Hey!
It's been another month and time for an update from the developer - aka me 🤓
Last month I warned you that the Developer News might be a bit "boring", because everything I worked on was internal stuff you couldn't really see. Well - this month is the opposite. A LOT has landed since last time 😄
Almost all of it is on the Experimental version right now, so if you want to try it before everyone else: Right click Fireworks Mania -> Properties -> Game Versions & Betas -> "Experimental". And please tell me what you think - that's the whole point of me pushing it there.
Achievements are in
[p align="start"]From lighting your first firework with the ignite tool, all the way up to blowing up 500 buildings - and a few hidden ones I'm not going to tell you about 🤓[p align="start"]Progress counts from this version and forward, so nobody has a head start. Everyone begins from scratch together, no matter how many hundreds of hours you already have in the game. Of cause this is only on Experimental for now, so we get it all tested before its being pushed to everybody in December 2026.[p align="start"]Figuring out which achievements even made sense took longer than building them, which I did not expect at all. But its done, and I'm quite happy with the list.
The performance hunt
[p align="start"]This is the big one for me this month, even if its the least fun to show off.[p align="start"]The fact is that I have been chasing the bug where the game slowly gets worse the longer you play (FPS got lower even with nothing happening) - especially with mods - and for years I haven't been able to pin down the root cause of this. However, in the beginning of this month, we did an Experimental playtest session, to test some other changes, but this little bug showed its face again! So with some feedback from some of the play testers I started to see a smoking gun. On my way to the real root cause I ran into some other performance eaters which I slayed on my way. However, eventually I found the smoking gun! I sparer you the technical details, but in short there was a list of some stuff that only got added to and never removed. That list was iterated each frame, meaning overtime that just took longer and longer, making the FPS smaller and smaller. Anyway, the bug was actually not in my code but in UMod, however as always, Scott from UMod was super fast to react and within a day he fixed it! I verified it with numbers and local tests, but the real test was in a real play session with real players. So some weeks ago, I asked in the Experimental channel for people to help test and people showed up 🤓 We did a 4,5 hour play session, of cause FPS goes down when a lot happened and people really went at it and I at least had 0 FPS at some points - but (and this is what proves the bug is gone) we all on the server recovered to our starting FPS! This is such a huge deal as its a bug that you guys have been reporting for years and I haven't been able to fix - so really really awesome! So to make it clear, when I talk FPS here it doesn't mean your FPS cannot go down, it can for sure depending on what happens, the real test is that when the host does a "Clear all", then FPS comes back to normal - that was what didn't happen before.
The characters got a real overhaul
[p align="start"]The first batch of the new characters landed - 22 brand new ones replacing the old list in the Inventory.[p align="start"]This is something I have wanted to do for a long time, as the old characters was a bit "too low poly" and also a bit over used in other games, as they all come from popular Synty Studio asset packs. On top of the new characters looking better, they also have a lot of new features.
You can glance around without spinning on the spot. Only your head turns until you look further round or start moving. It matters most for everyone else - they can actually see which way you are looking.
Crouching looks like crouching. It used to just squash you down to half height, which was always meant to be a placeholder, and now there is a real crouch with its own walk animations in every direction. Worth knowing: crouching doesn't shrink you quite as much anymore, so a few very tight gaps you used to slip under may not let you through now.
Related to the above, the bounding box for the character now match better the physical size. This doesn't mean a lot for these new base game characters as they are more or less same size, but for modded characters where the actual size differs a lot, the bounding box now much better reflect the visual size. This means big characters might not be able to get into houses, and small characters suddenly be able to get in places where they couldn't before.
No more skating. Your feet used to slide along the ground while walking, running and coming to a stop - very obvious on other players. That's fixed in every direction, or at least looks much better now.
Improved sound muffling
[p align="start"]Sounds are muffled now when something is between you and them, and it tells the difference between being inside and outside. Stand behind a house out in the street and the show mostly just gets quieter while keeping its thump - step indoors and it goes dull, like its coming through the wall.[p align="start"]Other players' voices go through the same system, so a wall between you finally sounds like a wall, and a lamp post no longer muffles somebody the way a house does. Voice chat is also a bit louder across the board, since it was way too easy to lose under a show.[p align="start"]Both can be turned off under Settings -> Audio if you'd rather not have it.[p align="start"]On top of that I fixed sounds jumping to somewhere else halfway through during busy shows - a fountain or a whistle could suddenly sound like it came from across the map - and the little stutter the first time each firework sound plays in a map.Also worth mentioning
This month have been very productive, so I got a lot of stuff done, you can see each changelog in the bottom of this post, but here are some highlights.
The green ghosts on mortar tubes got a makeover - they are rings around the tube openings now instead of green copies of the shell, they fade instead of blinking, and the one you are aiming at is drawn bigger. They also show up when you carry a shell with the Physics Tool, not just the Spawn Tool.
Stuff you throw with the Physics Tool tumbles through the air instead of sailing off dead flat.
The firework limit in a hosted game only counts fireworks that haven't gone off yet. With Auto Despawn off, everything you had ever lit still counted, so you could get stuck unable to spawn anything.
The Dynamic Performance Scaling indicator is a readable list now instead of an icon nobody could read - it names each thing the game can turn down, and whatever its turning down right now goes red.
The Workshop got a "Recently updated" row, the mod list when you create a game has rows twice as tall so you can actually tell mods apart, and it performs a lot better with many mods.
Everything you can pick out of a list now lights up as you move over it and gets a gold marker when its selected - character, blueprint, server, enabled mods. Most of that simply did not do anything before.
Text fields bring up the on-screen keyboard when you play without a keyboard (Steam Deck)
The Christmas lights finally look like the colour they are supposed to be after dark. The blue one glowed a washed out purple and the red one came out orange.
When you can't join somebody, the message now shows up in your own language and says what actually happened - full, already ended, wrong code, or different versions.
The year cakes moved into their own "New Years Collection" instead of hiding in the "2020 Collection" where they never belonged.
A lit fuse no longer gets dragged into the sky with the rocket it was burning towards.
Inventory items are grouped now - base game first, then each mod's items together.
Whats next
[p align="start"]The performance hunt continues. I found a lot this month but I'm not convinced I got all of it, and long sessions with a lot of mods is still where I want the game to be better.[p align="start"]More characters are coming - what you have now is the first batch, not the finished list. [p align="start"]Dedicated server might come back into play and if it does we might need a lot of people to stress test it. I'll post in the Experimental channel on Discord if it becomes relevant.[p align="start"]New updated UI for host listing. [p align="start"][p align="start"]... and a lot more really. [p align="start"][p align="start"]Thanks to everyone running the Experimental version and reporting all of this back to me. A lot of what I fixed this month I would never have found on my own - especially the long session performance stuff, which only shows up if somebody actually plays for hours and then bothers to tell me about it 🤓[p align="start"]Thats it for now - need to get back to work 🤓Change log
I have pushed the following updates since last Developer News.
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/690892322235221749"]
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/694269386880453925"]
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/674002554701481073"]
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/681883219789875086"]
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1079260/view/711155982681509100"]
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- Enjoy!
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079260/Fireworks_Mania__An_Explosive_Simulator/"]
