Micro Stream RPG news & patch notes

Hey all, Bauske here.

I hope everyone has had a great holiday season! First off, I want to say thank you for your patience with this project. I feel like this year slipped away from me due to a number of factors. I had so much planned with Micro Stream RPG and unfortunately didn't get to do much of any of it. Between game issues, connectivity problems, and general life hiccups, things didn't turn out the way I wanted. I won't try to make excuses, but I do apologize for the long delay in getting any sort of updates out.

On that front, I've rebuilt some of the game engine and pinned down what I think was causing issues beforehand. Not only did my copy of Clickteam Fusion, the program I used to create Micro Stream RPG, go corrupt, but so did an extension which linked the game to Steam. Both of these were responsible for some of the issues the game was having, like crashing, locking up, and shortcut keys activating in the background. Never expected the program itself to sabotage my efforts. But, after reinstalling and rebuilding, it seems to be working properly now.

I've also reworked most of the connection coding to hopefully keep the game from randomly disconnecting from chat and/or stalling up. It's taken weeks/months of testing, waiting, and making sure the game stays connected to Twitch, but overall it seems much more stable now.

My hope was to surprise you all with a new update by mid December, but obviously that didn't happen. What I'm currently working on is taking a little longer than I expected to finish, but I hope it'll provide some fun content for you all to enjoy once I get it done. Currently I have dungeon 3 completed and dungeon 4 is about halfway done. I'm also trying to get the companion app to a place where it's useable for everyone as well. This will let you customize your character, view your progress, see your badges, bestiary, and more.

My plan at the moment is to finish this next update and get it launched hopefully by the end of January, and then release the companion app shortly afterward. I apologize again that it's been so long between updates, but as a perfectionist (I know, I know...) it's frustrating to push out an update that still has issues. I want to make sure the game is running as smoothly as possible without causing problems, and I'd rather the next update fix things than push out updates that cause more issues.

In any case, that's all I've got for now. Again, thanks everyone for your patience and for sticking with Micro Stream RPG. Hopefully this next year will help push the game forward and we can get out of the Early Access state! Have a wonderful new year with the people you care about and I look forward to chatting with you more in 2026!

~Bauske

Hey all, Bauske here.

I'm posting this to give an update on Micro Stream RPG's current state. While it's not the good news I'd love to be giving right now, I want to be up front and honest about what's going on.

First, the good news: The third dungeon, which I've called The Jagged Vale, is basically done, and I've been starting work on the dungeon after that. Before I launched Micro Stream RPG, I had intended for the third dungeon to be a swamp area, and was already in the process of creating stage graphics and enemies for it. Due to progression ideas though, I felt like the swamp would work better as dungeon four, and started working on another area for dungeon three. Now that dungeon three is almost done, dungeon four should go much faster as I already have about half the assets ready to go. It's mostly just programming special situations and enemy stats from that point.

My goal for the next update is to have both dungeon three and four done to give you guys a bit more content to sink your teeth into. And then after that, I'm hoping to get the companion app launched too. That'll give you more customization options and control over your character and game progression.

Next, the not-so-good news: Progress has been slower than I would have liked. Much slower. There's a couple reasons for this. The main one is that I've been struggling with a couple major bugs in Micro Stream RPG. If you've read past news updates or the community posts here on Steam, you probably know some of what I'm been talking about. The three major issues right now in the game are:

• Micro Stream RPG randomly crashing

• Micro Stream RPG randomly disconnecting from chat and not receiving commands

• Micro Stream RPG executing shortcut commands when the window is not in focus

I'll admit I'm a bit of a perfectionist at times, and these issues are pretty serious to me and I want them addressed. The problem has been that I can't seem to find solutions for them. I've been asking the Clickteam developers for assistance, I've been sharing test builds with people to get input on changes, and wracking my brain on solutions without much progress. It's made working on the game frustrating to say the least because whenever I want to work on new content, I'm reminded these bugs are present and I continue to try and fix them.

Now for the bad/maybe good? news: As it turns out, my copy of Clickteam Fusion, the program I created Micro Stream RPG in, was corrupt. I've had it installed on my computer ever since the most recent rebuild, which was a couple years ago, so I suppose it's not surprising, but I've never had Clickteam Fusion itself become corrupt. I didn't even think to consider this as a possible cause for the issues I've been having. But after experiencing some other weird, unexplained issues in both Micro Stream RPG development and other game development, I decided to completely uninstall and reinstall the program. My suspicions were correct, and it seems like the corruption and issues have been resolved... at least in the other games I was working on.

Here's the current bad news: The Micro Stream RPG files seem to be corrupt. What I mean by this is that I can open the files, edit and update them, but I cannot run them. The game simply does not execute. Nothing happens. And I'm not sure why. I suspect that the corruption in Clickteam Fusion affected the Micro Stream RPG core files a long while back (coincidentally, right around the time I launched on Steam), and none of my backup files up to that point will actually run in the fresh install of Clickteam Fusion.

What this means is I will have to completely rebuild Micro Stream RPG in a new project file in the hopes that the game will function again. No, this doesn't mean completely recoding the game. I just have to copy and paste all the coding, assets, and objects from the current files into a new project file and test to make sure it all is working. It's time consuming and tedious, but better than starting from scratch. I've done this before with a past project, so I'm fairly confident this will work, and my hope is that doing so will hopefully resolve the three big issues I mentioned above. I'm not 100% confident it will, but I'm hopeful.

So that's the skinny on the current situation. My apologies for the long post, but I wanted to explain what's been going on. It's been a frustrating past few weeks/months trying to fix these issues, all to culminate in a program corruption situation I wasn't expecting. I need to do the rebuild to continue work on Micro Stream RPG, BUT I'm hopeful that doing so will fix some of these other issues I've been struggling with. I'm trying to stay positive about all this haha.

If you read this far, thanks for sticking with me. For the TL;DR - Micro Stream RPG has had a few issues lately that I believe were caused by my copy of Clickteam Fusion going corrupt, and now I need to rebuild the game in a new project in order to continue development. It's not hard, just time consuming, but I'm hoping it'll fix the issues going forward.

Thank you again for your patience, and I'll update you all again once I get the rebuild done.

~Bauske

Hey all, Bauske here.

First off, I want to apologize for the lack of updates recently. Full transparency, between some life stuff and just general ADHD focus struggles, motivation to work on the game lately has been low. I try not to make excuses for productivity, but this happens from time to time with me and game development, and often I find the solution is to spend a little time with some other projects to help refresh and rebuild that motivation again. So even though I haven't been progressing on Micro Stream RPG as much as I'd like, I have been making progress, and having fun working on a couple other small things as well.

That said, this update is just a small one for now. I wanted to have the next dungeon done by now, but it still has a little more cooking left to do. Along with the new dungeon, I had a couple little fixes and additions I had made that I was planning to bundle all into the next update, but I'm going to split them for now so I can at least fix some of the things that have been bugging me about the last release.

I'm aware there are a couple persistent issues in the game currently. For one, sometimes the game crashes. This seems to happen when the game is communicating with Twitch to refresh your connection status and get a new OAuth code. Problem is it happens so infrequently and I'm having a hard time pinpointing it. Please bear with me on this, as I'm trying to figure out the cause of the crash and get it fixed. A second issue is that the game sometimes just stops responding to chat commands. I think I found the cause of this one, so hopefully that's fixed, but if you still experience issues here, please let me know. And the third one, which is the big one that forced this update, is that for some people, Micro Stream RPG seems to respond to keyboard shortcut commands even when the game is in the background. I've had a few people come to me with this issue, and again it's something I'm struggling to figure out because, unfortunately for myself, the issue doesn't occur on my computer, so I can't test and try to fix it.

I've put some coding into this version to once again hopefully fix this issue and prevent shortcut commands from activating when Micro Stream RPG isn't the app in focus, but I'm going to post a thread in the community discussions specifically for this issue. If you experience this, please note which game or program you had running at the time and what keyboard command seemed to cause issues for you. Hopefully with some outside help I can narrow down what might be causing this.

Okay, enough rambling. Thanks for your patience. Next dungeon is coming soon, I promise. For now, here are the changes for this version.

New Features:

• New character sprites - Added in unique characters sprites for users BeanyCoffee, retropony28, RodShark, and Felius_Nightfox.

Adjustments:

• Changed the shader on the sparkle graphic used when a badge is earned. Since this is a shader I'm not as familiar with, please let me know if you experience any issues with slowdown or performance when a badge shows up.

• Changed the fullscreen key command to CTRL + F to help prevent the game going full screen sometimes when the game isn't in focus.

• Implemented a secondary flag when a player ALT + Tabs to another program to hopefully prevent commands working in Micro Stream RPG when the game isn't in focus.

• Made the magnifying glass on page 4 of the Settings Menu respond to keyboard and mouse selections to better indicate it is a selectable icon.

• Added some coding to hopefully prevent an issue where menu shortcut commands would activate even when Micro Stream RPG was in the background.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed an issue where certain shortcut commands (like pressing CTRL + X to lock dungeon access, or CTRL + 2 through 6 to change window size) outside of the Settings Menu wouldn't activate the commands until the Settings Menu was opened.

• Fixed an issue where the notification icon for connection issues wasn't displaying properly in menus.

• Fixed an issue where the first-time menu bar tutorial would appear on top of messages on screen if you skipped the tutorial on the first startup.

• Fixed an issue with some of the background color remained black even when a different background color is selected.

V0.23.1 Changes:

• Disabled Shortcut commands temporarily due to an issue where they are activating even when the window isn't in focus. This is set off by default, but you can re-enable them by holding S + C + \\ for three seconds. You'll see a message pop up at the bottom of the screen to let you know Shortcuts are on. Hold the same three keys again for three seconds to deactivate the Shortcuts. I'm looking into this, but I'm not entirely certain still what's causing it to happen on some computers and not on others.

~Bauske

Hey all, Bauske here.

I hope everyone enjoyed the Spring Event! It was a lot of fun to put it all together, but even more fun seeing people enjoy their time collecting eggs. If you enjoyed it as well, then please know that other events are planned for the future of Micro Stream RPG. I'm excited to share more with you when the time comes!

For now, a small feature update to Micro Stream RPG. In this update, I've implemented a few new Settings menu options based on feedback from people in the community! Game development is an interesting process because no matter how much time you spend thinking of things to add in to your project, you're never going to think of some things until your game gets into the hands of others. These new options are much like that, and they give streamers more power over customizing Micro Stream RPG to fit their streaming environment. That, in my opinion, is always important, and I hope people enjoy using them.

As always, there are a few minor bug fixes as well in this version. And also as always, if you notice anything weird or out of place, please let me know either here or on the community discussion page so I can get it taken care of ASAP! Thanks as always to everyone's continued support of Micro Stream RPG. I'm hoping to get the next dungeon out within the next few days, so keep an eye out for that soon. For now, onto the update notes!

New features:

• A total of three new menu options have been added to the Settings menu to allow more customization of Micro Stream RPG.

• Added the Queue Responses option to the Settings menu. This allows streamers to customize how often the game responds to people entering the queue in three ways: "Off" turns the messages off completely, "Some" operates how the game currently is with queue responses if the player is already in queue, and "All" gives every queue response, including when the queue is full and how many people are in queue when someone enters.

• Added the Background Color option to the Settings menu. This allows the streamer to customize the black color of Micro Stream RPG for more customization.

• Added the Edit Chat Responses option to the Settings menu. Clicking this will bring up a document of responses Micro Stream RPG will use when needed. You may edit and customize these however you wish. Detailed instructions are in the document itself.

• Added in a Feedback and Suggestions section to the credits, with the names of people who have provided feedback or ideas that have been implemented into the game.

• Added in a mouse hover feature to the Settings menu. When navigating the menu, moving your mouse over the options will highlight them, giving a better sense of navigation. I'm still a bit unsure about how much I like this, so any feedback on it will be welcomed.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed an issue where promo messages would display even when the dungeon was locked from entries.

• Fixed an issue where bosses of normal dungeons couldn't be defeated if the player was max level.

• Fixed an issue where sometimes the hidden eyes icon would stay present after a hidden enemy was defeated.

• Fixed an issue where boss sprites would flash on screen or not be displayed properly when facing them in The End Between.

~Bauske

• Added in functionality to keep the queue counter on screen by pressing F1. You can toggle it back off with F1 again.

• Adjusted the healing amount from "!heal" commands when the game is set at 2x or 3x speed. This increased healing is put in place to help provide a little more oomf to heals on these speedier runs since the cooldown timer for "!heal" commands usually doesn't reset until after the run is over.
• Adjusted the level cap for monsters in the Spring Event dungeon to never exceed the player's own level. This is mainly put into play to help low level players not get completely demolished by the event dungeon's enemies.
• Adjusted the stats of some of the enemies in the Spring Event dungeon to make them slightly easier to deal with. We hate seeing people lose out on earning eggs.

• Fixed an issue where eggs collected during the Spring Event would still register even if the player died during their run. This would sometimes allow them to skip over a badge milestone.
• Fixed an issue with "!heal" commands not registering when the on-screen character is moving between monsters.
• Fixed an issue where earning a badge other than the Spring Event Badge in the Spring Event dungeon would end the run prematurely.
• Hopefully fixed an issue where sometimes a player who used the "!rpg" command would be placed into the Spring Event dungeon instead.

• Reworked player and monster speed calculations through the engine to more consistently reflect speed differences across all level scaling.
• Updated some of the dungeon title text graphics for consistency.
• Sped up the "Turn-In Complete!" text at the end of a Spring Event run to better match the current game speed.
• Hopefully fixed an issue where sometimes players using the "!rpg" command would instead be placed in the Spring Event dungeon.
• Disabled Twitch "PING" detection as I think this might be causing some random crashes.
• Fixed an issue preventing the Queue Limit function from working.
• Fixed an issue where incorrect monster data was being recorded.

• Fixed an issue with game color not working.

• Added in functionality for events. Keep an eye out for these in the future!
• Added in a short menu tutorial after the main tutorial to help introduce people on how to use the settings menu. This only appears the first time after the game is run and the main tutorial is finished.
• Adjusted the game's speed down to normal during when a player finishes a dungeon or earns a badge to help highlight that player's achievement. The game will return to the speed set in the settings after the event finishes.

• Changed the wording in the menu from "Lock Abyss Entry" to "Dungeon Entry". This will hopefully make this function's purpose a little clearer.
• Added total healing done to statistics.
• Added in the badge sound effect when earning a normal dungeon badge.
• Added in some protections to hopefully keep the game window from being placed outside the monitor space during screen resolution changes. This may not be perfect due to the sheer amount of multiple monitor configurations, but this will hopefully help the game window to not get lost outside monitor space. If you do experience the game starting but cannot find the game window, just press CTRL + W to recenter the game window at any time.
• Spaced out the intro logo and the player badges at the beginning of each game so there's a little more space for the badges to breathe and be displayed.
• Disabled backup data and settings restoration. This initially was put in place when Micro Stream RPG hosted all its data, including player progression, locally on the streamer's PC to prevent accidental wiping of player data. Since everything is hosted online now, there's not a huge need for this. If I can find a way to make it work in the future, I will restore it.

• Fixed an issue where the wrong stage graphics would be displayed after running a connection test or replaying the tutorial from the Connection menu.
• Fixed an issue where exporting statistics (CTRL + L) and exporting log files (enter the log with CTRL + E and press CTRL + S) would not export properly or at all.
• Hopefully fixed an issue where sometimes when trying to refresh the streamer's chat authorization code the game would lock up and need to be restarted. If you experience the game regularly not connecting to chat or having to restart the game, please let me know.

• Added in some coding to prevent the game window from accepting keyboard commands when Micro Stream RPG is not in focus.

• Fixed an issue with the Rat King boss where the Rat Runt attacks were not timing properly.
• Fixed an issue with the Beehoof boss where the bee enemy sprites were not showing up properly.

• Updated the coded to prevent the window from going outside the monitor space again. Hopefully this will keep it from doing so in the future.
• Added in some attempted error logging in case any crashes happen in the future.
• Added in commands for the streamer and moderators to lock or unlock the game from receiving entries. These commands are "!lockrpg" and "!unlockrpg".

• Added dynamic pop ups in the Connection menu for error notifications.
• Implemented a Twitch username validation system to ensure handles used for Channel Names and Chat Usernames are valid, active Twitch handles. This new username check is present in both the Connection menu and the Tutorial.
• Added a PING response to Twitch chats so the game disconnects less frequently.

• Changed some sound effects when choosing menu options.
• Simplified and reduced connection clutter from the in-game chat log. You can access the chat log at any time by pressing CTRL + E. Press CTRL + E again to close it.

• Fixed an issue with the Connection menu soft-locking the game when clicking the GET button.
• Fixed an issue where the game might not reconnect to chat after an OAuth token needs to be refreshed.

• Added a new attack animation for ranged attack weapons.
• Added three new default characters: A ninja, a barbarian, and a sorceress.
• Added three new weapons: A bow and arrow, a hammer, and a spellbook.
• Added an outline to both player characters and weapons to help them stand out from background graphics more.
• Implemented Weapon Proficiency damage boosts. The only enemies this affects right now are the Tortimagus and the Manaquin. More on this later.

• Reworked connectivity to Twitch. This had to be done due to a Twitch security change. If you're a beta tester, your current OAuth token should still work, but if not, please use the Connection menu to reconnect to Twitch.
• Changed backup data saving so that it only saves if changes have been made.
• Changed the menu hover to only activate and show the menu bar if Micro Stream RPG is the focused window.
• Adjusted Weapon Point rates. After looking at results from the beta test, the rate at which points were earned was skewed too high, causing levels to be higher than I would like for the time involved.
• Changed the character's melee attack animations to be more impactful visually and more variable for the future. This also now allows attack animations to scale with the game's speed.
• Normalized audio levels across all sound effects so the game isn't so loud.
• Changed the sound effect when earning a medal.
• Adjusted the poison rate of the Snake from 80 to 25. I want it to poison often, but not that often.

• Added a version check function. Going forward, Micro Stream RPG will check it's version against the online database to make sure the game is on the most recent version. If not, users will need to update the game to continue playing.
• Added in a fourth layer of parallax scrolling for the background to help give more visual depth to the areas.
• Added in functionality for "!heal" and "bauskeheal" (my own personal emote for healing) to be read anywhere in a chat message instead of specifically at the beginning. Now users can use the emote or command anywhere in their chat replies and the game will recognize them.
• New character sprites - Added in unique characters sprites for beta testers FoxThiefBran, AlexArcher_, and AnsuBlue.

• Adjusted the database status check to only check once every 10 minutes instead of before each player starts. This will hopefully lessen any lag in starting a player's game.

• New online database system! Player data is now hosted in an online database, meaning players can continue their progression across any stream they play Micro Stream RPG in.
• Added a limited-time Special Beta Badge for people to earn during this beta period. If a player can hit level 15 before the game launches officially, they'll earn the Special Beta Badge.
• Added a Max Level Badge. This can be earned by hitting the max level at any point. Currently during the beta the max level is 30, but this will increase in the future.
• New character sprites - Added in unique characters sprites for beta testers DEBT, KnightLycan, and Outcast_Stars.

• Adjusted how the connection message pop ups appear to reduce their frequency when quick chat reconnects happen.
• Very slightly reduced enemy defense and hit point multipliers.

• Fixed an issue where the game wouldn't connect to Twitch chat after the first tutorial or subsequent Twitch info setups if the user had skipped the tutorial the first time.
• Fixed an issue where the shortcuts to change screen size wouldn't work if the settings menu wasn't on the right page.

• Window size hotkeys - Pressing CTRL + 2-6 at any time will scale the window size to 2x-6x size without having to go to the settings menu.
• Fire numbers - Some enemies are flammable. When a fire-casting weapon is used against them, it does bonus damage, which is now represented by a fiery effect behind the damage numbers.
• New character sprites - A couple new character sprites added in for some of the beta testers.
• Abyss lock message - A message will now be posted to chat when the streamer locks or unlocks the Abyss from the menu. This is to help make the lock functionality more seen by people in chat.

• Sped up the intro sequence when a user starts a run.
• Changed the promo text to say "!RPG to start" instead of "!playMSRPG to start".

• Fixed an issue where the Rat King's minions (cordially known as Rat Runts) or the two other slimes in the Slime Stack wouldn't appear during the Layer 1 boss battles.
• Fixed an issue with the Leshy boss in Layer 2 not being hit by magic weapons while in the Hidden state.
• Fixed an issue with magic weapons not being assigned their elemental type.
• Fixed an issue with some of the background graphics displaying incorrectly when a dungeon is completed.