Demo - update #7

This is a big one!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3350900/Fogpiercer_Demo/

Ever since our last demo update, we've been hard at work implementing the save/load system, drawing illustrations, adding cards and improving the game overall.

There is a myriad of things that have changed, improved and been fixed. This update brings it all! The most important of them however is the run save/load system, additionally there are a couple of others, let's take a closer look.

Save/Load System

Whenever an encounter's been finished, the game will autosave the progress, and will offer to load the progress when you get back into the game. The runs now also support seeds and we'll be adding extra support.

At the moment the seed is only used to generate the map and encounters, we'll be adding support for the seeds to also generate the same enemies, cards, upgrades and more!

UI Improvements

Our previous post also looked at these, there are better popups, easier to find buttons, several screens have been merged together and more, some of my personal favourites:

the shop got a lot of love! new colours, panels, ability to reroll and improved animations

selecting cards eveywhere got new VFX, SFX and juice!

choosing your save slot now makes it clearer which one of the lot is currently active

New range patterns

The game now allows us to design patterns that dynamically change depending on the grid, selected cell and the side of the grid on which the pattern is being applied. A couple of examples:

• AOE that covers an entire half of the map, depending on which half's grid cell the card targets
• AOE that covers an entire row of the map, or multiples of them, and they can also rotate around the mouse as their pivot point, depending on the side of the map that's selected
• AOE that covers the entire map, however only filters the cells with enemies

this is a quick preview of what the new range pattern system is capable of

This was a refactor that's been needed and long time coming. Since we've started implementing the Harpoon, new and improved ways of utilizing range patterns has been necessary.

Multiple Environmental Hazards

Up till this point, the game only supported a single env. hazard being triggered at the same time, but since we really wanted to add a card to the game that would spawn a new one, this opened up the possibility of mulitple hazards having the same countdown.

Taking the opportunity, we coded the feature in and it's a fair amount of fun when you manage to utterly devastate the bandit group using 2 hazards that cut them off

in an extreme case, you're able to cover the entire grid in env hazards!

Card upgrades/transforms

Some encounters (those with "Extra Rewards", but also random encounters) now offer powerful rewards such as Card Upgrading and Card Transform. The rewards found at random encounters are more powerful versions that give you more control.

3 upgraded versions of the base Artillery card to choose from

Changelog

Enough about the highlights, time to take a look at the nitty gritty! Personally, this is my favourite part, it gives visibility to the work we've put in and also puts things generally into perspective when we, as a team, retrospectively want a quick overview of what happened when during development.

The changelog offers over 80 items detailing changes, additions and fixes. Check it out:

Added

• animations for when a card is Removed or Duplicated
• first step in making unlocking modules and cards more visually appealing
• Harpoon Carriage
  • Available in the playtest version only

• Run Save/Load
  • run is autosaved when the player enters the map after finishing an encounter

• Seeded runs
  • an input field added above the start run button, if left empty the game generates a random seed
  • pause menu shows the current seed, can be copied to clipboard

• [Sabotaged] effect
  • affected unit takes 1 damage when it moves, effect is then removed

• introduce data difference for which units and cards are available in demo, playtest and debug versions
  
• SFX for duplicating and removing cards
  
• added a new model for a random encounter (The brother's workshop)
  
• SFX for harpoon
  
• info hover button on 3D cards
  
• Cards pressed in the side panel, show extra information about their state
  • for both the player and enemies

• added new localisation strings for temporary currency
  
• New card patterns
  • all enemies
  • all friendly units
  • half of all available
  • half of all available with a margin around the rail track

• QOL
  • Previously chosen carriages are remembered
  • Run stats added to the pause menu (needs to be enabled in settings)

• show run seed at the end of the run
  
• tracking new stats
  • AP Spent
  • Health Lost

• refresh buttons in the shop
  
• animations and better scaling in Module and Card Choose screens
  
• "Cafe" random encounter visual
  
• "Change card for a random other card from your deck" - random encounter reward
  
• Most of meta cards now have illustrations (last 2 missing!)
  
• You can now enable “Auto deselect cards on hover” in the settings for easier card management
  
• Card illustrations for Hand Throw and Picky Jester
  
• a short pause (that scales with animation speed setting) after "end of turn functions" get triggered. At the moment this applies only to "Malfunction"
  
• "Deck" button to Module and Card choosing screens
  
• new messages in the cards screen
  • about how to unlock cards of units when at least one of them is locked
  • about how to get to driver cards in the game

• if you finish a fight with a destroyed carriage (chassis)
  • only a single reward is available that revives the chassis into the original carriage, activating its first card (fresh start) and 1HP

• [Random AP] is now visualised also on 2D cards
  
• new encounter rewards
  • Card Upgrade – choose from 3 upgraded versions of a card
  • Card Transform – choose a card which will transform into a random other card from your deck
  • Card Upgrade + – choose one of three upgraded versions of the card you chose
  • Card Transform + – choose one of three cards, to transform the selected card into

• new encounter modifiers
  • Extra Rewards – gives either Card Upgrade or Card Transform as an additional encounter reward
  • No Rewards – encounter has no rewards

• Multiple environmental hazards can happen at one time
  
• new meta card: Radio In
  • creates a new env hazard on selected lane

• new SFX
  • Emergency Repair
  • Choosing a card to upgrade
  • Malfunction being triggered
  • Card interaction sfx changed to sound more machine-like

• new effect [Temporary]
  • cards with this effect are destroyed upon use
  • added to all temporary cards, such as Detonate and those created by Lost And Found

• Cards spawned using Lost And Found now also have the [Hold] effect
  
• Fancy background when driver gauge is full
  
• Extra SFX for general epic cards
  
• Audio related parameters now get saved and loaded together with the run
  
• Card upgrades conditions
  • Cost Up will remove Cost Down
  • Cost Down will remove Cost Up
  • Random AP will remove Cost Up/Cost Down
  • Cost Up will decrease AP cost by 2
  • Cost Down will increase AP cost by 1
  • Exhaust will decrease AP cost by 1

• Ace up your sleeve
  • adds Hold and Cost Down to the selected card

Changed

• Theming of the run over screen buttons
• Iron Rain
  • target one half of the map instead of the full map

• Shield Siphon
  • steal shield from friendly units too!

• "Coal pusher" -> utility card
  
• made card images brighter
  
• improved text margins on cards
  
• moved the offset of 2D cards' extra borders
  
• moved UI elements of the chop shop's shop
  
• moved most UI information to appear next to the mouse instead of in the top left corner
  • only with elements where it made sense

• improved UI panel shadow visuals
  
• improved wording of information regarding types of cards in the unit side panel
  
• Modules and Meta cards screens have been merged into a single one
  
• redesigned the end of run screen
  • more space for stats
  • more stats!

• version number is now always visible
  
• choosing a module gives a bit of time now, same as cards
  
• [Sabotaged] can be stacked, lifetime goes down when used or at the end of a turn
  
• improved Shop UI visuals
  
• Driver cards are no longer added instantly, instead they are drawn together with the other cards
  
• Improved the animation and SFX of picking a card using mastermind
  
• "Stock Up" wording
  
• renamed "Foresight" to "Lane Call"
  
• order of UI elements in the driver corner for better registering of mouse position for tooltips
  
• weaker screen shake on missile projectiles
  
• improved logic that activates rewards, ensuring that they can't be activated multiple times
  
• full driver gauge needs to be confirmed by a button by default
  
• confirmation dialogue now focuses the YES button instead of NO by default
  
• improved the moment during which [Malfunction] card is triggered at the end of the turn
  
• aligned [Carpet Shot] pattern with other similar cards (ie. suppressive fire)
  
• fight encounters now give an option of a card reward by default
  
• each random encounter now has a custom camera angle, it should be easier to inspect the Cafe now.
  
• Boss encounters now give a module reward
  • additionaly either Card transform,upgrade or duplicate reward will show up after completing the boss battle

• card illustrations underwent further unification of style, we removed glowy backgrounds from many to make them consistent with the rest
  
• replaced future content buttons with a general button, singaling our planned amount of locomotives, drivers and carriages. Subject to change
  
• simplified logic that loads resources
  
• start run button now remains visible even in the modules and cards screen
  
• changed "run seed" input field size to accomodate for a larger number of buttons
  
• Temporary effects label is in text, to prevent it from covering text
  
• discard SFX
  
• Minigun standard range extended
  
• wording of extra reward card upgrade
  
• wording of extra reward card transform
  
• Har Har range
  • you can now choose which 2 lanes you want to pull toward the rails, flips depending on the side

Fixed

• module tier 1 no longer auto activates
• modules can finally be deactivated again!
• Civil engineer typo
• removed an info button from the permanent currency panel, to stay consistent with the temporary currency panel
• removed mentions of the word "wagon" from localisation strings to keep consistency across the board
• enemies flying away are now properly scaled to imitate the effect of them disappearing in the depths of the universe
• Sabotaged enemies who die during their move turn no longer crash the game!
• extra stats panel no longer covers the settings panel
• [Sabotaged] is no longer triggered when an enemy moves to the same cell its on
• game no longer crashes when a support units ends its turn with death
• some cards would filter the grid for cell with non-existent enemies
• Improved environmental hazard checks
• Improved auto-victory checks
• Some debug options are now hidden in demo mode
• Max health is now properly saved in run data
• Total amount of Spikes now gets properly saved
• Better run seeds!
• when using the new "hover doesn't cancel the selected card", picking cards no longer activated their hover animations. (i.e. Picky Jester's effect)
• all popups can now be closed using "ESC"
• drivers not showing their cards in the new card's UI
• cards hovered before their data is set up no longer crash the game
• driver gauge can only be triggered in fights
• improved handling of the data of Detonate
• removed "Duplicate a card" reward from the first station
• "Spiked Hull" description: dmg -> damage
• Shop never giving 5 cards, even when it was supposed to
• cards of unavailable drivers show up as viewable
• upgraded cards no longer offer duplicate effects
• game no longer crashes when the locomotive button is pressed in rapid succession
• module and cards screen will now show UI properly when the run is started from there
• cards with [Hold] are no longer discarded after x turns (edge case)
• Sticky Bomb no longer crashes the game if it's triggered due to the count down
• Selecting an upgrade too quickly no longer crashes the game

As you can see, we're actively developing the game, thank you all for the feedback and for playing the game! Since the Save/Load system is in now, you can expect smaller but more frequent updates for the Demo that improve UX, QoL and stability.

That's it for this one, thank you very much!