Intro
Every developer has a different plan for Early Access. Some use it mostly for balance, while others use it to figure out exactly what a game will eventually be. I like to do a soft launch with my games that resides somewhere in the middle. The first week or two is dedicated to cleaning up issues I never would have found without an army of testers, and listening to feedback on balance and feature requests. It helps me fine-tune systems, fix bugs, and decide on what to add first, and sometimes what to add that I never planned at all. Once I’ve got my list, I get to work on the “grand opening.” Patch 0.15.00 is Gunlocked 2’s grand opening. It’s still just the beginning, but it’s much grander, you see.
Gunlocked 1 went through a similar process, and had its grand opening in patch 0.20 (progress was faster because the game was much, much smaller at launch). This also coincided with RockPaperShotgun writing a lovely article about the game:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/this-spaceship-shoot-em-up-is-kinda-like-vampire-survivors
It referenced that very 0.20 patch, and lead to an explosion in popularity. So it’s a system that historically works for me, and hopefully contemporarily as well.
But there’s still so much more to come, and not just upgrades and enemies. Everything from the previously discussed Symbionics (weapon evolutions) to expanding the world generation and NPC event systems is in the works. I also have some wild, wishlist ideas if the game really takes off...
As always, if you’re enjoying the game, and like where things are headed, please consider leaving a review. Word of mouth/positive buzz is really my strongest ally when it comes to marketing.
Patch 0.15.00 - "The Supply Drop"
Content
New Pilot: "Ms. Midas" is the widow to the late "Midas" from the first Gunlocked. Once a soldier of fortune power couple, our titular widow is striking out on her own to strike it rich.
Weapon: The Campfire
Mastery: Every 20 individual gems or other items you collect, The Campfire gains +1 max targets for its next attack. Max +2 targets.
Skill: The Campfire deals +250% damage to asteroids
New Weapon: The Campfire – Lock-on, Laser, Sweeping, Plasmic
New Weapon: The Conduit – Beacon, Laser, Electric
New Utilities: 28 new upgrades (I won’t list them all, the joy is in discovery!). A number of new synergistic archetypes should open up with these upgrades.
New Enemy Type: The Flea. Notes: These unaffiliated ships are the easiest cannon fodder and show up in most zones. This should provide an enemy type that every starter weapon will have no trouble with, and increase enemy density slightly without boosting challenge in the early game.
QoL
Augments: Repair Drone has a new sprite and healing effect
Skills: Rooster’s Sunspotter bomb now has a unique sprite
Utilities: Updated Junk Drone Sprite and Effects
Utilities: Updated Blossom Bomb Sprite
Utilities: Bo-Bomb created copies are now tinted yellow (only the main bomb sprite itself), and a visual effect triggers above them as well.
Utilities: Static Surge has more apparent visuals when ready to use
Electric FX on the HUD
Electric trail particles around your ship
UI: When you reach the warp gates, your data disks will now be displayed on screen until you make a choice
UI: Your current sector number will now be displayed when you pause. When you’re at a warp gate, the sector number for the next zone will be displayed above the choice information.
UI: When Phase Shift is available for use, your ship’s outline now has a new animation to make it easier to notice.
UI: When Phase Shift is recharging, the meter is now green. It returns to yellow when fully charged.
UI: Static Surge now has a visual timer when in use
Items: When you purchase an item from an NPC, it will now be visually collected by your ship
Text: Lucky Strike: Now listed as a missile synergy
Mouse: You can now switch to mouse controls by simply moving the mouse in the settings menu
General Balance
Pacing: Zones are now 15% shorter. Overall this will result in games being 5 minutes shorter on average.
Gem drops have been slightly increased to compensate for the shorter zones
Pacing: Certain enemies that hang around until killed will now retreat after a duration, or at the end of a zone.
Upgrading: Banishing and rerolling Weapons now costs 2 tokens. The UI has been updated to remind you of this.
Upgrading: Banish Bounty now grants 8 tokens, down from 13
Upgrading: There is a now a soft cap on banishing. If there are only 8 weapons or utilities left in the pool, you will not be able to banish the respective kind of upgrade anymore. A popup will alert you.
Upgrading: Rerolling Warp rewards now has a small chance to push the beacon to a higher rarity.
NPCs: The 3rd option in NPC events now costs 25 data disks, up from 20
Boss Balance
The Sting King, Hive Queen, and Lightning Lord now only trigger their “threshold” abilities 2 times per fight, down from 4-5 late-game. Note: These are the long, usually invulnerable abilities.
Bosses have new “armored parry” attacks. These are super short invulnerable periods that can trigger after the boss takes enough damage.
UI: When bosses are invulnerable the health bar at the top flashes and indicates they are “armored”
Hive Queen: The enemy spawn frequency in the Hive Queen boss fight has been reduced
Hive Queen: The Hive Queen already had an armored attack with her screen filling dash attack. The logic for how it can trigger has been updated to match the other attacks, but she didn’t get an extra armored attack.
Lightning Lord: Now has a brief warning animation before releasing pulses of energy barriers, during which he is now invulnerable (it’s now his armored parry)
Lightning Lord: No longer vulnerable while spawning in at the start
Lightning Lord: The level 3 boss fight has one less “electric fence” wave when he disappears
Sting King: Reduced the attack charge timer for his bullet fan and arm stretch
Sting King: There’s now a tiny pause before his bullet barrage attack begins
Sting King: Now has a brand new armored parry attack
Sting King: Various mortar style attacks have slightly slower projectiles
Monarch: It is now possible to defeat The Monarch after only 2 threshold events if you’re powerful enough, instead of 4. Note: Your build will determine if this is possible.
Monarch: The Monarch is already invulnerable for most of the fight, given their unique behaviors, but their pod that you have to destroy now has its own armored parry.
Monarch: The longest you’ll have to wait for the Monarch’s pod to respawn is now 1.5 seconds.
Bosses wont sit around at the start of a battle for 1.5 seconds before acting.
The enemy spawn frequency in the Sting King, Lightning Lord, and Monarch boss fights has been slightly increased.
Upgrade Balance
Notes: With some of the more powerful upgrades to stack, I’m trying a new approach for how they scale, alternating the bonus they grant on odd and even copies.
Drone Cloner, and Sconcer: Cooldown reduction every odd level, bonus copies every even level. Note: The only change here is that they don’t get the cooldown reduction every level.
Radar Array: Additional copies now grant +1 max targets on odd copies, and +10% range for lock on weapons on even copies. Is now a rare upgrade. Note: There’s now other upgrades that can increase lock-on targets.
Static Surge: Now only grants bonus duration on odd copies, gains damage on even copies. No longer recharges while in Static Surge form (note: this last part was a bug)
Fat Burner: The first tick of burn damage on a new target deals 6% of their max health as damage or 20 damage, whichever is lower. 2 second cooldown. Additional Copies: +2% max health as damage, +10 damage cap. Note: This should allow this upgrade to still become very strong against general enemies, without being able to eventually 1-shot bosses.
Bullet Buddies: Starts with 16 health, down from 24. They now also correctly disappear after their duration like other beacons (being a drone-beacon hybrid). Their cooldown has been reduced to 6.5 seconds from 8.
Blossom Bomb: Now launches 8 bombs (up from a base of 4), outward from a beacon every 12 seconds, that explode on impact or after a 2 second countdown. Additional Copies: +10% countdown duration, +10% plasmic chance.
The Arc Light can now have its range extended by upgrades. Its base damage is now 15, down from 20, and its chain shock chance is now 15% down from 25%. Notes: This upgrade was already a lot stronger than a lot of players realized, and now that its swipe range can be extended, I had to address its overall power a little.
The Vulcanorb can now have its move speed modified by upgrades
The Pulse Field now has a 3 second cooldown
Refractor beams now have a flat 10% chance to bounce again that can not scale. The base chance to create a Refractor beam (24%) remains unchanged.
Bug Fixes
Fixed some incompatibilities with keyboard controls when my engine built a stand-alone application that could cause it to believe the confirm button was always being pressed until it was pressed again and released
Fixed an issue with keyboard glyphs for confirm/cancel not updating properly in the settings menu
Fixed an issue where the music volume setting would not update the currently playing music until you left the settings menu when adjusting from specific volumes
The pause menu will no longer popup when you disconnect your gamepad if you’re not in active gameplay. Note: This will prevent weird resume functions that cause the game to restart while an upgrade menu or NPC event are active.
Fixed a bug where exiting the settings menu with the mouse controls in-game could soft lock the game.
Mouse and Keyboard glyphs will now properly update in the settings menu bottom bar
If you level up after the boss music starts playing, or at the very end of a zone once the warp gates have appeared, the music will now correctly revert to the previous state when you exit the upgrade menu
Fixed issues with the Sting King that could allow him to get trapped between states
Fixed bugs that would allow “empty” or invalid upgrades into the pool if you had banished too many and/or had too many upgrade choices
Fixed a bug that was preventing the correct synergies from being highlighted when navigating your inventory. Note: This currently does not work with augments
Fixed a visual bug that could cause boss attacks to alter course mid-way (but still land where they were supposed to) in rare circumstances
Fixed a potential issue possibly causing post-game rankings to not align with actual damage done
Fixed a bug that was allowing common beacons, and standard level ups to – in specific circumstances – ignore the uncommon and rare odd drop rates
Fixed a bug that could mess up locked upgrades if you managed to get over 9 upgrade choices
Fixed an issue where Bo-Bomb could override existing bombs with incorrect data, causing them to behave oddly or not at all
Fixed a bug where Blitz Bomb blitzed too hard, and detonated bombs before they could properly setup, leaving them stuck in a sort of stasis
Fixed a bug that would cause Bo-Bomb to create bonus Vulcanorbs out of visual range
Fixed a bug with Be-Longer that would reduce beacon duration by 5% on the first copy, instead of increasing it by 10%. Note: This issue would actually resolve itself after a 2nd copy was added, and the full, correct bonus would be applied.
Blitz Bomb cooldown bonus is no longer permanent
Fixed a bug preventing the Silver Tongue anomaly from applying its discount
Fixed issues with a variety of achievements that could reset your progress for a current game if resuming from a saved game
Fixed issues with the achievements Ringing It In and Roll With It that could allow you to achieve them when resuming from a game where you already failed their requirements
Monarch: Thin damage lasers will now consistently deal damage to the player
Monarch: Fixed issues with laser visual syncing