Howdy! Coming at you today with a new build of Cosmogelica. Sorry it took a while after Early Access opened up, it wasn't my intention to keep you guys waiting this long, but a lot of stuff happened in October irl that set me back. However, it's here now ready for you! I'll go over some big stuff, and then I'll get to the patch notes.

Thank You Early Access Purchasers

First, I want to thank everyone who purchased the game in Early Access! Your support has helped me to let me know that people like this game and believe in me and want to see it finished, so I thank you for that. If you haven't gotten the game yet, it's $5 US, so not that much really! I do also want to thank everyone who went ahead and added a tip on there, it's very generous of you guys <3

New Character - Carol

This is Carol, the second of 4 planned playable characters. She has higher attack power than Monica, but also has lower defense. You'll be able to tear through enemies easier, but you'll also have to watch your health more closely!

Solitaire Minigame

After the SAGE 2023 demo, I wanted to cool off for a bit and do something fun. So, I put in a solitaire minigame! You'll find it in the Extras menu.

Expanded Playfield and Ground Units

Firstly, I've expanded the horizontal width of the playfield, so it now scrolls left and right some. With this, as well as the new ground units that can spawn in the nearer background, you'll have to be extra careful of your surroundings. Right now there are just ground turrets, but there will be more types of background enemies in the future. The chance and position that background enemies will spawn is random, so it'll stay fresh.

Flamethrower

Exactly what it says on the tin, this new blaster emits a huge wave of flames, with more flames the higher your power level is. It doesn't have a lot of range, but its damage output is increased, so get in there and wreck your enemies - but watch out for their counter attacks!

Game Display Refactoring

I  went through and rewrote/cleaned up a bunch of code related to displaying the game. Now, it should be able to handle any display configuration you throw at it. If you find any more weird bugs, please let me know!

Misc Other Changes

This build also brings changes to how enemies drop coins, the boss sprites, and more. Please check the patch notes for all changes.

This is just a brief recap of what I've talked about here and here, so you can read about it all in more details there if you like, or if you own the game, you can check them out for yourself!

Patch Notes

Alright, it's time for a detailed breakdown of what's new in this build:

===== IMPORTANT =====

• These changes only apply to the paid version of the game. The SAGE 2023 demo is no longer being updated, and will soon be removed. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do!

===== NEW =====

• You can now play as Carol! She has higher attack power, but also lower defense when compared to Monica.
• Added the Flamethrower blaster type. It has a short range, but is more powerful!
• Added a "Snow Gel." It's similar to the Barrier Gel, but any enemies or allies that pass through it will cause it to melt.
• Added a Solitaire minigame. You can find it on the title screen under Extras->Solitaire.
• You can now click with the mouse anywhere on the game screen to advance the intro splashes, as well as make the menu appear on the title screen.
• Included some notes in the language folder because people seem to be interested in making fan translations, so the notes should help.
• Added a setting to stretch the game to fit the display and completely ignore aspect ratio. This should hopefully help for CRTs, but will also allow you to play the game in 4:3 and stretch it to 16:9, if you're into that sort of thing.
• There are now ground units! For now, there's just the turrets, but there will be more as time goes on.

===== IMPROVED =====

• You can now move left and right, and the screen will move with you. This adds more movement options, while also increasing the strategy involved.
• I'm sure this will cause a bunch of bugs. I caught a ton of them but there may still be some in there. Let me know if you see anything offset weirdly.
• Refactored the code that draws the screen. Hopefully this will address all the weird edge cases, though it'll probably introduce new edge cases.
• Some settings (mainly video settings) now have a mini menu that opens and shows you all options, and updates the settings once you pick one. This is an improvement over the old "press left or right to change settings instantly" system and should make it easier to change settings around without doing it accidentally.
• Added a couple new expressions to the mask boss.
• Made some improvements to the initial loading routine.
• Added a glow to the flames in the flammable gel, as well as redid their sprites to not be ones I did in like 3 minutes to test it out haha.
• Made some improvements with the drawing of 3D objects.
• The coin counter will now gradually change to the new value, rather than just changing immediately to it.
• The missile counter will also do the same thing whenever you pick up missiles.

===== CHANGED =====

• When defeating enemies, the defeating player will now get coins added automatically to their total. In addition, the enemy will drop more coins. However, these will not be attracted to you - you have to pick them up yourself.
• I did a small refactor on how the boss collision + transitions between parts of the boss fight work. Seems to work fine for me, but you never know with these things.
• Changed how fadeouts work between screen transitions (and also fixed an animation bug associated with it.)
• Updated the tilesets to make them feel less flat.
• Added some depth sorting for enemies based on how far they are from the top of the screen. This shouldn't interfere with the player object, and players should always be on top of enemy sprites, followed by bullets being on top of player sprites. If you see any issues, let me know!
• Cleaned up some unused sprites, and re-organized/renamed sprites. I'm only mentioning it here because you never know if one of them was actually used somewhere in some obscure spot of the game, so it may crash if that's the case.
• Transition times between phases that aren't multiples of 10 have been reduced and the scroll has been removed. This allows the game to flow faster.
• The playfield will now scroll faster depending on how high the current difficulty is.
• The Story Mode option has been removed for now, as per the post about rescoping Cosmogelica. It may come back at a later date.

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

• Mouse mapping should now be fixed across all screen configurations as a result of the screen draw refactor (I also refactored the mouse code too.)
• Fixed a bug where using the debug function to change the game speed would invoke the "low performance auto adjustment" function.
• Fixed a bug where the window cursor might not show the "resize" cursor on the window edge, implying that you can't resize it (you can, I was just being too aggressive in updating the cursor.)
• Fixed a bug where notifications would draw under the boss healthbar and therefore be obscured.
• Fixed a bug where the Mask Boss' expression wouldn't change when it got hit enough to move to the next attack patterns.
• Fixed a bug where the initial phase always had a scrolling speed of 0.2, followed by a scrolling speed of 0.4 on subsequent phases.
• Fixed that the boss gave no more coins than a regular enemy would.
• Fixed an oversight where only the player that dealth the final blow to a boss would get coins for it. Now, both players will get coins for defeating the boss, unless one player is out of chances.

===== 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

Thank you to the following supporters, as well as everyone who's been sending me money either via Kofi or by purchasing the game. You guys are helping to make this thing real

11Natrium, Shadow8t4, Alicia Goranson, Carlis A. Moore., Anteater, Arron Savage, AshiPaws, Boozel, Brandt Howard, Spyduck, Spyduck, Caliburn Absolute, Cherry, Circlingnugget, Claire Eckelman, Colonel Sandwich, Judah the Cookie Dragon, Daniel Rotwind, Darkonius Mavakar, DimSumthing, DisQorded, Dizmus, DoricDream, EZGames69, Cloud Hop, EveryZig314, Fábio Fontes, Fao, FaultBat, Flake, Flaki, FoxyDude, Galuade, Gri, GloopQueen, Goronhead, Goupilleau, Gray Bell, Greuppe, Hazel Stagner, Tigersonalex, Jack O'Connor, Jammy, Jo Polaris, Joanna Jones, Jyrki, Kabit, Kaylex Deer, Keyes, Hulex Fox, Kirbizard, Krazinsky, Kulkart, Trash, Legiayayana, Lorxus, Luka 'Lumia', Lulla, Luna Moona the Little Kahuna, Maniko, phantomsqueaks, Mercurial, Mark Cope, Marlyn, Maxine Red, Mello the Ferret, Little Egg Basket, Micky 'Leviathan' W., Midori, Axel Husky, NovaSquirrel, Nuck, Okesska, Piper Malone, Raegal Boggart, RawrParty, Rhaen, Vinyl, Roger Tyranny, Ryunohito, RAVE_R0Ak, Cam D'Arcy, Saxxon Fox, Scylla-Leeezard, Ansel Geisel, Sharb, Some Egrets, Sqx. Flann, Stitch The626th, Swirlate, Tarocco, Touku, Vectrobe, Vectrobe, Webster Leone, William 'Kenku' Swiftfoot, darkwitchclaire, green, caseJackal, indrora, meerm, megaRammy, nickisdoge, raine, rainedoe, Foxxhoria, ubuntor, sol

Because of the changes I've made, I'm sure there will be many bugs, so I'll probably be seeing you guys soon! If not, hopefully it won't be too long before the next update.

Thank you for checking out and supporting Cosmogelica <3