Thanks again to a new Metal Head LightningFighter for assistance pointing out a bug that would have only occurred to new players with the experimental build regarding not being able to play mini-games in the board game mode.

This has now been fixed. Mini-Games now work again in the board game mode.

This is an issue that has plagued me for THE longest time now, and I could not find the issue as I thought I had fixed it because it wasn't showing up for me anymore.

I have also removed the empty dialogue box at the top of the screen when there are no collectible goals (Golden Gears, Checkpoints, Dizzy Drops).

ROCK ON!

Thanks to a new Metal Head LightningFighter for pointing out that the Dice move method was not working, it defaulted to the move wheel, this issue has been fixed in this hotfix.

You can now roll the dice again ROCK ON!

This is just a small update to fix a pretty major bug I introduced (while trying to fix another bug).
This also improves the UI experience for gamepads in the board game UI.

• Fixed issue that prevented players from selecting an action in the action menu within the board game mode. This was caused because I tried to fix a bug with dizzy drops that allowed the dizziness move affector to also affect action menu navigation, now both are fixed.
  
• When navigating the board game menu with a gamepad, the player can use LB and RB to select movement method as well as turn order, rather than awkwardly trying to navigate using the D-PAD or Left Stick. I ran into a bunch of bugs which took a few days to fix with the minimal time I had, which didn't allow navigation of these buttons, nor did it allow a keyboard and mouse user to click the buttons. But it's all working fine now :)

ALSO...LAST CHANCE TO GET 50% OFF, WINTER SALE ENDS REALLY SOON! (2nd JAN 2025, 10am PACIFIC TIME)
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

ROCK ON!

Here are some more little fixes for the experimental offline build.

These are mostly quality of life fixes, especially for those trying to navigate the custom board game menu settings with a mouse (it was infuriating before).

• Board Game customisation settings list no longer goes crazy scrolling up or down with the mouse hovering over a setting near the bottom or top. It was previously set to CENTER the hovered UI element. Now it does the bare minimum to ensure the UI element is in view, which makes for a much nicer experience.
  
• Hovering over tiles when selecting a teleport destination in the board game mode no longer reveals transparent collectibles such as the Dizzy Drop and Golden Gear.
  
• When the Dizzy Drop is collected, this was severely impacting the player's ability to selection an action from the action menu (move/view map/view items). This was due to the influence that it has on the players controls as they are dizzy. It would work still, but it was very difficult to navigate to the correct action when extremely dizzy.
  
• Using the gamepad in any section of the lobby that isn't the mini-game section no longer causes "Select Mini-game" text and button to appear at the top of the screen.

Aside from the above, I have been continuing to work on getting online multiplayer functioning with all of the new board game customization stuff. I will keep doing this as much as possible with every update.

I hope you all had an amazing Christmas, and have an epic new year!

ROCK ON!

I know I should have been taking some time off...but I couldn't help myself.

Here are some of the fixes/changes in this little update for the experimental build.

• Can now click on BACK in the options menu while in a mini-game/boss-fight/board-game.
  
• Mouse no longer stays on the screen during mini-games, boss fight or board game mode.
  
• The mouse can now control the Platforming camera again while in the board game mode. If you don't know what the platforming camera is, you can hit the UP ARROW key on your keyboard while you are running to your destination in the board game mode. Use the mouse and scroll wheel to control the camera. NOTE: There is still an issue on multi-displays where the mouse may leave the screen.
  For gamepads, the Y Button (the top "face" button) is the camera changing button, and LB/RB will change the zoom level and right stick will change the camera angle.
  
• Custom board game modes no longer duplicate themselves when returning to the lobby.
  
• The "Allow mini-games" board game setting now actually works. This took a few hours to fix, and made no sense, but it was a corrupted node/variable within Unreal Engine 4...this was a bit infuriating to fix haha.
  
• Lobby UI changes made to avoid messages showing up that are only designed for gamepad.
  
• When the player is knocked down in the boss fight mode, they now actually get knocked down, and no longer remain down permanently with some of the boss attacks.
  Previously the player would get knocked back, unable to move, no knock down animation or pose, and some attacks would render the player completely unable to move for an infinite time.
  
• Made some changes to BASIC VIDEO menu so when setting the resolution, it should actually set the correct resolution in the game config. There has been an issue with Unreal Engine 4 for years, even in Unreal Engine 5, so hopefully the fix implemented (which seems to have worked for other developers), works here. I have tested it, it seems to work, but I would like to know of your experiences.

There are still plenty of bugs left to squish, but I'll keep at it, and keep trying to make the experience as polished as possible.

Your feedback is incredibly important and critical to finding any and all bugs, so help me hunt them down, and let's squish em' all!

ROCK ON!

As promised, I have released the OFFLINE ONLY version of the board game customization update.

It is available to download through the experimental build until I polish it up and get online functionality working.

If you want to download the experimental build, you need to do the following:

1. Right Click Metal Heads in your Steam library.
2. Go to properties.
3. Go to "Betas".
4. Next to "Beta Participation", select "Experimental" from the drop down box.
5. Metal Heads will automatically update to this version.


This version is VERY experimental. I have not done any proper testing of gameplay with other people (which is when the problems come out, other people find them quicker than I do haha).
I am aware of a LOT of bugs to do with items, the board game mode, some mini-games, and the new menu navigation amongst other things.
Despite this, I encourage every single one of you to share your findings over on the newly created forum for the EXPERIMENTAL BUILD over here at EXPERIMENTAL forum section.

- BUGS (There's a LOT of them...good hunting!)
- OFFLINE MODE ONLY (Online is far too buggy currently to allow the public to test, it's actually pretty good if I'm being fair to myself, but it's just not ready yet).
Don't forget that you CAN absolutely play with Steam Remote Play, it has some issues, but so long as everyone has a decent internet connection, it should play just fine :)
- UPDATED MENU NAVIGATION (Now the player can use the gamepad to navigate the main menu, and also use the mouse in some parts...this is still buggy, it has a few issues, but it's almost fully functional.
The visuals of the menu's are placeholder, I intend to update buttons and UI elements in the future to make it look a lot cleaner and nicer.
- OPTIONS MENU (Updated options menu in the main menu, but also added it to the pause menu, you can finally change graphical and sound settings mid game!)
- UPDATED MINI-GAMES (There have been a few minor updates here and there, but I'd say the biggest update was to Blasted, so go check it out, bombs now bounce off walls at shallow angles, there are additional bomb types, such as the bouncy bomb (bounces no matter the angle and is pink), and the smoke bomb (self explanatory). There's also a bunch more pre-designed arena layouts that the game will randomly choose, and some other fixes and polishings).
- OVERHAULED BOARD GAME EXPERIENCE
The board game is still not where I want it to be, however there are more items now, and more mayhem, plus a newer dynamic "tutorial" that adapts to the custom board game mode. It's not great yet, in fact, the tutorial needs WAY more work, it's barebones, it's functional, but this isn't the final version.
- CUSTOM BOARD GAME MODES AND SETTINGS
You can now go crazy and customize a plethora of settings in the board game mode!
Not all of them work well yet, and I have greyed out the majority of ones that I found were not working, or not working well, to avoid any confusion. But rest assured I'll be working on the functionality of these settings as development moves forward, and you'll see them get unlocked.
The settings are not broken into categories yet either, but it's still fun to go through and experiment.
I am not restricting a lot of the settings, so if you want to make something absolutely broken, then by all means, go right ahead and make an incredibly broken game mode, I want you to decide if it's fun or not.
- NEW BOARD GAME GOALS, AND MULTIPLE GOALS
There are now multiple goals for the board game to choose from, Golden Gears, Plectrums, Laps, Distance, Checkpoints and... Dizzy Drops?
And they can even be combined. Want to make a mode where the first player to do 10 laps wins, OR the first player to collect 100 plectrums wins? You can do that! Or maybe you want to make it so the player who travels the LEAST amount of tiles in 10 turns wins, OR the player who completes the MOST laps wins.
- ITEM SETTINGS
Items all have their own settings. Again, some are locked for now as they aren't fully implemented, such as item cost, rarity etc, and some, like the Fire Mine have had last minute changes where the settings are pretty useless.
So have fun with that!

HAVE FUN! AND HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS!
I am going to have a break over christmas, however I will likely end up doing development after Christmas day for a little bit at a time and keep updating the experimental build.

I also intend to do some live-streams, either showing development work, testing online multiplayer, or playing this experimental build with the Discord community.

I need to sleep now, I have been working 16-18hrs a day for the last week, and I need to rest and spend time with my loved ones, especially my girlfriend who has been so incredibly supportive and patient with me.

REMEMBER, ITS 50% OFF, GET YOURSELF A COPY!
SIDE NOTE: THE DEMO BUILD WILL NOT BE UPDATED YET

It's that time of the year again where Steam drops it's biggest sale event, and once again, Metal Heads is participating with 50% off.

Admittedly, the current version of the game is confusing and janky, it has plenty of bugs, that's why there's a big update in the works...it just takes a lot of time, effort, and financial support.
So even if you just want to play the demo and wishlist the game right now, that is plenty of support right there, but I will be absolutely greatful if you wish to buy the game and support it's development.
I haven't received any funds from the game for about a year now, as it hasn't made enough money for Steam to pay me, and I'm OK with that. I'd rather the game lay low until it's in a state where it's really damn good, polished, and bug free.

Metal Heads has been in development for some time now, I support myself financially through my day job, which means the game takes more time. But obviously any support you give me, will be truly appreciated, and will help me make hopefully the best party game out there (at least on PC, because let's face it, Mario Party is King).

But that's boring news.

The TL;DR version of this is; I intend to get an experimental build available in the next few days, it'll have a bunch of bugs, but I'm doing everything possible to make this happen.

The long version is:
I had hoped to launch the big board game customisation update to you all in time for the winter sale, but as you all probably know, the development of a game isn't as simple as we'd hope it is.

I've run into all kinds of hurdles and bugs, all whilst working a full time job, moving house (again), and having PC problems.

The good news is, I now have more time to work on the game, this is thanks to moving a LOT closer to my workplace, and moving in with my girlfriend.
Now, my commutes to and from work, shopping etc every day go from about 50mins, to about 4mins...that's a HUGE time saver.
That means a LOT more time to work on the game.

Thankfully, I am very close to getting an experimental build released to you all. I'm aiming to release this in the next few days, before Christmas day. This weekend, I am dedicating solely to working on this update now that I am settled into my new rental.

There are a LOT of bugs to sort out, and the experimental build will no doubt be filled with a plethora of them, I've had to overhaul and rework so many things, but I know it'll be worth it.

I intend to release the experimental build as an OFFLINE build with experimental online multiplayer as soon as possible.

Let me be clear though, ONLINE WILL BE BROKEN....VERY BROKEN.
I have not yet done much online testing, and from what I tested, there is a large number of new online bugs introduced. So I want to make sure that offline mode works fine first.

I will do my very best to get online working in a stable manner for the experimental build, but the focus is on the OFFLINE working first.

Remember that Metal Heads supports Steam Remote Play. I have tested this from time to time just to ensure it still works (because Steam regularly updates functionality which sometimes breaks things), and I'm happy to say it works, mostly.
The only issue I've come across so far is that if a player joins the game, and then leaves for whatever reason, some parts of the game, mainly the Tutorial screen, think that there's still a 2nd player, this is purely visual as far as I can tell, and doesn't break the game.
Remember though, Remote Play Together relies on a strong internet connection, mainly the upload speed, so if you're hosting, ensure you have a good connection.

I also intend to live-stream some development and eventually some online play to everyone, it brings me great joy to play with the community, talk about nerdy stuff, and just have a good fun time, cringe at game breaking bugs and laugh at the ridiculous bugs.
I'll keep you all posted about if and when I live-stream, but keep dropping in, or jump onto the https://www.twitch.tv/directory/category/metal-heads channel and join in on the fun if you see me live-streaming.
I love doing live-streams, it's been about 3yrs since I live-streamed, and I cannot wait to do it again, so fingers crossed I can make it happen with you amazing people.

The previous news posts will have some interesting GIF's, and screenshots to give you an insight of what's to come, so if you haven't done so already, go check out those posts for a taste of the future of Metal Heads.

Hello my fellow Metal Heads.

Again, it has been a long time since my last update, and I'm sure many of you who follow Metal Heads, or are new to the game, have the same question "Is this game dead?".

The answer is "absolutely not".

However development IS very slow for a number of reasons, but firstly, I want to show you what is and has been worked on before I give you excuses.

There are new goals that can be reached now, but this is up to the host to decide what mode to play.
But the host can create a custom mode that allows them to combine goals, for example, the primary goal might be to collect GOLDEN GEARS, but the secondary goal might be to reach a series of static checkpoints. There are other factors such as if rounds are limited or not that determine the win conditions, but this will certain make gameplay a little more interesting, and I'm excited to see what modes you come up with.
There will be more modes and goals in the future too.

Firstly, there was the implementation of a plethora of general gameplay settings to add, create UI elements for these settings, and then make sure that these settings carry over into the board game.
This in itself, is a pretty mammoth task, but it's one that I know is absolutely worth it. I LOVE customization in games, it might be a lot more work for developers, but it's those games that tend to do really well as it gives the player the choice on how the game plays.
If the player doesn't like something? Let them disable or change it.
While this is simple in theory, it does create a lot of conflicts, contradictions within the gameplay, that can cause some sillyness to occur, but still, I think I'll let you all decide on what chaos to unleash on your boards.
If you want to run with 200% speed, and start in random locations on the board with each player getting anywhere between 0 and 50 plectrums to start with, and pre-place 20 traps/deployables, go for it!

I have created a bunch of fun new items, and worked a bit more on existing items, removing bugs etc from them. This took some time, especially with some of the newer items requiring some advanced AI navigation that isn't built into unreal engine. Such as an item called "Swoopy Boi", it's not great, but it works.
Players will be able to give items, or collectibles (such as Golden Gears or Plectrum Points) to other players, or they may steal them. This took a bit to get working, and is still not finished, as there's a few bugs to iron out and visual polishing to do. This may not make it into the update, but I'll do my best.
I would have shown you a GIF, but it's nothing special to look at right now.

As part of the customization update, I wanted to allow you to choose how many items players are allowed to carry at one time. This meant that I needed to create an item wheel. This has turned out to be absolutely fantastic for gameplay, as players can activate some items prior to movement, and then equipped themselves with a deployable item for when they do their movement turn.
After creating the new items, I worked on allowing players to customize individual item settings. These are relatively basic settings, such as if the items are available to purchase at a shop, or only found on random item tiles, but some items allow further customization, such as the Stun Mine, players can, for example, control if it stops the player entirely, or slows them down, and for how long.
And if you really like, you could make the double jump do more than just a second jump.
I got to working on the effects of players being cursed. Now players have a curse level, the higher the curse level, the more bad stuff happens, but in some instances, the more cursed a player is, the better.
Every single item, tile etc has some effect from the curse, including the move wheel (which you all know about already), but also the dice can be cursed.
There is still more work to be done, such as adding a BLESS amount, which serves to counter the curse, and to give players buffs, but the curse effect already adds so much more interesting gameplay.
The effects of the curse, can of course be tweaked within the board game customization settings too.
Here's a few things the curse may or may not do depending on how cursed you are.
I had to implement my own gamepad menu navigation system, as the built in system does not work well, and some of the plugins in the marketplace also do not work well.
This taught me a lot of new things, but also took a long time, and was easily the most problematic thing to work on, however it is now at a point where I am slowly updating all user interface navigation with this system so that those with gamepads can navigate menu's the same as in every other game. It's such a small thing that is bare minimum in any game with controller support, but turned out to be nightmarish to implement.

This menu navigation is still being worked on and optimized wherever possible, I run into bugs here and there, but it's getting to a point where it's easy for me to implement throughout the rest of the game.

This may sound silly but the biggest hurdle I have to worry about now is seemlessly switching between mouse/keyboard and gamepad, which some plugins do, but I've also found that they result in a lot of other problems with input.

I am finally at a point where the update can be played OFFLINE. I will be testing with people who have not yet played the game, or have little gaming experience to test the user experience, to observe how well they can navigate menu's and such. If they are struggling, then I need to do better, and ask for feedback on what would help make things more clear.
Games should not feel like work, they should be fun and intuitive.

Once I am satisfied with the offline functionality and have eliminated whatever bugs show up, I will begin to ensure that everything is working ONLINE.

This will firstly be done on my own with multiple PC's set up, I have found this is the most efficient way to remove most network related bugs, but then I will begin private testing with the Discord community.

Once I am satisfied with the state of online play, there are a few major bugs I wish to iron out if I don't already crush them (such as player 1 sometimes just not spawning, but everyone else does).
Then I will polish things up wherever I can, do some marketing stuff, and launch the update for everyone to play.

I will primarily be focusing on new board game maps that I have previously shown off.
I held off on releasing these because the board game mode is pretty bad currently, so I didn't see much point releasing pretty new maps if the board game mode was still bad.
I will of course still be adding more to the board game customization, fine tuning, tweaking, bug fixing etc, but the major focus is on new board game maps.
Sadly, I cannot estimate when you will be able to play, I know it has been a long time in development just for this update, and if Metal Heads was making enough money for me to work on it full time, the update would have been done already.

I do need to get into a habit of keeping you all in the loop however, I have been so stretched for time that when it comes to working on the game, or updating the community, I end up working on the game, which is not the right approach to take.
I just don't want to make posts with nothing to show, that's all.

The main reason is I have a full time job that takes up the majority of my time now, and is necessary in order to pay the rent, food etc.
It is the work/life balance that so many struggle with. I am no different as a solo developer.

That said, I try to squeeze in as much game development into my life, wherever possible, and have been making better progress as of late due to managing my spare time more efficiently, but there's always room for improvement.

The board game customization update was something that was supposed to be fairly straight forward to do, but I have run into a plethora of technical problems within Unreal Engine (this is in no way discrediting this amazing engine btw) which I have needed to learn about and figure out how to work around or fix.
Some of these technical issues took literal months to fix, some were 3-6 weeks, and a lot of the time, I would resolve one issue, only to be presented with another, this has been incredibly frustrating and exhausting, but it needs to be done, and thankfully I perservered, got through a lot of the issues that was hindering progress.

I am now at a point where I am doing local offline testing of the update, which is pretty massive.
Whilst I do this, I am continuously making improvements to the update, to the UI, to menu navigation etc, and the overall user experience.

There's still a LOT to go before I am satisfied to release the update, because to me, it feels like this update is a second chance for the game, something to breathe new life into the game, and if I release it half baked, it's just going to result in disappointment, so I am really striving to improve the quality of gameplay significantly.

I hope you are all rockin it!, and if you have any questions, or wish to discuss this update, please feel free to either post in the comments, post on the DISCUSSION FORUM, or join the
I appreciate you all for being patient, and I appreciate any understanding given.
Once again I apologize for the lack of updates, and the lack of transparency surrounding development, but now I feel at least I can actually show off what I've been doing.

THANK YOU AND ROCK ON!

CHANGE LOG:

• Fixed issue where game settings were not being loaded, resulting in low graphics settings loading by
  default, making the game look awful.
  This would occur every time the game was started, so players would need to change graphics and audio settings every single time.

You may be required to change your game settings again to how you want it.

DEMO WILL BE UPDATED TOO.

Sorry about this folks!

ROCK ON!