Hello, dear Fractal Space players!

We have worked on a new 0.596 update for Fractal Space on Steam, in order to fix most of the remaining bugs reported by players in 0.595!

Now that this update is live, the Demos will be updated on both Steam & Xbox within the next 7 days, except if players find new major bugs in Chapter 0 or Chapter 1 in New Game. We’ll also finally be sending more keys to players that were still waiting for them!

Various balancing changes and dangerous changes were made, so it’s a good idea to re-test a few core mechanics that we’ll discuss here.

If you encounter a major blocking bug that prevents you from finishing the game, please report in-game with ALT+B 😉

Thank you for testing and reporting bugs!

Since the Demos will be updated soon to 0.596, if you don’t have much time to test, you may focus on New Game only, in Chapter 0 & Chapter 1, as the Demo content is limited to this.

NEW

Let’s talk about a few new additions in this update.

ACHIEVEMENTS

Implemented new Achievements for:

• Death by electrified water
• Destroy first Camera
• Destroy 10 different Cameras
• Stun first Camera
• Stun 10 different Cameras
• Enable Zero-Gravity the first time

Some of these new achievements are currently missing icons, but that’s OK for now 😉

CHAPTER 0

First, the Red Platform now uses an animated red volumetric light beam, and is now taller than before. It also now gradually disappears (intended) when the box is placed:

Then, a few additional improvements:

• The word “presents” is now more readable in the introduction sequence

• Fixed some potential softlocks in which the player could get stuck in corners. Some might still remain.

PRESSURE | Plates

Pressure Plates have been reworked in order to make them more accurate:

• The slightly higher edges are now taken into account in the Cube’s collisions, and they now need to be placed more to the center to be considered valid:

• They remain tolerant, as to not be frustrating, but a small part on the corner, or too much on the outside, will no longer activate it:

This change, behind the scenes, is a big change: as a precaution, all pressure plates should be tested after this change.

JUMP | Improvements

The game already has many systems to ensure jumps are reactive and never ignored (height tolerances, jumps from ledges have tolerance, higher jumps when moving upwards on slopes, etc).

However, it was still possible to have sometimes a few failed jumps, especially lower framerates and in certain (quite rare) situations.

This is why a new security system has been added that could be the root cause of some ignored jumps:

When the player requests a jump up to 0.15s too early (while still slightly in air, just before actually touching the ground), the game will now still jump as soon as the character touches the ground.

This should fix all the remaining “why didn’t I jump when I asked for it?” situations – except, obviously, if you miscalculate your timing and request to jump significantly too early (0.15s timing precision required from the player, instead of previously frame-perfect).

Finally, the exploit that allowed you to perform an additional jump while airborne, with a specific timing of Quick Save / Quick Load should now also be fixed.

Cube Surfing | Prop Flying

The technique is most probably still possible, but made much harder to achieve with Power Cores and Cubes.

You’ll be allowed to jump from an airborne Cube / Power Core only once in most cases, as it will be pushed downwards properly (this was added 0.594, but wasn’t always working as expected).

They now act as a single-use temporary platform instead of a chain-cube-surfing exploit.

In addition, simply walking on Cubes in-air by repeatedly dropping and grabbing it should be much harder to exploit, as it should now try to prevent you from doing so.

CHANGES

This update includes quite a few notable changes that should be tested too:

• Chapter 0: Show HUD no longer plays any sound (whether the first Objective will be shown or not). This is now intended.

• Chapter 0: Current upgrades display on Pause Menu is now fully hidden in Chapter 0, even if you have started from Chapters page – they should remain hidden in that sequence. They will be restored when you reach Chapter 1.

• Chapter 1: Added a new Checkpoint, when the first Taser Battery is retrieved in the Lockdown room. If you die before retrieving it, it is intended and normal that you see the “wall explosion” moment again. This new Checkpoint is to be tested:

• Chapter 3: Musical hacking minigame was now too hard for some players, as new players are unable to get past it and report “bugs”. This puzzle is now reverted back to the previous logic, that fails upon any mistakes in the code.
  Later on, when the difficulty system will be implemented, the 0.595 logic for this puzzle (fail only on first mistake), will be used when Puzzles Difficulty is set to Hard.

• Chapter 4: Flames corridor before Processing Center: Now damages significantly more, as it should not be survived in most cases of NG. You’ll now need at least 1 Healthpack in your Backpack + Sprint + Dodge + Speed Level 3 + Health Level 3 to survive it consistently. Missing any of the last 2 mentioned upgrades is still theoretically possible (especially at low framerate), but harder to do consistently (not recommended), and will still require you to Sprint + Dodge.

• Power Cores: Fixed inaccurate collisions between Power Cores and pillars in the game. They should now be greatly improved, and collide properly with walls and pillars. This is a dangerous change, though – Power Cores functionality should be tested:

• Switches: Reduced manual interaction range slightly, for all switches in the game. To be tested if any issues occur in specific cases.

• Mines: It was possible to stand on Mines. It’s no longer possible – they will now explode.

• Recordings: Listening to a Recording from the Recordings page will now pause the Menu or Chapter music, and resume it correctly when finished.

LEVEL FIXES

In addition to the in-game reported bugs, here are are a few level fixes:

• Chapter 2: Fixed visual black shadow bug on an Exit vent.

• Chapter 4: Fixed Solar Panels distorted texture. These Solar Panels will be reworked in the future to look better. This is just a temporary fix.

• Chapter 4: Fixed various Power Core related softlocks and issues with being able to pick them up from too far away

BUG FIXES

Most of the in-game reported bugs have been fixed, and some suggestions have been implemented:

• Taser: Fixed a case that would result in reloading an invisible Taser, if you were to reload after / while using Scope.

• Taser: Pausing the game while holding the Aim button, would remove the Taser, and quickly show it again upon resume.

• Taser: Pausing the game while Hyper-Shot is currently charging, would continue the charging animation while paused.

• Taser: Pausing the game while charging Hyper-Shot would reset the Hyper-Shot charging to zero.

• Taser: Fixed a case that would cause Module Management to not work properly after using Scope.

• Laser-Equipped Cameras: Depending on your framerate, many hits from the shooting cameras would not properly register. This has been significantly improved, and you should now be more accurately damaged when hit by the Camera’s shots.

• Breakable Walls: Aiming exactly between small bricks of the wall, would not register the shot to destroy it. In addition, the screen will no longer show it’s a breakable wall, once it has been damaged at least once. In addition, remaining flying wall pieces should now happen much less frequently than before.

• Zero-Gravity: Fixed a bug that could cause indefinitely keeping “upwards gravity”, if a Quick Load occurred to load a Zero-G state save, while the game was already transitioning from Normal Gravity to Zero-Gravity. To be tested if this doesn’t provoke new bugs with checkpoints in Zero-G, etc.

• Quick Load: Fixed an exploit that could allow to spam Jump during Quick Load, and resulting in an additional (illegal) jump even while in the air. To be tested, and to verify if this doesn’t introduce new bugs with Quick Load in normal conditions.

• Game Saves: Switching from a Chapter to another would sometimes keep previous run’s quick save and checkpoint autosaves. All these cases should be fixed, and saved data should be cleared properly, thus preventing various exploits.

• Taser Batteries: Saving the game after picking up a Taser Battery, then exiting to main menu, and resuming again, would result in the Taser Battery being respawned and present instantly. It will now correctly not be present, and will only respawn after the intended delay.

• Reported Bugs: Hundreds more in-game reported bugs and suggestions implemented.

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

Enjoyed the Demo? Request a Steam Key to play Fractal Space up to Chapter 4 now!