Well, this is a HUGE week for Lazarus, with so many fixes and improvements I'm actually a bit shocked. Genuinely. I wrote the list, came back up here to edit the intro and was like... "Whoa, how much scrolling do I have to do to get here?".
- Carrier! This is the big one. We've made tons of changes to collision, how it chooses targets, and what happens when it dies (hint - plenty o' dat MEV). Not to mention, it spawns bad guys properly now, with gfx and everything! Go find one and (try your best to) take it out! Oh, and it on longer takes damage from Asteroids. So nerr! That said we'll be tweaking this in the future for people who want to throw 'roids at it with Limpet Boosters...
- Bullet collision! It's too convoluted to go into the full details here (ask us in Discord!) but suffice to say for ages now shots have had slightly unreliable collision. That is no longer the case, and the combat is SO MUCH BETTER NOW. Bear in mind it works both ways - enemy shots are not more likely to hit you too, so things might get tougher.
- Juking now works a lot better. Hit Q or E to dodgeroll left or right, with some invincibility frames for extra fun! Right now it takes into account what direction your ship is facing, so it can be a bit fiddly for some players. We're open to changing that - but regardless, beware it has a cooldown and uses Energy too.
- Chat is back! So, you can chat away to your heart's content in the chat box, and because we're clever, it supports some rtf commands too. Now, ne nice though:
Bold - Use and .
Italics - Use and .
Underline - Use and .
Superscript - Use and
Subscript - Use and
Size - Use to set point size to 36.
Colour - Use to set the color to red (several other colors are pre-defined).
More Colours - <#FF8000> or any other hexadecimal code to define a color.
- New FTUE! Now, it's going to need more polish, but right now when you boot into the game (or restart the tutorial via the Esc menu) you will play through the new First Time User Experience. We think it teaches the game's Systems in a much more engaging and satisfying way. Let us know! If you have any issues, just skip (hold X), but don't do this in the Xenotaph menus!
- Tech Screen now updates properly to reflect any new Systems or Upgrade Tokens you've unlocked. So that's WAY more fair than it was before.
- Breach button moved, now named PLAY. We think it's a bit more obvious now, plus it's always in the bottom right of the Xenotaph menu no matter which tab you're on. Makes it easier to get back into the fun!
- Scavenger changes include capping its maximum size, and also scaling the model up more sensibly to make it more fun to fight against. Also, it can get closer to asteroids which makes it much better at mining.
- Shielder changes are that the movement is smoother, and its mesh also gets removed the instant it dies. There's plenty more to come for this enemy in a future update, but these tweaks make it a lot nicer to play with.
- We fixed the Mixed Up System issue from last week.
- Hooks to monitor how often you change ships, what to, how often MEV is picked up, and more.
Known issues:
- There's a bunch of odd bugs around your account/System management that kicks in when you die/when you log off. It's nothing new, you've been living with them for months, but we got halfway into a fix and realised it was a bigger job. So that's the main focus for next week!
Next week's update should include some fixes around Death and Systems, as mentioned above, plus a ton of polish and fixes for other annoying bugs. Let us kow in discord what's anoying you the most!