Prepare For Warp release 2.0.7 is now promoted to stable release.
This release marks the last major feature release before Prepare For Warp leaves Early Access.
One piece of advice I've heard over and over about developing games is that you should make a game that you yourself want to play. I have definitely achieved that with this game. I have literally hundreds of hours of playtest time logged for this game, and it still excites me!
With this update, two new game modes have been added. Timed mode can be unlocked in level 7 onwards, and imposes an explosive time limit on your mission, in exchange for increased rewards if you succeed. If you do succeed, you will be offered a higher-rank Timed mission with an even stricter time limit and even greater reward.
Infinite mode lets you see how long and far you can survive in the face of mounting odds, and can be unlocked from level 9 onwards.
Steam Achievements have been added, and overall the Achievement system has been extended to over 500 achievements, 76 of which map to Steam Achievements. The underlying Stats system has been extended significantly as well, and many more stats are available to look at in the Stats panel.
Two new Ship Part types have been added to allow further customization of your ship's appearance. "Ground" FX will install a lighted glow beneath your ship, while Engine Glow allows you to customize the color of your engines and exhaust.
Joke Extras "Eyes", "Color Explosion", and "Horns" have been added. The "Burning Rich" Joke Extra has been removed.
Full cumulative patch details are below.
As mentioned, with this release, Prepare For Warp is now very close to leaving Early Access. Likely, I will leave it in Early Access through the upcoming Steam Summer Sale so as to not have my release drowned out by that event. So depending on testing, other factors such as other major game releases, and the position of the stars, I am looking at early-mid July for transitioning from Early Access to full release.
- New Features:
- Added individual volume sliders for FX, Music, and UI sounds. These sliders allow you to control the balance of these three audio elements to your liking. In addition, the master volume control is still present and can be used to adjust overall volume without affecting your volume balance. More games should do it like this.
- Added display options for monitor, full-screen vs. windowed mode, and display resolution.
- Added option to enable/disable screen shake, which is enabled by default.
- Added option to enable/disable frame rate counter, which is disabled by default.
- Timed Mode - Unlock by completing levels (7 or higher) in Normal Mode under the goal time listed on the Mission Panel. Straps a timed explosive to your ship. Complete the mission within the time to escape to warp and disarm the explosive. Beating this challenge increases its rank, with higher ranks tightening the time limit further.
- Infinite Mode - Unlock by completing levels (9 or higher) in Normal Mode with the goal score listed on the Mission Panel. Disables warp drive, allowing you to see how far you can go.
- Legacy Achievements - These achievements related to your overall Legacy and are not reset by Pilot Retirement. These are closely related to...
- Steam Achievements - Attaining Legacy Achievements unlocks corresponding Steam Achievements.
- Statistics - improved statistics tracking and integration with Steam Statistics and Achievements. There are now over 30 pages of statistics to view.
- New Achievements - Now over 500 achievements.
- New Ship Part Type - Engine Glow - using the components F-A-S-T, you can now unlock different engine glow color gradients.
- New Ship Part Type - Ground FX - using the components H-A-L-O, you can now unlock different colors of "Ground" FX.
- New Joke Extra - Eyes - Adds large watching eyeballs to Black Holes that track your ship.
- New Joke Extra - Color Explosion - Makes explosions more colorful.
- New Joke Extra - Horns - Replaces the sound when an action cannot be taken with one of nine random vehicle horn sounds.
- Improvements:
- Upgraded Unity engine from Unity 2021.1 to Unity 2021.3 LTS.
- Reduced the amount of time the submit button must be held to abort a mission or initiate retirement to 1 second, and modified on-screen instruction to specify how long to hold button.
- Increased the amount of time the submit button must be held to reset all data to 3 seconds, and modified on-screen instruction to specify how long to hold button.
- Moved options related to game support to a new Support panel on the Options screen.
- Hold-to-confirm prompts now allow mouse interaction
- Mission UI has been reworked to better display requirements for unlocking modes and information about the selected mode.
- Achievements are now much more distinguished from each other in the Achievement Panel. Achievement series now follow a color tint progression, many new distinct Achievement icons have been added, and achievement icons display a quantifier denoting their goal quantity.
- Many more achievements are now awarded mid-mission when appropriate instead of waiting for the end of the mission.
- Simplified Challenge Mode progression by removing the concept of Iteration, and having the Challenge Mode Rank advance automatically when Challenge Mode is cleared.
- Gameplay tips are only shown if they are relevant to the player's current progression.
- Item and currency icons now animate on Upgrade/Mod/Legacy purchases.
- Store Panels are once again hidden until they are relevant (restores pre-2.0.6 functionality).
- Many more Latin-script keyboard layouts are supported. Control icons should now display proper localized keyboard glyphs for over 90 keyboard layouts.
- Removed "Burning Rich" Joke Extra.
- Adjusted the audio settings of all audio clips to use settings more appropriate for PC rather than the prior mobile settings (This is the main reason this update is such a large download).
- Increase volume of default "denied" sound that gets played when an action cannot be taken.
- Using bound control for Back in the Store Screen will return the player to the Mission panel first, and will only return to the title screen if pressed when on the Mission panel.
- Black hole and space mine sounds should now stop while prompting to use a Continue.
- Add option to hide mouse cursor when in menus (arcade mode)
- Hide Endowment bonus when it is zero
- Add Player Stats for Superlaser Max Consecutive Time
- Bombers will stop pursuing the Player Ship if it warps or explodes.
- Saturation and bloom of Lasers adjusted to match better with other artwork.
- Added particle effect at laser target.
- Re-enabled smoothing on Black Hole shader
- Angle player missiles so that more of the missile is visible.
- Starting Argen reported by Inheritance store item now includes bonuses from Labor Negotiations and Cosmic Payraise (these bonuses were already being applied correctly in fact).
- Hitting a Gate Laser beam now produces a distinct collision effect.
- Explosions are now even more dynamic.
- Huge explosion now has a shock ring effect.
- Superlaser pickup effect has been improved.
- Shield Power pickup effect has been improved.
- Improve theming of description of Continuum Reintegrator, referencing its use of higher-dimensional physics.
- Entering the Store right after Retirement before the first Mission attempt will now take you directly to the Prestige panel.
- Hangar icon will flash when a Ship Part can be unlocked or an Innovation can be completed.
- Reworked level color theme generation to remove 4-hue schemes with the hues at 90 degree angles from eachother on the color wheel. Levels that used those 4-hue schemes will now use another available 4-hue scheme.
- Replaced Achievements for maintaining speeds for 1 or 2 seconds with more tiers of "Time To Survive" Achievements.
- Replaced Achievement for buying a single upgrade with another tier of "Time To Survive" Achievement.
- Added explosion feedback when Missile from Bomber hits Player Ship
- Added explosion feedback when Space Mine Explosion hits Player Ship
- Black holes will no longer pull exploded or warping player ship out of bounds.
- Balancing:
- Superlaser energy will now be capped at 5x base Superlaser time.
- Doubled base health of Gate Emitters and allow health to scale up +33% per level
- Allow health of Bombers to scale up +5% per level
- Reworked Challenger Legacy. It now applies a 16.82% bonus to Max Timed/Challenge Mode Rank for each level purchased. Cost has been reduced.
- Fighters now become more maneuverable at higher levels.
- Fixes:
- Hovering over an Option Selector will not cause its navigation cues to appear, reducing confusion.
- Fixed issue with stat tracking for "Prolonged" achievement series, where Superlaser time was being credited based on time added to the Superlaser timer rather than real-time that the Superlaser was in use.
- Fixed an issue where navigating to Innovation Lab before it is unlocked would cause the Hangar Panel to get stuck and become non-navigable via controller.
- Fix ship shader bug relating to engine glow
- Fix issue with ship light colors bleeding into engine glow area on Duohawkh and Carabvyce models
- Stop phase from changing after warp
- Fix retirement screen showing level 0 Abilities for first Generation Pilot's secondary Ability
- Fix retirement screen erroneously showing abilities for the initial Pilot
- Fixed issue with not being able to mouse-click on Resume button on pause menu.
- Fixed issue with collision feedback effects not being triggered.
- Fixed issue with cost item animation for Dark Matter and Prestige in the Store.
- Fix incorrect tip regarding Lasers and Bombers.
- Fix some Achievement descriptions being cut off in Achievement panel.
- Large number displays will now round down instead of to nearest.