Hey Guys,

New Beta Build is now live! Added some new mechanics and more vaults, as well as an overhaul on the ledge detection which is now far more optimised. This should especially eliminate those frame drops in certain areas of the level. Thank you all for reporting the crashes you're having, most seem to be GPU and DX12 crashes so we're working on solutions for them asap.

In regards to our scheduled April updates, we've been taking a step back from adding too many new modes, features etc to focus on the game vision, features and player experience and are working on a couple things to convey that vision to you guys, including a comprehensive roadmap for the game, so you guys can see where our focus is and help guide us there too. It did mean that features like the character customisation didn't come out in time, as we decided to prioritise optimisations and core gameplay mechanics and stability over cosmetic stuff. Apologies for any disappointment there but we're grinding away to get those bits ready with the new menu for you guys!

We're also doing quite a big refactor of the input system and rewriting a lot of the code. As cumbersome as this is, it will definitely be worth it in the long run and the new system is far more manageable with less edge cases, which will allow us to easily implement key rebinding as well.

In the meantime, Hopefully this update has enough new mechanics and animations to keep you guys finding new ways to explore the world.

The beta branch won't work in multiplayer with those on the default branch (wont see any of the lobbies and vice versa), so make sure to switch to the correct branch to play with friends on one or the other!

BETA PATCH NOTES

[NEW] Added wall sliding! Hold Grab to when approaching a flat wall whilst falling to wallslide.

[NEW] Added wall 180s! While wall sliding, point your move input behind the character in the direction you want to launch in and use jump to charge and jump away from the wall. Exciting to see how you guys make use of this mechanic.

[NEW] Added Tic Tac Variants! Holding Just Left Trigger/Right mouse Button) and Jumping will do a one foot tic tac, and holding both triggers/ both mouse buttons will do a sort of wall 180 tic tac variant. You can now actually 180 your way up chimneys, Tim Champion style.

[NEW] Added Kong Front Vault. Hold Vault (Left Trigger) and Flick modifier (Right Bumper) and flick Up on the Right Thumb Stick to Perform a Kong Front. You can do this over, off, onto (KF's onto will do a physics launched KF until we capture the correct animation for this!). Think this is my favourite vault now. There's some issues doing this with K+M that we're aware of so will let you guys know when that's fixed!

[NEW] Added Kong Gainer. Hold Vault (Left Trigger) and Flick modifier (Right Bumper) and flick Down on the Right Thumb Stick to Perform a Kong Gainer. This currently only works when vaulting over something as we don't have the coverage for the other cases yet, but will add them after our next mocap session! Also some issues with this on K+M.

[NEW] Slow motion is back! Press Right Thumb stick / Ctrl Key to trigger slow motion. We will have a slider for the slow motion speed in a coming update. Slow motion is also disabled in multiplayer.

[CHANGE] Tic Tacs now no longer require a double tap but are instead a hold and release like the step jump. Let us know how this feels. This changed so there was less difficulty timing the power and more consistency across powered jump types. It also makes for chaining wall 180s and gauging power a lot more consistent.

[CHANGE] Precision Mode toggle is now on a long press/hold on the Left thumb stick / Shift Key. Sprint remains a quick press. Keen to get you guys feedback on this change! It allows for Slow motion on the right thumb stick and eventually camera change on long press right thumb stick, but definitely want to hear everyone's thoughts on this!

[OPTIMSATION] Ledge detection refactor. Significantly optimised which has also reduced frame spikes in dense areas of the map.

[OPTIMISATION] Physics and Collision optimisation. Some mesh and physics collision optimisations to give better more stable performance throughout the level.

[OPTIMISATION] Host of other key optimisations in terms of level, character and game thread logic.

[IMPROVEMENT] Improved distance matching on jumps. you can now jump onto and over objects much closer (and even when colliding).

[IMPROVEMENT] Reduced over wall width threshold. Should give more stable context detection for thicker walls.

[LEVEL] Small changes and tweaks to the level, adjusting gaps and unusable areas.

[FIX] Pausing in multiplayer no longer pauses for everyone in lobby

[FIX] Some pose matching and attack crash fixes

[FIX] Collision issues when grabbing

[FIX] Clamped sliding speed and slide jump velocity to avoid those crazy power jumps

[FIX] No more jittery feet when falling at higher velocities

[FIX] Host of other bug fixes. As usual any new ones and existing ones please report in the discord (link below)

Thanks again for the feedback and support, keep it coming!
Team SPP