After Eons of Suffering, the Update Draws Near

After over two months of crunching and update radioshadow, it's finally complete - sorry for the wait. Trying to do everything at once did not pan out and I'm sorry all of the quality-of-life improvements were held hostage by all of the story stuff that needed to be done in order to release this update (since said story stuff involves a movement upgrade that's necessary to reach and explore a lot of the new levels I've worked on in the background).

Going forward I've figured out a way to keep changes more self-contained so I should be able to release things at a more steady trickle, because huge updates a couple times per year doesn't feel like the best way to use the Early Access model.

Full List of Changes

• You can now visit Grandma Goat in lower Castle town and have your scarf upgraded using magic yarn! If you ask nicely, she might also tell you stories about the past...
• You can now visit Hammerhead The Blacksmith in Nugget Mines and repair damaged weapons! He might have even more surprises... if you help him track down Shiny Wings for his collection!
• Tippy´s storage now is accessible from her house! Store items you don´t need here before going on a shopping spree! She'll also automatically take any items you find out in the field if you're out of inventory slots.
• Added new system for thrown and shot weapons, letting you attack at a range even without Magic Juice! Buy dynamite from Prospector Frank or a classic western sixshooter from Hammerhead and take out your enemies like in the 1800s!
• Removed all RNG from Mean Eugene's attack patterns. It just wasn´t a very engaging fight when he would just throw fruit at you over and over, now he alters movement and shots in a way that forces you to be more active and overall leaves him less vulnerable. His ceiling-grab attack also tries to move him to the center of the room to stop it from instantly attaching to the side walls most of the time.
  
• New boss fight: Jester Saltman. You can finally proceed deeper into Bread Ruins, but not without a fight...
• New boss fight: Frie The Witch. Her potions are far too strong for you, traveller!
  • There's three different endings to the Frie questline.
• New level: Lever Action. An introduction to the colored block-switches that's slightly less confusing than Frie's Not Particularly Secret Library, but that doesn't mean the level is a short and easy affair! And what if there's additional secrets to find...?
• New level: Short Desert. It's suspiciously short... is this really the whole level?
• New level: Witchcraft Workshop. Learn about Frie's backstory, solve the first bunch of ACTUAL puzzles in the game, but watch out for the dreaded Witch Slimes!
• New level: Frie's Rest. Finally challenge the legendary Frie The Witch! Will your nostrils melt or will you escape to tell the story?
• Expanded level: Pit of Okaris. The new secret area will be really hard to find, but it's not like you're in a hurry when looking for secrets, right?
• New level: City of the Ancients. Explore some old ruins, in case you didn't get enough of that already! This tangled mess of corridors is the largest level in the game so far and you'll get a chance to check out a whole bunch of the new game mechanics I've added.
  
• New spell to find: Reflection. It bounces on walls, allowing you to hit enemies from weird angles. Perfect in tight spaces!
• New area: Nugget Mines hub. Get a little preview of the next bunch of story bosses, admire the scenic graveyard but watch out for the clowns!
• New area: Castle Town. Buy overpriced tourist merch and check out the weirdest food in the game!
• A ton of new accessories and consumables, including some weird effects like letting you place a hovering water sphere at your current position to break platforming challenges.
• It's now only possible to interact while grounded. Should make it harder to slide off platforms with warps mid-animation and easier to move around in Waste of Space interiors without accidentally talking to people.
• Pause menu now uses Game Maker's new 'GPU scissor' functions to cut out all rendering outside each tab, so there's no ugly visual leaks when switching tabs anymore (in particular the map in large levels).
• Tons of geometry changes to Nexus and various levels, mostly to fix flow issues / ugliness but also to make room for new secrets. (Too many to list in detail)
• Any analog up/down inputs are ignored if a stronger left/right input is registered. This should make it a lot harder to unintentionally crouch, grab ladders or interact, and solve issues where attack inputs are dropped because the game thinks you're trying to slide before unlocking the slide ability.
• Tractor beams now also reset your vertical speed when you use them, so you can't slide off them when trying to enter them at a high speed.
• Mirror in Nimper & Dimper's room isn't so high up you can't use it anymore (even if it made sense given how tall they are).
• Fixed a bug where stage exits can leak out of the room they are in and let you exit the stage before you reach them, position is now clamped to the boundaries of the room the same way stage entrances are. (Sorry speedrunners, but this was getting in the way of casual play!)
• Fixed item drops lingering forever if offscreen. Now they keep track of time and will adjust the countdown accordingly even if they were in the shadow realm to save CPU power.
• Fixed dying from falling offscreen causing you to fly upwards infinitely and starting the fadeout too early. Should make Off The Rails, Pit of Okaris and Shattered Citadel killplanes less glitchy.
  • Deathplanes can now also be set to only apply to normal/flip mode so you won't die from jumping into the sky on a level without a ceiling
• Fixed Plumber's Prayer Beads having literally no effect (they turned on the countdown that turns off invincibility but didn't actually GRANT you invincibility)
• Fixed Muri's hand disappearing if you unequip your melee weapon on the pause menu.
• Fixed losing the currently equipped melee weapon giving you a glitched state where you've got an invalid reference to the currently equipped weapon and have infinite durability since the durability logic can't subtract it from anywhere.
• Switchblocks now have different icons to be more colorblind-friendly: red ones have hearts, blue ones diamonds, and green ones hamburgers. Bocchi will also tell you this in-game if you tell her you're colorblind.
• Added 'weak point' system. Hitting a weak point like Chess King's head deals 50% more damage, and is shown with a bigger damage number.
• Fixed player hitboxes facing the wrong way when facing left on an asteroid and meleeing in Waste of Space.
• Overall improvements to melee system, including the ability for some weapons (e.g. shark plushie) to be usable underwater and special properties like armor piercing and emitting light.
• Fixed some bugs related to level loading. The map won't randomly be blank anymore, and if you enter a cutscene immediately when loading the Burger Nexus the music won't glitch out for a couple frames anymore.
• New lore.
• Added some new secrets...

What's Next?

Currently I have a whole bunch of half-finished levels that aren't ready to be played yet, I'll probably work on getting those done before I make more story stuff. Also any bugs you guys discover will have the highest priority - the game has now gotten so big that I'm scared I can't test everything anymore even with the secret speedrunning tech.

Stay flipping, folks!

/Yal