012.429 (In Progress)

The first patch note blog post.

I've been patching, updating, and fixing this game for years, but mostly just announcing updates in our Discord. It's time we moved these to a central location. This is where I will be announcing patch notes for the foreseeable future. If you'd like to report bugs, please do so in the Discord, I do hang out in there daily, so it's the best place to get involved in the development of SparkFyre.

Thanks,
Spark

Additions

• Added patch notes (hehe).
• Put together a general story arc for a proposed campaign mode.
• Fleshed out names for 7 acts, 3 levels per act.
• Added theme switching support in the level editor.
• Added placeholder backgrounds for themes. Yes, these are AI generated. Will replace them with real versions in the future.
• Added a graphics option to the performance menu. Lowering the graphics will paint the game on a smaller canvas, then make it bigger to fit the playing space, which pixelates the game, yet improves performance because less pixels are rendered on screen. This is the biggest bottleneck for performance, the Javascript runs pretty well.
• Added an option to turn particle effects completely off, which greatly improves performance of the game if you're having more issues.

Improvements

• Greatly improved various systems resulting in better game performance.
• Changing resolution size will now zoom the game out, improving sight range.
• Added numerous performance options, as stated, which allows my 2019 mac laptop to run the game fluidly. Really happy about that one, allows me to dev on it again.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed weather to generate only when the game is not paused, and is playing (not starting or doing the death animation).
• Fixed an issue with the pause menu not showing up.
• Fixed weather particles to not explode unless they hit an object, so lava rain won't release ash mid-air and rain won't blink while the game is paused when it disappears.