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Almost Bug Free

Frame - Portals on Steroids
A downloadable game for Windows

This update is all about bug-fixes and general improvements, so there are no new levels. However, concentrating on fixing things means that I could resolve several issues I was putting off for way too long. 

Here are the bug-fixes:

  • The level transition wasn't 100% seamless. There were several reasons for flickering or wrong clipping in some cases. After reworking parts of the code for the level transitions, these transitions are now, to my very best knowledge, completely seamless. 
  • The blend out effect, which takes place if the view through a frame can't be rendered anymore, wasn't always smooth for size changing frames. Currently I'm not aware of any more unsmooth behavior of the frame rendering. 
  • Objects that were carried by the player didn't move perfectly synchronuous with the player, resulting in a jittery movement of the carried object. Fixed. 

And here are the improvements and new features:

  • I was made aware that the hint machine can demotivate players to come up with the solution yourself. On the one hand I understand the drawback of the tentalizing temptation of being able to be told the solution when your stuck. On the other hand I don't want to remove the hint machine, since, lets be honest, I think most of us looked up a solution at some point. As a middle ground I decided to disincentivize the use of the hint machine. In most levels I moved the hint machine "away from the level", so that they feel less like a part of the level. The solution can now be unlocked only after a waiting period of 8 seconds and there appears a text motivating the player to come up with the solution yourself. These measures are kind of cheap psychological tricks. However, to discipline one self to not look up the solution is a psychological problem, too. So I hope that these changes fulfill their purpose.
  • All levels, which do not contain lessons for essential game mechanics, do have a skip-to-next-level button (though, of course, only a limited number of levels can skipped). This way a player can continue playing when being stuck in a level without using the hint machine. Also, with the skip-level button in place it should be acceptable to remove the unlock-all-levels button, which was intended for beta-versions only, anyway.
  • So far the camera flight during level transitions followed a linear path between start and end point. In some cases this implied that the camera flew straight through level-geometry. With the new implementation the camera now follows a spline curve defined by several supporting points. This way walls can be avoided during level transitions.
  • I removed the timed button (the button that deactivates itself after some time) from the game. As a rule of thumb puzzle-games should only introduce new mechanics/features if they can do something that could not be done with previously introduced methods. Besides the tutorial level, introducing the timed button, there was only one level that actually used those buttons. This alone probably shows that its introduction wasn't necessary.
  • There is now a "field of view" slider in the graphics menu
  • In addition to being told the solution to a level via text the hint machine can now be used to open a video showing the solution. 
  • Added a few occlusion quads to some levels (read the previous log in case you care what I mean by "occlusion quads").

And last but least there is some minor stuff:

  • The mesh in level "Stairway" had a small hole.
  • Added a bit of ceiling to avoid cheese in level "Always Forward"
  • Adjustment to level "Keep Things in Order" to make it faster. 
  • There was some portal-related flickering of a cube in level "Translate to Rotate". Fixed.
Download Frame - Portals on Steroids
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