Progress on the physical release

Last months, the focus has been set on the physical release. We are a bit late on schedule, and I am sorry for that. We really wanted to get the perfect cart as the risk with new technologies is to sell a defective or brittle product. There is a lot of stuff going on a physical release aside from the WiFi-enabled NES board, I'll try to cover all fronts here.

About the board itself. We finally froze its design, including the PCB layout, the components on it, and the FPGA programming. That means we are now using prototypes strictly equivalent to the production cartridge, or at least we can list the differences, which is better to get progress that the ever-evolving cart we had until now. It also means we can, and have, ordered the needed PCBs to make production cartridges.

The game itself is in a state were we publish incremental improvements. It is ready, and working on the prototypes, and we don't want to break that. At the same time, balance and polish can always be improved, and Super Tilt Bro. is a living game: it is updated regularly and will be for the foreseeable future.

Finally, the packaging. The cover art and manual are ready, and we also got a sample to ensure print quality was good. That's a good thing done, that means we can, and have, ordered the packaging elements. Digital reward like the OST and the comic book are also ready.

To summarize, everything is ready and has been ordered. We should receive all elements by the end of April, letting us do the last checks and begin to assemble, flash, and ship the games to Kickstarter backers, honor pre-orders, and finally release the game.

As a side note: Thank you very much for Kickstarting and pre-ordering the game. It may not be obvious seeing Super Tilt Bro. coming to completion, but the project would really have been jeopardized should it not have been backed. I myself reduced my work to part-time for two years developing the game, and Broke Studio has great upfront costs ordering thousands of cartridges materials. Super Tilt Bro. may not have been a thing, and would certainly not be near that magnitude without you. Thank you.

What's new in the game?

Story mode

The final score board has been improved. The time is now displayed in white which is way more legible than black on brown, and the medal name has been added.

Oh, and, did you notice? The timer now goes above 10 minutes, you can take your time!

Finally, targets in break-the-target stages now have larger hurtboxes. This is the end of raging because you missed it by one pixel. You can now rage because you missed it by three pixels!

VGSage

VGSage has been slightly buffed. First is his down-air which now has a stronger hitbox at the end. The new hitbox throws your opponent just far enough to let you continuing your combo with an advantage.

Also, the side-special now takes less time to charge. Without being a fast move, it can now take your rival by surprise, making it a good niche option.

Pepper

As with VGSage, Pepper got her share of buff. Like VGSage's side-special, Pepper's down-air startup time has been lowered to make the move more often useful.

Finally, Pepper's side-special has more scaling knockback than before. That's especially true when she hit from max range. This is actually a big buff since when your opponent is weakened, finishing a combo with a side-special can now score you a ring-out.

Fixes

Pressing start during an online game no more cause terrible glitches. The reason was while the client refused to pause an online game, the server actually paused. Causing weird desynchronization and a game seemingly stuck.