Welcome to the v0.98 Astrolite Mega-Patch
Astrolite was featured at Next Fest, and resulting from that obtained tons of new players to help provide valuable feedback on what is FUN, and what is NOT.
You have been heard.
Now prepare yourself.
CHANGES
Most Important:
Performance and Raw FPS have been improved by 300%
Due to a couple deep-rooted bugs that have been around almost since conception, performance has gradually but obviously been worsening- this is no more. FPS has gone from ~180 at optimal times to over 540.
Passive Upgrades now visually change the ship's appearance
Each passive upgrade has a noticeable visual change to the ship's appearance and should bring some more visual variety to each run.
Planet Duration is now 2:00 down from 3:00
Due to playtester feedback, the average planet timer has been reduced by a minute, and the pacing has never felt better. Astrolite feels like it was designed for 2:00 planets.
Towers have been implemented
Towers are a new mechanic added to expand on the Exploration Update- they require you to be relatively stationary within their radius to activate, and come with a slew of bonuses.
Time Up (Add 1:00 to the planet timer)
Time Down (Reduce planet timer by 0:15)
Combat (Spawns a boss and an elite )
EXP (Gain a 10% multiplier to XP gains- for the WHOLE RUN)
Swarm (Gain a 40% multiplier to Enemy Swarm- for the WHOLE RUN)
Magnet (ANOTHER way to get magnet powerups!)
Guardian Challenge (The next World Guardian gains health, deals more damage, and rewards much more XP and Score as a result!)
Luna (An exceedingly rare tower that causes a singularity event of Luna Splitters to appear)
Elite Enemies have been implemented
Elite enemies have a health bar, and considerably more health than unique enemies.
Elites have expanded mechanics from their normal counterparts:
Splitter: Shoots quad homing-projectiles periodically, when killed it splits into four splits that orbit you and continue to shoot homing-projectiles at you from each cardinal direction.
Charger: Ramps up similar to the charger, but dashes three consecutive times before going on cooldown.
Boulder: Builds momentum each time it bounces off the screen's walls, eventually resetting back to a normal baseline.
Titan: Constantly chases you, becomes ethereal and then repositions to repeat the process over again.
Multi-Crit has been introduced
Crit Chance can now stack FAR beyond 100%, matter in fact, you can now Multi-Crit up to TWELVE times, each crit has unique visuals, colors, and IMPACT with weaker damage values.
Kill Streaks have been introduced
Each time you kill enough enemies, a Kill Combo tracker will begin displaying your running tally, and as you reach thresholds (50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1200) the score multiplier increases!
As the kill combo expires, it awards a score drop depending on your kills!
Damage Visuals have been improved
Damage now has a creeping visual that worsens as your health approaches 0.
Damage values pop-up directly above your player, to help with visibility.
Score, Damage, and Text have been reworked
Damage numbers POP out- often times they will literally BOUNCE off other damage values depending on how different the damage value is.
Score numbers CLIMB out of the Score HUD, and track everything from every kill.
Freeze Power Up has been replaced
Freeze is OUT, playtester feedback mentioned how it slows down pacing and causes you to SEEK enemies out because of how spawning behavior works.
BONUS EXP is IN! - Picking up this power up will temporarily increase your total EXP multiplier by 100%- PER power up.
Power Ups are now STACKABLE
Rapid Fire, Crit Chance, and Bonus EXP all can stack MULTIPLE times if you get lucky enough to find multiple. That mean's >200% Crit Chance fiestas, >200% Attack Speed riots, and TONS of experience to be had.
Over 23 new QUALITY achievements have been added
Many of these achievements are "Feats" which require unique playstyles to obtain- including giving the World Guardian Gaia a high five! (Speaking of Gaia...)
Two New World Guardians
World Guardian Ares
World Guardian Gaia
Want to hear about them? Too bad. Go find them in-game!
Brand new Menu Navigation
Featuring a CHANGELOG! Wow!
All required menu navigation is completed through the menu bar at the bottom, icons should be self-explanatory.
Okay, and now for a big list of more:
Leaderboard Display has been increased to 16 people.
Guardians now have FLAT health- meaning it is less of a punishment to loiter on a planet for long durations.
ALL Guardians have had NEW music implemented.
Shard-based weapons (Chemist's) have been reworked. Shards now detonate after 4 seconds according to the first embedded shard on an enemy. Shards still auto-detonate on death, and Chemist can still shatter the shards prematurely. This should help non-Chemist ships when fighting World Guardians with shard weaponry.
Near-Miss now has a continuous counter above 20 bullets, and a visual tracker above the HUD for Near-Miss.
Scatter damage has been significantly nerfed, and yet still performs equally to other weapons.
Enemy Sprites have all been recolored to reflect their types (Tank, Split, Threat)
Enemies no longer despawn when outside of the screen's view, instead they now warp AHEAD of you in the direction you're going, and are faced towards you.
There is no longer a hard limit on enemy spawns, once the limit is reached, spawn speeds are just slowed to 40%.
There is now a satisfying bubble SFX added to enemy bullets.
Enemy Bullets are now much faster, and smaller.
World Guardian Ouranos has had some attack pattern tweaks.
The HUD Stopwatch now changes color depending on the Time Towers you've activated for that planet.
Arc has been modified to be a FAST weapon.
Tags have been completely reworked, going forwards, tags will be: Slow, Fast, Area, Summon, Orbit and will be more obvious following the Weapon Expansion update slated next.
Enemy Flat and Mult. Damage boosts have been removed.
Enemy Armor SCALING has been removed.
Player XP requirements have been increased when reaching extremely high levels.
Player Name and Skin Name have been moved to the top of the screen in the Play Room.
Mage has been slightly recolored to avoid the purple hue of enemy similarity.
Ganker no longer shoots two bullets, just one opposite of itself from you.
Now for some fixes:
Mage's Ability Singularity now properly spawns bullets UNDER the singularity, spawns shadows less often, and no longer spirals bullets on end.
Fixed an issue causing Shard weapons to behave VERY incorrectly with Luna Satellites.
Fixed a bug where Chemist's weapons were calculating crit based off Bomb..?
Burst now correctly calculates tracked damage for itself, and doesn't contribute to Needle's damage.
On-Fire is once again visual with a border. Oops.
Fixed a bug that caused the Power name to not correctly show on the passive upgrade for the first level.