I've tried hard to make Star Vortex feel like a classic ARPG. Whether I've been successful or not remains to be seen but there is one thing that has been missing is an interesting story-line. In this update I hope to address this.
Story Overhaul
The patch notes may look unimpressive for this version but don't be fooled. Every bit of dialog has been re-written, thousands of words in total. On top of this new dialog and encounters have been added, along with a new character.
A new creature named Echo will now join you during the introduction and tutorial. And then a few more times through Sector 1 (not Sector 2 yet). A mysterious and cryptic entity she will offer guidance and aid but her motives remain a mystery.
Translation - Work In Progress
In the coming days our professional human translation of our store page will fall in to place. We're aiming for English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Simplified Chinese and Spanish. I have also enabled these languages in game so I can start working on and fixing layout issues.
Important!
I'm changing content far too quickly right now to get the game itself translated professionally. It costs about $0.10 USD per word per language and the game currently has over 8,000 words in it. As such the game is using Google Translated content for now, we'll look at options to get it translated when we go in to Early Access.
The next update is aimed at addressing repetitiveness in some of the encounters. New siege encounters will be added where the player assaults alien structures along with dense nebula encounters where visibility is limited. I'll also be doing a full balance pass of Sector 1 and adding a few exploits with excessive kiting of bosses.
Hope you enjoy the new story, more to come!
Patch Notes
New Features / Content
- Rewrote most of the dialog in the game and added lots more.
- A new creature will now interact with you at various points in Sector 1.
- Infecting a waypoint is no longer ESA's bad idea.
- Shadow avatar in Sector 2 is now a different color to regular Skeran.
- AI translations are enabled again, I'm aware they're not the best.
- Added Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Korean AI translation.
- Gateways are now purple to match the color of the void they pass through.
- Species-XI no longer hyperdrive jump into encounters they appear from the void.
- Updated phase shift description to make clear its usage of the void.
Balance Changes
- Auto specials are now disabled when the parent ship is hyperdrive jumping.
- Increased base strafe speed of all thrusters.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
- Hyperdrive jumping now has its own loading screen animation, different from gateways.
- Font size of dialog is now slightly smaller to fit more text.
- Increased padding around achievement grid so navigation highlight is visible.
- Added item name header with arrow to comparison tooltips to make it clearer.
- Friendly ships now show friendly tags when they first arrive.
- Radial display and heading assist now scale with Camera Zoom and HUD Scale.
- Floating text, Minibars and Target Name now scale with Camera Zoom and HUD Scale.
- Added larger type icons to empty slots to try and make meaning more obvious.
- Slot labels in equipment panel now include type icons.
- Replaced X (Twitter) link in game with Bluesky link.
Bug Fixes
- End particles on tesla bolts no longer play while weapon is inactive.
- Changed default dodge modifier back to CTRL as too many OS functions use ALT.
- Music that plays during loading before intro cutscene is now correct.
- Behemoth and Basilisk achievements are now the correct way around.
- Fixed distortion at end of hyperdrive jump trails.
- Fixed null pointers after clicking play with credits / patch notes panel open.
- Fixed various language displays around the UI that were overflowing text areas.
- Fixed null pointer in item stats display.