082122 Shield Cat Patch (Patreon)

Hey guys! Just wanted to cumulatively update with the various changes I've made since the Shield Cat Demo Beta opened up! I've been doing several builds over the past week or so, and this post just serves to summarize what I've done.

 ===== NEW =====

• The game now has an option to pause automatically when switching to another window. This defaults to off, and can be turned on in the game options.
• The difficulty indicator overlay now shows on the end-demo screen (with all stat modifiers if the game is in Custom mode.)
• The difficulty also shows as part of the end-demo results text.

 ===== IMPROVED =====

• In multiple-choice menu options that you can cycle through using left and right, you may now also click on the arrows with the mouse cursor.
• You may now click and drag on any horizontal slider in the menu to change the value that way.
• Improved the graphics for cat coins in the question prompts.
• Improved various menu graphics.
• Magic Platforms will now have their timers reset when falling into a pit, so you don't have to wait for their timer to be up before trying again.
• An on-screen timer has been added to Hexagon challenges in addition to their existing audio cues, so you can have a better idea of how much time you have.

 ===== CHANGED =====

• The game completion percentage will now be capped at 99.99% if you've gotten everything but haven't actually beaten the demo.
• Adjusted lighting on a few screens.
• Made some adjustments to Julie's boss fight.
• Changed the way the boss health is displayed.
• Lance will now get healed after fighting certain bosses and winning.
• The message about "receiving achievements for the lowest difficulty you play" has been removed, as development has panned out to not really have any difficulty-specific achievements.
• Updated the spiral transition to be much smoother.
• Adjusted some dialogue for clarity.
• Adjusted the timing of some puzzles to ease up the challenge on them.

 ===== BUG FIXES =====

• Removed debug keyboard keys I accidentally left in (you could press 1 2 or 3 to update speedrun events, but now you cant.)
• "Invisible" NPCs such as signs, bookcases, etc will no longer attempt to reposition Lance when he interacts with them, to try to fix bugs where you could use them to get out of bounds.
• Fixed missing quest objectives on the minimap.
• Fixed the new key graphic drawing slightly on top of the number of keys you have on the map screen.
• Fixed a bug where the time would have a leading 0 in the Hours section if the time being shown was less than 10 hours.
• Fixed a bug where map markers could show in places you hadn't visited yet if you zoomed in or out on the map screen.
• Fixed a bug where zooming in and out on the map screen using the mouse wheel would cause the game to make a lot of sounds.
• Fixed a bug where the red gems would sometimes draw shadows when they were over a pit.
• Fixed a bug where some graphics were cut off on the stats screen.
• Fixed some logic bugs in Julie's battle routine.
• Small dialogue fixes.
• Fixed a bug where the Autumn Grove boss would show the boss health meter before the battle started.
• Fixed a bug where speedrun events were being set later than they should be.
• Fixed a bug where the itch/SAGE version of the game wouldn't run.
• Fixed a visual bug where particles from destroyed boulders could be locked in place when leaving the screen and still be there a significant amount of time later if you go back there.
• Fixed a bug where the map screen wouldn't draw the map at all if you opened it in specific places.

Thank you!

If you're reading this and don't know about the demo beta, it's going on right now in the game's Discord chat. If you want to help me out to iron out all the kinks before SAGE, please be sure to join in on that! I'm hoping to have the final build done within the next few days, unless nothing else is found.