It's a few months later than I was hoping, but after the initial release, life had a few more side quests than I was expecting up its sleeve. This update seeks to address various bugs and several issues with the gameplay which were identified in play & testing. No new levels were added.
Content Additions
The Database Window is now live in the Main Menu. The database is tied to the player's save file, and conveniently displays information about various mechanics, viruses, malware, tools, etc that have been encountered in-game. The database will be updated as new content is added.
Gameplay Adjustments
- Reversed the level order of LEVEL_1v1 and LEVEL_Doubles
- Player process kernels have been split into three sizes -- small, medium, and large. The health of the kernel is tied directly to its size. Vital kernels have twice the health of normal kernels.
- Standardized the health and spawn rate values of virus spawners, malware spawners, and hacker kernels
- Split virus spawners into three distinct kinds -- normal, fast, and slow. More types will be added in the future
- On malware spawners, the charge bar now changes color to pinkish to indicate when an advanced malware will spawn next as opposed to a generic malware
- Malware spawners now have a colored stripe to indicate that they will drop a tool on destruction; the color of the stripe corresponds to the tool type
- Carryover tools will persist between level attempts so long as the player doesn't return to the main menu
- The strength of the Proxy tool is now tied directly to the level with no randomness
- The Repair tool can now be activated manually while held. This effect occurs on top of its passive ability
- Removed the Firewall tool
- Added a Firewall Charge Bar to the HUD. The bar is filled by destroying viruses, and the player can press F while inside of an unsecured process to erect a firewall. Firewalls can't be erected on processes which contain virus or malware spawning nodes. The bar's visibility can be toggled with B
- Added a Virus Saturation Bar to the HUD. The bar indicates how saturated the level is with viruses. When the bar is full, virus spawner nodes become invincible and cease spawning until the player reduces the saturation level down below a certain threshold. The bar's visibility can be toggled with V
- Walls now have textures to more clearly distinguish between destructible and indestructible ones
- Minor adjustments have been made to all ten levels for balance to account for the aforementioned changes
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a navigation mesh issue on LEVEL_1v1 which prevented viruses from spawning
- Fixed an issue with the flying constructors in which they would fail to select a new target when their current destination had been removed
- Fixed a visual error caused by the player entering one hyperlink too quickly after exiting another
- Fixed a bug allowing the player to pause the game during the end level sequence
- Fixed a soft lock caused by the player destroying a malware last instead of a virus
- Fixed a soft lock associated with destroying malware spawners
- Added a scroll bar to the taskbar in the Main Menu to prevent visual overflow when many windows are open at once
- Fixed a bug with the resizer bars on the Level List & Database windows
Miscellaneous
- Added visual cue to the main menu resizer bars to indicate that it is hovered and can be clicked
Next Update Plans
(Not an exhaustive list)
- Several more entries to the Database
- A bug fix related to carrying over a Repair tool. If the player upgrades a Repair tool by consuming a carryover Repair tool, the carryover tool will not persist between level attempts as it no longer exists after being consumed
- A third and possibly fourth tutorial level to further pace out the introduction of the basic mechanics, namely the firewall charge bar and virus saturation bars