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.

The "Thank You" Section

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.

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:

===== NEW =====

• The Freedraw Canvas now has a song to draw along to. I plan on adding more on the future, but in the meantime I hope you enjoy this one!
• If you don't enjoy it, an option has been added to turn off music in the Freedraw Mode.
• Desktop Mode has been added to the Freedraw Canvas mode. This is enabled by default, but you can turn it off if you like.
• This mode allows you to use traditional keyboard controls like Ctrl+Z and enables many other keyboard shortcuts while drawing in Freedraw mode. This should help people who are drawing with the mouse/keyboard/tablet to draw faster and more effectively.
• Unfortunately, at this time the desktop shortcuts are hard coded and cannot be remapped. Remapping will still apply in the Freedraw menu. Gamepads will still be remapped. The rest of the game is not affected.
• Added an auto-adjust feature to the game which will attempt to automatically disable video settings that can make the game run slow if the game isn't running at 60fps. You can toggle this off if you like.
• Added a "Fast Render" mode which disables all visual effects. Use this as a last resort if nothing else makes the game run well.
• The health meter now flashes when you're at low health.
• A debug function has been added which reloads language files at runtime, to assist with fan translations.
• There is now also a "missing language keys" function to say if any new keys have been added. This can NOT tell you if keys have been updated, only if they've been added.

===== CHANGED =====

• Slightly increased the threshold at which the game will consider you to be "low health."
• Added a separate versioning check for the retail (early access) version, because I won't be updating the demo forever.
• Updated the support email to be the new one with cosmogelica.com as the domain name.
• Re-ordered the Freedraw Menus some to make room for the Desktop Mode options and menus.

===== BUG FIXES =====

• Fixed a bug where having True Shmup mode enabled would make it so you couldn't fire gel during the tutorial.
• Fixed a bug where the Player Fuel variable could be converted into an array during 2 Player, causing the game to crash.
• Fixed a bug where successfully beating 20 phase mode would cause a double call out over the radio.
• Fixed a bug with the meteor depth sorting between low-res and hi-res modes.
• Fixed a bug where the Multi-Shooter could spawn a bit too low on the playfield, making it impossible to attack.
• Fixed a bug where the debug overlay top bar would stay regardless, by virtue of the fact that Gamemaker fixed it so I can fix it too.
• Fixed transparency issues with some background elements in certain menus.
• Fixed a bug where the current high score would show as 0 in Balloon Mode's victory screen if you didn't beat it.

===== KNOWN BUGS =====

• There's a bug with async sprite loading in Gamemaker currently where it cuts off the rightmost and bottommost pixels of sprites loaded asynchronously, which affects custom borders. This will have to be fixed by Gamemaker.

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.)