Space Pirate Trainer beta is out now, featuring new gameplay, graphics, weapons, powerups, and the revered Volton.
The Volton is a melee weapon that redirects pulse lasers back to their origin, and also includes a plasma-link that can pull droids towards you or smash them into the environment. It takes some practice to master, though once you do.. it opens up a lot of possibilities!
Other new weapons include the Ion Grenade Launcher and Shotworks - both incredibly powerful additions to a Space Pirate arsenal. Use the trigger to fire a grenade from the Ion Grenade Launcher, and hit the trigger again to detonate. You can take out a whole swarm of droids with just one perfectly placed hit. The Shotworks sends out a spray of plasma, perfect for taking out a close range enemy or deflecting a group of medium range droids.
After a successful droid takedown, one of five PowerUps may appear. Once activated PowerUps will greatly enhance your abilities for ten seconds. PowerUps include a shield, machine guns, homing bullets, a gravity field, and missiles.
Alongside the global Space Pirate Captain leaderboard are leaderboards for each weapon, so you’ll be able to dance your way up the charts dedicated to your favourite method of playing.
There are *lots* more updates in this release, so read on below for a list of some of the ones we remembered to write down these past few months!
We'd like to thank all the supporters here on the forums, Twitter and Reddit that have helped make this beta possible, your contributions have been invaluable! We've really enjoyed going through your feedback and are pretty certain you're going to absolutely love this update.
Thanks for your support!
I-Illusions
Space Pirate Trainer Beta Change-list
New weapons
- Shotworks: Your very own space pirate shotgun. Really great for close range destruction, also pretty great for medium range scattered shots
- Ion Grenade Launcher: This is a whole bunch of 4th of July’s rolled into one gun. Shoot once to send out a grenade, and again to detonate
- The Volton: Brand new second option for the shield, turns into a laser-deflective bat that doubles as a plasma link! Try aiming the blue laser at a droid, pulling the trigger and lassoing that droid around like a space cowboy! All lasers deflected with the plasma-link will be redirected back to the location they were fired from
New enemies
- Scout droid: fires a whole bunch of quick bursts, and then zaps as far away as it can
- Heavy: The Beta “big gun” - this droid fires *five* lasers simultaneously to ensure anything and everything is obliterated. The blue laser is harder to dodge because of its higher velocity
PowerUps
After every droid is destroyed there is a chance a PowerUp cubes will spawn, up to a limit of three PowerUps at any one time. When activated (by shooting, hitting them with your head or with your shield) a PowerUp will last for ten seconds.
PowerUps include:
- Machine gun (green): Quick machine gun fire if you’ve got your guns out
- Shield (blue): A temporary bubble surrounds you and no droid fire can break through. Perfect for those tender space pirate times
- Homing bullets (yellow): Need some help aiming? These guys will do the dirty work for you. Hit the yellow PowerUp and then push the trigger - bullets will find their own way to a droid!
- A Little Help From My Ship (red): If you see a red PowerUp, wait til there are plenty of droids, and then activate the upgrade. The skies will rain with missiles!
- Gravity field (purple): A purple wormhole will open in a random location in the playfield, sucking in any object (droid or otherwise) passing through the local area
Gameplay updates
- Hardcore mode: Real space pirates do *not* have time for bullet time
- Guns were slightly rebalanced
- Wave selection: Start classic or hardcore mode from wave 1, 5, 10 or 15
- Shield swapping (putting arm behind shoulder) more reliable than ever. You probably won’t need the grip button anymore
- Super slow down when hit by a droid, making it easier to dodge subsequent hits
- Bullet time now degrades as you progress. Super high at wave 2, super super low at wave 30
- Controllers vibrate when swapping between shield and gun
- VRSense: Screen subtly flashes when a droid shoots outside of your peripheral vision, perfect for that pesky droid just to your left!
- Game stats presented at end of game (waves survived, droids destroyed, longest combo, eyeshots, shots survived, dominant weapon - weapon used for > 90% of shots
- Gun-specific leaderboards: Your dominant weapon (the one used for more than 90% of shots) will indicate which leaderboard your score gets sent to. All dominant weapons though will also be submitted to 'mixed'
- Your position in global leaderboard is now shown for each of the leaderboards
- The two lasers (triple shot and automatic fire) have been rolled into one laser
- Droids hang out behind you a little less
- Now possible to make an eye-shot with the RailGun
- Controllers no longer blink all the time
Graphical & UI updates
- Decreased game load time significantly
- Temporary marks left on the platform when you shoot, scuff up the platform as much as you like!
- Optimized effects and shaders resulting in better overall framerates
- New animated gun models and textures - space pirates like to look good right?
- Updated and Streamlined menu - removed a lot of clutter to make way for all the amazing new stuff
- Particle and weapon effects updated
- Shield now comes in beautiful "space pirate" blue neon, which now also indicates when the shield has enough charge to perform a pulse blast using the trigger button.
- HMD & computer screen is now blackened when the pause button is hit (menu button on the controller) and Space Pirate Trainer sounds are muted
- Updated environment models and textures
- Optional “relaxing” fog setting in the options menu
- SuperSampling and Anti-Alias options menu (available options > advanced)
Audio updates
- Updated 3D audio
- Droids now clang when they collide with each other or the platform
- QuarkCannon (single shot) now makes cooler, futuristic shot sounds
- RayGun sounds absolutely devastating when combined with another RayGun (cross the streams! We dare you!)
Party Mode
Brand new mode made to turn your lounge room into an Arcade - perfect for playing SPT with your friends. Head to the the options menu and hit the ‘Party Mode’ button. Here you can limit gameplay to a number of games or minutes, and clear the dedicated party mode scoreboard. Once you then hit ‘Start Party Mode’ the game will leave the options menu and show a striped down Space Pirate Trainer interface, with just a ‘Ready to Rock’ button and a party mode leaderboard on the side. To exit party mode, hit the escape button on the computer’s keyboard.
To force Space Pirate Trainer to start in party mode, just create a text file called ‘partymode.cfg’ in the same directory as the Space Pirate Trainer executable, with the following text:
forcepartymode=1
forcecredits=5
forcetime=10
Be aware that you won’t be able to press escape to exit party mode until you change the settings in the partymode.cfg file and restart Space Pirate Trainer, or remove the file from the directory.