Ssssalutations, art friends and friends' friends. Today's ART for Snakes update brings a number of improvements and fixes that may be of interest to you!

First and foremost, we are glad to offer friends and families the opportunity to sample our art together for the first time, in groups of up to a hypothetical limit of 18. Local co-op is available when starting a new game, and gamepad players can drop-in or out during levels by holding Start or Back respectively. Social!

Co-op adds room for a little more chaos, and gives more opportunities to build bridges and use each others' tails to reach new heights. To help keep everybody's serpentine forms apart, we've added a range of snake colours and patterns to choose from. You can also press Enter, A, or Right Mouse to show an indicator on your snake. If you happen to fall out of view during gameplay, you can hold that button to spawn onscreen. Handy!

To help ease visitors into what ART for Snakes has to offer, we've added a new introductory/playground level that gives an opportunity to experiment and get familiar with snake-ish writhing in the museum lobby before timers and scores and other distractions demand your divided attention. Peaceful!

Our helpful tour guide is ready to furnish you with pointers and fresh paintings to whet your appetite should you need. Courteous!

To surface new and existing gameplay options that we think visitors might appreciate knowing about and provide a better flow for tailoring your visit, we've added a new game screen with fancy little pictures suggesting their purpose. Illustrative!

The new "Grabby frames" option allows picture frames to be climbed upon even after a painting has been consumed, "Zen mode" has been removed and replaced with a more succinct "Timed mode," and for anybody allergic to lobbies, there's "Skip intro."  Snake colour and patterns can be selected here as well. Customiseable!

In addition to the new trigger game entity seen in the lobby, we've also added those most iconic of art gallery furnishings - curtains! Curtains!

Curtains can be climbed upon, and can in some levels be handy as alternative paths or safety nets for any snakes who find themselves stuck or hurtling through the air in very much the wrong direction. Drapery!

A full changelog is included at the bottom of this post, but other noteworthy items include:

• Consuming an entire painting gives a bonus 10% of that painting's values
• In-game screenshots (F12)
• Open user folder button in the settings menu
• Fancy mouse cursor
• Keyboard and gamepad input are now more consistent

Many thanks to everysnake who played a pre-release build and gave us feedback, and also to everybody who drew something to play in-game at the recent Level Up event!

We hope that you find something to enjoy in this update ^_^

- Splerp, Cheese, and lcl

Changes:

• Added local co-op multiplayer with support for keyboard, mouse, and up to 16 gamepads as separate players
• Added introductory/playground level
• Added new game setup screen for snake and gameplay customisation
• Added in-game screenshot shortcut (F12)
• Added score bonus of 10% of paintings value for fully consuming a painting
• Added identify snake/respawn shortcut (Enter/A/right click)
• Added UI cursor
• Added gameplay cursor
• Added 6 snake colours
• Added 9 snake patterns
• Added 20 default level start positions
• Added 1 new The Scream
• Added support for date-specific map insets
• Added Spoopy & Poopy map inset (appears late October)
• Added Decapodes On Ice map inset
• Added asterisk character to PixelFont
• Added version number output at startup before game is instantiated
• Added curtain gameplay entity
• Added curtains to exp.json, fruit.json, fuji.json, loop.json, morsels.json, ren.json, scream.json, treasure.json, and vangogh.json
• Added apply button to settings screen for delayed settings
• Added fullscreen setting (uses fullscreen borderless window rather than FSEM)
• Added grabby frames setting
• Added open user folder button to settings screen
• Added partial pixel scaling setting for old auto scale behaviour
• Added skip intro setting
• Added timed mode setting
• Added HUD notice about pausing to end level when in untimed mode
• Added multi select support to editor (shift+click to add/remove from selection)
• Added open editor path shortcut (Home) in editor mode
• Added particle effect when a painting is fully consumed
• Added region dragging for Curtains to editor
• Added snake blink animation on title screen (we know snakes don't blink)
• Added support for untimed levels
• Added trigger gameplay entity
• Added dialogue for triggers
• Added sound for triggers
• Added painting reset for triggers
• Added expo mode for exhibiting at Level Up (hidden)
• Added V4L2 capture support for expo mode (unused)
• Added support for different snake variants
• Added thick snake (unused)
• Added thin snake (unused)
• Added webcam.json level (unused)
• Added back end support for mod data overriding base game data (unused)
• Added curtain movement sound
• Added mouse over sounds for souvenirs in the gift shop
• Updated all pamphlet screens to allow clicking outside the pamphlet to trigger back action
• Updated pause screen to show gamepad binding for quick reset as well as keyboard binding
• Updated auto scaling behaviour to guarantee square pixel sizes (adds letterboxing/pillarboxing)
• Updated config handling to stage changed values before applying
• Updated window settings to have delayed applying
• Updated default size in windowed mode to use the largest integer scaling that fits the current screen resolution
• Updated HUD progress bar and particles to be visible at the end of the level before the pamphlet comes up
• Updated HUD to use player 1's snake colour
• Updated UpdateCurrentLevelBoundsFromContent() to enforce a minimum max width big enough to show the HUD
• Updated level boundary calculation to allow snakes to move slightly further off the bottom of the screen
• Updated level select screen marker to use player 1's snake colour
• Updated snake rendering to always draw eyes on top
• Updated main menu to use ClickButtons
• Updated MaxElapsedTime to reduce choppiness when running below desirable frame rate
• Updated pause screen to say "quick restart" instead of "restart"
• Updated save data to track retry atempts and level score targets
• Updated save data to track snake colour and pattern assignments
• Updated loop.json and ren.json with balancing adjustments
• Updated tester credits
• Updated editor painting value adjustment to use big increments when shift is held, and small increments without
• Updated editor shift controls to apply to all entities
• Updated editor shift to use big increments when shift is held, and small increments without
• Updated camera to ignore "inactive" snakes
• Refactored editor drawing and processing code into new Editor class
• Refactored snake tail collision
• Optimised snake bounding box updates
• Optimised Clipper vertex list to use a pool
• Optimised complex intersection checks to only happen on consumable GroundBlocks that have not been triangulated
• Optimised OnUpdatePolygons() and CalculateTriangulationVertices() calls
• Optimised Painting GroundBlock accessing to no longer use Linq .Single and .First calls
• Optimised Pamphlet drawing to only occur when pamphlet is on screen
• Optimised SimplifyPaths() calls
• Optimised Snake polygon updates
• Optimised use of Vector2 and Vector3 constructors
• Optimised particles with a global limit
• Removed light brown wooden frames in treasure.json
• Removed lower lights in fuji.json
• Removed windowmode setting
• Removed zen mode settng
• Removed some extraneous logging
• Fixed keyboard and gamepad input not being normalised
• Fixed crash when pressing quick restart shortcut when not in a level
• Fixed capitalisation of souvenir names
• Fixed music looping for untimed levels
• Fixed snake movement being processed during gift shop after completing a full run
• Fixed asymmetry in wall1.png
• Fixed some warnings