UPDATE v1.1.0 - RELEASE NOTES

— To all who wander the world of Sol —

Thank you to the many dozens who played the Sol Game Demo over the past few months! It truly has been a joy to get your impressions. Next to all the excitement, the most humbling element is that so many of you took the time to play the demo in the first place. It means the world to me and makes me very excited for whats to come. Big thanks for all the support <3

That being said, there are plenty of things that were either barebones or poorly implemented (my bad). Allow me to deliver a poem containing your guys' most important tidbits...

Too many buttons to hold.

"Put on some pants!", she was told.

Too many voids to fall into.

Cutscenes one can't skip through.

Jumping is a hard pass.

Its UE5 slop that runs like ass.

Trust that this patch addresses all of your pains and wishes. I am sure, that all of these new features and improvements will make the experience even more enjoyable to you all. Thanks again for your support and stay tuned for more updates!

Cheers!

Saving and Loading

• With the latest update, the game automatically stores your progress upon reaching checkpoints in each level.
  
• You can load checkpoints anytime during gameplay via the game's pause menu (press 'ESC' or Options)
• At the start of a play session, the demo will give you the chance to continue a previous save (if there is one). You can also skip loading alltogether and start a new playthrough instead.

Checkpoints & Resets

• Revamped the system that aims to reset the character upon exiting level boundaries. The new system should vastly improve your experience by keeping you on the intended paths more consistently.
• If things happen to break, it should set you back on the rails. If not, press 'ESC' & select 'Load Game'

Character Improvements

• After wandering through the vast openness of the world of Sol, the character has finally found a pair of baggy cargo pants. It was getting cold anyway. So, no more bare butt cheeks! The character also found something else, maybe you can spot it...
• Fixed skinning weights for hood and cape to avoid clipping
• Replaced the 'Release' input trigger with regular behavior. This will trigger jumps right at the press rather than the release of the key.
• Added extra particle effects, a camera animation and sound effects when jumping and landing
• Slightly increased character jump height

Cutscene Improvements

• All major cutscenes are now skippable by holding down SPACE, ENTER, WASD, LMB/RMB or the "Jump"-button on controller
• Added a new cutscene to the 8th level ("Bottom") to help guide the player towards the goal

Animation Improvements

• Increased jump animation blending speed consistencies
• Added jump start offsets to make the character movement and the jump animation match more closely
• Fixed foot weight selection mechanism for jumps starts
• Fixed an issue where landing animations would continue playing when immediately falling after a landing
• Fixed an issue where the character would spin to match the camera rotation right after coming to a stop within controller oriented movement
• Fixed an issue where ground contact particle effects would not spawn at the respective foot bone locations
• Improved foot locking during idle animations to avoid the character sliding along the ground

UI Improvements

• Replaced all "hold"-buttons with regular "click"-buttons
• Added feature to input numbers in open text blocks via virtual keyboard (for controllers)
• Added features to accommodate for dedicated playtests
• Fixed various small focus & cursor bugs/edge-cases
• Minor codebase improvements

Performance Improvements

• Replaced Volumetric Cloud with regular skyboxs for better visuals and performance
• Adjusted "Epic" scalability (Volumetric Fog, Lumen.Screenprobegather)
• Increased rendering performance by tweaking DoF handling
• Slight optimizations of the character mesh by using modular body parts
• Improved particle and fluid dynamics simulation performance
• Improved performance of clothing simulation
• Better performance through minor codebase/asset improvements

Miscellaneous Features & Improvements

• Added small clock in lower right corner that displays time spent in a level
• Increased base horizontal (XY) camera smoothing speed
• Fixed an issue where audio events would persist after getting a power up

— And various other minor fixes and improvements —