Patch v0.2 Beaming and Gleaming
So many changes happening this week! I got a lot of great feedback, and watched a lot of videos of people playing. I expect more balancing will be needed after so many significant changes, and I'll address as much as I can in patch v0.21 after I've read your feedback.
You can leave feedback below, in the forums, or join the discord here: https://discord.gg/NR4qDNH8Vb
And if you're enjoying the game, please leave a review.
A quick what's next: A new boss/zone. Persistent unlockable upgrades called "Augments." A unique difficulty system. More pilots. And for those of you that want some weapons that are a bit simpler to aim and use, I got you covered.
New boss, coming soon...ish!
TL;DR
- 2 new weapons
- 2 new utilities
- 2 new powerups
- 1 new enemy
- 1 new hazard
- 1 new background
- 1 new level up mechanic has been added
- 1 new requested option
- Revamped Pilot and Upgrade Interfaces
- A pile of balance changes
- Bug fixes
Features:
- A new option has been added called "Ship Accel" that when turned on will slow down your movements when using quick taps, and ease you into full speed when holding movement down. This option is off by default. Note: The movement engine was not built with granular movement speed in mind, but more fine control was requested, so this optional feature will hopefully help and is actually my preferred way to play now.
Weapons
- Sunstriker: Alternating beams of energy detonate on targets in front of your ship, dealing 50 damage to enemies in the target area.
- Conduit: A beacon appears in a random location, and fires 6 energy beams toward your ship over 3 seconds. Each beam deals 17 damage to all enemies it passes through. 6 second recharge time.
Utilities
- Refractor: Beam weapons have a chance to bounce to nearby targets for 25% of the original beam's damage
- Raypalm: When a beam weapon damages an enemy, all enemies in an area become set ablaze, and take 27 damage over 2 seconds. This debuff does not stack.
Enemies and Hazards
- Hercules Class Ships have been added. These are massive, slow moving, bullet sponges. They can't be pushed or stunned. And if you take them down, they are worth a lot of gems.
- A new "Iceteroid" variant has been added. As the game progresses the chance that asteroids instead spawn as Iceteroids increases. Iceteroids have 125 health, down from 300, but give fewer gems.
Powerups
- Gleaming Cube: Fills your exp bar by 20% of its current maximum.
- Overclock: Sets recharge reduction to 90% for 5 seconds
Note: These powerups will not show up in the early game
Balance
- Experience needed to upgrade has been reduced by about 13% across all levels.
- Repair Drone now only has 3 levels of upgrades down from 4. The repair drone now spawns in the bottom 3/4 of the screen reducing the chance for a bad spawn, but not entirely. Heal duration is increased by 25% at level 2. Max heal is increased by 2 and recharge time decreased by 25% at level 3.
- Gravity Wave now only has 3 upgrade levels, and has had its upgrade bonuses condensed. There has been a slight reduction in overall power, but because you're considerably more likely to reach max level now it will be much stronger in most cases. - Recharge: 4/3.6/2.5 seconds - Damage: 15/15/25 - Stun Duration: 0.5/1/1.5 seconds
- The Phase Shift Powerup now lasts 1 second longer, from 5 -> 6 seconds.
- Discharger's base amount of projectiles has been increased to 3/3/4/5/6 now that it is creating a consistent amount when triggering (See: Bugs). Its range has also been increased at levels 1 through 3 by 25%
- Leymine bullets have had their size and range increased. At level 5 a second pulse of 3 extra projectiles is now released, and their range increases by 50%.
- At max level, when the railgun destroys a target, its recharge timer is reduced by 25%. This reduction is applied after other recharge reduction (i.e. Heatsink).
- The Gunlock sweep now starts up and to the left of the ship at a 45 degree angle.
- Passive armor regeneration has been increased by 20%
Data Beacons
- Every 4 minutes a data beacon appears on the playing field. Move your ship to the beacon and remain there for 1.5 seconds to upgrade a randomly selected, but already equipped weapon or utility. These do nothing if everything is at max level.
Note: I may increase the frequency of these, but combined with the reduced needed experience to level, reduced levels to max some upgrades, new iceteroids, and gleaming cube powerup, I want to wait and see how the game feels. The impact of so many changes at once to experience gain is hard to measure just with myself and a few testers.
Note #2: The art for these is not finished.
Quality of Life
- Repair Drone had some of its text updated
- Disruptor had some of its text updated
- Sentry Drone and Scouting Drone now indicate that they can not target shielded enemies, like the Gunlock. No lock-on weapons or utilities should target shielded enemies.
- You can now see your pilot's current level on their portrait
Sound
- Ship destruction sounds now play on a dedicated channel. Only one will play at a time. This should prevent every sound channel from becoming flooded with the same sound during a nuke or other large enemy destruction event. Note: A significant sound system rewrite is coming eventually to address multiple stacking sounds from a variety of sources, but not in the near future.
Graphics
- Updated pilot selection menu - Pilots now display their equipment icons - Wider display - New, larger font - Larger confirmation button
- Updated upgrade selection menu - New upgrade icons - New level meter in the selection menu shows you the max level of an upgrade and its current level - Descriptions now include if upgrades are wepons or utilities
Bugs
- Discharger no longer stops working during boss fights
- Discharger was sometimes triggering multiple times when an enemy died
- Leymines will now properly scale with projectile range
- The Gunlock aim preview will no longer get stuck on screen while you're EMP'd
- Fixed an issue where the railgun targeter could occassionally get stuck
- Fixed an issue that put a disruptor effect below the player ship instead of above
- Music will now start playing if you start a game muted and adjust volume