Detailed spoilers below.

New Level: Biology! (WIP)

Added a brand new level to the game: Biology! This level at its current state contains:

• A new teacher.
• A new subject / notebook type.
• 3 new enemies (not counting the teacher).
  • Doctor
  • Diesection
  • Kittie
• Multiple new items.
• A couple new paintings.

This level is not finished, including potential bugs, a lack of endings and features, and non-finalized balancing and layout. I also planned for a fourth additional enemy for this release, but I decided to cut it so I could give myself more time to think about it.

Level Modifiers Added

The difficulty selection menu now comes with toggleable modifiers that will change things within a given level. This feature is experimental, but will receive improvements in the future. Currently existing modifiers include:

• Low Ceilings: Ceilings are lowered to the height of old alphas.
  • Given as a default.
  • Available in all levels.
• Ninjagovski: Viktor now goes dead silent after a certain amount of notebooks are collected.
  • Earned from beating Math on Brainiac.
  • Available in all levels.
• ???
  • Earned from going to [redacted].
  • Available in the Math level only.

Most modifiers are earned from certain accomplishments, mostly tied to achievements (though erasing achievement data will keep unlocked modifiers unlocked).

New Achievement Stuff

Expanded “Achivement” Area

Added a whole new area in the Main Menu to make space for more achievements, with new pedestals to navigate between boards.

Added a new UI element that appears when looking at each individual board. Showcases new achievement names, along with descriptions and tips. Tips are present before unlocking, though some tips only show for certain achievements if previous achievements are earned first.

New Achievements

To showcase the previous expansion, about a dozen or so new achievements have been added, including:

• The Next Einstein - Beat Math Level on Brainiac with Albert active.
• Grammatically Insane - Beat Language Level on Brainiac.
• Super Linguistic Mathematics - Beat Language Level with all 20 notebooks on Brainiac.
• Shambles - Visit the Tarwill World.
• Strike! - Hit Darwin with a bowling ball.
• Other Bowling Ball Achievement - Unimplemented.
• Not gonna spoil this last one, good luck finding it…!

Minor adjustments to previous achievements:

• Replaced Linguistic Mathematics achievement image.
• A multitude of adjustments of prior existing achievements’ descriptions.

Enemy Changes

Viktor Changes

• Now freezes when you hold [redacted].
• Delay boost is now removed from Viktor during the finale to make him less fast.
• Fixed an oversight where the delay variable was always getting set to 0 when Viktor entered the finale.
• Fixed some crazy oversights for when he spotted you with a tier 5 item.
• Cleaned up code.

Ninja Viktor Balance Changes

• Book count needed on all difficulties buffed:
  • Boi 8 → 6
  • Default 6 → 5
  • Hard 5 → 3
  • Brainiac 3 → 2
• Ninja Walk Speed rebalanced
  • Boi 300 (no change)
  • Default 400 → 375
  • Hard 420 → 425
  • Brainiac 500 (no change)
• Walk sound volume during finale: 1.5 → 0.5 (if Ninja is active)
• Viktor now stops moving while his “walking quietly” quote plays.

* Note that previous hard mode values went unused since Ninja Viktor wasn’t in the game before this update.

Head Teacher Fixes

• Head Teacher can now teleport to unreachable goals (primarily to fix Alarm Clock exploits).
• Fixed HT exclusively using echo voice lines even if close to the Player.
• Fixed HT continuously tracking you even if you are following the rules after the grace period is supposed to end.
• Fixed HT still thinking the Player is sprinting if they hold the sprint key while standing still.
• Fixed HT having the cat costume when no holiday feeling is active.

Cleany Clean Code Revamp

• Major code clean-up and optimizations.
• Added safe guards when litter collecting, trashing, and closing lockers.
  • Now ignores trash cans and open lockers he can’t reach.
  • Cleany now picks the closest trash can to himself after he picks up the last piece of litter, as opposed to switching between the closest or farthest trash can.
• Now collects litter he has seen in bulk before going to a nearest trash can.
• Now trashes collected litter one at a time instead of all at once.
• Minor adjustments to when Cleany drops the player or enemies.
• Potential crash fixes.
• Fixed Cleany sometimes getting stuck (hopefully).
• Cleany Clean now stuns the Camera for a short period of time when dropping it.

Camera Code Clean Up

• Cleaned up code.
• Fixed Camera not going back to wandering after getting punished by Head Teacher.
• Fixed Camera still being able to finish taking a picture after getting stunned.
• Fixed a potential oversight where Camera getting killed during a stun timer would potentially allow it to come back to life.

Granny Code Revamp

• Removed Granny spawn system.
  • Previously used a separate actor to spawn in instances of Granny.
  • Fixed multiple Granny’s being on the map at the same time.
• Updated other parts of code.
  • Fixed Granny’s door opening code being severely outdated.
  • Fixed Granny able to break doors if they’re closed by a magnet.
• Partial fix for Granny changing game filter for the rest of the round (lessened change tremendously, but the bug itself isn’t fixed).
• Fixed Granny able to affect the Player through walls, and also continue affecting the Player if they’re away if she hasn’t disappeared from an encounter.

[Redacted] Reworked

• No spoilers, related to the modifier!

Puppet Updated

• Fixed improper movement code causing the Puppet to move slower than usual.
• Fixed the Puppet always having a banish time of 1 second, regardless of difficulty.
• Fixed Puppet blocking item use inputs (asides from the Cross).

Darwin Updated

• Can now be countered with a new item, as well as the Crucifix.
  • The new item can knock him out for a while, though by comparison the Crucifix’s stun time is not very long.
• Cleaned up code.
• Fixed Player being able to see Darwin through a wall sometimes.

Misc.

• Fixed some enemies not being able to look through things like trash can arrows and plants.
• Fixed OG 2.5d enemies having incorrect sprite rotations at certain angles, due to them only having 5 sprite rotations to work with, as opposed to 8.
• Potentially fixed some issues with enemies wandering.

Puss Mode Fixed

A couple of the following changes were present since earlier releases, though were not notable due to the difficulty’s code being broken.

• Door behavior changed:
  • Fixed doors at the start being openable (official game behavior).
  • Fixed doors at the start still being locked after the first notebook (bug as of -1a).
  • Fixed some secret doors being openable.
  • Some secret doors are now completely locked, regardless of key.
  • Doors at the start of maps now work as intended again.
• Lots of secrets are disabled now.
  • Although, regular items will spawn now.
  • Achievement zones are also disabled.
• Regular items now spawn.
• Key lock doors now stay locked on Puss Mode so new Players can memorize locked doors.
• Albert hallucination in the garden is now removed on this difficulty (Math level).
• Picture randomization on the Math level is now up to date.
• Re-enabled Puss Mode endings of Math and Language (I’m pretty sure I turned them off back in -2c or -3a, idk).
• Probably some other fixes I forgot.

I am aware Language Puss Mode ending is a bit bugged, but I will fix that in the next Language Level update.

Door Code (Partially) Revamped

• Revamped teleporting door code to be more optimal and dynamic (and easy to understand when editing a level).
• Optimized how doors are set up at the start of a level.
• Changed the door material to be less bright and have the door handle display a wider range of colors.
• Black Key doors now have a black handle instead of a yellow handle.

Passive Enemy vs. Magnetized Door Changes

Passive enemies can no longer remove a Neod Magnet from either side of the door, they must now be on the same side as it. Certain enemies can’t remove the magnet at all. Enemies unable to remove a magnet in any circumstance will instead find a different route to their destination.

• Passive enemies:
  • Viktor (if idle)
  • Head Teacher
    • Can teleport to the other side of the magnetized door to remove the magnet, however.
  • Cleany Clean
• Passive enemies that can’t remove magnets:
  • Camera
  • Granny
  • Diesection (unless distressed)

Item Changes

• Alarm Clock re-added in the Math level.
  • Added a new music track.
  • Alarm Clock now spawns a new actor instead of just being a heavily modified item.
  • Changed a music’s starting audio.
  • Adjusted HT’s reaction to music beginning to play.
• Rusty Wrench (artifact) properly implemented. Hint: Language Level.
  • Contraband tier nerfed, 4 → 5
• Chalk nerf:
  • Contraband tier nerfed, 0 → 2.
  • Is no longer considered an artifact.
• Gas Mask now uses the item wearing system.
• Updated the code of a bunch of miscellaneous items.
• Blue Door Key name changed (from Door key).
• Updated capitalizations for other key items.

Food Item Changes

All food items now use similar functions for code optimization. Furthermore, consuming an item that drains your stamina after the time is up, and then consuming an item that doesn’t drain your stamina removes the stamina drain effect once the time is up.

• Ex: Eating a chocolate bar and then eating a chocolate muffin will not drain your stamina bar once the stamina runs out (this was not the case before).

Each edible item now has its own guilt timer when eaten. If you’re unaware, eating a food item (or drinking the energy drink) means you’re guilty of the associated rule break for that amount of time (and HT can catch you for it).

• All guilt times (default time before this update was 0.45) in seconds:
  • Cookie: 0.3
  • Chocolate Bar: 0.45
  • Chocolate / Edible Muffin: 0.5
  • Chips: 1
  • Donut: 1
  • Energy Drink: 0.8
  • Melon Slice: 0.3 + fixed melon slice not being against the eating rule.
  • Mushroom: 0.45 + ditto fix
  • Ice Cream: 0 (you no longer become guilty of eating food if it’s the ice cream).

Level Changes

Math

• New classroom towards the end of Corpus B.
• A couple of small expansions and stuff moved in the Pentagram area.
• Added a Chalk item spawn.
• Re-added medical lamps in the Med Bay.
• Albert’s room now has a forced lower ceiling to match what happens in it.
• Fixed low ceiling not being enforced in some spots of the rust labyrinth.
• Removed the Bathroom hole, changes following this include:
  • Fixed a wandering waypoint that was above the hole, which was obviously inaccessible to NPCs.
  • Moved the Notebook spawn closer to the back of the room.
  • Moved Viktor’s changing spot to the sink in the back right corner.
• Changed a couple of painting images.

Language

• The storage room’s door now has a staff only sign on it.
• Added a new painting to the roster of random paintings to be found here.
• Changed some painting images in the closets near Medbay to be forced.
  • Added a previously unused cursed painting variant here as well.

Notebook Changes

Sub-Spawns (FEATURE)

Notebooks now have the ability to have “sub-spawns”, which allows an individual notebook to have multiple different spots to choose to reside, should it be one of the notebook spawns chosen from the round.

Primarily used in the Biology Level, though some sub-spawns have been added to the Language storage room and closets near med bay.

Math

• Optimized some code.
• Changed how the correct and incorrect beep sounds play.
• Albert now appears in the image if active.

Language

• Added a new QOL hotkey for going backwards when tabbing. Simply use your keybind while holding shift to go backwards in the order of missing characters.
• Text caret is now pink!
• Fixed clicking on a missing character not setting the tabbing index, causing tabbing to ignore what you actually have selected.
• Fixed the caret blinking incredibly slowly when using the tab key instead of clicking.
  • I had to make the caret from scratch to fix this so please appreciate the tabbing hotkeys.

Misc Changes & Fixes

• Re-added the intro warnings sequence.
  • For now only appears first time when opening AREwVS on -3c, and (probably) all subsequent releases.
  • An option is planned in a settings menu update to add an “on every launch” option for this setting.
• Reworked unused “Trainer” part of Main Menu into an honorary Credits section.
• Red skybox is now “animated” during the game with some new effects.
• New galaxy skybox from recent official alphas added (in Biology level).
• Trash cans now have a pity value that decrements each time you fail to get an item from it.
  • Makes searching through trash cans more consistent.
  • Fixed trash cans not updating your UI if you get a successful item roll (this is the bug where items pop into your inventory after recently searching a trash can and then switching slots in the inventory).
• A couple new paintings added, one to Language level, multiple for Biology.
• Paintings are now randomized during level editing based on what tag group from the painting data is selected.
  • Math is unaffected outside of Puss Mode due to all paintings being preset.
  • Language paintings are probably “shuffled” around.
  • Biology has some paintings exclusive to it.
• Fixed Holiday being set to Halloween by default instead of None (caused Head Teacher to wear the cat costume outside of Halloween).
• Optimized how materials are set up for a majority of furniture objects.
• Fixed being able to walk on med beds.
• Fixed pug loaf painting not having correct compression / detail settings and therefore appearing blurry.
• Fixed the back button in the difficulty setting menu having the puss mode button hover sound.
• Modified some save data for optimization.
• Removed the FPS cap.
• Fixed Steam VR launching on start up.