Etherjump Patch Notes — 8/9/2022
Originally Published 8/9/2022 on the Etherjump Discord
Our team is committed to creating the most enjoyable player experience in Web3 gaming!
We’re here today to bring another round of updates for Etherjump. We really wanted to prioritize the little things in this update, that all add up together to make the entire Etherjump experience that much more enjoyable, including:
🖥️Game Engine Optimization
For the game engine, we optimized the engine so that not as many sprites and tiles need to be loaded in at once What this means for you is that the game will run faster, smoother, and more consistent!
🪟Chunking
A big area of optimizations came from the concept of “chunking”
Chunking works similarly to the way it’s implemented within the game itself. Instead of loading in the entire map at once, only a small portion near viewable areas of the map are rendered.
This will greatly increase the performance of larger plots, which creates a much smoother experience, as seen on the right.
🪟Memory Leak Fixes
There was a problem going around that caused the game to incorrectly save tiles in memory from previous game sessions, which would cause the game to lag more over time.
This has now been fixed, and the game can now run for much longer without experiencing a slowdown.
On the right is a visual indicator of a level that was running before optimizations and then afterward
We hope that this results in a smoother and more enjoyable experience, especially for those who like to speedrun, and for longer levels that might take a long time and many tries to complete!
Overall, with all of these changes, the game can see up to an 80% increase in performance as compared to pre-optimization, but that’s not the only area that we’ve improved.
🪟Plot Loading
For those of you with lots of plots, we’ve drastically decreased the time it takes for all of your plots to be loaded.
Not much else to say, but take a look!
In the future, we plan to further improve plot selection with more options such as filtering, sort by, and quick selection of your most commonly used plots!
🏗️ Level Builder Changes
Building large level is now much smoother and along with instant loading of your plots in your wallet, we have implemented a slew of quality of life changes such as hotkeys, and new brush sizes, to make the building experience a lot easier!
🏗️Brush Sizes
We’ve introduced brush sizes for the draw and erase modes, making it much easier to place and erase tiles en masse, allowing builders to create large levels with ease.
The brush sizes range from 1 to 5, and only apply to blocks that:
Have a tile dimension of 1x1
Are not an enemy or player
We hope that this will alleviate the pain of having to draw or erase large portions of a scene slowly.
🏗️ Hotkeys
We’d like to introduce the highly requested feature of hotkeys!
You can now build your level much faster by having your mouse always focused on drawing, since you can now quickly select any tool with just your keyboard!
To access hotkeys, simply press the corresponding key to the tool that’s needed:
In the future, we plan to introduce more flexibility for what these hotkeys can do!
More tools are coming in the future!
📝New Content
We didn’t want to release an update without adding new content for everyone to play with, so we’re introducing the double jump tile, health boost, and colored blocks. We have also added place-able heart drops, and a double Jump Gem...go see for yourself
📝Double Jump Gem
Introducing the Double Jump Gem! If you time it right, the double jump gem gives you a second jump while in the air! After being used, it has a short cooldown period before it can be used again. Think of it as a platform with no collision! We’re excited to see the creative ideas that stem from this gem!
📝Colored Blocks
This one is for all of you pixel artists out there! It turns out a lot of people like making art on their plots, so we figured that we would enable artists with the medium to build colorful designs! In terms of gameplay, these blocks are no different from normal tiles, but in terms of aesthetics, they allow for a whole new world of creation!
📝Health Boost
Enemies have been able to drop health boost for a while now, but it’s now been added as a dedicated item that can be placed down on a plot!
This will allow creators to have a more precise handle on the level of difficulty that their plot has.
⚖️ Balance Changes
Although we feel that the game is pretty balanced overall, the wizards have been a consistent source of frustration for players.
⚖️Wizard projectiles now despawn after a certain amount of time:
Ice Wizard projectiles now despawn after 1.5 seconds
Fire Wizard projectiles now despawn after 2 seconds
In addition, Ice Wizard projectiles are now 20% slower. This will help players dodge consecutive projectiles while also retaining the strength of the ice projectile.
We kept the balance changes relatively light this time, but they will continue to be monitored to determine if more changes are needed.
Next Steps 👉
As we always say, Etherjump is not going anywhere! We’re here to build for the future, and we want to be as communicative as possible to everyone as to what our future plans are.
In addition to the features announced in our previous update post, we are now actively working on deeper integration with our partners! In the coming weeks, our partners and their holders will start to gain access to exclusive items that are available to use in the Level Builder. (Custom Enemies, Pets, etc.) We'll provide more information the closer we get to the release of this feature.
If you’re not a holder, don’t worry! We will continue to develop features for the base game as we have been.
In this update, we aimed to focus on quality of life improvements that overall increase the ability for players to enjoy the game. From here on out, expect more in-game content!
We've also packed a lot into this update, so check out all the new details in our latest patch notes: https://etherjump.notion.site/Etherjump-Patch-Notes-8-09-22-743c200c8ef146b896ae99d2a6e9fa23
Thank you everyone for your your patience and continued support - Etherjump would not be here today without each and every one of you!
The changes are now live on OpenSea, play.etherjump.game, and build.etherjump.game! Good luck and have fun! 🥳