Hey, everybody! How's everyone's 2019 going so far? Ours is going pretty rad. So rad, in fact, that we have a pretty substantial update for ya'll today. What I am calling the Crash it Your Wave update (or v.65 if you don't enjoy wordplay or fun) is focused around providing more options to customize your game of WaveCrash!!. And as a reminder, we've got a Discord server going on at discord.gg/VzdrtMU if you want to chat about WaveCrash!! or other games or even things that aren't games. Onto the patch notes!

Features

• Expanded Game Options - We've added a variety of new options to the game rules menu, including options to alter the height and width of the board or change the number of hits required to win the round. This means you can do stuff like this Tiny Hyperspeed Sudden Death Crash:

• Inverted Mode - Technically, this is an extension of the expanded game options mentioned above, but I felt like it was important enough to get its own bullet point. It's been one of the most requested features and although I was always resistant to the idea I figured I might as well try it out as long as I was doing such a dramatic overhaul of the game options system. Inverted mode is an option that can now be toggled in the rules menu. When enabled, it reverses the logic of the goals and scoring hits, meaning each hit pulls the line closer to the attacker and a player's goal line is the one that is closer to them. So instead of gaining territory when you score a hit, you actually lose it making more difficult to close out games.

• Controller Mapping - That's right, controller mapping is back and better than ever! You can now set your custom controls in the options menu and save them to a profile name. Then just select the name in the character select screen to apply your controls. If you've played a Smash Bros game, the whole thing should be very familiar. There is still some more refinement and polish that I want to add to the controller mapping and name selection menus, but it's looking pretty good in the state that it is now.

UI Updates

• Hold Back Buttons - For screens where multiple players have the ability to exit the menu (like the character select and controller mapping screen) I've added buttons that will only exit the menu when the back button is held to prevent situations where folks accidentally return to the main menu with one wrong button press. Once again, this is something that I've borrowed from the Smash Bros UI.
• Special Cost Icon - I've replaced the cost color text in the character select screens with icons of the block shape. This should make it more color blind friendly and generally easier to understand for new players.

Visual Updates

• Sudden Death Effect - One minor detail that was bugging me in WaveCrash!! was the Sudden Death effect. The old one was obtrusive, unclear, and not very hype. This new version addresses all of those issues and does it with style.

• Slow-Mo KO - I'm trying to make the final hit of the match more hype as well and one of the age old ways of doing that is by ramping the game speed down for that final moment. There's more I want to do for this, but it's a step in the right direction.