Morning Post #2: Sandbox Mode Arrives

Another week! Good morning, everyone! Let's go over this week's beta release.

Previously

Originally, this week's beta release was planned to add the Sands of Time boss — in fact, the programming work is essentially done. However, since the previous stretch was five Pond levels in a row, we felt there should be one very short level before the Sands boss to bring players back into the Sands of Time. The related story beats and details still need time to polish, so this week's beta release does not ship a new boss.

We then planned to ship Trials instead of level content. But after I finished building two Trials, I found there was still a lot to adjust in their pacing and details. A beta release can cut corners on art, music, or animation, but I don't think the design part should be that rough. So we moved all of the remaining effort into Sandbox mode.

Content Log

At the very start of this update, we changed the notice shown when launching a beta release. First, the popup now appears only once per game session. Second, the letter now reminds you to back up your save.

The previous beta release had a save-affecting bug (fixed quickly), so I think it is worth reminding everyone to back up their saves to guard against anything similar happening again (of course, I will do my best to make sure it doesn't).

Next, a long-awaited feature — Sandbox mode! To enter it, just type sandbox on the world map. The official entrance will later move inside Snowbloom Palace.

Sandbox mode lets you freely place plants, zombies, and field objects, and switch scenes. By the end of this update, the placement scope was widened further: most field mechanics that appear in the game can now be experienced in Sandbox. On top of that, you can test every skill in Sandbox! You can even put together combinations that are impossible in normal play (such as equipping the "Guided Thistle Darts" and the "Redpin Flower Laser" at the same time).

Sandbox also provides "save layout" and "load layout" functions — very handy if you need to test something repeatedly.

Another change concerns the "use last loadout" feature. Previously, using it would unload every selected card — even if a card was part of the last loadout.

For example: your current loadout is Sunflower, Peashooter, Wall-nut, Cherry Bomb, and your last loadout was Cherry Bomb, Hygro Plantago, Lily Pad, Peashooter. The instant you press the button, Sunflower, Peashooter, Wall-nut, and Cherry Bomb all snap back to the selection screen and are then moved into the tray — so Cherry Bomb and Peashooter teleport out and are immediately re-selected!

The new logic: Cherry Bomb and Peashooter now move within the card tray, matching the positions from the last loadout as closely as possible, avoiding the teleport problem.

Beyond that, two small seed-selection bugs were fixed:

• GHTR-000000DA Dragging a seed packet on the seed selection screen could preview the wrong card
• GHTR-000000DB Using "last loadout" in a particular order could leave seed packets in an abnormal state

We also redesigned all zombie cards so they sit together more naturally instead of looking uneven like before. You may have noticed some zombie cards are a bit blurry — we will fix that later.

There is also one level change: we moved the two bishop tiles in column two on the second floor of Snowbloom Palace. Previously, the moment those bishop tiles were triggered, the Power Peony you must protect would die instantly. That made it very hard for players to learn how bishops work, and it felt frustrating. A "trigger equals death" trap does not seem like a good fit for this point in the main story.

So the bishop tiles were moved to their current positions. Predictably, the difficulty of Snowbloom Palace floor two will drop noticeably, especially in the early phase — you can even lean on the terrain and starting plants to get through it. The level's main difficulty, the hamster ball, is still there. For now, this is the adjustment we are going with.

Odds and Ends

You may not know this: if you activate two Hygro Plantagos within the same frame, they can absorb the same liquid. There used to be zero timing forgiveness for this — though you could pull it off easily with Time Stop.

While building the Hygro Plantago Trial, we really wanted to include the "two Plantagos absorb one liquid" trick, but we did not want it to require Time Stop or other special tricks. So in this version, the timing window has been raised to 0.5 seconds.

Also, this beta ships x64 and x32 builds. Android actually compiled as well, but Android generally cannot use keyboard input, so the main test content of these two betas cannot be completed there. Once the official entrances are added, future beta releases will ship on Android too.

In Preparation

You may have noticed that the Music Room, Document Library, and similar screens are laid out very unevenly right now. We will rework this whole area later (especially the Music Room).

Here are some UI design sketches from the process. Of course, this is not what the actual UI will be — the layout below has plenty of problems of its own, and this area still needs a lot more thought.

Aside

I recently discovered this website in the community: pvzvoyage.com/zh/. It genuinely shocked me — the site is remarkably well made! Especially the download section and the DIY workshop section, both of which are exactly what Voyage has been missing.

Thank you so much for building and running this site! If the site's operator ever needs my help, I will assist however I can. My sincere gratitude to the player who built and runs it.

That's it for this week's Morning Post — see you next week!