As always, you can play the latest pre-release in your web browser, give playtesting feedback in Discussions, and join our Discord.
Starting and leaving quests
Previously, all quests were started by talking to an elder, who would teleport you to the start of the quest you chose. This is still how StoryQuests are started, but for LoreQuests, the elder now gives you a hint for where in the world to go to start your next quest. We have expanded Fray's End and added new connecting areas beyond it. As you complete quests, more areas of the game world are unlocked, revealing more quests.
When you abandon a quest midway through, you can now come back to it later. The next time you try to start the same quest, you are given the choice to continue where you left off (the default) or restart from the beginning.
And while we're talking about Fray's End: there is now slightly more daylight and slightly less night-time.
Initial “retelling”/“townie” system
At the end of the tutorial, musician, and void quests, there is a new cutscene where you have the opportunity to retell one aspect of your adventure to a group of villagers. Depending on what aspect of the quest you retell (corresponding to a thread of memory, imagination, or spirit) that villager will appear in a later quest to offer you a different kind of help, such as some game lore (currently placeholder text, “lore lore lore”), opening a new path through the level, or making a challenge slightly easier.
This is a first iteration of this end-of-quest mechanic. More to follow!
Dialogue UI & SFX redesign
We have redesigned how in-game dialogue is shown. The balloon now shows at the bottom of the screen, in a more compact bubble than before. If the player-character is very close to the bottom of the screen, the balloon moves to the top of the screen. There is a clearer indicator of the button to press to advance to the next line of dialogue.
If you press the same “next line” button while dialogue is being typed out, the whole line is now shown immediately. (This action was available before, but on a different key that was not indicated on screen.)
Rather than the “pencil on paper” sound effect that was used before, “pop” sounds are played in time with spoken dialogue being shown, which makes it feel more like natural speech. The pencil sound is still used for narration, with its volume normalized so it should be more audible than before.
Improved game state
We have improved the way that the game stores state between scenes, and introduced a general mechanism for saving facts, either at the level of the current quest, or throughout the game. This is used to remember which buttons you have collected during the Void quest so that they don't reappear when you return to the same scene, and will be used for other collectibles in future.
The pause menu also has placeholder sections for an inventory view and quest log. Watch those spaces!
Touchscreen warning
Threadbare currently requires a keyboard or gamepad; it cannot be played with a touchscreen. A warning is now shown on the title screen if the game believes that only a touchscreen is available. Please report a bug if this warning is shown on a device that has a keyboard or gamepad!
This is our intern @alcole2's first contribution to Threadbare. Welcome!
French translation
Threadbare now has an initial translation of the user interface into French, by new contributor @Max6mm. Bienvenue, et merci !
Health component
New contributor @Litraxx refactored part of the fragile barrel into a reusable health component, which can be used to give other game elements the concept of health. Welcome!
@Litraxx also fixed an annoying bug where StoryWeaver's "running" dust particles would keep being emitted if StoryWeaver was defeated while running. Thank you!
Dynamic input hints
The keyboard inputs are bound to the physical locations of keys on the keyboard, not the labels printed on them, but in previous versions of Threadbare we always showed the symbols printed on those keys in a US English keyboard, regardless of the layout of your keyboard. Now, on desktop builds of the game, the correct symbols are shown for your keyboard. For example, if you are using a French AZERTY keyboard, the Repel action is correctly shown as W, not Z as on a US English keyboard.
(Unfortunately, this does not work when playing the game in a web browser due to platform limitations. US English keyboard symbols will be shown as before.)
Joypad input hints are unchanged, except for a tweak to the icons used for PlayStation keyboards.
It is not currently possible to rebind keyboard or joypad inputs in Threadbare, but the implementation of this change will also make this easier in future.
Quest improvements
Tutorial quest
We've made some small changes to the tutorial quest to better connect it with Fray's End and address some bumps we saw players hit. Thanks to many people at Serious Play in Mainz for their feedback and playtesting time.
Musician quest
The musical-rocks puzzle now has background music which advances as you solve the puzzle. The puzzle has a new solution, and the scene has been polished a little.
The stealth challenge in this quest has improved camera behaviour.
Void quest
The camera now moves more smoothly while grappling, thanks to the Phantom Camera addon that we have added to the project. Unfortunately the camera sometimes moves incorrectly while grappling in some levels; we are still trying to track this bug down.
The void-runner stages now have checkpoints to save you from redoing so much of the challenge if you are caught.
“Placeholder” quest
The two unrelated challenges in this quest, which as its name suggests was a placeholder, have been split into two smaller quests, accessed from the Song Sanctuary after completing the musician quest. The new ink combat mechanics are now briefly explained with introductory dialogue in each round.
After the Tremor
Our intern @felixwalberg, who you may recognise from Nora and the Impossible Homework and Evan and the Search for Champ, has fixed some regressions in the combat level of After the Tremor.
StoryQuest template & setup tool
We have fixed some incorrect y-sorting configuration in the StoryQuest template, and in Stella and the Missing Star which inherited these bugs from the template. Thanks to our Core: Threadbare mentors for reporting the problem!
A bug in the Create StoryQuest from template tool which cause the description to be ignored has also been fixed.
Godot 4.7
Threadbare now requires Godot 4.7.
New Contributors
- @Litraxx made their first contribution in #2370
- @Max6mm made their first contribution in #2408
- @alcole2 made their first contribution in #2448
Full Changelog: v0.2.0...v0.2.1
