Devlog 02 - 02-21-2025 Alpha Update & Patch Notes

Update

Happy friday jammers! It's been a while since our last Dissonance Devlog.

We've been hard at work preparing our next major build (which just released yesterday 🎉). We've been posting new builds every week until now but this one is considered our 'alpha' at this stage of Dissonance's development as a student project. 

During this time we have been conducting official playtests.
Of our findings, the most critical were that the tutorial is unclear for most players and many players frequently confused the WASD and arrow key controls. Alongside this, players also expressed that narrative segments were too long, especially compared to gameplay segments.

We have since updated the dialogue system with some new visuals and audio to improve engagement. While we have temporarily made minor changes to the tutorial and controls, our team is still hard at work on designing a developing a new onboarding flow and control scheme that better accommodates players. Additionally, new enemies will be introduced soon along with added level content and balance tweaks to try and improve upon the current game balance.

We are planning on spacing out tutorial and narrative content across multiple additional levels. Hopefully you can look forward to that along with the new music and art we've been preparing in the weeks to come as we make our final preparations for Level Up Showcase 2025. 

Patch Notes

• Added: Credits menu.
• Added: First draft of level 1-2.
  
• Added: Dialogue for level 1-2.
• Added: Wisp enemy.
  
• Added: Character voice sound effects for Fayruz, Niimi, Sonu, and Rocky M. (Now they can make sounds with their mouths instead of just their instruments!)
  
• Added: Tower deployment sound effect.
  
• Added: Options for fullscreen and windowed modes.
  
• Added: Additional character sprites & expressions for Fayruz, Niimi, and Sonu.
  
• Added: Tower projectile sprites.
  
• Added: Dialogue system art.
  
• Added: Title screen button highlight animation.
  
• Added: Title screen to main menu transition animation.
  
• Added: Map and band screen transition animations.
  
• Updated: **Switched WASD and arrow key controls. **
  
• Updated: Tutorial control prompts.
  
• Updated: Dialogue system now uses physical controls instead of interactive UI elements to progress, check, and skip dialogue.
  
• Updated: Sonu's buff now spawns additional projectiles in multiple lanes instead of multiple projectiles in a single lane.
• Updated: Buff prompts now only show before a tower is about to act instead of every beat. 
  
• Updated: Changed restart button visuals to more clearly indicate when it is disabled.
• Updated: Added button select sound effects to new interactive UI elements.
  
• Updated: Removed quit button from the win and lose screens.
  
• Updated: Added new text font, Dogica.
  
• Updated: Updated interactable UI element highlight colour to white when selected and grey when deselected. 
• Updated: Level background music track volumes now scale with the number of each tower present on the stage.
• Updated: Metronome animation.
  
• Updated: Title screen art.
  
• Updated: Settings menu art.
  
• Updated: Band screen art.
  
• Updated: Dialogue system now handles multiple character sprites.
  
• Fixed: Bug where controller inputs could be 'spammed' and register multiple times within a short timeframe.
• Fixed: Bug where movement inputs could be 'spammed' and register multiple times within a single judgement window to generate excess resources.
  
• Fixed: Bug where the band screen buttons would not be set to active and highlighted post-dialogue.
• Fixed: Bug where upon re-entering a level, the win screen would be enabled.
• Fixed: Bug where AoE attacks would leave visible artifacts in the combat scene after ending a level with an AoE attack having occurred.
• Fixed: Menu elements are now anchored and scale properly with the correct aspect ratio and resolution regardless of monitor dimensions.
  
• Fixed: Bug where the clash system stopped working in some builds. (No more pesky enemies phasing through towers and crossing the end at the start of a level)