The first major update for BLASTRONAUT has landed. The Darkness adds a fog of war, a map, and new worm aliens to the game. As well as many smaller improvements.
The darkness will limit the player's view and hide the treasures and aliens underground. It also works well in co-op allowing friends to clear the map for each other.
The minimap helps to find the way back home but only shows the cleared areas.
Worms are new enemies lurking in the dark but can be detected from afar by the sound they are making when munching on blocks.
These new features are made to complement each other and will make the exploration more interesting and rewarding. To allow these new features, the underlying systems for storing blocks have also changed. The new system is much faster and will not slow down even when traveling very long distances. However, it also required the save system redesign and therefore the old save games will not work after this update. This will happen less often in the future.
List of new features:
1. Darkness system
2. Minimap
3. Worm enemies - small and large variants
4. Attack sounds for worms and flyers
5. Support for multiple enemies per biome
6. Save games optimized (about 1/2 the size)
7. World chunking optimized to allow infinite travel
List of changes:
1. Critters give more fuel (2.5x)
2. Fuel containers give more fuel (10x)
3. Multiple bag directions are shown
4. Subtask complete sound changed
Fixed bugs:
1. Upgrade cost wrongly increased for all players after purchase by one.
2. Entities were sometimes mapped to the wrong chunks.
Known bugs:
1. Editor tile placement not working correctly.
2. Editor also displays darkness.
3. Player beam weapon sometimes not shooting.
We are hoping to fix these and all the other new bugs in the upcoming patches. The next big update will be scheduled in about 3 months and its main objective is to tackle the equipment system. Add more upgrades and improve the controls of the player. Take a look at our roadmap to see what is coming up.
I hope you will enjoy this update and if you find any bugs or just want to have a chat, please join our Discord server.
Cheers,
Jaanus (Perfoon)
