NOTE: This version is only available on the EXPERIMENTAL game version/beta. You manually need to switch to it in Steam. Right Click on Fireworks Mania -> Properties -> Game Versions & Betas -> "Experimental". To go back to the normal version, change it to "Default Public Version".
Please note that this is work-in-progress stuff. There might be bugs, features might never end up in the real version of the game and things might be a little odd.
However, I share this version as I am asking for your feedback to help me shape the game - thanks for taking your time helping out 🤓
As this is a bigger update in terms of new things, I want to add a few words here, instead of only the changelog as normally. I will write more details in the upcoming Developer News, but here are some highlights.
Shop
Many players have through the years asked for "something to play for". That can be addressed in many ways, but here is the first change in that direction - a Shop.
So what does that mean?
Well, you get points for playing now, igniting fireworks, unlocking achievements and simple being active in a game session will give you points. There might be more ways to earn in the future, but it depends on your feedback. These points you can use to unlock fireworks, props, characters and more in this new Shop. Its a way to try and make some form of progress in an open sandbox game with no real start or end. You can keep playing with mods exactly as you use to, so really the Shop is an optional feature for the ones who want the stuff in it.
More content
Another thing that players have been asking for, is more base game content and that's exactly what you find in this Shop.
More than 300 new items of various kinds have been added to the Shop - so have a look when you get into the game :) For instance, there are new refreshed versions of all the legacy fireworks I originally made back in 2020! These new versions are much more realistic than the original ones. Here are some samples.
Over the years its been very clear that mod creators are much better at making realistic fireworks than me. My time is better spend on optimizing, adding features etc. So for this big content push, it made sense to try and get some help. Therefore I reached out to Amnestey, asking if he would be interested in some contracting work, creating new unique content for the base game. Luckily, he was up for it. This freed up my time to work on other stuff, so you can now enjoy both new content and new features in this update. 🤓
Player character improvements
Another huge change is improvements to how your character works. First of all you now hold the tool you select in your physical hand and some tool models have been replaced by just your hands and fingers. Furthermore the way your character move have been improved a lot, so it feels more immersive and looks much better when you play with others.
Also, in you are exposed to enough explosions forces, your character will go into ragdoll mode, simply for the fun of it - he/she might even scream a bit if its too much.
This was just the tip of the iceberg, so I really encourage you to jump into the Experimental version and give it a try. There might be some things you need to get use to, but give it a little time and see if it's not really better after all.
Please share your feedback with me as it helps shapes the game to make it perfect 🤓
That's all for now, as said I will describe some more details in the upcoming Developer News, but for now, here is the full change log.
Added
The Shop is open! For a long time, a lot of you have asked for something to play for and more content in the base game, so here it is. As you play the game you earn "PyroPoints" in various ways. These points can be used to unlock various items in the new Shop. It's completely optional: no fireworks have been taken away, and you can carry on playing with mods as much as you like, exactly like before. However for the ones that like the feeling of progress by earning more and more things you can use in the game, this is exactly for you. This is the first draft of it, so I still haven't figured out exactly how the points should be earned etc. But thats part of where your feedback comes in, so we can make it even better
The Shop has 149 brand new fireworks to unlock in there to start with - cakes, rockets, tubes, roman candles, firecrackers, smoke balls and more. Plenty more coming as we go
On top of that there's 92 new shells from 3 to 6 inch, and 71 new mortars and racks to fire them from
The Shop has 64 new characters in there too, a load of civilians and a set of police, so there's a lot more choice in who you play as
27 Christmas decorations in the Shop too - neon signs, a snowman, a reindeer, light-up trees, presents and more, in case you wanna do some decorations during the holidays
There's a new Fuse Node in the Shop too - a little box to split and join your fuses. When one fuse burns in, all the others light at once
There's a Sound Track Player in the Shop as well - a speaker with a fuse that plays a song when lit, so you can put music under your shows. 11 songs to pick from, and there's a new Music volume slider under Settings > Audio
PyroPoints stop adding up if nobody touches the controls for an hour. You're earning again the moment you're back
The Home tab in the main menu isn't empty anymore - it explains how the Shop works, what earns PyroPoints, and why the game is best with headphones
Emoji show up properly now, in full color - in chat, in player names, on mod titles, everywhere. They used to be empty boxes
You can see which mods a host is running before you join now. Click the mod count in the Multiplayer host details and the whole list opens up, with names and thumbnails
Emotes have a wheel now. Hold the Tools Menu button and press E (X or Square on a controller) to flip the wheel over to your emotes, then point at one and let go to play it
Four new emotes to fill the wheel: Dab, Air Guitar, Facepalm and Thumbs Up. Air Guitar keeps going until you walk off, like the dances (Some of these might get removed again to be unlockable in the shop - just here for testing right now)
The inventory now shows roughly how long a firework lasts, right under its name in the item details - and that is exactly how long it counts against the host's spawn limit
The Shop shows how long a firework lasts, and which brand and collection it's from, so you know what you're getting before you unlock it
The Workshop has a "Recently added" row again, sitting right above "Recently updated". Turns out a brand new mod in some cases doesn't turn up under "Recently updated", so now there's a row that only shows what's new
Anything you unlock now gets a little marker showing where it is, from the tab all the way down to the item itself, so you can actually find the thing you just got. It goes away once you have clicked it
D-pad up and down on controller now do what the scroll wheel does on a mouse: hold one to move a held or spawning item nearer or further, and tap to step the fuse type or the day/night speed. Far Away View and switching perspective moved over to D-pad left and right to make room
Advanced Settings can now delete all your temp mods - the ones that get installed automatically so you can join someone's game. The button tells you how much space they're taking up. Handy if you want that space back, you will download them again anyway next time you need them
Explosions can now knock your character over! A big enough blast sends you flying as a ragdoll - jump or move to get back up once you've landed
Your character might scream if the blast was big enough (unless you're already talking in voice chat)
Don't want to be thrown around? Turn off "Ragdoll" under Settings > Game - or just "Ragdoll scream" under Settings > Audio if it's only the screaming
The Players list now shows how many fireworks and props each player has out - in red once they hit the host's limit
The host now has a little gold crown on their picture in the Players list and in front of their name tag, so everyone can see who's hosting
Changed
Your character now holds the flashlight in their left hand, pointing where you look, and other players can see it too. It's tucked away while you carry something
The Spawn, Physics and Erase tools no longer hover in front of your face. Your character gestures instead: the Physics Tool is a pointing finger with the laser shooting from the fingertip, the Erase Tool the same finger with a red glow at the tip, and while spawning you hold a little glowing model of what you're about to spawn, and the Day/Night Time tool is a pocket watch lying in your palm, turned so you can read it. All of it follows what you look at, other players see it too, and it works on (most) modded characters too
Your character now turns and leans their upper body a bit with where you look, not just the head. It keeps whatever you're holding in view when you glance sideways, and it looks a lot more natural to other players, plus it makes you feel more part of the world
Your character now steps their feet round when you turn on the spot, instead of spinning with their shoes glued to the ground. The faster you turn, the bigger the step
The Spawn Tool now holds items by their middle, so your crosshair is on the thing you're placing. Big items like the Christmas tree also start a bit further away
Things you pick up by hand now shrink to a little palm-sized version held between your character's left thumb and index finger, the same size whatever you picked up, and pop back to full size the moment you throw or drop them. Holding the throw button winds the arm back the harder you charge - other players see all of it, so they know what's coming. The current throwing animation is a bit "meh" though, so might change that. The reason object shrinks to fit your hand, is because as I started making this logic for actually holding stuff in the physical hands of the character, it looked super weird picking up a box as its way too large. So came up with the idea of shrinking it down, so everything always fit between two fingers. Only "downside"/odd thing, is that fireworks shooting off as miniature too...which both looks weird and funny. I dunno if its a feature or a bug :D
Redesigned the Fireworks inventory: the category tabs across the top are now a list on the left, with one big item grid next to it - making room for more categories down the road. Shell and mortar sizes fold out right under their category
The menu tabs have icons next to their names now - in the main menu, in the inventory and in the in-game menu. Its an attempt to make it easier to spot stuff and avoid just a block of text up there
The tabs at the top of the menus wrap around now, so going past the last one takes you back to the first when navigating the UI with a gamepad
The inventory grid now groups items by collection - each collection gets its own header line with its logo, name and brand, and everything that isn't part of one sits together under "Others" at the bottom. Should make it a lot easier to find your way around as the list keeps growing. In the future modders will be able to create these collections too to group their things in the Inventory too
The Avatar tab groups characters into collections the same way, and now scrolls straight to the character you're using instead of just highlighting it wherever it happens to be
Gave the in-game chat a refresh - everyone's profile picture sits next to what they said, the text is bigger but the heavy black box behind it is gone, so you can still watch your show while people are chatting
Secret unlockable items no longer show up as locked "?" slots in the inventory - they now stay hidden until you find them out in the world
The chat window now starts out of sight, instead of sitting there for the first ten seconds of every game. It comes back the moment somebody says something, or when you open it yourself
Scrollbars are easier to grab with the mouse, and the one in chat is less in your face
Moving a held or spawning item nearer and further is far easier to control. One scroll moves it the same distance wherever it is, instead of a small nudge up close and a huge jump out at range - and on a fast machine it was quietly ignoring most of your scrolling
Standing on something that's moving - riding a rocket, for instance - is smooth now instead of jittery, both for you and for everyone watching you do it. And if it turns, you turn with it
If you can't join a game because the host has a mod that's been removed from mod.io, the error now tells you the id of that mod, so you can let the host know
The Players tab is tidier: teleport, mute, volume, kick and ban are now in a small menu on each player - right-click a player, hit their ⋯ button, or use your controller
Improved the logic around how the player voice works and sound. Its more narrow now, so it sounds more like it coming from their mouth - you can hear where they are, they fade out more naturally over distance, and someone facing away from you sounds muffled
Removed emission from base game firework material, meaning they no longer light up in the dark. It was originally made like this to make them easier to see, however, it makes it more immersive now as they actually behave as expected when in the dark
Saving a blueprint now leaves out anything someone is holding, instead of saving it floating in mid-air
The Blueprints tab is hidden when you're in someone else's game as clients currently cannot use blueprints anyway
When you've hit the host's spawn limit, the item in your hand turns red and nothing spawns, so it's obvious. You're told once in chat, instead of in chat and a popup
The spawn ghost now flies out already facing the right way, instead of turning on the way
Shells now snap into a mortar that already has a shell in it, so you can stuff extra shells in with the Spawn Tool
When a mortar or rack won't take something, it now tosses it clearly away instead of making it hop on the spot
The dances and Air Guitar no longer bring their own rock loop with them. Now that there's actual music in the game, it got annoying fast
Fixed
Fixed the inventory opening on the first item instead of the one you last picked
Fixed rockets going nowhere when you stand on them, and objects being nearly impossible to lift with the Physics Tool while someone stands on them
Fixed the Tools Menu quick saving or quick loading out of nowhere
Fixed the Tools Menu missing your controller stick when you opened the wheel and aimed at a tool in one quick motion, so swapping tools took two or three goes. It now picks up whatever you're pointing at the moment the wheel is open
Fixed the camera swinging off on its own every time you let go of the Tools Menu on a controller. You aimed at a tool with the right stick, so the camera grabbed whatever was left of that push - it now waits for your thumb, and moves the moment you actually steer
Fixed the Fireworks inventory stuttering when you drag the scrollbar or jump a long way down a category - the more mods you have, the worse it was. It keeps up now
Fixed menu clicks and other interface sounds going missing every now and then
Fixed a shell keeping its owner's spawn slot for fifteen seconds after it had gone off, and a couple of rockets doing the same. They let go a moment after the bang now, like the rest
Fixed the Slow Clap emote clapping the instant it started, before the hands had even met. The claps now land where the animation actually claps
Fixed the chat telling you that you joined the server when you start a singleplayer game - as it makes no sense with that announcement in a singleplayer session :D
Fixed the "Players list"'s teleport button doing nothing the first time you opened the list after joining a game - you had to close it and open it again before it would listen
Fixed the join code box letting you press Join with nothing typed in, which just threw an error at you. Join stays greyed out until there's a code, and you can now back out of the box with Escape or your controller's back button
Fixed Singleplayer sometimes opening with only the built-in maps, and your mods listed out of order
Fixed things stacked on top of something staying up in the air when you erased what they were resting on. They fall down now, like you'd expect
Fixed the Physics Tool beam latching onto the wrong spot on whatever another player was carrying. On your screen it hung off the bottom of the thing instead of where they had actually grabbed it
Fixed "Most popular" in the Workshop being a different list to Most Popular on the mod.io website. It was ranking mods by today's downloads instead of all-time
Fixed getting stuck for the rest of the game if you opened your inventory while holding the Tools Menu button (Thanks to Truxtyx for figuring out how to reproduce this)
Fixed everyone in a multiplayer game freezing for a moment whenever somebody joined. The longer you had been playing, the worse it got - especially with auto despawn turned off, where all your spent fireworks pile up. It can still lag a bit if auto despawn is turned off
Fixed the game still reacting to your controller while you were tabbed out of it. It now ignores the controller until you come back, the same as it already did with your mouse and keyboard
Fixed the menus falling apart at a high UI Scale. At 150% the server browser ran off both sides of the screen, and Join and Refresh were pushed off the bottom - everything fits at every scale now
Fixed some players ending up on an old version of a mod, because the game didn't always wait for mod updates to finish before loading. And if you have two copies of the same mod installed, a popup now tells you which one is used
Fixed a small hitch when the speaker in the fireworks store was switched on or a smoke ball started hissing
Fixed the voice volume and mute you set for another player not sticking - they kept resetting
Fixed the D-pad in menus ignoring a press every now and then - the slightest touch on the thumbstick at the same moment was cancelling it out
Fixed some modded items dropping into mortar tubes far too small for them - an 80 cm cat went straight down a 2-inch tube
Fixed the inventory item details showing the previous mod's logo while the next one was still loading
Fixed the green rings that show where an item will go floating in the air beside curved and angled racks, instead of sitting on each slot
Fixed spawning quickly in some multiplayer games skipping every other item - the spawn animation played, but nothing appeared
Fixed a firework you lit in your hand staying stuck there after it was done. Your hand lets go once it's finished now
Fixed the flashlight prompt not showing up until you had opened a menu once, and sometimes showing the wrong On/Off
Fixed the throw and rotate hints disappearing when you picked something up
Fixed mortars kicking away other mortars and racks set down right next to them
Fixed players still showing up in a server's player count after they left, when a lot of people left at the same time
Fixed the spawn preview being the wrong size for some items - the cool flamingo showed up as a small one and then spawned full size
Fixed the spawn marker's line pointing up into the sky when you stand in the water in City
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- Happy testing, enjoy! 🤓🕺
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