarily unsupported. Nevertheless, if this feature is needed in the future, we will make adjustments based on everyone's feedback.

• HP/Status Processing Stability

  • Enhanced the stability of maximum HP and status value processing, and fixed an issue where maximum HP was not correctly applied due to item order. Additionally, percentage-based HP change effects will now take effect last.

  • Consequently, the values for some items that increase by a percentage have been slightly lowered; however, there are very few such items in the game (only two), and this adjustment was made to ensure system stability. If balancing issues arise, additional auxiliary mechanisms will be added.

• Skill Bar UI Improvement

  • When using a controller, the skill bar UI order has been adjusted to a display format that matches the controller button layout.

• Crash Fixes

  • Fixed crashes that could occur in various situations such as screen transitions, reward screens, skill duplication, and memory processing.

  • Improved the reference logic for objects that have disappeared or been replaced to enhance stability.

  • Reconstructed the internal processing structure to make long play sessions or repeated combat processes more stable.

• Collision/Boundary Stability

  • Fixed an issue where the character would intermittently fly out of the map when using Wire Axe.

  • Fixed an issue where the character would intermittently fly out of the map during low-stance attacks at high movement speeds.

  • Fixed an issue in certain specific maps where the character would intermittently fly out of the map when using displacement skills or rolling against walls.

• Steam Cloud/Save Stability Improvements

  • mproved the functionality so player progress can be saved to Steam Cloud.

• [Visibility Option] VFX Fading Effect based on Visibility Mask RT

  • Added a VFX fading option based on Visibility Mask RT, which can be toggled on/off in the settings and have its intensity adjusted.

• Phase 2 Boss Attack Pattern Visibility and Resource Optimization

• Adjusted health recovery sound effects and certain high-frequency sounds to reduce potential player discomfort.

• Fixed an issue where fixed values such as stamina and cooldown in skill text displayed abnormally.

• Optimized the description for the English achievement [Survival Instinct].

• Corrected the spelling of "Manium," which was mistyped as "Maniium" in English.

• Corrected other text translation errors.

Optimization Content

• Post-death Screen Transition Stability

  • Fixed a phenomenon where the death settlement screen occasionally goes black or appears stuck.

  • Corrected an issue where overlap might occur during the transition between saving and playing screen.

  • Optimized an issue with duplicate internal data processing when exiting after viewing player records in the base database UI.

  • Adjusted the fade-in/fade-out of death/result screens to make them more stable.

  • Verified through relevant automated testing and a full set of HeadlessTests.

• Event Flow and Room Transition Stability

  • Fixed a phenomenon in the"Absorbed Manium++"event where the timing for applying penalties was delayed when skipping or abandoning branches.

  • Corrected an issue where the BGM paused from a previous room would not resume playing when consecutively entering mini-boss/elite rooms.

• Damage Effects and UI Display Error Corrections

  • Fixed an issue where the +1 damage effects of Manium Ore and Project Omega overlapped or were unclearly displayed.

  • Fixed the impact that modifications to certain passive skill descriptions had on the main damage UI display.

  • Separated passive skill description text from actual damage display labels to avoid confusion.

• Skill Duplication and Equipment Information Stability

  • Fixed an issue where equipped accessory information was not correctly duplicated during skill duplication.

  • Optimized situations where internal ownership could go wrong when handling duplicated skills in the shop and UI.

• Reward Animation and Internal Processing Stability

  • Prevented an issue where objects that have disappeared or been replaced could be approached during reward animations.

  • Applied the same stability checks to weapon modification reward animations.

  • Cleaned up deprecated old processing paths in internal memory allocation to improve stability.

Next Update Preview & Conclusion

In addition to the above, we have spent a significant amount of time fixing many unlisted issues. Since these optimizations are not directly reflected in the game content, we feel quite conflicted every time we perform this type of update. Although a lot of time has been spent... the "fun" of the game does not seem to have improved. Fortunately, having completed this version overhaul, we will now regain our momentum and continue to push forward with the development of game content.

New Main Skills and Combo Skills

Up until now, across multiple minor updates, we have added some weapon modifications and modules, but almost no new Main Skills or Combo Skills have been added; this has led to builds becoming increasingly homogeneous.

Therefore, we plan to add brand-new Main Skills and Combo Skills, while simultaneously performing balance improvements and reworks on underutilized skills to ensure each skill can function more effectively. We will strive to meet you with more new content by the end of this month.

Conclusion

Interestingly, during the period from April to early May, while we were conducting a "precision examination" of the game, the entire team (of two people) also underwent a detailed health checkup. We hope both the game and the team can move in a healthier direction.

Thank you for your continuous feedback; we will repay everyone with a healthier, more stable, and more fun game!

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