Chao Garden: Evolved 1.4.7
Aquatic Mine becomes a half-pipe you can air out of, with a goal ring and a trail that knows rock from water. Elemental particles sit on the chao instead of over its head, and take its accent everywhere. And the update prompt that would not go away is gone.
The update prompt that would not go away
If the game has been offering you an update you already installed, this release ends it — and it was our fault rather than anything you did.
- The updater compares the release against the version compiled into the app, and that number had been stuck at 1.1.0 since the release it was last built at. Every update since then installed correctly and still reported 1.1.0, so the next launch offered it again.
- Nothing looked wrong from the outside: the installer, the download page and Windows’ own installed-programs list all carried the right version. Only the app itself was reporting the old one.
- Install this one and the loop stops. After 1.4.7 the app reports the version it actually is, so it will only ever ask when there is genuinely something new.
- The same fault could make the Android build announce a release the phone already had.
Aquatic Mine
- Air out of the pipe. Carry enough speed up the wall and you leave the lip instead of scraping along it — about two seconds of air, which is room for six tricks and a chain into the low twenties. Land back in and ride it out.
- Air is earned. Commit to the wall before you have built any speed and you will not reach the lip at all.
- Less force pushing you off the walls. The climb out of the invert costs a lot less than it did, which is what makes the walls rideable in the first place.
- A goal ring at the finish, like every other course. Aquatic Mine was the only one without one.
- The trail knows what it is riding on. Dust off the dry rock, spray in the standing water, switching as you cross the waterline. It used to throw spray down the whole course, walls included.
Elemental chao
- The particles sit on the chao again. In Chao Karate and Chao Kindergarten an elemental chao’s effect was floating above its head — worst on lightning, which is authored to crackle up the whole body and so was pushed the furthest. Fire, ice, lightning, wind, water, earth, light and shadow all now sit where they do in the garden.
- The embers take the chao’s own accent colour everywhere. They always did in the garden; in Karate, Kindergarten, Chao Race, Chao Quest, the Chao Board and Chao Clash they came out the element’s stock colour. A fire chao burns its own gold in all of them now.
- Fixed: entering a tournament with one elemental chao and then swapping to another left the first one’s particles floating in the air for the rest of the session.
Under the hood
- Half-pipe flight rides the lateral axis rather than the jump system, so the arc, the tricks and the landing all come from physics that was already there.
- A new headless test covers airing out of the rim; the board’s regression suite is up to fifteen.
- The build now refuses to produce a release whose binary disagrees with the version it claims.