Version 1.33 of EBF5 is up on the Google Play Store, here’s a list of changes:

  • Added support for resolutions up to 20:9. The game should look much better on longer phones. (many battle animations have been extended, let me know if any are incorrect) (I’m also curious if screen cutouts/notches cause any issues)
  • Added an option to lock the game in the original 16:9 ratio, in the experimental options menu.

  • Added cloud saving. In the experimental options menu, you can upload and download saved data. (tap the star in the options menu) (this will eventually be automatic on start up and shut down of the app, but for now it’s done manually) (downloaded data will only be used if the cloud files are newer than the local files)
  • Added an option to disable cloud saving in the experimental options menu. (if you don’t want to share data across devices)

  • Added back the hidden equipment color variants. (removing them was a mistake)
  • Added 10 new weapon color variants – 2 for each character.
  • Added a prompt to rate the app, which triggers after boss fights. (frequency of prompts is limited)
  • Added a preview of the Cheats and Challenges menu which shows their details before you purchase them.
  • Made the DLC shop look a bit shinier.
  • Cleaned up the Glitched icons, to make them easier to select, since you have no cursor on mobile.

The list of changes is quite short this time, but cloud saving and wider aspect ratios took a LOT of work and are a big deal!
EBF5 is now feature complete – all that’s left is fixing a few bugs and translating a couple of new lines of text.

Hey guys, stupidly long phones are popular lately, and EBF5 has been a strictly 16:9 aspect ratio game until now, so a lot of people have been seeing black bars on mobile. This isn’t so bad on phones with an aspect ratio of 18:9, but when it gets to 20:9, you’re losing 25% of usable screen space!

Getting rid of the black bars has been the most requested feature on mobile (except maybe for cloud saving, which is also coming soon), so after some reluctance at first, I’ve finally decided to work on it. I’ve decided to support resolutions from 16:9 to 20:9, because that covers most high-end phones, and isn’t a crazy amount of work (at the moment it’s looking like about 5 or 6 days of work). I’m not doing taller tablet resolutions because that would require twice as much work, and tablets are much less popular (most of the GUI has been designed for widescreen, so I’m in no mood to redesign all of that). I also considered supporting 22:9, but that turned out to be awkward and looked worse than just having the black bars (the maps can’t be scaled to such a width without horrible distortion).

So what’s changing? Player, foe and spell animations that reach the edges of the screen have been extended to reach further, and battle backgrounds are being extended too. The world map has been zoomed in a bit, and the menu now requires a button press to open. This has the advantage of making the map easier to navigate, as the tiles are noticeably bigger and easier to tap.

There’s also an option to lock the game to 16:9, if you prefer that for whatever reason. But I think the extra width looks pretty cool.

Is it worth a week of work? Probably not. But it’s a novel challenge and has been more fun to do than some of the other mobile features.

Hey guys, a big Android update for EBF5 just dropped, addressing a lot of issues. I don’t know if you’ll be prompted to update automatically, or if you should do it from the Google Play Store page. Either way, don’t uninstall the old version – that will delete your data.

Here’s a list of changes:

Updated the version of Flash/AIR used, meaning the game will hopefully crash much less often.
Unlocked the password save system by default. It doesn’t work on every device, but generally works well enough to keep it in there.
Fixed Fat Fly and Amethyst Earrings not being listed correctly as premium equips, which left empty spaces in the flairs menu.
Fixed a minor animation error with Lance’s Hyperbeam.
Fixed Sandworm summon category from “Hits One” to “Hits All”.
Fixed Cosmic Monolith foes turning invisible after a Cosmic Monolith is summoned against them.
Similarly, fixed Lance turning invisible after Annabelle uses Black Hole.
(This is not specific to either situation, and there may be other cases where this can happen)
Fixed Pumpkus not getting angry when Idle animations are off.
Fixed Slime Bunny buckets softlocking the game. (it was related to idle animations being off)
Fixed the tooltip being cut off if a treasure chest has equipment in the 3rd slot.
(there was only 6 of these chests, so their equips have been moved to the 2nd slot)
Fixed the tooltip being cut off for skills that have 2 target types, in the second row, in battle.
(hopefully some other tooltips aren’t being cut off as a side effect…)
Added different themes to the slime minigame, based on the 5 holiday events, which makes it clear when these events are active.
Added more arrows in No Man’s Land, Glacier Valley, and the Ice Cave, as well as making the final Ice Cave puzzle simpler.
(Some users were getting lost at specific areas)
Added some diagnostic text in the top left after the slime minigame.
(the game sometimes stops at this black screen, so this should tell us how far it gets)
Added links to the Privacy Policy and Support Email on the main menu.
Added a secret option to force screen flipping, if it doesn’t happen automatically.
Turning off idle animations no longer turns off heal animations – they play as normal.
(hopefully this will fix the issue with looping healing/draining skill animations)
Improved some icons on the main menu and Secret Features menu.
Allowed usage of premium Summons and Equips if either Dungeons DLC or Game Modes DLC is active.
(I previously overlooked that some premium stuff could be collected with only the Game Modes DLC) Muted global volume when SFX and music volume are both set to 0.
(This should hopefully help in instances where partial sound effects play when they shouldn’t)
Removed Matt’s “passiveHealing” dialogue after battle, since it’s instant on mobile.
Halved the damage of Devourer’s ultimate attack on Normal difficulty and below, less likely to surprise you with a total party kill.

Stuff that I still need to fix, but won’t be in this update:

A few more lines of text needs to be translated, and a couple of mistakes with old text.
Cloud saving is still planned but I haven’t started on it yet. I’d like to have it if Google and Apple offer that option with their services.
Black screen after the slime minigame – not sure what causes this, need to collect more info. It seems rare, but the only known fix is deleting your data at the moment.
Battles not continuing because the command menu doesn’t appear. Seems to be related to Idle animations being off, but I can’t reproduce it. Seems rare, but reports say it happens often in very specific battles.
Two players can be sent to backup at the same time, softlocking the game. Apparently this can be done by selecting the middle player, dragging down and releasing on the bottom player. Doesn’t happen for me though.
A bunch of other minor issues that I need to investigate.