v038 - The Night-Mode Cometh

Big news! 

Our Kickstarter is live, so hopefully we can offset some development costs. Drop by and help us out!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/superhockeyball/super-hockey-ball

Bigger news!

Our Steam page is live, but we aren't ready to launch  quite yet. So, for now, itch.io will continue to be the only place to get Super Hockey Ball. You should feel special, because you are special.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/738950/Super_Hockey_Ball/

Bigger-er news! 

We've been accepted to Oculus Start! It's a program designed to support small and independent studios in their Oculus Rift development efforts. This is super exciting for us. Can you feel our excitement? It emanates right through your computer screen, doesn't it?

On to the game:

This update is freakin' huge. Yeah, yeah... we say that every update. Whatever, get hype! 

There are a ton of graphical improvements this time around, including a Nighttime mode, new balls, and several new levels. You'll just have to check it out to see the remarkable difference. And there are a couple of gigantic new features to announce!

Have you ever been confused about which way you were supposed to be facing in a VR game? Us too. Luckily, we solved that! You'll always be facing the correct direction when you start a new level. We've also completely overhauled the in-game menu system, including adding a pause feature. 

We improved performance (again), added Oculus Dash support, and worked out native Windows Mixed Reality support!

Windows Mixed Reality is a new feature for UE4, and it still has a few bugs. Namely, it interferes with the Oculus support. We're gonna leave it up to them to sort that issue out. As soon as it's good to go, we're ready to bring it to Super Hockey Ball! In the meantime, if you'd like a Windows Mixed Reality version, just drop us a message and we'll hook you up. If you play using Oculus Rift or Vive, just stick to the public version.

We don't want to bore you to death with more details. And there's a ton of work that needs to be done before we launch the Kickstarter and Steam pages. So, just dive in and see all the great improvements for yourselves.

Have fun, kiddos! Here's the changelog:

Graphics 

• New stylized materials
• Improved outlines
• New transition screens
• Updated Main Menu
• Completely overhauled in-game menus
• New nighttime scene
• New Ball types
• Added trees
• Added fire hydrants
• Added new mailbox post
• Improved background kid
• Added anti-aliasing settings

Audio

• Switched to Google Resonance Audio for spatialization
• Added sound effects for cone/obstacle hits
• Adjusted Bomb timer attenuation distance

Gameplay Adjustments

• Can now pause game
• Adjusted bounciness
• Player now always faces correct direction when level loads
• Fully ambidextrous menus (use both hands at the same time)

Bug Fixes

• Sunlight now respects shadows on/off
• Score displays proper value at game start
• Fixed thumbstick deadzone on scroll wheel input in menus
• Fixed visual settings not saving between levels
• Various minor bug fixes

Other

• Performance improvements
• Enabled Instanced Stereo Rendering
• Secret Code changed
• Migrated to UE4.21
• Improved Debug Tools
• Added Oculus Dash support
• Added Windows Mixed Reality Support (experimental)