This patch took a bit longer than usual since it involved tackling some of the last game breaking bugs associated with the map generator. Also, the list of changes below covers just a few of the fixes that people would notice. There's been a ton of work behind the scenes. Provided there aren't any more glaring bugs, this might be the last patch in the 0.1X cycle! In the next cycle, we hope to bring more features to the game, including loot and new items, an inventory system, new enemies, new environmental assets, and hopefully a new location!  I'll release some devlogs to introduce the new features, since they go beyond the typical "bug fix" category.  Also, sorry for forgetting to put the patch notes in the packaged game...

version 0.18 - 08.07.2019

1. Working on the inventory system, which will be the focus of the 0.2X version cycle. Most of the actual inventory management is already implemented, but the UI is not yet fully functional (hence being inaccessible for the time being).

2. Added a targeting assist for regular attacks performed without a selected target. Essentially, the player automatically rotates to face the nearest living enemy while attacking. The detection range is pretty generous (larger than the weapon range).

3. Removed the wind-up portions of player attack animations in order to make attacking more responsive to user input.

4. Added transitions from the charge attack to the regular slash attacks. Previously, the animator would transition to the movement/idle states before another attack could commence.

5. Added a grace period of several frames where the player can jump or dodge if they aren't on the ground. In essence, this makes it possible to perform jumps if the character has just run off of a ledge, thereby reducing frustration with platforming.

6. Normalized the delay for initiating combo-attacks. Every attack animation is locked until the delay passes. Afterwards, subsequent button presses will start the next attack. This was already implemented but the delay itself was inconsistent. Now all delays are set to 0.4s. Note: increasing the speed stat increases attack animation speed, which means this delay will decrease as the player gains speed (e.g. agility).  

7. Fixed a bug where the grappling hook chain emission wouldn't "cool down" and would glow constantly.

8. Working on making sure humanoid animations use consistent common avatars (bone mappings). Unfortunately, it's not possible to have only one avatar due to version conflicts, bone naming inconsistencies, and various other issues. However, I am at least trying to make sure animations from the same source use the same avatar (e.g. Adobe's Mixamo animation database all use "xBot", their default character). This may also fix some wonkiness with individual animations that were previously using the wrong avatar.

9. Working on a fix for the transitions between idle variants. Unfortunately, this problem is compounded by issues within Unity's mecanim animation system (making transitions for every animation variant is insanely cumbersome). Looking for a better programmatic solution to generating variants that allows for a proper calculation of animation and transition times.

10. Increased the number of idle animation variants. May eventually separate some into a new "emote" system that can be used in a more targeted fashion (e.g. happy, sad, angry). For now they are just randomly selected if the player has been idle for long enough. Will be implemented once I finish the changes in #9.

11. Fixed an issue where the player head rotation would not match the main animation (aside from IK rotations). Since many of the animations that I have lack jaw bone mappings, the player mouth would gormlessly hang open. To remedy that, I was using an extra animation layer to override the head with one having a closed mouth. Unfortunately, that also overwrote the head rotations. Now, I simply set the jaw rotation manually in a script, which I will be able to integrate into the emote system.

12. Implemented a change to the head-tracking so it can be toggled smoothly in certain animations. Previously it was just being turned on and off, which resulted in some jittery character movements. Now it's smoothed with an animation curve, so animations that need their own head tracking can do so with minimal interference.

13. Fixed the issue with crashes in very small (early) caves by implementing safeguards against generating caves too small to actually spawn the player.

14. Fixed the issue where a smoothing loop would get stuck for very large caves, thereby generating a stack overflow exception and crashing the game.

15. Increased attack damage for the short sword slightly to reduce the number of hits required to kill pillbugs. Will probably revert once we get the inventory and loot system up in the next patch cycle.

16. Added sound effects to things like falling impacts, dodging, supersprint, stalagmite breaks, arbitrary sword impacts, pillbug ambient noise, and items.

17. Fixed issues where weapons that dealt multiple damage types (e.g. slashing + fire) could potentially kill something twice.

18. Similarly, now the damage popup text properly combines the damage dealt by all damage types for any single attack. Previously it generated a popup for every damage type.

19. Implemented a foliage shader with "wind" and "bulging" vertex deformation in addition to LOD crossfading. Mushrooms use the vertex deformation for very subtle swaying effects. Technically the shader also uses spherical interaction deformation but the current implementation needs further optimization before I want to put it in game.

20. Created a LOD chunking system, whereby a large grid of "chunks" is generated over the whole map. Each chunk contains a "LOD Group" that determines how their contents are rendered depending on the distance to the player camera (and some other factors). LOD Groups reduce GPU load but potentially increase CPU load when you have a ton of them in scene. Previosuly, every mushroom cluster had a LOD group, and in large dungeons this could result in thousands of LOD Groups, causing a CPU performance bottleneck. With the new system, the number of LOD groups is limited, relieving the CPU load significantly. Currently, only mushroom clusters use this chunk system, but I'll be adding more static LOD models now that I have a functional universal LOD crossfading shader. This system also properly culls models at long distances and uses the quality settings to determine LOD biases (i.e. lower quality settings may cause pop-in because the cull distance is closer to the camera).

21. Fixed some issues where one mushroom variant was missing textures for the LOD model. 

22. Adjusted the sound mixer settings for improved audiblity of certain sound effects.

23. Noticed a bug with the TAA anti-aliasing method that causes a "hall of mirrors" effect with transparent or additive materials (e.g. particles and the sphere of doom). Unsure how to solve, except to avoid using the built in TAA.

24. Fixed a bug where the player would be awarded the tutorial experience award multiple times.