Ecto news & patch notes

Big Update y'all. Ecto is almost ready for release!

This has been my biggest project to date and it feels surreal that I'm finally wrapping it up and getting it ready for release. I'm done creating levels and content for the game, any other update after this will be tweaks and bug fixes. Feedback in the discord server is always appreciated.

Big Changes

• Original Soundtrack by Conifer Patch (his music is awesome and he's a great guy)

• Desert world 3

• Jungle world 4

• New items

• Level speedrun timer - A built-in timer by the world selector shows how long it takes you to collect all of the star fragments in the level.

Small Changes

• Finalized pause menu + more settings

• tweaked platforming challenges on the nighttime level because it was too hard

I originally intended on selling this game once it was complete, but I decided its going to stay free. I'm going to include a cosmetic DLC to support me, but it wont impact gameplay at all.

~Dez

So basically, Ecto was trying to do too much

A few people might be disappointed in this, but the flower guns and robot combat of this game is gone.

The combat always felt like a bit of an afterthought for me (even though I spent hundreds of hours designing, programming and testing it). A couple weeks after the last update I felt incredibly burnt out and overwhelmed by the scale of what I would have to accomplish to finish this game. I had a long conversation with my friend and decided what I needed to do.

Scope Reduction

For the non-developers out there, scope is basically: what you aim to accomplish in the project. The scope was too large. It was not realistic for me to make this game a fun bhopping movement puzzle game AND a shooter with weapon upgrades and boss fights. It was just too ambitious.

So what's next?

From now on, the identity of Ecto is now all-in on movement, whimsical interactions and vibey worlds to explore. I finished an entire world in less than a month, including some new items to play around with. Expect more updates with new items and worlds to explore.

Changes

• Removal of all combat elements, redesigned gameplay loop

• Replaced temporary playermodel with a new character: Chloe. I sketched, 3D modelled, rigged and animated her.

• Collect 4 star fragments in each level to progress

• A new world to explore! New islands, items, puzzles and interactions

• 2 Fidgety items to play around with. A Kendama and a Basketball + hoop

• A home/hub world while allows you to change levels

• Persistent save file (save your items and coins after quitting the game)

• 2 hazardous enemies in the first world. The venus fly trap and the beetle

Howdy yall. I got some feedback from the wonderful people in my Discord server and made some changes.

What's new:

• LINUX SUPPORT!!! This was actually so painful to get working but I had to do it for the love of the game. If I see the word "libsteam_api.so" or "SteamAPI_Init" one more time I'm going to lose it.

• Improved item dropping: Dropped items wont go through objects anymore

• Improved hitbox detection for interactables (specifically the pedestals in the underworld)

• Enemies can jump on top of the spawner buildings

• Added swap mouse buttons option

• Added scroll jump option

• Fixed autojump checkbox missing (I must have slipped on a banana peel and pressed the hide button on it in the 4.0 release.

• Fixed bug where the enemy would get stuck inside the spawner on the client

• Fixed hit sound being too loud with shotguns

• Added upgrade station to the underworld

I'm seriously so mentally exhausted right now but we stay grinding <3 !!

~Dez

Big Changes

• Revamped underworld!!!

• New puzzle in the overworld

• Consistent jump height (you can still hold space to jump higher though)

• New platforming puzzle in the underworld

• New islands!

• New flower: Prairie Trillium

• New mushroom: Jack-O-Lantern Mushroom

• Comically large ant

Technical Mumbo Jumbo

• Basic graphics settings. Fast or ~FANCY~

• Draw distance reduction

• Tweaker-level optimizations

• Occlusion on all objects to reduce draw calls

• Removed secondary camera (item camera) and replaced it with a custom shader that renders items on top of everything else. This shaved ~2ms off each frame. I sacrificed a week of my life for those 2 milliseconds.

• With the "Fast" graphics setting, unnecessary objects are hidden when far away. I wrote my own system to dynamically hide them. I made it light on CPU usage by spreading the calculations out over many frames instead of checking all of them at once. Ex.) instead of 500 calculations per-frame, it will check 10 objects each frame for a total of 50 frames. Comment your favorite type of bean if you read this far lol.

Small Changes

• Higher prices, but more chests to discover or unlock

• Added cracked texture to asteroids that will break when you touch them

• Removed the bone scavenger hunt item because it sucks (it too small)

• Balance tweaks

• Too many bug fixes to count (as per usual)

Do good things

peace and much love dez signing off kachow mi name jeff

• autohop checkbox in options menu

• You can manually choose the level generation seed for speedrunning (in the options menu)

• Added compatibility mode launch option

  --rendering-driver opengl3 --my-renderer=opengl

• Fixed: dying on level load keeps you stuck in a black screen.

• remove fade / level load screens when changing levels to avoid getting stuck in a black screen in certain scenarios

• Fixed: pause menu when falling off breaks pausemenu

• Log location open button < to better help me debug my game :) >

• Disabled crystal island colors once you place it on the pedestal. And disable spawning of the crystal.

• close pause screen on death

• Visual fixes on low FPS (10fps)

• dont allow health regen while falling off the map

• dont get input in titlescreen when game window is unfocused

• Final boss explosion doesnt do damage anymore

• Keep player from shooting or interacting while in pause menu

• Placeitem hitbox increased

• update to Godot 4.4.1

• updated Steamworks SDK

Special thanks to the homies on the Discord server who provided a lot of feedback and reported bugs!

~Dez

Big Changes

• Added interaction / movement puzzle island to overworld
• New flying enemy "Sputnik"
• Playable tutorial segment at the beginning of the game
• New flowers and updated animations for preexisting ones
• Interactive tutorial island on spawn
• Changed movement. Less floaty, no more autohop, added jump and bunnyhop sounds

Small Changes

• Added barrier of sticks to the underworld well to keep players from going down there without a weapon
• Rainbow visual indicator for froggieman's shop (inspired by the chest from COD:zombies)
• Smooth fall off / respawn animation when you fall off the world
• Doesnt spawn scavenger hunt items that arent in the shop because that was pointless
• Removed "Levels" because it was too repetitive. There's one level and then the boss.
• Changed prices for the shop
• Netcode improvements
• Tweaked enemy scaling for multiple players
• LOTS of optimizations and bug fixes (as usual)

Reworked core game mechanics

• Weapon crafting removed and replaced with a giant frog's shop
• Search for trinkets hidden in the world and trade them in for coins!
• Weapon upgrades / variants
• Find coins throughout the world or by killing enemies
• Weapon ammo / reloading

Big Changes

• Fun interactive flowers and mushrooms to fidget with
• New enemy wave system
• Better difficulty scaling for different amounts of players
• Enemy spawner buildings
• More Islands
• Improved Visuals
• Major Performance Improvements (2x faster) (very smoove)
• Improved boss level layout + Enemies spawn in waves and navigate the level
• Too many bug fixes to count

Small Changes

• Drop left-hand items.
• Re-balanced weapons.
• Dynamic fall distance
• Level generation spawn position rework
• Soul improvements (the glowing orb when you die)
• Improved trees

Big Changes

• Complete level progression instead of an infinite loop like in the prototype version
• FINAL BOSS >:)
• 3 Lives + collecting your soul when you die. You lose if you run out of lives OR all players are dead at the same time in multiplayer
• Reworked underworld objectives that are generated on the outskirts of the level. I will add more variety to this feature in the next update.
• Collect crystals in the underworld instead of having to go back and forth between the overworld and underworld to collect flowers.

Small Changes

• Invert Y option in settings
• Slightly tweaked movement
• New skybox aesthetic
• Crafting bench synchronizes over the network and doesnt act like a spawner anymore
• Underworld pressure plate model and sound
• World generation checks for tree collisions so they don't stick through islands sometimes
• A few more island types in the overworld
• You get your weapons back when you die
• New robot shoot sound (the old one sounded too intense)
• HUNDREDS OF SMALL BUG FIXES (70% of my development time goes here)

Big Changes:

• Added a ranged enemy.
• Enemies now wander instead of just sitting there.
• Enemies occasionally fall back during combat.
• The blue pistol does big damage at a slow fire rate like the deagle.
• You lose your inventory when you die.

Small Changes

• Enemies flash when hit.
• Adjusted health regen for the player.
• Improved health overlay.
• Adjusted damage values of each of the weapons again.
• Slight tweaks to movement. You have a higher range of jump heights depending on how long you hold the spacebar.

• Tweaked the weapon stats to attempt to balance their strengths and weaknesses better
• Fixed a bug where you get stuck at the bottom of the well
• The knife is limited to only damaging 3 enemies per hit
• Robots chase players more effectively at close ranges
• Fixed minor performance studdering on clients
• Held Frogs no longer get hit when attacking with the knife