Gravity Circuit update out now (version 1.2.0), patch notes
A new version 1.2.0 update is now available for Gravity Circuit – and it technically includes three updates in one.
The main highlight this time around is support for new Game Modifiers. Players can experience the title in different ways such as more challenge in levels, double damage from hazards, and more. Also included are quality of life additions and bug fixes.
Here’s the full rundown:
Gravity Circuit update version 1.2.0 patch notes
Ver. 1.2.0
WHAT’S NEW?!Version 1.2.0 introduces new Game Modifiers, that allow you to spice up the game, and provide additional challenge! When starting a new save (or New Game+), after choosing which difficulty mode you want to play on, you can choose up to five modifiers to enable. These modifiers were made based on some player suggestions or feedback.The modifiers are as follows:
Game Modifiers become available upon completing the game on any difficulty, or by inputting the following code on File Select screen: LEFT, LEFT, RIGHT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN, BURST! A legend has it that if you beat the game with any of these modifiers enabled (or when “Everyone is There”), you might even see something a little extra? Only one way to find out! Just make sure Speedrun Mode is disabled!
QUALITY OF LIFE ADDITIONS
- Added a checkpoint menu in the mission select screen. This allows you to warp to a checkpoint in a previously cleared level, as well as toggle any in-level cutscenes to play again (like boss confrontation dialogues). Mission rewards and certain challenges are disabled if this feature is used.
- Added an extra toggle in the game’s settings, which determines if speedrun mode is enabled by default or not when starting a new save file. If the setting is set to “default”, speedrun mode is enabled by default when accessing the file select screen. Otherwise, it’s off. However, even if the setting is set to “off” or “default”, you can manually toggle speedrun mode on/off on the file select screen, like you have been able to do up to this point. The intention is to remove any confusion caused by some players wanting to have the on-screen timer on during normal play (which determined if the speedrun mode was toggled on/off when launching the game).
- Added an additional setting for enabling an aiming arrow that appears around Kai, which can help with aiming the hookshot during platforming sections or similar. There are three different settings for its behavior. The aiming arrow is disabled by default.
- Added a toggle for adjusting double tap tolerance.
- Mission Complete screen now shows the target values for max rank in relevant categories in square brackets (clear time, enemies defeated, damage taken). Rescues, if available for the level, are displayed with the icons as usual.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES/TWEAKS
- Made it possible to cancel to divekick (down+attack while mid-air) from air jab (attack while mid-air).
- Made it possible to gain sprint speed if the run button is held down, or “inverse” run button behavior is in use, when exiting quick warp portals in cyberspace (Warehouse Area).
- Similar to above, certain aerial Armor Paint abilities are refreshed when exiting a quick warp portal.
- If Loadout Swap button is assigned to the same button as Accept or Cancel, the Accept and Cancel buttons override the Loadout Swap button on the pause screen (ex: when exiting out of the pause menu with Cancel, the game won’t do double input by closing the pause menu, and also swapping loadouts).
- Fixed an issue where pressing attack after a wall jump might lock you out, and prevent you from moving back towards the wall. The game was simply treating like you were still in wall jumping state, and as such was applying some forces onto you.
- Fixed an issue where crumbling blocks (Ore Mines) may sometimes block the hookshot from going through them when they’ve been crumbled.
- Retracting metal spike blocks (final level) have had their hittable boxes increased in size, making them easier to clear out.
- Fixed an issue where Kai did not gain sprint speed if he jumps out of a crouch while the run button is held, by releasing the down button roughly on the same frame as the jump input is detected.
BURST TECHNIQUES
- Burst Spark’s hitbox has been increased to hit a larger area. Does damage ticks slightly faster, duration slightly shorter. Essentially you’re stuck in place for a shorter duration (overall duration reduced by ~25 frames, or ~0.42 seconds).
- The support Platform has been buffed. Creates three platforms to cover a wider area, the platforms take a few frames longer to start falling, side platforms do slightly less damage than the main one. You can still perform the original version by holding the Burst button during the startup.
- Cycle Kick can now be cancelled with a jump or hookshot at any point. Can gain sprint speed out of it if run button is held down.
ARMOR PAINTS
- Hot-headed Red Armor Paint’s Float Beam now does its damage ticks faster. How it affects boss invulnerability times has been adjusted.
- Heavy Orange Armor Paint now grants a slight damage boost for hookshot on top of its other effects.
- Scheming Pink Armor Paint can now be set to activate by pressing and holding jump while holding up, or double tapping jump while holding up. The setting can be found in the controls menu. Shop description changes to match the selected setting.
- Fixed an issue where the “powered up” state of certain Burst Techniques (Heavenly Piledrive, Surface Render, Catch Interrupt) were not handled correctly if they whiffed, or Kai got struck by hazards, when using the ability of a certain Armor Paint. A similar fix was applied for Powered Walker’s Self-Destruct ability (Ore Mines).
ENEMIES
- Contact damage has been removed from Flip Panel Turret enemies (City Center).
- Crystal Floater enemies’ contact damage has been removed (Cyberspace).
- Fixed an edge-case game crash involving the Battie enemies. It was unlikely to happen, but there was some potential for it.
- Fixed an issue where the Virus Zombie and Turret Zombie enemies had their usual behavior code running when they were grabbed by the player (normally, any normal behavior is paused on grabbed objects). This led to some weird interactions at times.
BOSSES
- Trace’s (Patch Circuit) Burst Technique can now hit her own minions. This is so to prevent situations where her minions might cause undodgeable damage.
- Fixed an issue with Ray (Optic Circuit), where after a certain action he always jumped towards the wrong direction from what was intended.
- Fixed an issue where Crash (Break Circuit), in rare circumstances, might wind up defeating themselves due to some of the larger falling blocks.
- Fixed a minor visual error where certain bosses’ mugshots in their lifebars got mirrored on the horizontal axis during their Burst Technique activations.
- Fixed Crash’s (Break Circuit) mugshot to have a “weak flinch” animation during his boss fight. He can now properly feel pain.
And a few [SPOILER] worthy changes…
- Fixed a phantom hitbox from one of the later game bosses, where they grabbed an object off of the floor, and threw it. During this throwing animation, the boss would have a hitbox beneath them for one frame, that could hit the player if the boss jumped before the throw.
- Adjusted the clear time goal for the main eight levels from 5min45s to flat 6 minutes for max rank.
- The final level in the game has had its target clear time increased from 6 minutes to 7 minutes for max rank.
- Adjusted the enemies killed goal count from 45 to 40 for the first two of final levels.
- Adjusted certain enemy positions in a couple of levels to make them a bit less messy or rude.
- In the Steelworks level, adjusted geometry to remove a single tile gap that was possible to squeeze into with Support Platform Burst Technique.
- The final level of the game has had its level layouts slightly touched on the blue floor.
- Am I hearing things in Cyberspace (Warehouse Area)?
Note:When playing levels with the Master Levels modifier (or Easy Mode), target clear times are increased by one minute. Playing with Rude Enemies modifier adds another extra minute. This is to account for the more difficult platforming, and giving players more leeway during boss fights if playing with self-imposed minimalist challenge in mind.
GENERAL BUG FIXES
- Fixed Medley’s (Wave Circuit, City Center) concert billboard’s despawn and respawn radiuses, so it doesn’t disappear if you weave back-and-forth between the screens.
- Fixed a minor edge-case oversight in Warehouse Area, where in a certain portion of the level, you weren’t able to drop from a ledge-grab-jab with the ‘up’ button, like you are supposed to. Had to press ‘down’, like you generally have to in all other instances.
- Fixed a little oversight where during Bit’s (Shift Circuit) Burst Technique, if you position yourself in certain ways, one or two of the screen slashes may not render because they’re deemed “off-screen” based on their starting positions.
- Fixed a scenario where if Kai is using a certain Armor Paint to carry an object, and Kai then picks an end-of-level item, releasing the hookshot button to throw the object may softlock the game entirely.
- Fixed an issue where if Hardware Barrier Burst Technique was active at the same time as Emergency Accumulator Booster Chip, taking a hit would trigger both at once.
- Changed the order in which certain damage calculations are applied, to fix an issue with Underflow Guard (Booster Chip). Underflow Guard is supposed to prevent you from going below 1 health if you had 2 or more, but if Function Overload (Burst Technique) is active, the damage becomes fatal anyway (because Function Overload multiplied the incoming damage after Underflow Guard’s reduction by 1.2, and rounded up, meaning at low enough health any damage would bypass Underflow Guard).
- Fixed an oversight where if player took damage from hazards (spikes, lava, crushing), this was not reflected in the damage number reported on the Mission Complete screen.
- Fixed an oversight where when Kai grabs a stunned (gray blinking) enemy he is standing next to, the enemy may become overkilled (red blinking) from the grab action itself. This means that upon throwing the grabbed enemy it would not do any damage to other objects, due to overkilled enemies becoming intangible.
LOCALIZATION
- Fixed one minor color tag issue in some dialogue in Japanese localization.
- Fixed some missing text strings in Chinese (traditional) localization.
- Fixed some text overflow issues in a text box in Chinese localizations.
MISC
- Applied a fix that should prevent any flickering issues while streaming the game through Discord.
- Wrote additional code to better ensure that, if in the event that the file that locally tracks player’s challenges progress (ie. “Pat’s Challenges”) has through whatever means become corrupted, the game treats that as though starting from scratch. This prevents the game from crashing during startup.
- Made the game crash screen a little more readable with a darker blue background, as well as deploying an additional support Pat for your comfort (PC versions only).
- Improved the code efficiency of various objects (ex: gray breakable crates, explosive barrels, goop dispensers, and several others). These changes help with general performance on lower-end hardware.
Ver. 1.2.0a
General fixes and adjustments
- As per a suggestion from a player, if “manual slide” is disabled from game’s control settings (and player has assigned the dedicated slide key), the only way to trigger Blade’s Armor Paint’s air slide is by pressing the dedicated slide key.
- Made all object types (excluding bosses) destruct when Heavenly Piledrive gets interrupted, for example through touching hazards. Previously, this was only limited to certain enemy types (eg. Lava Crawlers in Steelworks). This prevents some weird behavior from certain enemy types.
- Made it so that player needs to take more than 0 damage from any source or hit, before the “perfect” status against a boss is nullified. This is mostly to account for Trace (Patch Circuit), where touching her goop didn’t deal damage, but still registered as a hit that would prevent a perfect boss clear.
Ver. 1.2.0b
Levels
- Fixed some spikes being on the wrong layers in two of the final levels, when Master Levels were enabled. This led to those spikes not having any collision.
- Fixed a camera connection between two screens in Cyberspace (Warehouse Area), which led to players being able to lead the camera to a place where it’s not supposed to go.
- Improved performance of couple of object types in Power Plant. This should make the stage run more smoothly on lower end hardware.
- Warp Portals (the green ones) in Cyberspace (Warehouse Area) now refresh air actions like air slide when exiting them.
Burst Techniques
- Fixed an issue with the aerial version of Flying Strike, where its hitbox may spawn on the “wrong side” if player changes direction during the startup.
- Fixed an issue where Clone Array did not get its duration refreshed if it was already active, and player used a “dumb cancel” (slide on the same frame as the technique activates).
- Changed how Surface Render Burst Technique’s multhit timers work, making it do a bit more damage against bosses.
Misc
- Made hazard damage calculations consistent. When player touched spikes or lava, the game would check if Surge Protector (Booster Chip) was equipped, apply its effect if it was, and then increase damage based on if player had Fading Onyx equipped. However, if player got crushed by a moving object, these two steps were done in the opposite order, which could cause some slight difference. This change makes Surge Protector apply its effect first in both cases, because the spike situation is more common than being crushed.
- Added some safety precautions into the Bestiary screen’s code, if the game’s Linux AppImage is being run through Proton. Specifically, one particular shader seems to not work correctly when the AppImage is running through Proton, leading to a game crash. This fix attempts to pre-empt that particular crash, though it may make the bestiary enemy/character sprites invisible if the issue does occur.
- Fixed an oversight where the description boxes did not update on the equip screen in pause menu, if the loadout swap button was used
- Fixed an issue where grabbing and throwing an icicle (Mountains stage) would break the icicle if you grab and throw it a second time.
- Fixed an issue with doors, where if some upwards vertical velocity pushed you slightly above the door (on Y axis) just as you entered it, the door transition might play out a bit weird. Fixed by forcibly moving Kai down a few pixel units if he was higher than the door upon the door transition starting.
- Fixed a minor issue where data chips may float in place, as opposed to bouncing when they spawn.
- Fixed an issue where a certain boss in the final levels might clip out of bounds, possibly softlocking the fight.
- Fixed an issue where Kai’s palette may appear wrong when he dies under certain circumstances (ex: while frozen, or while Function Overload is active).
The Gravity Circuit version 1.2.0 update is out now. For more on the game, head on over here.
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