I'm happy to announce that version 2.0.6 of Prepare For Warp has reached a state where I am comfortable promoting it from the test branch to the main release branch.
To celebrate this update, Prepare For Warp will be on sale for 20% off from May 19th 5AM PST until May 24th 5AM PST. Grab it while you can at that low price, because after the sale I will be setting the price to what will likely be its final price point once the game leaves Early Access.
There are so many changes in this release! I've been writing about a lot of them in my Patreon Daily Standup posts and in the "bleedingedge" test branch patch notes, but it has only been upon aggregating all of those patch notes that I fully realized how much I have accomplished. This is especially true regarding the last month when I have been able to work on this game relatively unfettered.
The largest change is the completely renovated in-game store screen. The new UI style introduced in 2.0.5 has now been applied throughout the game. The store is now so much cleaner and less busy, reducing information overload.
Another major gameplay change is the introduction of "Challenge Mode". Once a level has been beaten, you can select Challenge Mode for that level, where rewards are increased, but modifiers of increasing difficulty are placed on a level.
A third major feature is the introduction of the Innovation Lab and Component Exchange, which provides a purpose for Components beyond unlocking cosmetic Ship Parts. The Innovation Lab allows you to indirectly exchange Components for Prestige, by spelling out words to gain a new currency Innovitae, which is exchanged automatically for Prestige at retirement.
Speaking of Ship Parts, two new ship hulls created by Arvex have been introduced, and the existing "Whedgee Mk 2" ship hull has been improved and upgraded to the "Whedgee Mk 3". Paint Jobs have also been overhauled. There are still twenty different Paint Jobs, but now they are much more vibrant, distinct, thematic, and generally more awesome.
Legacies can now be respecced. A Respec can be purchased in the Prestige store, and can be applied at Retirement. This will refund all Legacies, returning the original Prestige cost.
The in-game HUD has had some more updates, more evolutionary than revolutionary. Things should be less in the way.
Overall, I'm excited by how the game is progressing, and will be sure to keep the ball rolling for 2.0.7!
- New Features:
- Challenge Mode
- When a level 11 or higher is beaten, Challenge Mode for that level becomes available.
- Challenge mode adds +20% Score for success with each Rank in Challenge Mode.
- A disadvantage is added to the level for each Rank in Challenge Mode. Disadvantages can stack multiple times.
- The maximum rank available is governed by the lesser of the prior rank beaten plus one, or a maximum of (level / 4 + 2 * challengerLegacyLevel).
- Synergistic negative modifiers will tend to cluster when modifiers are selected.
- A maximum of eight distinct disadvantages are generated. After that, new disadvantages will always stack with one of the disadvantages already present.
- Each time a Challenge Mode Rank is beaten, its iteration will increase by one, changing the modifiers chosen.
- 25 disadvantages are available.
- High score, number of wins, and best time for each level/mode/rank combination are now tracked (though not necessarily displayed yet).
- Added "Duohawkh X/A" ship hull, which is unlockable in the Hangar.
- Added "Carabvyce M84" ship hull, also unlockable in the Hangar.
- New Prestige Item "Legacy Respec" is available for purchase in the Prestige store.
- New respec option available during retirement that will refund all purchased Legacies.
- Added 6 new achievements related to Challenge Mode
- Added 6 new achievements for scores ranging from 500M to 20B.
- Added new achievement for destroying 500 bombers in a mission.
- Added new achievement for destroying 50K asteroids in a mission.
- Added Innovation minigame allowing Components to be indirectly exchanged for Prestige:
- Added New Hangar Categories "Innovation Lab" and "Component Exchange" that unlock when all other Ship Parts are unlocked.
- Innovation Lab allows completion of Inspirations through use of Components and Innovation to earn Inovati.
- Innovation Lab component cost is drawn from a dictionary of over 800 words ranging from three to ten letters.
- Inovati is exchanged 7:1 for Prestige at Retirement.
- Component Exchange provides a fluctuating component barter market
- Upgrades now list the game stat that they affect, giving current value and proposed value.
- Camera Shake occurs on larger explosions and Player Ship collisions.
- New larger flavors of explosion applied to Mega and Giga obstacle variants.
- Hangar areas of the Store now shows a paper doll model of the item being considered.
- Added ability to bind mouse delta for steering (arcade cabinet support).
- Icons for controls can now be overridden using a config file. This is intended to be used on devices like the I-PAC for arcade cabinets, that map controller inputs to keys (Documentation to come).
- Added ability through config file to override in-game music with arbitrary MP3, OGG or WAV files. (Documentation to come).
- Challenge Mode
- Improvements:
- Made Ally Ships, Dark Matter, Debit Cards, and Components immune to Space Mines.
- Ally ships will no longer drop Shield Power if ship shields are full, and will no longer drop Superlaser pickups if ship currently has more than 3 pickups worth of Superlaser time. If one of these conditions are encountered, the drop will be changed to a Shield Power pickup if shields at are less than 50%, else it will be changed to a Superlaser pickup if ship currently has less than 1 pickup worth of Superlaser time, else the drop will be changed to Dark Matter (70% of the time) or a Debit Card (30% of the time).
- Reworked Pause UI.
- Added "Optimal Magnifier" Subspace Upgrade, which will increase the size of Shield, Super Laser, Dark Matter, Debit Card, and Component pickups by 2% per level of Optimal Magnifier.
- Added "Endowment" Legacy Upgrade, which will increase Prestige awarded by retirement by 1 per level of Endowment.
- Added "Old Secrets" Achievement.
- Added 40% frequency spread to Dark Matter collect sound, to make it easier to aurally distinguish when multiple Dark Matter have been collected.
- Added 40% frequency spread to Missile launch sound. As a result, Missile Salvos will probably sound less like someone blowing their nose.
- The pitch for the sound for each subsequent laser beam beyond the first will now be offset by half-steps on the chromatic scale. The second beam will be offset a half step higher than base, the third offset a half step lower than base, the fourth offset a full step higher than base, and so on.
- Adjusted priority of Missile launch sound so that it would cut out less when many asteroids were being destroyed.
- Improve particles generated by collecting Warp Plus and Warp Minus pickups.
- Change the calculation of the rendered width of a laser beam. Laser width will now be proportional to the square root of the laser power instead of increasing linearly.
- Adjust assignment of colors in generated color schemes. Levels will all still feature the same hues, but the assignment of those hues to level elements may vary from prior versions.:
- On 4-color schemes, level elements will always be assigned complementary colors, rather than the complementary colors possibly getting split between level elements.
- On 3-color schemes, there will no longer be a strong left-right color wheel rotation bias on the hue offset assignment.
- Scoring formula has been reworked:
- Score = (HazardScore + SpeedScore + SafetyScore) * WarpEnergyFactor * PickupFactor * GoalFactor
- HazardScore = Sum of scores of all hazards destroyed
- SpeedScore = Accumulates each frame that speed is above a certain threshold. Accumulated amount increases exponentially with faster speeds.
- SafetyScore = Accumulates each frame based on the amount of time since last collision.
- WarpEnergyFactor = Warp energy / 1000, minimum of 1.
- PickupFactor = Starts at 1 and increases by a slight fraction with each pickup collected, except for Dark Matter, Debit Cards, and Components
- Current score, and the various components of it, are displayed during the misision.
- End of level UI panel has been adjusted to display new score information.
- End of level UI panel now reports Argen collected from Debit Cards.
- Mission, Store, and Hangar UI has been completely overhauled:
- New UI is consistent with other recent new UI work.
- Overall, UI is less busy and more focused on the task currently at hand.
- Vertical scrolling lists are gone, replaced with horizontal item navigation.
- UI is fully controller navigable, with the same three axes of control as the Options UI.
- It is now possible to see current "X of Y" progress on unearned achievements.
- Remaining in-game UI elements have been migrated to new UI standard.
- Title screen has been migrated to new UI standard.
- Credits screen has been migrated to new UI standard.
- Logo screen has been migrated to new UI standard.
- Added new feedback sound to in-game abilities when those abilities are not available.
- Menu navigation now has feedback sound.
- Improved feedback glow on HUD gauges.
- Added feedback glow to Speed, Hull, Shield, and SuperLaser gauges.
- Renamed early levels (2-4, 6-9) to be more in-line with the theming of later level names.
- Current control scheme will be remembered between scenes. The current control scheme will no longer reset back to keyboard with each scene transition.
- Current control scheme will no longer be changed back to Keyboard by mouse interaction.
- Expanded several object pools to handle more objects without re-allocations.
- Made tip displays rotating - Tips now change every 20 seconds.
- Added more self-repair of save game corruption.
- Forty icons have been remastered.
- In-game HUD has been re-arranged to encroach less on gameplay area.
- Achievements are now grouped by stat in the Achievement area of the Store.
- Player Ship paint jobs have been overhauled.
- Bomber, Fighter, Missile, Space Mine, Laser Gate paint jobs have been overhauled.
- Main paper doll ship now has improved rotation.
- The Whedgee player ship model has been substantially improved and has been incremented from "Mk 2" to "Mk 3".
- Balancing:
- Adjusted cost curve for Ship Upgrades. Level 5-7 Ship Upgrades are now cheaper. Level 9-12 Ship Upgrades are now more expensive.
- Increased cost increase factor for Warp Licenses, from ~1.87 to ~2.07, to align overall Warp License costs with the above Ship Upgrade cost change.
- Removed "Ignit (100)" Achievement.
- Changed Guardian Force effect to be multiplicative rather than additive, to allow it to scale properly past level 39.
- Change rule for retirement so that at least one level will need to be cleared in order to retire, even if Appprenticeship level is 10 or greater.
- Reduced laser strength progression for level 6-11 Laser upgrade by 50%.
- Collisions have 25% more impact on speed.
- Spawn rate of Speed Up pickups has been doubled.
- Adjust late-level spawn rates and spawn rate falloff. Spawn rates for enemy obstacles will now increase all the way to 360k distance. Superlaser powerup spawn rate will now peak at 40k distance instead of 45k distance, and Superlaser and Shield Power powerups will now falloff at double the previous rate after 40k of distance (One sector is 15k distance).
- Fixes:
- Fixed jitter in HUD that worsened the further the distance traveled.
- Fixed issue where highest speed during a mission was not being calculated correctly.
- Fixed issue where bomber health would unexpectedly increase.
- Limit Apprenticeship Legacy upgrade to level 50 (was previously and nonsensically 100).
- Bonus points for clearing level are now properly awarded upon warping instead of being awarded when level goal was reached and prior to warping.
- Ally will stop dropping pickups when player warps.
- Fixed an exploit where the extra drops that an Ally Ship does when the highest unbeaten level has been failed multiple consecutive times could be farmed for unintended Argen gain.
- Fixed an issue in icon shader causing black borders on some icons.
- Fixed issue with ability sounds (Superlaser, Standby Shield, etc.) activating when Warp was activated.
- Fixed an issue with stat reporting and display for the Qualified Trainee achievement.