18 New Stage Variants - v0.39

Howdy all,

Today I bring unto you 18 new stage variants to mess about with in Match Maker mode!

What Are Stage Variants?

You may remember when selecting stages that you could choose between hazardless and Type Alpha. With this patch, we introduce Type Beta and Type Gamma to all the stages with hazards/gimmicks. These change the layout, timing, size or movement of the various gimmicks, as well as sometimes goal sizes, to create new scenarios to mess around on.

For example... Rememeber the cool portal stuff on Ring Research? Well in Type Gamma the entire ceiling and floor is a portal, making for absolutely wild plays.

The following screenshots show Alpha, Beta & Gamma on The Clawcade as an easy to see example:

There's also a few small tweaks and fixes to some of the stages to improve how they play. Full patch notes below!

What Am I Up To?

Believe it or not, I spent most of January's dev time seeing how feasible getting a simple online implementation into ZONERS would be using Steam's API. I got something extremely rudimentary working and may continue working on it in the future to add to the public build at some point, but have decided to focus on getting some of the other bits done first so that the rest of the game's content and polish can be rounded off as intended.

In order to maintain my sanity after years of working on ZONERS to... 76 sales... I've also begun putting a few hours into prototyping new game ideas so I can hit the ground running when ZONERS is done.

In many ways, ZONERS is more feature rich and detailed than many complete indie multiplayer games already, but there's still a sizeable amount of things on my list that I'd love to get in the game before I call it quits. If I was working full time on the game, it'd probably only need a few months of focused work, but I increasingly get less and less dev time and so it's taking a while to finish off. Bit by bit, piece by piece, it's getting there!

Peace & Love, Paris

ZONERS v0.39 Patch Notes ADDITIONS Added 2 additional stage variants to 9 of the 11 stages (Circle Circuit through to Stardom Stadium). These are available in Match Maker without any unlocking required. When selecting your stage and choosing between hazardless and type alpha, you now have types beta and gamma as selectable! These take the existing hazard gimmicks from type alpha and change their layouts, frequencies or behaviours to create new scenarios to play on. In some cases the sizes of the goals various states will also be altered. Enjoy the 18 new stage scenarios this brings and find your favourites. FIXES & CHANGES GAMEPLAY Circle Circuit - changed direction of wheel arrows for type Alpha Circle Circuit - made it so projectiles are now effected by the wheels again Plazzma Penthouse - ball cannot be repelled by the magnet sides beyond a certain angle up or down to stop the ball getting stuck bouncing too vertically Ring Research - Type Alpha Portals made larger and now have a simple idle animation The Clawcade - Bumper collision masks tightened The Clawcade - Way players interact with bumpers fixed and improved Stardom Stadium - Fixed inconsistent delay between sides Fixed crash that could happen when playing a 1vs1 after a 2vs2 MENUS When selecting a stage variant in the stage select screen, a new view of the variant is displayed over the galaxy map on the background screen Fixed the menu guide REF's opening dialogue in Match Maker, Academy & Museum Lobby Fixed bug introduced in last patch that made you unable to go back the right way when selecting the AI opponents in match maker MISC Haunted Hangout - Fixed spectators sprites so that they have glow as originally intended The Clawcade - Fixed crab bumper display and animation during instant replays