v0.0.3 (Finsbury Park) Preview builds available

Version 0.0.3 (Finsbury Park) Preview builds are now available for testing! This version includes a lot of improvements from the v0.0.2 release, most notably the reintroduction of NPCs. This means that it is now possible to complete all the currently included levels (in v0.0.2 several levels could not be completed because NPCs were missing).

Major changes include:

• Added NPC support and navigation systems
• Added the inode, a harmless, wandering NPC
• Updated the level selection screen to hopefully make it more obvious what to click on
• Changed the appearance of levels in the level selection screen to be more visually clear on locked/unlocked/completed status, and remove reliance on colour as the primary indicator of status (to avoid issues for the colour-blind).
• Added help windows to the level select and play level scenes to provide some information on what to do
• Allow switching between robots by clicking on the robot in the world, not just on the side panels.

Bugfixes:

• Savegame names can now be single characters rather than being forced to be 3 or more
• Deletion beams will no longer go straight through deleted entities and hit things behind them (at least one level could not be completed because of this bug)
• Clouds have been seen over the gridwastes zone again
• Many fixes to movement systems

It is important to note that this is a preview release: it does lack several key features, and it is likely to have quite a few bugs. Key missing features/known issues are:

• Settings (screen res, vsync, quality, etc) are not implemented.
• Level editor is not implemented
• Several level entities missing
• There are continued issues with manual movement chaining (clicking forward when a robot is already moving forward may not be detected correctly, and the robot may “stutter”). This doesn’t happen with command queues.

If you play this, expect bugs - but if you do play it and have comments or feedback, please tell me in the comments, or on Mastodon, or on Discord.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If the game crashes on startup with the error “LowLevelFatalError [File:….\D3D12Util.cpp] [Line: 991] RayTracingDevice->CreateStateObject(&Desc, IID_PPV_ARGS(Result.GetInitReference())) failed at …\D3D12RayTracing.cpp:663 with error E_INVALIDARG” please delete the following cache file:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\ProjectShinar\Saved\ProjectShinar_PCD3D_SM6.upipelinecache

and replace USERNAME with your Windows username.