It's always interesting how silly of mistakes you can make trying to make the biggest game you've ever made and what is even more surprising to me is that I didn't notice it until playing the game just today.
Right before this game was launched on Steam in early access, I was trying to add a lot of stuff to the game with the G.E.O.S gems and the M.E.S.A. shields and much more, and in testing things, I changed some code causing the resources sold to not get reset properly between levels. Since launch until I played today, I never really observed that these resources were not resetting correctly to zero once you sold them for either points of game cash. This means that you could essentially be making MUCH more global cash and/or points than was ever intended by simply surviving a few levels because you could sell the same resources you already collected (and sold) in previous levels over and over and over and over..
Using this bug combined with the 5 million game cash option I put into the game "just for fun" back in update 0.71 on July 16th could mean big cash, big points, and a much easier game than was ever intended!
Add in the option to purchase Spi-Rolls at a flat cost that didn't go up at all the more you purchased with no set limit, and it was possible to use the Greedy cheat option I added in update 0.71 to purchase more than 250 Spi-Roll attacks as early as the first Upgrade screen after beating just one wave of asteroids! Having 250 or more Spi-Roll attacks could easily mean clearing out many levels without even trying, just spamming the Spi-Roll attack keys until the level was clear with minimal risk.
So to resolve these problems, I've made a lot of decisions and changes in this update...
I decided not to put in a timer restricting players ability to use consecutive Spi-Roll attacks because there is already a built in algorithm I coded in the game to increase a players risk for using this strategy. Doing this will increase your "hurl away" speed exponentially to more times you use Spi-Roll attacks in succession, thus greatly increasing your risk of getting thrown into an asteroid. I felt that this is a risk the player should have an option of taking if they so choose as long as they have enough Spi-Rolls to do so.
So here we go... CHANGES made in this update:
- The optional "Greedy" cheat is still in the game from the introduction screen just as before and still accessed by holding CTRL and hitting the "G" key on that introduction screen. However, the amount given to you is now $500,000 game cash versus the old $5,000,000. I feel that this is still enough to help players out, but not enough to allow them to make the game unbalanced too early on in their favor.
- Resources are now properly reset when you sell them at each Selling screen at the Galactic Space Hub. This means that you'll likely notice a much slower cash flow than before if you've been able to advance a few levels and perhaps wondered "Wow, I just made bank that level!". This is now fixed and working properly as it should.
- To award players for advancing to higher levels of the game and beating levels of asteroids, you'll now notice a small but exponentially growing value to all resources the further you advance in the game. The resources you collect and sell from level 1 (wave 1) won't be nearly as much as the same resources collected and sold from wave 10.. should you make it that far. To make this even more interesting, the score point values for resources will grow at almost double the rate of game cash value for resources.
- Spi-Rolls can still be purchased without limits at the Upgrade screen between levels as long as you have the game cash required to buy them, however each additional Spi-Roll purchased now increases the cost by a small amount if you have purchased ten or less at the same upgrade screen. Purchasing more than ten Spi-Roll attacks will cause the additional cost of each one purchased to increae even more than the first ten additional Spi-Rolls purchased. The cost of Spi-Rolls will reset to a random but low cost again once you defeat another level and return to the Upgrade screen.
- Enemies will now spawn much less frequently than before, especially on difficulty 1. Again remember in the last patch 0.77 I also made it impossible to ever see the VDS if you choose difficulty 1. The further you advance into the game, the more frequently enemies can spawn however.. even at difficulty 1.
- There is still no limit on the number of extra ships you can obtain in the game, you'll get an extra ship at 20,000 points, at 50,000 points, and at every 50,000 points afterwards (100k, 150, 200k, 250k, 300k and so on..) I feel that the game does a good enough job of increasing the challenge the further you progress. Also note that extra ships can be collected on rare power-up spawns during your gameplay.
- The iron resource has been given a little more "glitter" to make it look a little more like a collectible versus a small asteroid.
It's early access, and this is exactly why I chose to release this game in early access to give me plenty of time to fix issues, improve the game, and balance the game until I feel that it is a very solid and finished game. While I'm sure that these issues fixed in this patch allowed a few Steam achievements to be set that really shouldn't have been awarded, I'm not going to reset the Steam achievements until this game comes out of early access. Steam achievements WILL definitely be reset when I bring Rock 'N Roll out of early access, but we are likely to be a good few months away from that day.
I hope you all are enjoying the game and I think people will feel the changes made in this patch feel more authentic as like you're actually getting the score points and/or game cash you deserve now. I also feel that there is a much greater difference after update 0.77 and this update 0.78 between the difficulties you choose from the start. Difficulty 1 should be much more forgiving now than ever before and I think this is great because it will allow people to get a good feel for the game and the controls before taking on a stiffer challenge.