Part of being a solo-developer is establishing your own limitations. For example, I'm not a musician and I can't make music so I paid someone else to do it for me. That seemed like the obvious choice.
Background Artwork
Well I'm also not an artist, and while most of the art in the game is made by myself I certainly couldn't draw character artwork and I also wasn't that great at drawing planets, stars and nebulas. Finally I've accepted this fact and got someone much better at art than me to draw them for me.
Faction Icons
Turns out I'm also not that great at designing icons. Luckily I know a guy who is, so we have some new faction icons in the game as well
Music
I've also replaced all the Skeran music in Sector 1 with a new music pack. One of the reviewers pointed out that the old music was quite jarring, so this all have a similar vibe.
Enjoy! Sector 3 and the new Flora enemies are coming next!
Patch Notes
New Features / Content
- Remade all backgrounds with new artwork from one of our artists.
- Added faction icons to encounter details, dialog background and template folders.
- Main menu now uses a random background.
- Replaced all Skeran encounters with a new music pack.
Balance Changes
- Swapped Basilisk and Behemoth around so the Behemoth is now the first boss in Sector 1.
- Behemoth now has 6 x long-range fast roach drones to give it some constant damage.
- Increased damage of all laser weapons due to faster overheating.
- Reduced range of enemy Basilisk lasers by 10%.
- Increased velocity of Citadel plasma guns by 25%.
- Citadel now summons 4 ships instead of 3 and they're 2 levels higher.
- Reduced the level requirement of lots of ship parts to give more options earlier on.
- Mothership will now get sector-specific shield types when not in combat.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
- Beams now overlap their target slightly to make the larger hitboxes less obvious.
- Shields now show beam hits immediately instead of waiting for the first damage tick.
- Increased spacing in the navigation panel so it's easier to read.
- Removed old stat tracking system from sandbox as no longer needed.
- Console will now display a warning when you use developer tools on a player save.
Performance
- Optimized encounters with debris so they cause framerate drops (especially on Steamdeck).
Bug Fixes
- Fixed null pointer when tracking A Bad Idea mission.
- Fixed invalid slot position in Species-XI Nautilus.
- Overall achievements will no longer progress when playing in the sandbox.
- Fixed achievements for completing sectors to correctly award progress.
- Renamed rarity achievements to say item rarity so it's clear that they include all equipment.
- Missions to destroy an enemy target are now only granted when the whole target is destroyed.
- Fixed overall disabled message at bottom of achievement panel wrapping on higher UI scale.
- Achievements for missions are now retroactively granted at load.
- Low pass audio filter is no longer disabled when dialog displays over the core panel.
- Fixed achievement tab text overflowing button on 120% UI scale.
- Fixed achievement panel not correctly scrolling when UI scale causes the container to overflow.
- Fixed achievement tab highlighting incorrectly.
- Fixed invader debris debuff not giving damage bonus or permanent burning.
- Fixed bosses and elites in Sector 2 having the wrong factions assigned.
- Fixed difficulty modifiers for reward rarity not showing in navigation.
- Sector complete achievements should now sync up properly for old saves.