Summer Roundup

Hi friends!

Holy cow it's been a long time since I visited the ol' dev blog. Truth be told, it's because there wasn't much dev happening! 

Since this past April, let's see, what's happened? Well, Vidar was released! The 1.0 came out in June, and since then we've had a few quick fixes to the game. Vidar has also been accepted to a host of indie showcases, including as a finalist for Indie Prize for Most Innovative Game, and as an official selection in the Indie MEGABOOTH! It's been a whirlwind summer showing the game all over the country, and I'm so excited to be capping it off this weekend at PAX West alongside some major names at the booth.

One of those events was PlayNYC, our first real consumer-facing games convention in NYC. It's insane to think about, but when you look at our other events, like IndieCade East (which didn't even come back to NYC in 2017), or smaller events like Game Devs of Color, they tend to be pretty niche and often industry focused. Or, games were a second class citizen like at ComiCon. We never had something "PAX-like" until now, and it could not have been a better event. Sold out on Day 1, lines out the door, lines for every game, and people absolutely loving Vidar. Newsweek (!) stopped by, you can read their review here. "For a game with such a somber mood and story, I was surprised to find it's also a hell of a lot of fun."

On the Kickstarter front, the box sets have officially been sent for printing! There was a lot of back & forth to make sure the box art, the instruction manual, everything was perfect. The last of these items was just finalized, and now we're just waiting on the prints. About 50 will be available as a limited edition purchase on the Square store - I'll post the link when they're available!

Once those come in, all physical rewards will be go out in the weeks after. And with that, at long last, the Kickstarter will be complete. It's been such a long road, but the finish line is in sight!

Lastly, work has really ramped up on my next game, From Rust. I'm going to start trying to do a dev blog for that, on its own website - so if you're interested in following me, come join. And if you're just here Vidar stuff, you won't have to go digging through stuff you don't care about!

Since it's been a while, here are the combined patch notes since way back in April. I'll be back once the boxes are in!

Vidar 1.0.1.2

• The windows client has been migrated to JRGSS; this brings the Windows, Mac, and Linux versions into conformity.
• The Steam overlay is now enabled on Windows, and everything that it entails has been activated (including the ability to capture screenshots!)
• Lag has been reduced, particularly in the Boulder Cave and Ruins
• Pixel fidelity has been improved
• New Game+ has been added. Completeing the game once will unlock the option from the title screen. In games created in this mode, you can choose who dies each night, rather than the choice being random.
• A new loading screen added at the beginning of any new save file when Vidar is being generated
• A new Game Over screen, autosave icon, and client icons have been added

Audio:

• Dozens of new sound effects and ambient sounds have been added throughout the game
• Various voices have been normalized (looking at you, Extremely Loud Gusztav)
• Barnabas now has a voice
• Default audio levels have been reset
• Fixed some audio issues with the back room of the Church
• Fixed some audio issues at Barnabas's house

Quests:
Bring Him Home

• This quest now fails if there are no helpers alive
• Elek will now update the journal correctly if he assists with this quest
• All helpers are less likely to get stuck on this quest after it's completed

Boy's Best Friend

• If Groa is dead, Cail will be lost somewhere inaccessible in the cave until you receive this quest
• Cail joins Tomi wherever he's living at the completion of the quest (rather than always going to the poor house)

Dr. Spore

• This quest now fails if, at some point after Gusztav dies, Robert can no longer inherit it

Giving Back

• Lots of improvements to Csaba's dialogue 
• Csaba can now properly give you this even if Groa is dead
• Fixes to the cutscene that occurs if Groa is alive when you receive this quest
• Groa and Csaba correctly act as weights for pressure plates while standing alone
• Any character in your party now acts as a pressure plate while following you
• Additional bug fixes

Hair of the Dog

• Dani's rewards will change for this quest if the player already has the lantern

Historic Preservation

• The conditions to reach this quest are no longer logically impossible

Reading Is Fundamental

• Fixed some of the concluding text message placement

Rewriting History

• Tons of fixes to this quest, including in receipt, cutscenes, and completion

Sketched Out

• The effect for journal update now correctly plays when you sketch a fossil

Smoke Them Out

• Fixed a crash in Barnabas' dialogue that prevented receiving this quest
• Dig sites now spawn in the Boulder Cave
• Adjusted the charity values for various items; additionally, the reward can no longer be donated to Csaba

Spirit Walk

• It is now possible to cancel out of the teleport menu when at the graves after completion of this quest

The Name Game

• Fixed a crash in the middle of this quest

Vodka Stinger

• Fixed a crash in Dani's dialogue on completing this quest
• Giving away mushrooms as part of this quest or Dr. Spore all properly updated the journal entries for other quests involving mushrooms
• Dani will not complete this quest unless the player has all of the necessary items in their inventory

 
Maps: 

• Boulder Cave 2 has been removed - the Boulder Cave is now 3 rooms long
• Fixed a ton of pathing and drawing issues in the Dark Cave
• Fixed some pathing in Boulder Cave 1
• Consolidated the layout in Ruins 1
• Fixed a bug where residents of the second floor of the inn would occasionally not show up
• Fish are way less likely to freak out and get stuck now
• A path back has been added to the entrance to the cave 
• Leaving the cave entrance now correctly reenables footprints and town music in Vidar
• Added easily accessible oil barrels to the entrance of Dark Cave 3
• The Imp Oil Lantern now properly works throughout the rest of the cave
• Fixed a rare passage issue in the Water Cave
• Prevented some rare invisible walls spawning in Boulder Cave 3

Puzzles:

• Puzzle 80 in the Ruins has been broken into 3 separate puzzles for the sake of internal "checkpoints" in the puzzle (only applies to new games created in version 1.0 or later)
• Shortened puzzle 66, Option 0 (only applies to new games created in version 1.0 or later)
• Fixed a crash when resetting an already completed puzzle in the Dark Cave
• Fixed various crashes in the Ruins 
• Moved doors in Puzzle 25, Option 0 so you can't race to them using the Leather Boots
• Fixed an issue where completed water cave puzzles would bug out on loading a save file
• Pillars in frozen Dark Cave puzzles will no longer glitch if you return to that room later
• Lots of little changes and fixes to Ruins puzzle layout
• ​Grabbing a gargoyle will no longer cause a pressure plate underneath of it to un-pressure. 

Misc:

• Fixed a layering issue involving Cecilia
• Fixed a bug where game over would never trigger
• The Journal UI is now more intuitive, with new icons and a new default selection
• "Reset Puzzle" will not be included in the menu list unless you're inside the cave
• Names of items in the inventory and quests in the journal will no longer be scrunched up
• Added a few more graves in town
• Entries in the directory are now properly saved
• Fixed various typos in dialogues, including replacing unrenderable curly quotes with straight quotes (really)
• New animations have been added for using the pick and the shovel
• Players with Intel graphics cards should see better stability and fewer crashes; this should resolve the failure to launch bug, at least for some people
• Sandor is less likely to get stuck if you manage to catch up with him at the beginning

Mac/Linux:

• The Mac and Linux client has been *dramatically* updated, so much so that a change list isn't possible. There should be a lot less lag, the build is far more stable and less likely to crash, and a host of things too long to list have been fixed. Notably, readability and memory management have both been significantly improved. 
• Improved Mac performance at startup