Hello everyone, and Merry Christmas! We've got some exciting news. Yuurand 8.0: Final Fragmentation is released!
Now, before I dive into what this update is, I wanna give some background and talk about what this update is not. After 7.0 was released, some fragmented areas were made by several people. However, they were never merged with the main file, and eventually, the planned update kinda fell apart. For a while, this update languished in limbo, until Moosh and Deedee pushed me to work on it again recently. Figuring I'd dragged my feet long enough, I decided to finish that planned update. I've checked recently with Aevin, who does still give his blessing to this update.
This is a roundabout way of saying this is an update with simultaneously a lot of content and also not a lot you might expect from a Yuurand update. There are no new full labyrinths, characters, bosses, stories, or achievements. However, we have brought a whole lot of new fragmented areas. A double digit number, even! This equates to about one new labyrinth's worth of content, though spread through fragmented. We've also added a lot of new features that, while not earth-shattering, should greatly improve quality of life. And, of course, we've done our best to fix the most annoying bugs that were present. The overall goal of this update is to polish up Yuurand, to extend its shelf life, and to give it a proper send off.
It's been almost seven years since Yuurand first launched, and what a wild ride it's been. The quest formed a community, brought in contributors from across the ZC scene, and ultimately became the bench mark for what 2.53 was capable of and the best stress test for the engine the ZC devs could ask for. Thank you all for coming along with us on that ride.
Anyways, now that I've rambled, what can you actually expect from this update? Here's the new features:
- Lots of new Fragmented areas
- A return to start option has been added to the spacebar map in Fragmented
- Silent Sea has a 50/50 chance of excluding the lake boss screen in Fragmented
- Any area can be rolled as a lake area backup
- Between these two changes, you can expect to see Sixth Area, Play Room B, Royal Gardens, and Cocytus a lot less
- Styx and Phlegethon areas are now interchangeable in a single pool of areas in Fragmented. You can theoretically get four Styxes in one run now!
- Due to the above changes, Warp Space's warp points now have labels to tell you where you'll warp.
- You can do a Fragmented run with as little as a single labyrinth enabled now. If you ever wanted to play the Yuurei Entrance Randomizer for some reason, that's doable now!
- This option will not work with only the Reikon or Lifted labyrinths enabled (due to their non-standard number of areas) or with Fragmented only (for a variety of silly reasons)
- A banlist for areas in Fragmented has been added. For those moments when you really don't want to see Palewoods again
- Similarly, a banlist for bosses has been added. For those moments when you feel like Bastille is stalking you
- The above two points may be related to each other
- Triple battles against sync battle trios can be enabled to appear in double battle arenas. These are disabled by default and must be enabled in the boss ban list.
- These fights are really nasty, and I don't recommend enabling them unless you're feeling particularly masochistic. If any triple enabled, a random enabled triple will appear at a rate of 1/10 seeds
- Seeds without enough items will now spawn double coins, greatly increasing the amount of valid seeds and increasing the amount of area combinations possible
- Between Aevin's previous booster addition for seeds with too many items and this change, the logic is now entirely free of the tyranny of item count and no longer biased against certain areas
- A settings hash, consisting of four spell graphics, now appears at the upper right of the menu to ensure proper syncing of seeds for races
- Roaming bosses can now spawn in Fragmented areas and in Garden of Dread
- You can now use X/Ex1 to quick swap between two different active spell loadouts (when multiplayer is off, of course). No more constant pausing and spell shuffling to recast poison!
- Because of this, calling characters from the house for sidequests has been rebound to Ex3
- Sound Wave now auto charges (except for Loammi, where this is kind of a hindrance) and is more efficient at breaking blocks. This might sound like a minor tweak, but it makes it feel a lot better!
- Loammi's brimstone laser has a bit more oomph to it. Brimstoning a bleeding enemy also creates a small area of effect that inflicts bleed on nearby enemies
- Brimstone also inflicts a few frames of stun to an enemy. Not a huge amount, but enough that you don't have to wiggle around while firing it to actually hit mobile enemies like meteoras
- The Calais fight has been reworked slightly. It's not a brand new fight, but it's also more than a minor tweak.
- A new custom seed, by Deedee, shows of some of the new areas, but there's plenty more to be found.
And here's the smaller tweaks, bug fixes, and balance adjustments:
- Spacebar map now works in fragmented areas
- Lunar Tower B's minimap no longer shows random items
- Roaming boss markers now properly show on the Lifted Labyrinth map and minimaps
- The subscreen now properly reflects the item count for the area if the roaming boss spawns there
- Fixed some bugs in the Fragmented Logic that were invalidating seeds or rendering unbeatable seeds
- Screen shaking effects now consistently work
- Every character has unique graphics for sliding down the waterfalls in Silver Springs now, like in Reikon
- You may ask, "Russ, don't you have better things to do with your time?" Yes, and yet, here we are.
- Sound Wave's spell icon now flashes when it is charged, like it did way back in OG Yuurei (I'm unsure why that got lost somewhere)
- Shadow magnet no longer turns dark conduit into a nearly free machine gun (but does still make dark conduit home in on enemies)
- Tall grass collision with a certain character's wind weapon is no longer buggy
- Victor has slightly more defense now
- Emily's bow no longer turns 180 degrees to target nonexistent enemies
- Sylvia draws her ice passive properly now
- Arc Rider no longer clips into walls
- Characters with dashes no longer get caught on corners
- Wildfire no longer bugs out quite so badly
- Robots' charged sound wave respects float direction now
- Autimecia can now properly use Copycat Dash and Muramasa. Previously, she could technically roll these signatures, but a bug with character handling made them default to a regular dash
- Tartaros's Archetype costume has been resprited to look a bit better
- Snake Bone Worms die properly now to Death
- So does Fistmos
- Fake-O-Lanterns' HP have been nerfed. Enter Mortis should no longer be the bane of a relaxed run.
- Morgan has been edited to be a little more fair to fight early game
- Final Bastille now has a bit of arthritis
- Sync Caelan's ice disappears when he dies now
- Sync Tyre no longer takes half damage during his spider attack
- Jandra now properly randomizes the spike layout when using her super attack regardless of what area you fight her in
- Final Wisps and Rivieres have had their collective iframe mechanic greatly nerfed so that they'll properly take piercing damage and can be poisoned. They no longer completely wall Flect.
- To compensate, Wisps have 1.75x their old HP. They might be slightly harder, but if you're playing a normal character, you shouldn't notice much of a difference. If you're playing characters that rely on piercing damage, you're welcome.
- Rivieres, on the other hand, have 1.25x their old HP and enter phase 2 later in the fight. The overall result is they should feel a bit easier, with you able to chip away their health more rapidly in phase 1 and spending less time in phase 2.
- Venser's earth glyph can be escaped with float now
- Loammi properly appears in boss rooms prior to the fight beginning
- Some Rainbow Doppels have been rebalanced to be a bit easier
- Prismia has books explaining Venser's mechanics and a conduit switcher
- Prismia has a bridge added after solving the area so you don't need float to get to the boss screen
- The Robots' mid-fight scene in the Venser fight plays properly now
- The Avatar has a proper death animation in rogue-like mode now
- Lunar Tower B has fewer enemies
- Also fixed some graphical issues with Lunar Tower B
- Solstice tree tiles have been touched up
- Equinox's theme and Nostalgic Field's extra theme have been converted to ogg to avoid volume issues
- If you didn't know Nostalgic Field had an extra theme, try playing dress up with Eli
-Lots of other fixes and small things I've probably forgotten now
While this update should be compatible with existing save files, we recommend screenshotting your password, just in case. You can download the update here. The music for this update can be found here. And if you need to download the whole music pack for the quest, that can be found here.
As always, while we've done out best to ensure as few bugs as possible made it through, the nature of Yuurand means some bugs have certainly slipped through. Please let us know any issues you run into; I'll do my best to fix them promptly.
So what's next for us? While this may be Yuurand's farewell to the Labyrinth, Aevin is continuing to work on games in the franchise. You can find him over in The Labyrinth Discord server, which he uses to post about his creative projects in development. He's also released a nifty remake of Hitodama on Steam, and if you haven't played it, you should absolutely give it a shot! It's really cool, plus has an exclusive labyrinth you won't find in Yuurand. Did I mention it's only 2 dollars right now? It's practically a steal! While the Yuurand contributors and myself aren't involved in Aevin's further work in the franchise, I'm joining the rest of you in eagerly looking forward to what comes next as a fan again, rather than a contributor.
As for me and the rest of the contributors? Well, we'll see. Moosh and I have recently made a Discord server as well, which you can find here. We're planning on using this server as a central hub for our creative works going forward. I've had plans for a spiritual successor to Yuurand for a while, one that incorporates the kind of iterative release schedule Yuurand had but makes a bigger focus on community contributions and planning ahead. As of right now, this isn't past the concept stage, so I don't want to make any promises, but I'll be sure to update you all if/when development commences there.
From both me and Aevin, thank you all so much for taking this journey with us, and we hope to provide more to come in the future!
DarkFlameSheep, Anthus, Mani Kanina and 10 others like this
It's great to see this last content update finally finished. It's been nagging at me for a long time that the latest efforts of some contributors hadn't made it in yet. Thanks to Russ and those contributors for their work in making this happen. I hope the update entices some players to revisit the game.
Yuurand development has been quite the journey. Thanks again to Russ and all the Yuurand contributors, including Moosh, Evan, Deedee, Mani, and more. (Sorry if I've overlooked anyone in particular.) And, of course, thank you to all the players. It's my time with all the aforementioned people that has made this game so special for me. I'm always carrying my experiences and the things I learned from Yuurand, and from the larger ZC community, with me into my future projects.
Quick personal plug...
Spoiler
The Labyrinth Discord server has evolved into a cozy space for talking retro games, game development, creative passions, and more, as well as a place to follow development of my own games. I don't spend much time on PureZC anymore, but would love the chance to reconnect, workshop projects, and chat with those of you who would enjoy that kind of place. There's an invite link in the main post above and in my signature. Hope to see you there! And, of course, I encourage you to go join Russ and Moosh's server, and support their projects, too!
Hey all. Unfortunately, I realized one of the songs wasn't properly included in the music pack. You'll want to redownload the 8.0 update music folder to fix it. I also updated the quest file to fix a few bugs, including one that sometimes causes the double battle to desync under specific but not too uncommon situations, so I'd recommended redownloading that as well. Apologies for the inconvenience. Lastly, a couple of people using the passwords to bring in older saves are letting me know that some of their house purchases aren't being carried over. I'm looking into fixing this, but in the meantime, if a bunch of your purchases are gone and you don't want to grind the money to get them back, let me know and I can pass along a password to fix it.
Hey everyone, sorry for the double post. I've fixed a whole lot of bugs over the last several days. Most are minor, but there's a couple of bigger ones, namely one that caused the total item count to get thrown off if a certain area spawned, and another that caused the door to the final boss to fail to open if the roaming boss spawned in a particular arena. I'd suggest redownloading the update for those. The update today also adds a new custom seed by Orithan, titled the Ouroboros Puzzle.
I'm sure more bugs will be caught, and I'll continue to silently update the quest file to make these minor fixes, but I'll announce when larger fixes or new custom seeds that warrant a redownload are made.
Alright, I think most of the issues have been caught at this point. This update fixes a bug that might prevent items from spawning properly if the roaming boss appears in certain areas, plus an area whose gimmick only partially reset when runs are completed. It also fixes a lot of issues with carrying over house progress via password. There may still be a few issues to work through there, but the majority of your unlocks should appear if you used a house password now. As always, please let us know if you run across any issues.
