Changelog: 0.5.0 (11th July 2025)

Changelog: v0.5.0 (11/7/25): The Surprise Double Attack Update

Figured out how to fix the bug that contributed to me shelving the game, so I decided to finish and release the update I was working on at the time.

Major features:

• New character: Anten! Also designed by Spectremint. I should not have gone for a fully drawn, fairly detailed character for my first ever serious attempt at a walk cycle.
• Characters can now require level completions in addition to quaver counts. Unlocking Anten requires you to complete the tutorial. (This should have been incredibly straightforward, but instead gave rise to the second weirdest bug I encountered while making this update - Anten was impossible to unlock, and the way I fixed this was to open and close the menu used to edit his collision mask.)
• File saving added. The game saves automatically each time you enter the level select menu, and your save can be reset in the Settings menu if needed.
• Combined Score added, which combines both rhythm and time.
• Star ranks added to levels. Speedrun, Rhythm Score and Combined Score each have an associated star rank, which can be achieved when finishing a level. There are six main star ranks to aim for - plus a seventh rank if you can beat my best scores... (Good luck with the speedrun times - they're downright diabolical.)
• The original levels 0, 1 and 2 are now levels 0, 2 and 3.
• New level: 1 - "Sky's The Limit"
• New level: 4 - "A Sticky Situation"
• New music track: "Toast in the Machine"
• New music track: "Suspiciously Empty Spaceship"
• Jump-through tiles added, which act as platforms but can be passed through from below.
• Walljump tiles added, which allow the player to jump again. They can be sticky (which slows the player's falling speed) or non-sticky.
• New tiles added: Grass, Decorative Grass, Log, Leaves, Jump-through Leaves, Jump-through Cloud (my personal favourite), Crystal, Dirt, Water (non-background), Splashing Water, darker variants of Wood Planks, Angry Jump-through Cloud, Sticky Wall, Walljump Wall
• New backgrounds added for levels to use in place of the default background.
• Camera Triggers can now use X and Y offsets. These have been added to levels 0, 2 and 3.

Minor features:

• Dashes and jumps now cancel dives. This should make dives much more useful.
• Dashes can now be buffered. While this reduces the need for precision of inputs, I'd say it's overall definitely a good change.
• The player will now be spawned on the ground below the checkpoint instead of on the checkpoint's exact position, if there is ground directly below the checkpoint.
• The rhythm ratings now tell you whether you were too early or too late.
• Different types of input are now weighted differently when calculating Rhythm Score. Left and right presses have 0.5x weight, and dashes have 2x weight.
• Rhythm Score gained from each input now scales quadratically in both directions with accuracy rather than linearly. This means that inputs that are close to perfect will gives scores closer to 100%, and very low scoring inputs will give scores closer to 0%.
• The rhythm ratings now tell you how many points an input was worth, out of the maximum 1, and the rhythm weight of the input.
• Added a bar that shows you how far into the current beat you are to make it easier to time inputs for Rhythm Score. I intend to improve this bar next update, and possibly phase out the beat number marker in favour of it.
• All characters now have a coloured outline around them, which can be enabled and disabled in settings.
• Quavers collected are now displayed on the level end screen.
• Significantly edited the music track "Energised".

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug where buffered jumps did not count for Rhythm Score.
• Fixed a bug which caused jumps on mobile to not count toward Rhythm Score at all for some reason.
• Fixed a bug in which dropping down through a platform did not count for Rhythm Score.
• Fixed a tiny hitbox inconsistency between different characters by scaling the character sprite by the same factor instead of to the same dimensions. (8-bit Staccato previously had a ~3% larger hitbox.)
• Fixed a bug which caused any key pressed during the starting countdown to be executed once the countdown ended, regardless of whether it was still being held or not.
• Fixed a bug which caused a dive to be executed again when releasing the dive button.
• Fixed a bug that caused buffered jumps at the start of a level to use up the character's double jump. (Was likely caused by the previous fix to buffered jumps.)
• Attempted to fix an issue someone else had with the music not playing by attempting to start the music again if it is not already playing, but I don't know if this has worked or not.
• Partially fixed a second hitbox inconsistency where the spike detection hitbox was set to the middle of a character even when its hitbox was off-centre. Character sprites and hitboxes have how been centred to mitigate this.
• The time on the end screen now includes "s" as a unit.
• Fixed a bug which caused a jump to be executed before a dash when buffering both jump and dash at the start of a level (which functionally acts as only a dash), instead of the intended behaviour of a dash followed immediately by a jump.
• Fixed Staccato and 8-bit Staccato's walking animations again (every once in a while the 3rd and 4th frames of the animation switch places on their own and I'm not sure why)
• Fixed a bug which caused the player's save data to gradually grow in size with large numbers of unused array locations each time the data was saved.
• Optimised the game slightly by halving the number of collision checks performed between the player and checkpoints, making various setting buttons only change to the correct state once rather than doing so every frame (same for the scale value of stars on the menu), and various other small tweaks.
• Possibly fixed a bug which caused jumps to not count for Rhythm Score on mobile, and may or may not have also caused jumps to count twice for Rhythm Score on desktop.
• Fixed a bug which caused the player to be able to walljump off every wall an infinite number of times (this singlehandedly set back development 11 months btw. also it was a 5-second fix, turns out I accidentally left in some premade walljump code intended for testing purposes)
• Fixed a bug that allowed the player to collect quavers if they collided with them while dying