Posted September 08, 2023 by Jess
Howdy! Coming at you today with a new patch for Cosmogelica that fixes some of the bugs people found, as well as makes improvements and adds stuff that I couldn't add in time for SAGE 2023.
Before that though, I'd like to take this moment to thank everyone who's been supporting me on Patreon, as well as the people who believed in me and Cosmogelica enough to buy the Early Access version! You guys are the best, and the more money you throw my way, the more I'll be able to put into Cosmogelica to make it the best it can be (and faster, too!)
Before release, I was worried about how well it would resonate with people. Shmups are a niche enough genre, and I was worried my approach of "space action adventure game" would fall flat with people. However, bullet hell fans, casual shmup players, and even non-shmup players have come together to say "what you're making here is pretty cool" and it resonates with all of them. This is the best possible outcome, I think!
The Demo version of Cosmogelica will stay up for a while more and will continue to be updated until it no longer makes sense to do so. I have no plans on taking it down, but I can't promise it'll be up forever. This wont be for at least a month or so though, so you've got time to check it out if you haven't yet. For Early Access people, generally I push major builds every 1-2 months, so please look forward to a larger build with new content to check out in October or November! Prepping for SAGE has been a lot of work, so I want to take a little bit of a break (Also, I need to catch up on commissions, so) but I will be back at that space action soon.
Thanks to everyone's feedback about the game and greatly enjoying it, I feel confident with proceeding with making the rest of the game, which means soon I should have more to share about the other characters I have in mind and the overall story of the game as I flesh it out more. I have a lot of different stuff in mind for stages, enemies, bosses, and the like. Please look forward to it! Early Access and Patrons will be the first ones to experience the new content when it arrives.
Since the game is purchasable now, I also want to start doing blog posts talking about what I've been doing in it, what I've been working on, etc. I can't guarantee I will do it with any regularity, but I do want to do stuff besides just the patch notes.
As mentioned above, I've taken this time to put in stuff I wasn't able to in time for the SAGE demo. This includes the Desktop Mode of the Freedraw Canvas, which allows you to use the usual shortcuts like Ctrl+Z etc. Freedraw Canvas now also has a song! I'll be making more in the future, but I think I've made something really catchy for now that should inspire you to draw.
I also found out that some people had performance issues playing Cosmogelica? I'm not sure how, but in order to help I added a system similar to Shield Cat where the game will attempt to step down graphics in order to achieve performance. With this system in place, I was able to get 1080p 60fps out of my cheap Chromebook with its Intel Celeron N2840 CPU and 2GB of ram, so if people enable the "Fast Render" mode and still can't run it, well, I don't know what to tell you haha
Here are the full patch notes:
Thank you so much again to my supporters and everyone who's gotten the Early Access version. If you played the demo and haven't checked out that version yet, it's only $5 US, and it helps me out a lot. See you guys soon!
PS: I won't be updating the SFGHQ downloads of Cosmogelica, so all future downloads of the game will happen on itch (for now, wink.)