NOTE: This version is only available on the EXPERIMENTAL game version/beta. You manually need to switch to it in Steam. Right Click on Fireworks Mania -> Properties -> Game Versions & Betas -> "Experimental". To go back to the normal version, change it to "Default Public Version".
Please note that this is work-in-progress stuff. There might be bugs, features might never end up in the real version of the game and things might be a little odd. However, I share this version as I need your feedback to help me shape the game - thanks for taking your time helping shape the game 🤓
This update is HUGE, mainly internally to try and fix some of the performance issues, especially the ones happening in longer sessions. Still haven't found the smoking gun, but have found a lot of minor things, that might when added up is the smoking gun - we will see. At least I have tried to fix as many as I could. Its not all internal stuff as you can see below, there are visual and game feel things too 🤓 For instance, I'm much happier with how the player feels to control now, give it a try.
### Changed
- Your character can now glance around without spinning on the spot - look to either side and only the head turns, until you look further round or start moving. It mostly matters for everyone else in the game: you can see which way other players are actually looking, instead of them always facing whatever they look at
- Crouching finally looks like crouching! Your character used to just get squashed down to half height, which was always meant to be a placeholder - now there is a real crouch, and crouch walking in every direction has its own animation, for you and for everyone else in the game. What you can duck under also matches what you see much better. One thing worth knowing: crouching no longer shrinks you quite as much as it used to, so a few very tight gaps you could slip under before may not let you through anymore
### Fixed
- Fixed your character sliding along the ground with its feet standing still after you stop running - it was even easier to spot on the other players. You still slow down with a bit of weight to it, but your feet now keep up with you the whole way down to a stop
- Fixed your character's feet skating along the ground while you walk and run, in every direction - forwards, backwards and sideways. Like the sliding above, it is mostly something you notice on the other players
- Fixed the game freezing up when a player joins - for both of you, and the bigger the show you had built, the longer it lasted. Your setup now fills in around the joining player in the background while you both keep playing, so a huge or heavily modded one takes a while to arrive completely, but it stays smooth the whole way. It should also fix really big setups where joining could silently fail
- Fixed fireworks quietly ending up out of sync when you play with others. When a lot happened at once - loading a big blueprint, a busy show, or somebody joining - things could go missing on the other player's screen and stay wrong for the rest of the game
- Placing mortar racks is faster, so the little freeze when you drop a big rack down, or load a blueprint full of them, should now be noticeably shorter
- Placing fireworks from mods is a bit faster too, so the little hitch when you drop a big modded rack or cake down is shorter than before
- Fixed the game slowly claiming more and more memory the longer you play, as every mod sound you set off stayed loaded for the rest of the time the game was running. Sounds you have not used for a while are now cleaned up while you play, and sounds used in a map are let go when you leave it
- Fixed the see-through preview of a mortar rack twitching and jumping back and forth on its own while you look around before placing it. Holding a mortar or a mortar rack no longer tries to drop it into another rack's tubes either, so placing racks next to each other doesn't fight you anymore
- Fixed the number keys and the flashlight key not reacting properly once you had played more than one game without restarting
- Fixed a fuse left hanging in mid air when you have the Fuse Connection Tool in your hands. If the firework you started a fuse from disappeared before you connected it to something, the half finished fuse just stayed there floating, and putting the tool away and taking it out again didn't help
- Turning off Dynamic Performance Scaling in Settings -> Advanced now really does turn it off. Fireworks further away than about 130 meters still had their spark collision taken away, so sparks fell through the ground instead of bouncing off it. Fireworks now play exactly as they were made when the setting is off, and switching it off during a show puts everything back right away
- The flashlight beam no longer looks like a solid cone with the end chopped off. It now trails off gently towards the far end and its edges are soft, so it reads as light hanging in the air instead of a shape, and it is just as bright as before
- A mod that asks for a sound which doesn't exist no longer costs you performance every single time that sound should have played
- Fixed a handful of memory leaks where each game you played without restarting left a little of itself behind. This kind of leftover buildup is one of the suspects for the game slowly losing performance over long play sessions, and this is a first batch - the hunt continues
- Fixed fireworks quietly eating framerate while doing nothing at all - fuses just standing there before they were ever lit, rockets and whistlers, and mortar racks worst of all, especially loaded ones. In a long session with lots of fireworks placed this could eat a third of your framerate or more, so big builds and long shows should now run noticeably smoother
- Fixed being told a game was full when it wasn't, with a cryptic error code on top, after sitting through the whole mod loading first. Accepting an invite no longer takes a spot in the host's game before you actually join, so a host stops losing slots that nobody is using
- The messages you get when you can't join someone's game now show up in your own language, and say what actually happened - that the game is full, that it has already ended, that the code doesn't match a game, or that the two of you are on different versions
- Fixed rockets, whistlers and firecrackers vanishing into thin air the moment they were supposed to explode when you play with others. If you weren't the host you never saw the explosion at all - strobe rockets got it every single time, normal rockets now and then. Everybody sees the whole explosion now
- The Christmas lights now actually look like the colour they are supposed to be after dark. The blue one glowed a washed out purple, the red one came out orange and the green one went pale towards white - all four read properly now, and they glow just as much as before
- Fixed pulling the fuses off a firework only working for yourself when you have joined somebody else's game. They disappeared on your screen while everybody else still had them attached, so lighting one of the other fireworks still set it off. Removing fuses now works the same for everyone, no matter who does it
- Fixed the other players you fly around with dropping out of the flying pose and standing upright in mid air, while they were in fact still flying. It happened whenever anybody picked a new character in the Inventory, and to everyone already in the game when a new player joined. The same thing also cut short an emote somebody was playing, so both stay put now
- Fixed used up fireworks still costing you framerate when you play with "Auto Despawn Used Fireworks" turned off. They go quiet once they are finished now, and still stand where you left them like they should
- Fixed some modded fireworks leaving an invisible piece of themselves behind in the world when fired. It couldn't be removed with Clear All and kept costing framerate until you left the map, so a show full of those got heavier and heavier. The game now sorts them out as they load
- Fixed some fireworks never finishing, so they stayed where they were after the show was over and kept costing you framerate for the rest of the time you were on that map. Mostly a modded thing, and every single one you lit added another to the pile - they now play out once and disappear like everything else
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- Happy testing, enjoy! 🤓🕺