Flight of the Swallow

Flight of the Swallow 0.21

Version
0.21
Links

Patch Notes

0.21

Add: The whole quest Pictures Of You. I didn't want to release it half complete as I often do (a full quest is long to write and implement, but this one is pretty short), and I didn't want to ruin the surprise of what it is about. To avoid spoiling, it is to Vogue what Some Kind Of Monster is to the detention block arc. And please make sure you have the pictures taken during Vogue still in your Photo folder, in particular the "Single" ones. If not, the game will use default ones instead. The rest... I hope you'll like what you see!

Add: Elegance shackles for the elbows. They behave exactly like the police elbow cuffs, except they're less painful for Sandy.
Add: New chain attachments for the Elegance shackles, to match what the Police cuffs can do. Now a character can be chained up exactly the same way in Police cuffs and in Elegance shackles.

Add: A new option to select how you prefer "Propel" to work. Either propel Sandy towards the object under the crosshair (the default and original mode), or in the direction parallel to the camera (meaning there's parallax but easier to aim when Sandy is against a wall), or in the forward direction of Sandy's chest (in other words, where her breasts are pointing), which is trickier but more dynamic since the camera isn't required at all in that mode, you aim with her body. With those new modes aiming at making Propel more comfortable and dynamic, the stamina cost of propelling has been reduced from 30% stamina to 15% so Sandy won't be winded after the second propel in a quick succession.

Change: Since ElevenLabs dropped their default voices last month, including Charlotte who voices both Sandy and the player, I had to find another service to continue doing text-to-speech voicing for both characters, while keeping the same quality and of course the same voice. You will notice that Sandy is now actually more expressive than before, as I'm using both another online service and a couple offline solutions (I spent a week trying to find the best solutions, actually, part of why this version took so long to make). The offline solution is good but only delivers 24 kHz voice files, as opposed to the 44.1 kHz I get from the online services, and I think the difference is audible.

Change: When a robot grabs Sandy but there's an obstacle between them and she can't "float" to the shoulder within a few seconds, the robot should notice it and drop her. It happens sometimes in the art gallery during Pictures Of You.

Change: The stairs in REC are now opaque for a robot, even though he should in theory be able to spot Sandy through the steps. But it's too annoying when the robot tries to grab her and fails anyway.

Change: The Reach ability is now taken into account when calculating the attract radius of each hand (that radius is normally equal to the grab radius multiplied by the factor you set in the Helpers, and determines how far the hand will be attracted to a handle when wanting to grab it). But since this is going to be an unpopular change, there's a new switch in the Helpers to ignore Reach, keeping things the way they were before this change. FYI, at Reach 0%, the attract radius is equal to the grab radius, and goes up smoothly as Reach increases. That way, a low Reach still yields a useful attract radius, even if it's smaller than a 100% Reach.

Change: Normally, all operators (hands, feet, voice etc) use their minimal volume when in ragdoll mode, at least those that have several volumes depending on the Reach ability (hands and feet). For the hands, the volume will now be interpolated exactly like it is in animated mode, instead of always considering Reach is 0. This is because hands and arms are mobile and there is no reason for the game to expect the player to place Sandy's hands exactly on buttons in ragdoll mode and not in animated mode. Of course, when the bondage is tight, the Reach is low so the player has to be more precise than when Sandy is free. For the feet, nothing changes, they still have to be very close to whatever Operable the player wants to operate, but at least it should be easier to operate buttons, closets and doors with the hands when in ragdoll mode now.

Fix: A few missing lines during the trial in Some Kind Of Monster.
Fix: During the trial, when Jones says "It got across sideways", I forgot to make him lose a point.
Fix: "None of us robots is programmed" becomes "None of us robots are programmed", even though Kate is formal and "is" should be correct, "are" sounds better for most native English speakers.

Fix: During Zap's negotiation scene, I forgot to make Sandy lose a point in one of the branches.
Fix: During You Came, Archibald is now smarter and frees Sandy from all her disposable restraints (ballgag, tape gag, tape, ropes) and transfers the reusable ones to her Lost And Found Restraints closet in her room. He leaves her shackles and cuffs alone, though.

Fix: The space and planet angles weren't properly restored when loading a game, if the speed factor is 0 (as is the case at the end of Some Kind Of Monster). As a result, the sequence where the characters go outside, which is supposed to play out on a clear planet background, could play out in the dark and the player wouldn't see much of what's happening.

Fix: At the end of Some Kind Of Monster, during the death scene, there was some inexplicable momentum added to a ragdoll... Actually this was because of Unity's "continuous speculative" collision detection. Now the ragdoll shouldn't have any parasitic motion anymore.

Fix: At the beginning of Hunting Down A Killer, the camera no longer moved to predefined points to indicate where to go in HAB.
Fix: In some cases, Rad was still doing his patrol when he was supposed to go see Sandy in the Detention Block.
Fix: The tether on the ceiling of Virginia's office should now be more versatile and allow for chains and tape as well, no longer only rope. Same for the tether under the fan in Virginia's room in HAB.