SSunnKing/Open-Nectar---Pikmin-Native-PC-Port 0.5

Open Nectar 0.5 - Hard Mode

on GitHub

Hard mode

After Normal vs Permadeath, a second prompt asks Normal or Hard. Both rules can combine (four kinds of file).

On Hard:

• Enemies have about a third more health
• Olimar takes 50% more damage
• Days are 8 minutes; at most 80 Pikmin on the field
• F1 cannot raise those two
• The choice is stored on the save. Old permadeath files stay permadeath, without Hard.

Glossy surfaces are back

Olimar, the pellets, the ship and the Onions render their reflections again.

Disc images: RVZ, WIA and GCZ

The first-run installer accepts compressed disc images directly, alongside the existing ISO and GCM support.

• Conversion uses a Dolphin converter you already have, found next to the launcher or on your PATH, or picked from a file dialog. No converter is bundled and none is downloaded, so you need Dolphin installed to use a compressed image.
• Conversion goes to a uniquely reserved temporary folder and is cleaned up afterwards. Your source image is never modified or copied into the install.
• Conversion, verification, extraction and finalization are now reported separately, and a failed attempt returns you to setup with your selections intact instead of exiting.
• Budget temporary space for a full uncompressed disc image (about 1.4 GB) on top of the extracted assets.

Language from F1 (PAL only)

The European release carries six languages, and the F1 settings menu now has a Language row to switch between English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Dutch. The change applies on restart, and the menu says so while it is pending. Other discs ship a single language and do not show the row.

Controller and menus

• Settings from the pad: Select / View (Share on PlayStation) opens and closes the F1 menu. Holding it after a dialog does not pop the menu open again. F1 still works.
• New-game prompt honors remaps: Accept / cancel on Normal vs Permadeath follow your A/B bindings (buttons or axes). The
• F1 menu still uses physical A/B.

Gameplay (PC)

• Yellows planting bombs together: A bomb warning from one planter no longer yanks another carrier into LookAt or a whistle recall before it can set its bomb. Player whistle and blast damage are unchanged.
• Quick-release grabs: A short throw press is no longer lost while a Pikmin is still in the grab anim or walking in.

Performance

Faster vertex submission: the default matrix-index mode was being mistaken for a streamed vertex format, which sent every interface and world draw through a byte-at-a-time parser. Only indexed arrays and packed non-float immediates take that path now.

Linux

• NVIDIA laptops on Wayland no longer crash at startup. Pinning the NVIDIA GLX vendor on Xwayland made context creation fail with BadValue and abort before SDL could report anything. Wayland sessions now request NVIDIA through EGL and leave the GLX vendor alone; NECTAR_PRIME_X11=1 restores the old X11/GLX path. A warning is printed if you asked for PRIME and still ended up on the integrated GPU.

Note for people building from source: this adds X11 as a link-time dependency on Linux.

Engine / tests

• ARAM unit test on Windows: Scratch files use the real temp folder and a private directory per process, so CTest works without TMPDIR and concurrent runs do not clobber each other. No change to the game.

Saves no longer depend on how you launch the game

The memory card used to live at a path relative to the working directory. The launcher changes into the data root before starting the game, but running the binary directly from Steam, or from a file manager leaves the working directory somewhere else, so each way of launching ended up with its own card. You could save at sunset, relaunch the other way, and find nothing there. It was reported twice on Steam Deck, on both USA and PAL.

The card now resolves once, and never from the working directory:

• NECTAR_SAVE_DIR if you set it, for portable installs
• otherwise a per-user location: %APPDATA%\OpenNectar\save on Windows,
  $XDG_DATA_HOME or ~/.local/share/pikmin-native/save elsewhere
• existing saves stay where they are. If there is already a save/card0
  next to your working directory, the game keeps using it, so nothing moves
  out from under you.

The startup log now prints the absolute path the card resolved to, which makes
save-related reports much easier to act on.

Thanks

Special thanks to 4laric for the fixes and suggestions that made it into this release: the controller-driven settings menu, remap-aware prompts, the bomb-planting and quick-release gameplay fixes, the portable ARAM test, and the reworked first-run installer with compressed disc image support. Thanks for the careful write-ups and validation notes that came with them.