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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.
• Added an option to pause animations when the game is paused. SparkFyre was heating up my 2019 mac laptop while tabbed out, this fixes that. This won't be an issue for everyone.
• Added the ability to customize projectile color, as well as the color of special particles (the SparkFyre itself).
• Added the ability to customize player ghost trail colors.
• Added the ability to search for levels by name or code in the level viewer.

Improvements

• Greatly improved various systems resulting in better game performance.
• Changing resolution size will now zoom the game out, improving sight range, while still improving performance if needed.
• 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.
• Moved platform panning to a new canvas, away from using the DOM & CSS transform, to facilitate 3 layers of background parallaxing.
• Updated death animation to show the player flailing, fading out into the SparkFyre outline, and then fading back in.
• The player's limbs are now solid unless at full running speed, in which case they turn into the lightning bolts. I'm not 100% set on this, I might allow the player to choose whether or not to have limbs, have them be solid, have them be lightning at full running speed, or have them always be lighting. Not set on this one yet.
• Updated / improved the layout and design of the level viewer.

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.
• Fixed an issue with player cards not producing the correct url for the "View Levels" link.