Hey Guys,

New Beta Build is now live! Added some new mechanics and more vaults, as well as an overhaul on the ledge detection which is now far more optimised. This should especially eliminate those frame drops in certain areas of the level. Thank you all for reporting the crashes you're having, most seem to be GPU and DX12 crashes so we're working on solutions for them asap.

In regards to our scheduled April updates, we've been taking a step back from adding too many new modes, features etc to focus on the game vision, features and player experience and are working on a couple things to convey that vision to you guys, including a comprehensive roadmap for the game, so you guys can see where our focus is and help guide us there too. It did mean that features like the character customisation didn't come out in time, as we decided to prioritise optimisations and core gameplay mechanics and stability over cosmetic stuff. Apologies for any disappointment there but we're grinding away to get those bits ready with the new menu for you guys!

We're also doing quite a big refactor of the input system and rewriting a lot of the code. As cumbersome as this is, it will definitely be worth it in the long run and the new system is far more manageable with less edge cases, which will allow us to easily implement key rebinding as well.

In the meantime, Hopefully this update has enough new mechanics and animations to keep you guys finding new ways to explore the world.

The beta branch won't work in multiplayer with those on the default branch (wont see any of the lobbies and vice versa), so make sure to switch to the correct branch to play with friends on one or the other!

BETA PATCH NOTES

[NEW] Added wall sliding! Hold Grab to when approaching a flat wall whilst falling to wallslide.

[NEW] Added wall 180s! While wall sliding, point your move input behind the character in the direction you want to launch in and use jump to charge and jump away from the wall. Exciting to see how you guys make use of this mechanic.

[NEW] Added Tic Tac Variants! Holding Just Left Trigger/Right mouse Button) and Jumping will do a one foot tic tac, and holding both triggers/ both mouse buttons will do a sort of wall 180 tic tac variant. You can now actually 180 your way up chimneys, Tim Champion style.

[NEW] Added Kong Front Vault. Hold Vault (Left Trigger) and Flick modifier (Right Bumper) and flick Up on the Right Thumb Stick to Perform a Kong Front. You can do this over, off, onto (KF's onto will do a physics launched KF until we capture the correct animation for this!). Think this is my favourite vault now. There's some issues doing this with K+M that we're aware of so will let you guys know when that's fixed!

[NEW] Added Kong Gainer. Hold Vault (Left Trigger) and Flick modifier (Right Bumper) and flick Down on the Right Thumb Stick to Perform a Kong Gainer. This currently only works when vaulting over something as we don't have the coverage for the other cases yet, but will add them after our next mocap session! Also some issues with this on K+M.

[NEW] Slow motion is back! Press Right Thumb stick / Ctrl Key to trigger slow motion. We will have a slider for the slow motion speed in a coming update. Slow motion is also disabled in multiplayer.

[CHANGE] Tic Tacs now no longer require a double tap but are instead a hold and release like the step jump. Let us know how this feels. This changed so there was less difficulty timing the power and more consistency across powered jump types. It also makes for chaining wall 180s and gauging power a lot more consistent.

[CHANGE] Precision Mode toggle is now on a long press/hold on the Left thumb stick / Shift Key. Sprint remains a quick press. Keen to get you guys feedback on this change! It allows for Slow motion on the right thumb stick and eventually camera change on long press right thumb stick, but definitely want to hear everyone's thoughts on this!

[OPTIMSATION] Ledge detection refactor. Significantly optimised which has also reduced frame spikes in dense areas of the map.

[OPTIMISATION] Physics and Collision optimisation. Some mesh and physics collision optimisations to give better more stable performance throughout the level.

[OPTIMISATION] Host of other key optimisations in terms of level, character and game thread logic.

[IMPROVEMENT] Improved distance matching on jumps. you can now jump onto and over objects much closer (and even when colliding).

[IMPROVEMENT] Reduced over wall width threshold. Should give more stable context detection for thicker walls.

[LEVEL] Small changes and tweaks to the level, adjusting gaps and unusable areas.

[FIX] Pausing in multiplayer no longer pauses for everyone in lobby

[FIX] Some pose matching and attack crash fixes

[FIX] Collision issues when grabbing

[FIX] Clamped sliding speed and slide jump velocity to avoid those crazy power jumps

[FIX] No more jittery feet when falling at higher velocities

[FIX] Host of other bug fixes. As usual any new ones and existing ones please report in the discord (link below)

Thanks again for the feedback and support, keep it coming!
Team SPP

-PATCH NOTES-

[NEW] Crash reporting. If you can send the crash report when prompted, it would be much appreciated so we can get to the bottom of all the possible crashes!

[NEW] Host of new vault animations. Especially for vaulting onto, over and off objects. These new animations are far more fluid and stable, resulting in significantly smoother traversals.

[NEW] Added drop kick. Right face button on gamepad or C on K+M. I stumbled across the animation when looking through a recent mocap session and it felt rude not to add it.

[NEW] Added slide jumping. Pretty self explanatory this one, you can now charge and jump off slope slides. Can't wait to see the lines you guys pull off with this!

[NEW] Swapped thief for lazy vault (will be adding thief back soon).

[IMPROVEMENT] Much more comprehensive input device support. Correct detection for PlayStation, Xbox and M+K. As well as improved disconnect and reconnection support and a host of other input related improvements. I.e., correct device overlays, correct glyphs on UI etc.

[IMPROVEMENT] Controller and M+K swapping at runtime. Overlays and glyphs should now be correctly displayed when switching between input devices.

[IMPROVEMENT] Level optimisations. Texture, collision and other graphics optimisations. Let us know what kind of frame rate and performance changes you guys are experiencing.

[IMPROVEMENT] Gameplay optimisations. Trace, collision and a host of other character optimisations. Still a lot more to come on this front though once we've fixed some of the outstanding bugs!

[IMPROVEMENT] Improved capsule and mesh physics collisions. Less bails, more boinks and a lot less annoying. This also fixes a lot of bugs like phasing through objects and walls etc.

[IMPROVEMENT] Reduce bails. Colliding against objects and surfaces when close to the ground will no longer make you bail. Makes navigating tight spaces a lot more stable.

[IMPROVEMENT] Improved optimal ledge detection. Character will now pick the ledge closest to neck height, similar to that of dynos. this means small lips protruding from walls won't be selected over more pronounced ledges that are more climbable and within close range. This of course only affects non physics driven actions like wallpops etc. Some more improvements to the ledge detection coming soon as well.

[IMPROVEMENT] Locomotion improvements and fixes. Correct threshold for walk and run.

[IMPROVEMENT] Improved vault physics. Vaulting over, off and onto things is a lot more fluid and stable, and vaults such as lazy and dash now don't make you bail like crazy.

[IMPROVEMENT] Arm jumps and grabs are a lot more stable and result in less bails. Although still driven by your gravity trajectory, there is now a greater range for those flatter arm jumps and more animations , fallbacks and soft bails are on the way soon too!

[IMPROVEMENT] Standing jumps now triggered more reliably when having no input, stopping and idling.

[FIX] Bunch of crash cases fixed. We've also identified the cause of a few more, especially in regards to graphics profiles and configurations, which will be fixed in an upcoming update.

[FIX] Fixed frame dependencies for some of the physics behaviour like swings, pole sliding and more.

[FIX] Sound mix fixed, especially for music (Mad Place won't make your eardrums explode anymore, but it will still make your head bop tho, serious tune that one).

[FIX] No longer bail when getting up. This was an annoying one.

[FIX] Can now climb the crane. Little janky still but working on the climbing and level collision geometry. Both of these will be improved over time!

[FIX] Fixed Pole slides and slide brake on M+K.

[FIX] Fixed Ghost step bug. Especially evident on step jumps, which would sometimes get you stuck running/floating in air.

[FIX] Fixed Turn in place overriding actions.

[FIX] Fixed warping bugs on various actions.

[FIX] Fixed jump power bar being stuck on screen in different scenarios.

[FIX] Palm spins fixed and with improved syncing. A new favourite of mine this one!

[FIX] Fixed slide being triggered twice when walking onto slopes.

[FIX] Probably a bunch more, but any bugs you are still experiencing that you've reported and haven't been fixed in this update will be in one of the next ones!

[UPCOMING] New menu. We're nearly there with the new menu system. Much easier to navigate, as well as sections for character, missions, map and online, and improved control guide and more comprehensive settings!

[UPCOMING] Time trial and mission refactor nearly there too. Improved UX/UI and more stable objectives/feedback.

Team SPP