Hello! It's Boss and Power Patch Day (#1). Prepare yourself!
Disclaimer: 20XX is in alpha. As we develop the game, we may make changes that require us to invalidate or wipe your 20XX save files, Steam Leaderboard info/achievements, and other save-y stuff like that. Be aware!
As of today's patch, we'll be wiping the long-term Speedrun and High Score boards, as well as your 20XX save data. Congrats to Saeryf for somehow breaking of our Score leaderboard (9,881 nuts.. on level 3?) and to rob_demir for the fastest completion (886 seconds).
TL;DR for today's patch: Boss mechanics overhauls! Power overhauls! Tons of Flamelab art!
For the next patch or two: Eridu rework, more level variability, more boss work, proper speedrunning mode.
On the horizon (extremely subject to change): online play, safehouse rework, more Leaderboard changes.
As always, let us know if anything's busted or if we missed some changes.
BIG CHANGES:
- Agnisort/Flamelab art has received a massive update, and is much closer to how it'll finally look!
- In general, boss fights will now be longer/force the player to actually learn the mechanics, because...
- Bosses now have invulnerability timers (1 second).
- Bosses can now be weak to certain Powers -- discover them all!
- Bosses now drop a specific Power (instead of a random one).
- Rollster B now uses its Boomerang Blade in combat (and drops it after his death).
- Turret Boss now uses and drops Vera.
- Penguin Boss now uses and drops Splinterfrost.
- Lotus now uses Mortar as part of its attack rotation.
- Eternal Star (bat boss) moved to Eridu. In a future patch, Eridu will not be a special level; instead, the game will have a Wily-style level 9 to end the run.
- Destroyer of Diamonds (exploder boss) is on vacation.
- Powers no longer need to be unlocked via Soul Nuts. (In this patch, only the Passives are unlocked via Soul Nuts. Skulls may be added to the Soul Nut Unlock list soon, or we might make them achievement-based.)
- The bosses that don't clearly use the weapons they drop currently will do so next patch (April 29 2015).
Weapon charge time increased to 2 seconds (up from 1). Our thinking: Charging is supposed to be something you do in between combats, or very purposefully for reach/cleave (instead of all the time, which 1 second allows for). Items will be available soon that reduce charge time.We've reverted this change pending more testing. Charge attacks still take one second.
SMALL CHANGES:
- Starting Energy increased to 12 (up from 8). Passives that grant Energy now grant more. Energy pickups now restore 2 and 5 for small and large pickups, respectively (up from 1 and 3).
- Splinterfrost reworked to be more attractive. The splinters now fire off in front of the weapon.
- Boomerang Blade is now more metal. It can be thrown in 8 directions, based on the direction the player's pressing.
- Flameshield has been reworked. It's no longer a toggled power; instead, on use, it spawns four flames that either deal damage to the first enemy hit, or block the first enemy bullet they come in contact with.
- Blastjump has been replaced with Nova, found after beating Svalinn Gamma (shield drone boss). Nova is a powerful AOE attack that also destroys enemy projectiles on use.
- Ace's base weapon damage has been reduced by 20%.
- Dashing on slippery surfaces is now much more responsive. (Maybe too responsive. We'll see.)
- The Bonus Timer now stops once you've beaten the boss. Additionally, it now does a better job of explaining itself. (More coming on this.)
- Nutrageous and Nut Farm (passive items) removed. Nutrageous was anti-fun, and Nut Farm was crazily overpowered.
- Arctech's Shield Drones can now only retaliate once every quarter second (instead of once every frame), mostly for performance reasons.
- Health Nut and Charged Nuts now restore the appropriate resource 20% of the time (down from 100%). The chance stacks additively with other Health/Charged Nut pickups, and caps at 100%. Their Shop values have been decreased to account for the nerf.
- XCALBER nerfed. MaxHP down to 2 (from 3). Attack boost down to 1 (from 2).
- TANK! nerfed. Attack boost down to 1 (from 2). Power boost removed.
- Vera's damage increased by 50%. Vera's energy cost increased by 100%. Vera has a special ability: it does not trigger boss invulnerability timers. (This might be super OP. We'll see!)
- Co-op camera zoom max speed increased by 900%.
- Added some better signaling in the Safehouse about purchases unlocking items, instead of permanently granting them.
- Transmute removed. (We're getting rid of Powers that don't have combat uses, but this ability might come back another way. Maybe!)
- Datalore is on hiatus while we do it correctly.
- Enemy Nut droprate reduced by 50%.
BUG FIXES:
- Fixed an issue causing normal playthroughs to register on the Hardcore leaderboard, using up a player's try for the day.
- Fixed an issue causing the tutorial's boss room platforms to fail to appear.
- Fixed an issue causing every Speedrun leaderboard entry to say the player used Ace, even if he didn't.
- Fixed a bug causing some funky Flameshield interactions.
- Hopefully fixed a bug causing the game to display the wrong input in the tutorial. (This probably needs more work.)
Thanks for reading!