After nearly four long years, we're finally here! When I started working on Waves of Steel back in 2019, it was just meant to be a relaxing project for down-time between jobs. Needless to say, things got a little out of control! But the important thing is that the game is complete.
Which isn't to say that I'm done working on it! I'd love to add more game modes, translate the game into Japanese, and add DLC. I know many of you would love to have playable aircraft carriers and submarines, with their own campaigns. Whether I can afford to make all these improvements, though, now depends on you. So please, play the game! Tell your friends! Leave a review! But most importantly, have fun and be kind.
The complete changelist for Waves of Steel 1.0 is at the bottom of this post. But in brief:
The campaign is complete, with seven final missions. Take the battle against Jörmungandr to its triumphant conclusion!
Two more bonus missions have been added.
8 more ship hulls and over 60 more parts can now be unlocked.
Gameplay:
- Add the final campaign missions and two more bonus missions!
- Add several new achievements.
- Add VLS variants of anti-ship missile weapons.
- Add Drifter II special.
- Add destroyer-sized variant of the Sawblade weapon.
- Update the Sawblade model.
- Melee weapons constantly animate.
- Add support for Twitch Crowd Control. This is very much in beta!
- The ship designer's lighting and colors have been improved.
- Main guns have had their damage values rebalanced. Guns below 14" deal more damage, while guns above 14" deal less. This should make the early game a bit easier, and fix the late game being a bit rocket tag-ish.
- The supercavitating drive now slightly reduces the ship's drag.
- The "orbital laser" and "grapple ships" chaos effects are mutually exclusive.
- The Hood-class battleship has a more generous belowdecks.
- The Cöln-class cruiser has reduced drag, to compensate for its small size.
- The Ballistic Laser is 200 tons lighter.
- 21-inch guns have much larger belowdecks areas.
- Added a friendly face to the first mission of the game.
- Scavenger systems now give a flat bonus to HP instead of a percentage. This should make the Scavenger I more useful to destroyers.
- Rocket boosters deal half as much damage in AI hands. They were a little too lethal...
- The combat camera's Y sensitivity has been greatly reduced.
- Missions "The Cat's Away" and "Paralysis" now have larger maps.
- The ship designer remembers the systems you installed, and will attempt to restore them when you add bridges/superstructure.
- Made health crate drops massively more likely if your ship is about to sink.
- Changed the names of unique specials (e.g. "EMP I" -> "EMP" since there's no EMP II)
- Improved autofiring behavior when the player has selected autofiring weapons. They still fire on their own, but you can manually designate targets for them to shoot at.
- Custom decals and flags can be added while the game is still running; no need to restart.
- Changed the messaging when the player steps outside of the map boundaries.
- Added visible walls that indicate the absolute limits of the map.
- The torpedo turret in "Quetzalcoatl" has a slightly smaller arc of fire.
- Tethered mines follow their parent ship more closely.
- Added a few guaranteed health drops to "Scylla and Charibdis".
Bugfixes:
- Fix missing name in the credits
- Foghorns and train whistles are no longer considered to be valid anti-submarine weapons.
- Fix bug in "Storm Descendent" causing certain enemies to fail to spawn.
- Fix bug causing shielded ships to be completely immune to damage; in particular, this makes it possible to get the treasure in "Lighting a Candle".
- Fix "zombie plane" bug triggered if planes are attached to a ship when it is destroyed.
- Fix flag strands being visible in the binoculars view.
- Fix flag picker being broken.
- Fix bug causing superstructure parts to have a height of 0.
- Fix player being able to click on background menu elements while loading mods.
- Bow Drill weapons are now properly locked to their ship categories.
- Fix paint being applied to the "underwater" materials, preventing ships/parts from rendering their water shadows.
- If the player cancels out of the "start next mission" ship selector, they're put on the main menu, not the mission select menu.
- Fix freeplay mode unlocking story missions.
- Fix a bug causing gameplay to hang if dialog is skipped on the frame it is displayed.
- Fix the "invisible ships" chaos effect causing green copies of ship hulls to appear when it ends.
- Fix the "inverted controls" chaos effect not ending when it says it does.
- Fix excessive lag if "giant ships" chaos effect is triggered in a mission that has both submarines and terrain.
- The MLRS turrets in Winter use the correct model.
- Fix 3 superstructure parts not being available unless the "Unlock all techs" assist is used.
- Fix a bug causing some superstructure parts to not be able to be moved once placed.
- The menu name for the Truly Excessive Flamethrower is now better matched to its full name.
- The old Depth Charge Rack weapon has been dummied out.
- Certain secret ship hulls are no longer displayed in the hulls menu unless you've actually unlocked them.
- Many minor dialog tweaks.
- Fix a bug causing ships to fail to sink properly, leaving "zombie ship" remnants.
- The Bogue is now pointed the right way around.
- Fix Captain Quinn pretending to be a lookout in "The Tendency of Power"
- Fix a bug preventing dialog from being sped up by the Select button
- Change the impact warning color in missions using the "dawn 2" lighting conditions (e.g. "Chrysalis")
- Fix bug causing allied ships to have the incorrect flag. They now properly get the same flag the player uses.
- Fix a bug causing a certain ship in "Storm Descendent" to be un-targetable by the player.
- Fix the ship designer being too aggressive when removing invalid parts, potentially rendering the Denali unusable.
- Fix the undo/redo system allowing parts to be actually used when in invalid positions.
- Fix the Farragut's belowdecks being oddly-shaped.
- Fix being unable to place guns on the Bazel's nacelles.
- Fix bug with the 8" gun models causing them to have inconsistent behavior near the edges of the ship's deck.
- The top prizes in the Score Attack and racing missions are now flagged as treasures.
- Fix some decals not showing up in the decal picker.
- The "no flag" and "bgo" flags are not shown as decal options.
- Fix the ship name not drawing in the designer when a ship is first loaded.
- The intro cinematic in "Vahana" is now quieter.
- Fix a bug causing extremely tall ships to get stuck in "Vahana"
- Fix the spacebar behaving badly when the player is using the on-screen keyboard but starts typing.
- Fix bug causing "Winter" to be failed if the player completes it without performing the first objective.
- Fix bug causing the flag picker to be visible when first loading into the ship designer.
- Minefields no longer spawn mines inside of terrain.
- Fix a bug when loading ships that have no thumbnail.
- Fix the designer weapons tutorial giving inaccurate instructions for setting weapon groups/autofire.
- Fix the display of certain secret ships in the stats panel.
- Fix a certain secret ship not being propely usable.
- The game no longer pretends that there are playable submarines when there aren't, actually.
- Fix Boss-class ships not having any usable bridges.
- Fix the Invisible Pink PT Boat chaos effect's plasma lance not despawning when its owner does.
- Fix the chaos effects overlay being active outside of combat.
- Fix the "enemy rain" chaos effect continuing to run during photo mode.
Modding:
- Parts and ships now list their mod of origin in the stats panel.