Hi all, dear Fractal Space players! We wish you all a Happy New Year 2021!

A new update 0.586 is now live for Windows, Mac & Linux!

Please restart Steam to ensure you get this update now

This update focuses on fixing the various major issues in levels, that could prevent you from completing the Pre-Alpha.

Some of these issues were added with 0.584 changes, and should now be solved.

In addition, there are various level changes to solve some gameplay issues, most important ones are listed below. There is a chance these new changes provoked new bugs – to be tested!

If you encounter a major blocking bug that prevents you from finishing the game, please report as usual, and also send an email to bug@haze.games 😉

IMPORTANT: RESTART CURRENT CHAPTER: If you were playing before this update, please restart current Chapter from the beginning to avoid bugs, prevent softlocks, and ensure the new bugfixes are correctly applied.

NEW

List of additions / new elements in this update:

  • Lighting Shadows: A Unity Engine bug is causing some lights to not create shadows correctly, which is why you may find sometimes “only the vent or door” shadows, but not shadows from the actual walls close to them. This is very hard to fix. After hours of research, delaying this update, I have found a workaround, needs to be applied individually to the lights concerned by this bug. This fix has only been applied to Chapter 1 for now, will apply to next chapters gradually over the next updates. You may report the ones you find which look unusual (like a “flying lonely shadow” of a door or something similar).
  • Chapter 1: Optional Area with “Impressive” Recording: Checkpoint to save progress if you reach this area. To be tested.
  • Ammo Packs: Now slightly smaller visual – same pickup range. Now it has more polygons to look better on “circular” parts. Texture will be improved later on:
  • Screens: They no longer have player collisions. Only a few will keep them (the very large ones that should have some). Please report if you find large ones that should be walkable and that currently aren’t (should be very rare).
  • Controls Remapping: Skip cutscenes control will now use the Show Objectives input to skip cutscenes if remapped. Only with the Keyboard, as with a Gamepad it should always remain on the Y button (intended).
  • Taser Power Upgrade Previous updates added more powerful wall breaking with Taser Power Level 3. Now, from Taser Power Level 2 upgrade, fragile windows will also break much more in 1 single hit.
  • Lasers: Some individual lasers (selectively) will now destroy broken glass shards upon contact (intended), to avoid blocking the beam. Please report any areas where specific lasers should use this new system to destroy glass shards in order to avoid game-breaking situations (like going through lasers you shouldn’t be able to, etc.). These situations will usually be isolated to vertical lasers, placed low on the ground, next to fragile windows.

CHANGES

List of changes to be aware of from this update:

  • Chapter 1: You cannot skip the lasers in the Cameras room without Dodge anymore (intended). Either direct Dodge or Dodging on the (now higher) crates.
  • Taser Toggle ON/OFF: As some players pressed “T” by mistake, and thought it was a bug that the Taser Gun would remain toggled ON, releasing the AIM (HOLD) key will now cancel the Aim (Toggle) in order to hide the Taser to “unblock aiming”.
  • Chapter 1: Room with first 2 pressure plates: reworked to prevent being able to get up onto the pipes and upper vent (upon return) without a Cube in New Game. You can either get past the lasers (with the 2 lower ones now disabled) and use the Cube to get up unharmed, or go through lasers without a cube (on the side of pipes), but you will be damaged (intended to allow it, but not optimal choice). From the “start of the pipes” (higher than the rest), you may stack 2 cubes to directly reach the upper vent from here (intended). You can step on the pipes directly on the right as you enter but won’t be able to get onto the vent:
  • Chapter 1: New Game + shortcut with Dodge through fragile window, upon returning with Taser to get Ammo Pack: Has been changed to ensure that: You cannot go outside through that window without Dodge anymore; recently added Cube Respawn here has now been removed (you can stack cubes and won’t be able to go out in New Game). It’s now higher, to discourage new players from trying to get there. With Dodge, you can still go outside or inside through that fragile window:
  • Chapter 1: “New Orange thingy” dialogue actually refers to the structure on your right as you return to this room (which wasn’t here first time you crossed the Bridge). Moved the Color Pack to be less visible upon return here to avoid confusion with the Color Pack, until this dialogue is changed.
  • Chapter 1: You cannot simply jump over the laser field in the “This is bad” room after the fall in New Game anymore. You’ll need Dodge as intended:

  • Chapter 1: Alternate route: You cannot use only 1 cube anymore on New Game and will require 2 cubes (except if there is still an issue with jump height in some cases or another collision bug here)
  • Chapter 1: You cannot skip the lasers in the Cameras room without Dodge anymore (intended). Either direct Dodge or Dodging on the (now higher) crates.
  • Chapter 4: Second propeller (super-fast one) in the Train area (which requires to remove Power Core) was too easy to get through without removing it, because it was pushing you instead of killing you (this “pushing” is kept and appropriate for other areas). It is now still possible without removing the Power Core, but much harder, using a perfect Dodge, or quick jetpack below before relocation. There will be an achievement here in the future. You could also just crouch below them – no longer possible.
  • Chapter 4: Sun & Solar Panels: The only possible combination should be A-B-E green. Solved multiple cases of other combinations that could work (not intended, and objectives would not accomplish). If you find other combinations that work, please report them 😉
  • Speedrun Timers: Will now correctly be hidden on all Computer Interfaces / Upgrade Terminals, but remain on Keypad and other interfaces (intended).
  • Screens: Small screens (rectangular ones – most of them) will now have borders that don’t look as “stretched” as they used to.

BUG FIXES

List of major bug fixes in this update:

  • Chapter 3: Hyper-Speed could not be acquired
  • Dodge: Dodging upwards from Crouched stance could allow you to enter “small height” areas that you are not meant to.
  • Jump Save Spam: Spamming Quick Save / Quick Load with Jumps could allow multiple jumps. Now solved.
  • Save System: 0.584 introduced a “safer save system” to ensure there were no level bugfixes after saving when many changes are being done simultaneously in the level. Fixed some additional cases of these issues (with buttons triggering Timers and such).
  • Interaction: Could interact with some objects through some types of walls. Should be fixed. In order to solve this, a few changes had to be done to interaction in general – please check interaction for all object types to see if this change didn’t break interaction with some object types. In addition, it was possible to pick up cubes through “vent grids”.
  • Show Objectives: Various bugfixes with the system which sometimes would not show objectives when requested. Fixed cases where health / fuel bar could remain displayed on interfaces if quickly interacted with it after unpausing the game.
  • Objectives: Objective entries could sometimes remain displayed as a line for a few seconds before being shown. Should now be fixed.
  • Objectives: Objective cancelled red square could be displayed at a wrong position in the notification system, overlapping text, etc. Should be fixed.
  • Music: More cases of “Detected” music remaining indefinitely now fixed. Shouldn’t happen anymore, or at least, much less often. If it happens, please report again with steps to reproduce (if you know them).
  • Chapter 1: “This is bad” room Relocation will now be performed before dying from falling into the void
  • Dodge: Fixed exploit that allowed you to Dodge through lasers or others if Dodge was performed immediately after a Quick Load. Dodge is no longer available until the Quick Load is fully completed (around 0.5s).
  • Upgrades: Could sometimes fail to provide non-acquired upgrades when reaching last terminals in the game (and End Game not yet reached)
  • Controls Remapping: Fixed a bug with Aim Toggle being displayed and empty on Gamepad input, which was creating a conflict – should not be here with Gamepad (at least for now, intended not to be).
  • Controls Remapping: A bug caused deleted secondary mappings to cause conflicts on “empty” keys.
  • Localization: Various localization fixes
  • Taser Ammo: The “Energy” text on the Taser screen was not using the correct color and would keep orange / red even when fully charged.
  • Reported Bugs: Fixed many in-game reported bugs

Thank you for testing! We’ll continue working on the various remaining bugs, and re-update over the next few weeks for the next found major bugs 😉

We wish you all have a great year 2021!

Charles & Amy from Haze Games


Haze Games

Game designer & Unity C# Developer at Haze Games, working on Fractal Space.

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