SMT May Progress Update (+ Important Notice Please Read!!)
Hi! It's now been a month since the latest update, and I'd like to let you all know how things are coming along, what's in progress, what's planned, and get your opinion on what should come next!
IMPORTANT
it seems several people have had issues with SMT v0.3.6 not running. It seems that the issue stems from out of date packages on the system, so if you are having this issue please make sure to update VC Redist from here: https://aka.ms/vc14/vc_redist.x64.exe. if you need further support please join the discord: https://discord.gg/pGpTqCkQMC, there's a good chance you'll find the solution to your problem already in the troubleshooting channel, and if not there are people who can help you to figure it out.
Now just a quick notice, SMT v0.3.6 was a huge update that fixed and reworked several core parts of the mod, and set the stage for several additions to come, but that unfortunately meant it took significantly longer to release than originally intended. In the interest of that not happening again, going forward updates are going to be more focused on specific issues or features, which means a smoother development experience for me, and more frequent updates for you.
How are things progressing?
Pretty well! The next update is going to focus on improvements to player animations, particularly traversal, and general refinement of many smaller things rather than big additions. I've also got a couple of the finished fixes ready to show off for you!
Fixed an issue where player positions would not properly sync when performing an air-dodge/web-zip.
Wall running will now play the correct animations for the intro, cycle, and end of the wall run.
I believe proper synchronisation of players is one of the biggest contributors to the mod feeling well polished and high quality, and these two specifically I've personally been annoyed by for a while so I'm happy to finally have them fixed!
What's coming next?
As you know, currently only the host is able to activate their suit power in combat, and when they do some can also incidentally trigger on the other players. I have made some good progress on suit powers, specifically in the dev builds all players can activate suit powers as they wish, but there is still a lot to be done. Most don't sync across clients properly yet, several of them do not appear visually correct for other players, and each suit power must be tested to ensure it functions correctly. Here you can see me as a client using some of the suit powers:
With some work this will likely be the focus for the next big feature update, but it will be a little while before it's done cooking, so until then smaller updates will be prioritised.
I'm currently in the midst of my final exams for this academic year, so until 18th of May my focus is going to be on my remaining coursework, that means mod progress is unfortunately going to be slow for that duration, but will return as my primary focus immediately after! During the downtime I'm going to be using what time I have to plan out the next steps for the mod, so I'd love to hear from you all exactly how you feel about the mod in its current state, what you want to see added, how you think it could be improved, etc. Your input is extremely important for me to know what people actually want out of the project, rather than just guessing and working on whatever I personally feel like implementing at the time. So please do comment here, leave your feedback in the discord, let me know what you actually want to see, and I'll prioritise those requests where possible for future updates. :)
Thank you all so much for your continued support on this project, I cannot express how deeply it is appreciated. This mod has come incredibly far from where it started, and has far exceeded the level I had expected it to reach. It is a genuine joy to work on, I can't wait to reveal more of the big features I've got planned in the future!