Hey, I've got some huge news!

Apotris got a physical release! The cartridge is made by insideGadgets, and has optional rumble!

Along with the physical release, the v3.4 update is out! It features a lot of new graphics settings which improve the visuals of the game dramatically, new game modes and a lot more!  In this devlog I'll be going through the new features in detail.

First up, gradient backgrounds were added! It was about time to do something about the boring black background, and this was the easiest way to do it while also looking quite cool in my opinion. Ideally, I want to add image backgrounds to the game but that's for a future update. You can tweak the RGB values in the settings to get any of 32000 unique colors!

The next visual improvement, which I feel like makes a big difference, is the addition of connected skins! Until now, all skins had minos comprised of individual blocks. With connected skins, each mino's blocks are connected to each other! Three different connected skins were added, and more are coming in the future!

It's crazy how much these 2 additions change how the game feels. Also with the growing number of options in the graphics menu, you can now press Select to reset all graphics settings to their default values. Anyway, onto the new modes!

Master Mode, based on the beloved TGM series and specifically TGM3, was added! You can pick between "Normal" and "Classic" rules; Normal keeps the SRS rotation system and controls, while Classic features the ARS rotation system along with Sonic Drop and Locking Soft Drop so you can pull off zangi-moves! All the normal grades are here up to MasterM, except Grand Master which was omitted. In TGM3 the Grand Master grade was awarded after promotional exams which were given to players who played exceptionally well in their previous few games. That functionality was a bit hard to add to the game since a lot of pieces were missing, but I plan to it or a replacement in the following updates along with secret grades which were left out because of time constraints. Master mode without Grand Master does feel a bit incomplete, but I hope you understand.

Along with master mode, a new sub mode of Marathon was added. It's called Zone, and as the name suggests it adds the zone mechanic to the normal marathon game-play. Implementing zone's visuals in a satisfying way was very challenging, especially because of the limited capabilities of the GBA. I personally think the end result does the job, and feels great to play at the same time.

Moving forward to handling changes, a lot of new options were added to the handling settings! I want the game to be able to be played as fast as any other falling block game, and these changes were necessary to achieve that.

Here's a list of the new settings: 

1. You can now set DAS to an exact number of frames (keep pressing left on the Auto Repeat Delay setting to set this)
2. Added "Instant" options to ARR and Soft Drop Speed
3. "Delay Soft Drop" option to toggle the delay before soft drop starts when holding down
4. Disable Diagonals now has 3 options: OFF/SOFT/STRICT. (Strict ignores the second press entirely while soft only ignores it while the first button is held down)

The SOFT option for Disable Diagonals is the same as the v3.3 behavior, while STRICT brings back the v3.2 and prior behavior. This was done because the different options seem to work better on different devices.

Another thing that will probably be welcomed by people who like to play fast, is the addition of Pro Mode. You can enable Pro Mode by holding L or R when starting a game. Enabling Pro Mode changes a few things about the game. It adds a PPS counter and a correct-finesse-streak counter in-game, so that you can monitor your performance in real time. Also, while Pro Mode is active, line clear delay is reduces to 0 (of course, this doesn't apply to game modes that have clear delay as part of their difficulty, like Master Mode). 

If you don't want the other additions included in Pro Mode, but would still like to know what your time would have been without clear delay, "IGT" or In-Game Time was added to the post-game stats which let's you know exactly that.

Speaking of post-game stats, they are now pause menu stats as well! You can now check the stats out at any time while in-game by entering the pause menu and pressing L. A few more entries were added to the stats too, like starting level, score and more, so you can see everything about your game in one place.

One thing more thing you might have noticed about the new pause menu, is that it hides the board, hold piece and previews. This was done to prevent "cheating" in time-sensitive modes by pausing to think.

Lastly, a few changes and additions were made to the Training Mode. You can now pick a speed level, which remains constant for the duration of your training so that you can practice on certain speeds without leveling up. Also, it felt weird to be top out and have to restart Training mode every time, so now instead of toping out, the board just resets. The final change affects the save functionality inside training, and although minor, it should improve your experience using the feature by a lot. Before, if you would have to enter the save section of the pause menu each time to load the game and retry some scenario, which could get annoying really fast. Now, unpausing the game by pressing start while in the saves section, and then pausing again keeps you in that section so you don't have to waste time.

The physical release was in planning for a couple of months, and I was in a bit of a mad dash to bring the game to a complete state in that time frame. Now that it's out I will have the time to work on bigger features for the game, like achievements and also ports. But more on those when I finish working on them!

I want to give a big thanks to all the people in the Apotris discord that helped with beta testing and ideas on how to improve the visuals during zone. They were a tremendous help, and allowed me to focus on fixing bugs instead of having to play-test for hours.