Game Update Changelog

[MILESTONE]

• New Camp/Hub System: Introduced a foundational camp and hub system, providing a central player area that integrates with exploration and various game features. This marks a significant step towards persistent player progression and world interaction.

[GAMEPLAY]

• Weapon System Overhaul: Implemented a comprehensive weapon feature system, including new multi-shot capabilities and dedicated mechanics for heavy weapons. The action point (AP) system has been refined to integrate with these new weapon features, alongside updates to action availability logic and character holster support for visual equipment.
• Enhanced Exploration & Free Movement: Players can now experience levels with a new free movement mode, allowing direct interaction with the environment, including ladders, doors, and proximity interactables. This system also introduces new flow and initiative rolls for seamless transitions between exploration and combat encounters.
• Daily Buff System: Introduced a daily buff system, offering players regular, time-limited benefits to enhance their gameplay experience.
• Dynamic Loot & Enemy Spawning: Improved enemy spawning with role-based configurations and implemented marker-based loot spawning, including new “Smash and Grab” mechanics, to add more variety and emergent opportunities within levels.
• Refined Level Flow & Encounter Logic: Adjusted combat initiative rolls for manual engagements and refined the overall level start flow. The system now supports manual room layouts and flexible node template overrides for procedural generation, along with new extraction and alarm settings for procedural dungeons.
• Interactive Level Elements: Added robust support for general level triggers and interactive objects, paving the way for more dynamic environmental storytelling and puzzles.

[GRAPHICS]

• New Visual Assets & Tilesets: Expanded level design possibilities with new art assets, including dedicated ladder sprites, 30° slope sprites, and a complete underground tileset.
• Parallax Backgrounds: Implemented parallax backgrounds to add depth and visual fidelity to various game levels.
• Animation Improvements: Enhanced goblin animations with looping and custom curves for more fluid and responsive character movement.
• Font Updates: Performed general updates to game fonts, improving readability and ensuring consistent visual styling across the user interface and in-game text.

[AUDIO]

• Music Manager System: Integrated a dedicated MusicManager to provide sophisticated control over in-game music, enhancing the atmospheric experience during different gameplay scenarios.
• Dialogue & Typewriter Timing Fixes: Resolved timing issues with character dialogue (barks) and ensured correct display order for typewriter text effects.

[UI/UX]

• Action Bar UI: Introduced a new ActionBar UI element, providing players with a clear and intuitive interface for managing their abilities and actions.
• Level Selector Improvements: Enhanced the level selector with improved cursor initialization and refinements to the map user interface for better navigation.
• Interactive UI Hints & Feedback: Added contextual control hints and interaction prompts to guide players, particularly during camp entry and when utilizing new exploration modes. Implemented interstitial UI elements to provide clear visual feedback during transitions between game states.
• Key Binding Additions: Implemented number key bindings to quickly switch between action modes, improving control accessibility and responsiveness.
• Loading UI Adjustments: Fine-tuned the loading user interface, specifically for transitions to and from the camp area.
• Daily Buff Notification: Added clear notifications to inform players about their active daily buffs.

[PERFORMANCE]

• Level Room Memory Leaks: Resolved memory leaks associated with procedural level room generation, significantly improving long-term game stability and performance.

[FIXED]

• Mission Stability: Addressed several issues related to mission progression and overall stability, ensuring a smoother player experience.
• Procedural Generation Consistency: Fixed issues with fixed-seed handling, ensuring that procedural level generation is now consistent and reproducible across different play sessions.
• Heavy Weapon Behavior: Corrected bugs related to heavy weapon firing, action point consumption, and specific behaviors when the character has not moved.
• Exploration & Ladder Mechanics: Addressed various bugs affecting the exploration flow and the functionality of ladder interactions.
• Duplicate Game Flow Prevention: Implemented safeguards to prevent duplicate game flows, enhancing overall system stability.
• Input Handling Robustness: Improved the restoration of input maps and performed state cleanup for more robust and reliable player controls.
• Level Map Controller Functionality: Resolved an issue that prevented the level map controller from functioning correctly.
• Action Availability Logic: Centralized and fixed inconsistencies within the action availability logic, ensuring abilities are correctly presented to the player.

[TECHNICAL]

• Procedural Generation Determinism: Introduced a ProceduralRandomProvider to guarantee deterministic and reproducible procedural generation, essential for consistent gameplay and debugging.
• Enhanced Level Editor Tools: Upgraded the BetterRuleTiles plugin, added specialized ladder editor callbacks, and introduced a LevelDesignBootstrapper with iteration tools to significantly improve the level design workflow.
• Advanced Pathfinding System: Implemented and refined a PlatformNodeAutoGenerator system with detailed checks for ground support, headroom, and lateral clearance, forming a robust backbone for character movement and AI pathfinding.
• Data Structure Refinements: Performed significant refactoring of game and player data management, updated the LevelSO for spawn configurations, and adjusted scene template dependencies for a more scalable and organized codebase.
• Codebase Cleanup & Refactoring: Removed legacy level map UI scripts, outdated camp scripts, and performed general code cleanup across various systems to maintain a lean and efficient codebase.
• System Documentation: Added comprehensive documentation for the weapon feature system, exploration tactical system, and FreeMovement system, aiding future development and maintenance.
• Animation System Updates: Applied updates to the core animation handler for improved flexibility.
• Movement Debugging Tools: Integrated new debugging capabilities specifically for character movement, assisting developers in identifying and resolving pathfinding and traversal issues.