v0.1.6 has made way for v0.1.7 - here's the best I could do... not quite as good as the one from 0.1.5 but I think I can safely say I had longer sustained fun gameplay this time around so I'll take that trade :)
That's also a significantly less-upgraded ship than the 0.1.5 high score ship! I'm pretty happy with getting over 9k.
I'm also really happy with what the first HEX (hardware expansion) module - the Deployable Repair Kit (or DRK; what's a sci fi game without a million initialisms and backronyms?) - has brought to the game. It gives me a reason to risk flying in front of ships instead of avoiding them and sniping asteroids... if I take damage and need a repair kit, I can only get that from fighting an enemy ship.
Eventually I'll probably add in some kind of resource mechanic tied strongly to the current level's color palette (maybe tied to a HEX that serves as a cosmic forge, turning asteroid dust of different colors into consumable resources?) that would be part of a supply chain, of sorts, that would enable you to theoretically get a kit without fighting a ship, too... but I digress.
Speaking of fighting and risk, Gunships in 0.1.7 always drop a DRK when they are destroyed - so that should give pilots even more reason to take them on.
Asteroids get a hull buff and some tuning to the way they react when they bonk one another, and I tried to make my life a little easier in that part of the game so I can test out letting the level parameters affect some of them down the line, as well.
It also felt a little unsatisfying popping a DRK and not getting any kind of visual indicator that it was deployed, so 0.1.7 adds a particle effect to the player ship when a DRK is used. This also paves the way for other HEX modules, consumable or permanent, to have their own special particle effect when consumed/activated which is exciting to daydream about (I'm thinking maybe an energy shield that deploys for a few seconds and absorbs all incoming laser damage is probably the next one I'll work on).
With a few fixes to the player ship's thruster exhaust, 0.1.7 marks a point in the game's life where I feel like I'm getting back to pre-Early Access levels of fun (before I started poking around in some of the mechanics to open up more possibilities for myself later and kinda broke the balance for a while). I think I'll probably keep working on 0.1.8 as least as long as it takes to beat my 0.1.5 high score (no promises though).
Here's my high score from 0.1.7 testing and then the full patch notes below:
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Patch Notes
Fixes
Player ship thruster exhaust now applies its transformed color correctly.
Player ship no longer displays thruster exhaust particles briefly when spawning in.
Changes
Asteroids now receive a hull multiplier from the current level when they are spawned (default is 1.5x) and the final value is rounded to the nearest integer
Tuned asteroid rotation and x-axis momentum transfer math to get more satisfying behavior
Also added a few variables that should make this kind of tuning easier in the future
Laser bolts now inherit less of their parent object's momentum and bolts now slow down when flying away from the direction the bolt is fired (instead of speeding up as if the parent object were flying forward)
Added particle effects when repairing player ship hull damage
It looks like fey-realm nanobot fairies repairing the ship to me
Modified cargo spawn logic so that Gunship mini-bosses always spawn with droppable cargo.
Known Issues
Some color combinations can create problematic visuals, will review and update *eventually*
The modification to space object spawn rate that happens as the player's hit multiplier increases might not be resetting correctly once that hit multiplier returns to 1.0x - more testing is needed
There may be situations where the player is credited with a kill that was the result of damage from a source other than the player - needs more testing
Dev Priorities
Make DRKs dropped by enemy ships scale the amount of damage they restore proportionally with the enemy ship's stats so that stronger ships provide a bigger bonus
Review color combinations and potentially add in pre-selected (in addition to the current randomized) palettes
Attempt steam sdk integration with a focus on supporting steam input for controllers, stretch goal of providing simple achievements and stats tracking
A real local leaderboard for high scores, ship names, their stats, and some info about the level they were achieved on
Find a better structure or foundation for save data that includes the current game version for future cases where an update might require that an old save is updated or wiped before playing the new version.
Expand HUD to full screen when fullscreen is enabled
Add cargo/mod slots to HUD