Build 07-11-24 - Beta 6

hello fire safety enthusiasts! i have a new beta out today with a host of major changes

just added

• there is now a dedicated kick button that also allows you to slide. if you've been struggling with combat, this will give you some more options for dealing with enemies. the default key is ctrl, or the left button on controllers
• each level now has a secret cartridge hidden somewhere. find all 4 to unlock the secret level!
• subweapons (specifically, the icinguisher). these make you a little more combat effective for a limited time. watch out for the cooldown!
• level 4: freezer burn - save the dog trapped in the ice factory! skate along the icy surfaces, kick ice cubes at enemies, and play with the new icinguisher subweapon
• secret level - find all 4 secret tapes to unlock a challenging fifth level. what is this mysterious "video zone" and why is it on fire? you'll have to play it to find out!
• the world map has a bunch of changes that make it more interactive
  • your high scores are now displayed for each level, along with whether or not you've found the secret cart
  • thick smoke now blocks your path. clear out levels to clear the smoke!
  • an oil spill with fuegatos roaming about has been added. you'll need to defeat them somehow!
  • there's a fire hydrant across the river that allows you to use the deluge cannon.
  • prompts to start levels and use the deluge gun show your actual controls instead of the defaults.
• door and puzzle blocks now leave an outline behind when opened
• the dialogue engine has been updated with some major changes
  • the game pauses during conversations. this halts enemy movement and the timer.
  • dialogue is now typed out and plays "voice" sound effects. you can skip a block of text by pressing any button.
  • conversations can include multiple dialogue boxes that can be advanced through.
  • the controls in the tutorial messages actually update to show your current controls instead of always using the default.
  • dialogue nodes themselves are now actual objects which allows me to do canned animations and other stuff during conversations in a relatively safe manner.
• there are now sound effects on the completion screen.

less major changes

• static fires can now be tied to difficulty. some fires do not appear at lower difficulty levels.
• adjusted "that room" in level 3 to reduce the difficulty on normal and easy
• updated the tutorial with the new dialogue system, and to account for kicking
• removed the auto-run and auto-fulljump options because these conflicted with how kicking/sliding affects movement

fixed from last time

• the press any button prompt is now dismissed when clicking cancel on the rebind screen. previously, the prompt would stick and the bind menu would remain in a listening state even while the bind menu was hidden
• clicking the retry button on the completion screen now saves your progress.
• there's now a short delay after releasing the shoot button before water pressure starts to refill. this prevents "pumping" which allowed you to hover over longer distances than intended and abuse slope physics in unintended ways. there's an equally long delay before you can fire another "burst" shot, if somehow your water meter refills (such as by entering a water volume).
• the camera now snaps to the player after resizing the window resolution. previously, the camera would wait until the game was unpaused, allowing the player to see out of bounds after resizing
• grabbing a ledge after taking damage no longer causes you to become invulnerable. previously, if you grabbed a ledge while in the hurt state, it would cancel the hurt state without removing any i-frames or disabling the "on fire" particle effect
• fixed being able to grab walls while facing the wrong direction. this usually happened while hovering against a wall
• fixed grabbing poles for 1 frame while shooting. this would reset your momentum in mid-air and immediately bounce you off the pole
• fixed a number of bugs related to ledge grabbing caused by an invalid collision check. this previously checked if a collision would occur which caused the player to perform ledge grabs through doors, on walls that shouldn't be ledge-grabbable, directly into enemies, etc.
• fixed the dither shader using screen space instead of world space, causing an intense moiré effect when scrolling

next time

august fast approaches! i'd like to have a completed world 1 demo ready by then. the last thing to complete would be the world 1 boss. i want to submit to some of the amateur game expos in the latter half of the year, so progress might be slow for a while.

if you'd like some more frequent updates, i usually post them on my cohost: https://cohost.org/ripper-coyote

there is also a firedog discord now if you want to chat with me directly: https://discord.gg/6NQrm5apSK

good luck!