I've been trying to finish this version for three days, and I think it's finally ready for release. I can promise there will be a 1.1.01 update in a couple days to tweak/fix something I missed. But as you'll see below, there's a LOT of stuff in this new version. Let's start with the major stuff:
2 NEW VEHICLES!
20 NEW MAX POWER UPGRADES!
ALTERNATE COLOR SCHEMES!
FULL UPGRADE LIBRARY!
MODIFIER COSTS REDUCED! (and cap added)
FIXED A MAJOR BUG WITH KNOCKBACK AND FIRE RATE!
Yeah, that last one is embarrassing, but taking the Knockback upgrades would reduce your fire rate by a lot, and not affect Knockback at all. But now it's fixed, and many weapons are a lot more powerful than they used to be (unless you were very careful previously).
Now we'll get into the excessively long changelist, which I'll try to split into similar sections, and I'll bold anything important that's not mentioned above.
RHYTHM STORM 1.1.0 CHANGELIST
Added two new vehicles:
-- Monolith: One body + one turret weapon slot only
-- Polaris: Two turret weapons and unlimited energy, 2nd turret fires backwards
Capped max number of modifiers at 12 (except Tier 10)
-- Made additional upgrade cost more linear and capped at 4000
-- Can add one more non-Tier 10 modifier for every active Tier 10 modifier
Increased spark bonuses for completing worlds/runs at Pro/Elite/etc
Added 4 alternate color palettes, and made SHUFFLE ENEMIES also change colors by default
-- Will choose any of the other 7 palettes than the standard one for that world
-- Added option to set when to use Remixed Colors (defaults to Shuffle Only)
Changed randomize weapons to alternate weapon sets (2)
-- Cycles through three total sets, weapons are always in the same position
-- Each vehicle can't start with 1 turret/body weapon, but this feels better and is more consistent with powers
Increased line drawing cap (main layer)
Doubled the number of lightning lines that can draw at once
Prevent massive damage from leaving long-lingering enemy flash images (common with blasts)
Reduce frequency of linger enemy flashes when draw count is high (they take a lot of line drawing and last many frames)
Added full upgrade list for each upgrade set (and Power MAX upgrade list)
-- Renamed Ultra Library to Upgrade Library
-- Get ready to scroll REALLY FAR
Added player pulse button (Y on Xbox controller)
-- Doesn't affect gameplay at all, just something for fun
Changed Electrowhip to be more chill, stay closer to player (feels a lot better to me)
Changed Electrowhip Damage upgrade to +2 instead of +1
Made the boss's shield for phase 1 way more obvious
Adjusted the speed spinning vehicle bodies spin while using beam
Added an energy penalty to Static Charge (Detonator ultra upgrade)
-- Prevent Static Charge from affecting enemies while you have no energy left
Stop player from doing insanely high damage to enemies (at high framerates) while invincible
Increased Trail power's default shock distances (both Ultra and bolts)
Slightly reduced move speed boost for a number of power upgrades (at top end player moved too fast)
Increased frequency and damage of Warp-related shocks (shockers + targeting)
Increased max shot upgrades for Saber (4->5)
Increased max range upgrades for Warp (5->6)
Slightly increased range of Solidified Blaster
Fixed Crusher 2nd-level damage not counting towards Ultra upgrade unlock
Fixed Flak barely doing any deathblasts (splitting projectiles weren't getting the flag)
Changed trail vfx of Wide to use simple trail (old version was very expensive)
Changed one of Crushers upgrades from Ricochet to DeathBlast
Changed Wide's backward firing upgrade to also Ricochet
Changed Dash to do more damage on blast (Super Blast Ultra now does 66% more damage)
Changed Warp to do more damage on blast (and use slightly more energy)
Changed Warp shockers to do be more frequent and no longer fire at 0 energy
Reduced Warp Usage upgrade bonus from -15 to -12
Increased Warp Blast Range upgrade (20->25)
Increased Warp Strike damage and width
Increased Warp Target shocker damage/range/chaining
Increased Detonator damage a bit
Increased frequency of main power/weapon ultra upgrades
Increased frequency of ultra combo upgrades (if they require 2 ultras to unlock)
-- They now almost always appear when you meet the requirements
Increased invincible timer when taking a hit, and when reviving
Fixed Trail firing rate upgrade literally doing nothing
Fixed Trail invincibility from toggling on/off constantly (and stunning enemies) at low energy
Redcued smaller grav mine lifetime a bit
Reduced enemy tank HP a small amount and made it drop a couple energy
Reduced speed of Blaster + Fighter (left-right moving enemy + flanking-red enemy) on world 1
Made Blastastic upgrade sometimes appear in Powerful upgrade sets when it's relevant to the power (6 powers)
Fixed Knockback upgrade (per weapon) affecting firing rate instead (in a negative way)!
Reduced Blaster number of firing rate upgrades to 6 (and removed damage fire rate penalty)
Reduced many weapons firing rate upgrade boost to 12 (from 15) now that Knockback is fixed
Fixed Low Energy text overlapping with Lancer on player status
Tweaked most knockback numbers for projectiles in code
Increased Knockback from 25 to 30% on all solo weapon upgrades
Reduced Knockback upgrade count on Blaster (4->3)
Tweaked (mainly larger) enemies so they have less resistance to knockback
Added Sparky XP upgrade (5 XP per spark, General/Upgrader sets)
Reduced size of Storm's strike area (how close any enemy has to be to it's preferred location)
-- Changed Storm's Knockback upgrade to Range and made that affect strike area size
Changed pushback on enemies from damage to always move away from the player, regardless of damage direction
Nerfed most powers with Limitless Energy for Scorcher + Polaris (everything except Trail)
-- They still work, just less well at 0 energy for those 2 vehicles
ADDED THEN CUT
Added a system to allow both weapon Ultras at once, but it was lame (made Ultra choice feel pointless, and weapons get really powerful already), so I cut it
I'll be working on an advanced strategy guide to post next week, then I'll probably not work on Rhythm Storm again for quite a while. If you have any feedback on powers, weapons, balance, etc, please let me know sooner than later. I'll be playing the game a bunch and making tweaks for 1.1.01, but more feedback on that stuff is always appreciated.
- Luke
[I know the game needs more music variety too, but unfortunately that's a difficult problem to solve with how the game works. Hopefully I can address the issue someday, but it won't be for a couple months at least.]