​A Vibrant Melody Patch notes 0.22d

A Vibrant Melody Patch notes 0.22d

Clarity, synchronicity and progress

Thanks so much to all the new players who’ve picked up my game as part of the GDC relief bundle, I’m looking forward to hearing what you think about this quirky game!

Continuing the trend of recent patches, I’ve further improved A Vibrant Melody’s clarity and accessibility. You can now see creatures and emotions when they are hidden behind rocks (and unusually large hats). And the title screen lets you know which difficulty level you’ve currently unlocked with a colourful medal. I’ve also improved a lot of the games text, especially in the compendium.

There have just been a whole lot of little things that have come together to help the game feel a bit better to play. One nice change I think everyone will like even if it’s not obvious, is that when creatures change their emotional state, they no longer switch what they were doing. They will keep track of the sequence they are in, and switch over to the higher or lower difficulty version of it that matches their new emotional state. This is the first of what will be several changes to trying to improve the synchronisation between different creatures.

Thanks everyone so much for trying out my little game. Please be sure to let me know what you think either on the Itch site, on twitter @Trev_Murray or by email SuspenionOfDisbeliefGames@gmail.com

Hope you’re having a wonderful day, despite everything going on at the moment,

Cheers,

Trev

Gameplay features and changes

• Coloured outlines of creatures now show through obscuring objects.
• Timers now show through occluding objects.
• Removed outlines from pinata mode rings.
• Creatures will no longer forget what they were doing when they change their emotional state. They should have better synchronicity as well.
• Increased the size of emotions.
• Each difficulty level now has a medal, which you unlock as you access them. These medals show in the title screen and as you unlock them in the post game screen.
• A new credits screen.
• Post game screen now tells you the outcome of the match.
• The post game screen is now animated and has sound effects.
• I changed the menu order when you unlock new creatures and systems. First it displays the match results before taking you to the compendium page in the menu.
• Tutorials now have a time limit, to help you realise when you should start over.
• The tutorial flower now has sound effects and animations, just like the regular flower portal from the matches.
• It now tells you the result when a tutorial ends.
• New voice lines for escaping through the portal in the early difficulty levels.
• Replaced several text systems. Now more text has unique colors for important concepts.
• Sad and Angry Agave, are now more in time with their Bored brethren. They also cry one less time.
• Adjusted the volume of several sound effects.
• Reduced the size of the Happy Flint Stone’s push effect arrows.
• Reduced the thickness of effect sprite outlines.

Bug fixes

• Can no longer push emotions onto Happy Pebble People using other Happy Pebble People.
• Revised compendium entries for spelling grammar and clarity.
• Revised tutorial notes for spelling grammar and clarity.
• Offscreen special effects are now properly hidden from view.
• The vacation creature no longer appears as soon as you unlocked it, instead of once you completed the next match with a vacationing creature.
• Hatching now occurs over several frames to minimise slowdown.
• Fixed the offset of the Brambler’s trap when it’s holding Melody in place.

Known Bugs

• Very low amounts of emotional energy are sometimes invisible.
• Frogs/lizard singing ignores armour, and can make scarabs happy instead of flying home.
• Hatching timers no longer fly to the Flower Portal do too a weird bug that causes 2 to fly out if I turn it on at all.
• Baby Egg Plants look full when they are only at 80%.