So, this year's April Fools' joke was that Ved was "automatically updated" to version 1.4, featuring a new playtesting feature!
The details. If you already played it, or you're still in for a surprise, you might want to skip this part
If it isn't immediately clear during the first room of the demo level that this game feels somewhat different, it definitely becomes clear in the second room, when Viridian doesn't flip, but jump:
You'll also have noticed the three hearts in the top left corner. Each death removes a heart, making it look like the player only has three lives (the third death turns it into a death counter though, you can keep playing)
All sound effects have also been remade. And one thing that was rushed enough to mention it here, was moving platforms. Horizontally moving platforms work well when standing on them, but you can't get pushed from the side by one at all, and you can easily fall through vertically moving platforms.
The more technical details
Pretty much everything was done via the plugin system. One of the advantages of this was that it made everything way more organized, requiring only minor actual changes to the code. Another advantage is that I can easily release it as a plugin after it would stop working automatically!
The plugin files can be found in utils/internal_plugins/.
In order to reduce the chance of the joke getting out before the 1st of April, I never committed it to the repository. Though it probably would have been more fun to do everything in plain sight without getting noticed, it would've been too risky.
You can ignore the four eraser images in this screenshot, I was working on a feature that I wanted to add to 1.3.2 originally, but shashed for later. Git doesn't stash files that you never
added, hence why they're still there, and they're actually in the 1.3.2 packages, too (which was not a problem for me).
I set the playtesting feature to appear on 1 April 2018 10:00 UTC (3AM PDT, 6AM EDT, 11:00 BST), and to disappear on 3 April 2018 10:00 UTC. That means it will no longer be loaded now, unless you set back your computer's clock to be in between those dates. However, if you want to keep playing, you can also re-add it as a plugin!
Quick info for Windows users (which the majority is): you can install plugins by putting them in
%appdata%\ved\plugins\ (if you're using the .exe version) or
%appdata%\LOVE\ved\plugins\ (if you're using the .love version). You don't have to extract the .zip. More info, and info on how to install the plugins on Mac and Linux (which is just as easy), is at the top of
this page.
vis.zip -
DownloadThis is the actual playtesting feature. "Vis" is the codename for this project. I'm planning make a repository for it, soon!
visload.zip -
DownloadDespite having "load" in the name, this plugin is
not required. It just pops up the "Welcome to Ved 1.4" screen, changes the version number in the title bar, and includes the demo level. For the full 1.4 experience!
vis-sounds.zip -
DownloadLike the sound effects? You can also use them in VVVVVV! As far as I know, this is the first complete custom sound effect pack for VVVVVV. Just make a folder called
sounds in your VVVVVV folder (which is in Documents on Windows), and put the .wav files in there!
P.S. It was pretty nice that I could call this version 1.4 (1 April), being at version 1.3.x. However, I'll keep numbering the next revisions as 1.3.x, and once I get to the real 1.4, you can tell them apart by knowing it'll be called 1.4.0, keeping consistent with Ved's real version numbering system.
