Hello,

A week after deploying patch 1.1, here we are already with patch 1.2! Indeed, a lot of things have been done since the release of the game, and not everything was ready for patch 1.1, which explains the short time between these two patches.

We have added a visual accessibility option in this patch, some visual and sound improvements, performance improvements on some problematic rooms in the "Catacombs" biome (I'm still trying to do better), an improved save system, and finally some bug fixes.

Let's dive right into these new features.



I personally have no problem seeing a small character with low contrast. But I absolutely understand feedback from players who would have liked a bigger, more visible character, etc.

Unfortunately, the graphical aspect of the game is entirely out of my control, as it is not my field of expertise. I am entirely dependent on what the team create.

This is also part of what you learn while making the game. AAA games offer a ton of accessibility options, small indies, not nearly as many. And it's for a good reason: It’s very time-consuming.

Anyway, we had an idea that should please many people. This option has several parameters to allow you to make the game fits what you want it to be

This "outline" option can be found in the accessibility menu.

Feel free to let us know if it’s good, if you’d like it bigger, or if you want other specific parameters (color, size of the outline, etc.).



If there’s one thing the game was missing, in my opinion, it’s visual effects when hitting monsters.

Unfortunately, even with a team of about ten people over three years, no one had a precise idea, and it was often a subject of disagreement, leading to a deadlock where the technical and art teams passed the subject back and forth, ultimately neglecting it.

The second issue with feedback stuff related, is that you quickly get used to what you have, and even if it’s minimal, you no longer notice it.

With the calm of summer and a bit of time to think and not rush, I had some ideas that we applied, and they are paying off. See for yourself.

Here’s what it looks like on normal monsters
And, the biggest improvement in my opinion, which will also provide much more understanding of "what’s happening," here’s what it looks like against ghosts when you try to attack them in physical form:
Additionally, the few monsters and bosses that have an invulnerable phase will now be much easier to read.
All monsters and bosses benefit from this improvement.

Moreover, we have also added dedicated sound effects when trying to hit a ghost without success, and another specific effect for attacking an armored monster in an untouchable phase.



This is a painful subject for me, but it must be admitted that the catacombs suffered from slowdowns, especially on certain specific rooms.

First of all, it’s important to know that this part of the game was perfectly smooth before the official release. What caused the slowdown was fixing some bugs and better controlling memory leaks, combined with the fact that some rooms are really, really large, pushing the limits and saturating the game both technically and graphically.

So, I’ll be honest. It’s not perfect yet. I say this because I know what I can do to further improve this area (and I will), but I wanted to have some improvements in this patch.

To explain a bit, Noreya uses a "tile" system, so a map is defined in terms of size by a height/width ratio, multiplied to get the total tiles.
Multiply that by the number of layers, and you realize there are a lot of objects to generate (and in some cases to manage).

The rooms b2_02, b2_05 were way too large, with more than 6000 tiles for b2_05. I reduced this room (and its level design) to fall under 4000.
Same for b2_02, I cut it a bit and reduced the number of things in it.

I took a lot of notes while performing that analyzing task, and I’ll make sure to apply as many optimizations as possible to the console port (this will also come to PC!).



Although I had already spent time developing a more robust system than what was in place, there were still issues. Either because the system locks access to the file (without knowing why), or because the game crash, or due to steam cloud conflicts.

Anyway, it needed improvement.

I have therefore improved the save system.
It will now automatically create a copy of the save each time it is written.
If it doesn’t succeed, it will try to name it differently.

Finally, when you launch the game, if the save is corrupted, it will try to read the copy, and if it still can’t, it will try to read the cache, alerting you that the save was corrupted and it is attempting to recover it!

If you still lose your save due to corruption, the game will save the content of a broken save in clear text.

Open a ticket on the forum or on Discord, and I will do my best to repair your save!

But honestly, I’ve stress-tested it for several hours doing all sorts of things, and the game has always managed to recover the save!


I would like to thank everyone who provides me feedback, whether positive or negative. I don’t plan to abandon the game like this, especially when small details spoil the overall picture.
And a big thank you to the testers and other players who help me test the beta versions!
It doesn’t seem like it, but that’s really what takes the most time in this phase of the game.

I think this was the last big patch of the summer, and now I will focus on the remaining bugs and the console port.
I will write specific dev blogs, but I have no idea when or what it will be about yet.


Improvements:

• healing speed reduced and reviewed, getting faster the more you chain heal
  
• new accessibility option to add an outline to the player and the monsters
  
• new sounds and visual feedback while attacking monsters, with a specific case for Ghosts and Armored monsters
  
• achievements sync with Steam has been reworked and should now work correctly even if it’s a new save
  
• save system has been improved to create and load automatically a backup
  
• improvement of the performances in the big big rooms of the catacombs
  
• add a sound when you destroy a statue
  
• play again the sound when offering gold to a statue
  
• reduced the ratio required to fully discover a room

Bugs fixed:

• fix some achievements
  
• progress of the save is now correct
  
• fix the button “next statue” for old saves
  
• don’t show the hammer button while under ghost form
  
• reset spider attack on enemies
  
• world map controls was not localized
  
• markers where shared between save
  
• stop vibration while changing a room
  
• healing in front of the forge instead of interacting with it
  
• various level art fixes
  
• various level design fixes
  
• fix many bugs related to the giant worm
  
• fix sounds bug with bats
  
• fix sounds bug with paramites
  
• fix many Salluste bugs