This is the fourth update for Firebat - Revolution. I saw some videos from players on youtube taken with the Nintendo Switch version and I realized some problems. I also bought a Nintendo Switch just to further test the game, and I found a bunch of other problems. You might have a just question: how is it that you have a released game on the Nintendo Switch and you didn't test it? The thing is that the export was handled by a third party. Said third party realized some FPS problems that I addressed, but I only saw the problems on later levels on videos and observed sudden crashes from the 3rd island (the crashes were far and between but still).

Bugfix and accessibility...

One was a bug on the Nintendo Switch, namely, that for some reason none of the videos had music on the map section of the game. On the PC it works just fine, so I do not know what could cause the problem. Combined with the crashes, that seemingly happened when a whole bunch of brick were simultaneously destroyed, or at least cut the music, I deducted that it must be the sound system. You see, in GameMaker there is a sound priority parameter on any played sounds, that I always used: high priority to the music, mid to the important sounds, and low to sounds that can happen a lot. So I implemented a sound limiter, that monitors the same type of sounds as I have an octave of them) and won't let a new one play, if a given maximum would be exceeded. I revisited how the environmental sounds work, optimized it and now the map music plays and the sounds work as intended. I still have to test it on the freshly released version, but my first plays seemed very encouraging.

The other thing I realized, how many players do not read. At all. None of the rhymes are read through and if a player don't read and realize what to do, most of the Fire Pearls are left behind. It seems not even the short text I added to the level icons, after the rhymes were found are enough, nor the flashing of the POIs (the small graphical representations of the levels). So, for the more casual players, I reveal the hidden paths in Normal mode. I left the Hard mode as it is, making it harder to collect the Fire Pearls in that mode. This won't affect the rogue mode, as there are no hidden levels there and the player can collect many Fire Pears.

Implemented a Language Option, having an English and a Hungarian version...

I thought about that for a while, and I implemented one. As this was never planned, the whole project's text system wasn't prepared to handle this, so in the end I offer to choose language right when the game starts and should the player want to change it, have to restart the game. After selecting a language the game will remember the choice.

Future plans for updates...

Should any problems arise, I will address it. With the languages the English and Hungarian are in place, but as for any other languages, this would take some serious help (regarding the rhymes, that should rhyme). And for this, the game should bring in some cash, so the publisher could consider hiring said help.