Flux Empyrean news & patch notes

The last update broke the notes and ended up in some notes getting overwritten. I'm very sorry. This patch is focused on fixing this issue, with some other features too.

• Fixed the bug with notes overwriting each other. Feel free to safely use your journals again!

• Made location 100% tracking in the scrollbar more accurate.

• The save button now gives clear feedback when pressed.

• Added two new passages at the Corba Temple to hint at how to get in.

• The Greater Corba puzzle should be more stable now.

• Ancient Engravings at Ayhodia should appear on the Lorefinder now.

• Made the save system more stable and less prone to corruption.

• Fixed the passage list for some of the Trues.

• Fixed an issue with the total location count.

Hope everything has been going good for you! There are A LOT of changes here to improve the overall experience. I hope you enjoy. Side note: 1.1.9 will focus more on puzzle adjustment and potentially new content to help improve the overall experience. It will probably take longer than previous updates. If you're stuck somewhere and feel like you've explored everything, reach out in some way and let me know what you're lost on, and what you wish you knew. I'll what I can do to add things to the game to help you :) Changelog:

• New Features

  • When you are at a large location, the maximum distance you can travel from your boat automatically increases, to a limit.

  • There are now lines in the journal between passages to help divide them.

  • The journal now remembers the last thing you were on per category. If you are viewing Station 9 and then move to your passages, when you return to the locations view, you'll be back on Station 9.

  • The journal now gives you a count of how many things you have discovered, and if you have found enough, how many are left to find.

  • The search function now considers your notes.

  • The journal now shows an icon in the scrollbar when you have found every passage in a text or location.

• Puzzle Tweaks

  • Make the Greater Corba puzzle give much more feedback. It should be much more clear what is going on.

  • The sounds transmitted by Beacons should now be more easily identifiable, making it more clear what their pattern is.

  • The Courtyard House now gives more audio feedback that should make the puzzle more intuitive.

  • Reworded the puzzle at Parallel Exhibition to be less obscure.

  • Adjusted one of the puzzles at the Shrine of Siciphos.

  • The Master Key did not have a use previously. (Uh, oops.) It now does, and might get more soon.

  • Added audio feedback for the Tome Esoterica puzzles.

  • Made the stuff at the Memorial to Inexistence more clear.

  • Added a new text at Home of Minos to help guide people to how to open the Labyrinth.

• Discovery Tweaks

  • Quite a few spots had inaccurate, duplicate, or missing texts. Here's some that I fixed.

  • Rogue Cloud

  • Clockwork Yellow

  • True (Directions)

  • Deep Flux Lab

  • Home of Minos

  • Labyrinth

• Bugfixes

  • Fixed a bug where the world would stutter upon applying settings.

  • Fixed bad collisions at the Drum of War.

  • Fixed a bug with the frequency compass where it would overshoot the target it was trying to point at.

  • Made the 202 frequency quieter.

  • Fixed a bug with collisions after using portals.

  • Fixed a few typos in texts.

• Easter Eggs

  • One new fish to be found somewhere...

Hello all! Here's some new changes to make things better than ever before!

• Modified the way pinning objects in the minimap works. This should make large-scale navigation easier, and possibly hint at answers to deeper mysteries...

• You can now click on a passage under a location's progress bar to view it in the journal! This is a feature that like, 7 of you independently asked for!

• Fixed a bug at the Monolith to Cora. The solutions should now be accurate.

• Fixed a duplicate passage at the Drum of War. It now has the missing, correct passage.

• The lorelines in the lorefinder are now purple if you have found the passage already.

• The discs on the boat will disappear after discovering them and rebooting the game.

• Made the input for the tutorial slightly more forgiving, allowing for more possible valid answers.

• Made the input at the Hall of Forms slightly easier as well.

• Adjusted the effects of something at one of the Ideologs to be less extreme.

• Adjusted one of the passages in Station 9-17 Communications to account for a missing detail.

• There's a little easter egg to find somewhere :)

Excuse the terrible pun. I hope you've been enjoying the game as much as I have been enjoying hearing back from all of you! This update has a fair handful of quality of life additions and changes.

• Made the base volume of music louder. Improved the control of music volume. (It was previously impossible to make it truly 0...)

• Made the rockets on the back of the boat bigger, and improved their collision. I felt like they were too small.

• Improved collision avoidance at some of the larger locations like the Hall of Judgment, Monument to Consciousness, Great Arch, and Ayhodia.

• Adjusted sail rotation speeds and thresholds. You can now reach maximum speed without pixel-perfect alignment of the sail.

• Adjusted the location of some content at the Dark Atoll to prevent movement bugs.

• Adjusted the valid set of answers at the Hypercube.

• Fixed a bug at the Courtyard House that allowed for bypassing the puzzle.

• Fixed a bug that caused the load time to increase massively when loading the game after returning to the main menu.

• Fixed a bug at the Monument to Cora. One of the puzzle answers was wrong.

Technical details for those interested: Collision avoidance is determined by a radius around the center of any given location. As a result, locations which are not circles can have portions where the radius is far larger than necessary. I've developed new technology for collision avoidance that lets me add subcircles in locations. For instance, Ayhodia was represented with a single 880m collision circle. Now, it is made of multiple smaller circles, allowing for a more accurate shape around it.

Hello all! Thank you for a wonderful launch so far. Here's some changes based on your feedback:

• Added rockets to the back of the boat. They ignite as the boat travels faster and picks up air.

• Adjusted the way the boat flies to be slightly less jarring overall. Expect smoother transitions between sea and air!

• Adjusted how the boat avoids collision at locations. It should be much harder to sail into a building!

• Clamped the "trippy" effect for the player so that it can't go wildly out of control. Hopefully this reduces the amount of bad trips.

• Added an option to hide the helmet's visor, allowing the player to reduce glare if they so choose.

This might be the one that launches on Monday! I just wanted to squeeze in some extra content and polish before release. You can expect similarly sized updates after release, with bugfixes and new content for some locations.

• Added some new content at West Ideolog

• Revamped Park of Solitude

• Added a new feature to the Planetarium

• Added a new thing to find at Testing Grounds

• Added new mechanics to the Deepspace and Fixed Point Telescopes

• Fixed a bug with the interaction icon

We're rapidly approaching release! Here's a new build to get ready for the big day! As always, don't hesitate to reach out and let me know when you encounter any issues!

Changes:

• Added a few new songs to the game

• Added a setting to invert the minimap

• Added the ability to move the main menu with WASD

• Added some satellites (can you find them?)

• Added some new telegraphing for one of the endings

• Made the interact logo more fluid

• Optimized the sky shader for better performance

• Fixed the way planets render their position in the sky, this should make planets look more realistic and beautiful

• Fixed a bug that caused one ending to trigger unintentionally

• Fixed some typos

• Fixed a bug that caused some entities to spawn unintentionally

• Fixed a bug with the physics engine throwing errors

Thank you all for your feedback and support! I've made some changes based on what I'm hearing from you. I'll be away from my PC for a week, but don't hesitate to reach out with feedback for when I return!

Changes:

• Updated to Godot 4.7

• Fixed a bug where the boat would fly much higher into the sky than it should, causing a softlock

• Fixed a crash that would rarely occur when entities attempted to spawn

• Fixed some bugs with item animations to prevent items from getting stuck

• Tweaked the hitbox of Station 9 Dish

• Made portals that run at reduced quality appear better

• Removed some content from the demo that was not fully finished

• Updated the interaction icons to be more visible & useful

A small update is now live for the demo.

Major changes:

• The Lorefinder now displays found items differently from undiscovered items

Thank you all for checking out the demo and giving your feedback! Please don't hesitate to reach out. This is a great opportunity to have your voice heard and help improve the game before release.