Hello everyone. This is a pretty big change to the scoring based on when you are successful at saving the Earth with a G.E.O.S. gem you collect in your games.
As I was about to play my game, I looked at the global high scores here on Steam to see that a couple of people having scored higher than my current 3rd best high score. I saw a problem however when I checked out these scores. While I usually play on difficulty 2 myself, I wondered if the two scores above me were obtained on difficulty 1, a much easier experience mainly because there is absolutely no threat of ever having to face the most deadly enemy in this game known as the VDS. ..Perhaps though they played a higher difficulty and got such high scores because of higher scoring awarded in game for taking on the challenge of higher difficulties. ..I just didn't know!
Update 1.28 changes that, and now it will be very obvious what difficulty was played by anyone who succeeds in the main objective of saving the Earth in the normal game mode.
In the above game code, the code I changed in this update is shown. The event where this code occurs is just before the final statistics are shown on the end game screen. The variable "global.saved" is only set to 7 at this point if the player succeeded in saving the Earth with a G.E.O.S. gem. The variable "global.points" is the player score, and the variable "global.lvl" is the difficulty the player had selected before their game.
So where this code had previously just awarded 50 million points to the player if they saved the Earth regardless of what difficulty they had selected, you'll see that now the bonus for saving the earth is 100 million points multiplied by the difficulty they selected before their game. (the * means 'multiply' in the line of code shown)
I think this change is a good change to the scoring that will help all people looking at the top scores to easily see on what difficulty each was achieved on. It will also help encourage people to take on the challenge of higher difficulties if they want to be "the best of the best" on the Steam global high scores for this game. Keep in mind that this scoring only applies to games where you are successful in saving the Earth with a G.E.O.S. game.
There was also a bug fixed that would happen when you sometimes might have a Smasher or Cannon Ball power up and collect another power-up while in the middle of one of those power-ups that would end your Smasher or Cannon Ball power up early. Hitting a power-up like K-OS while using one of these two power-ups could lead to a confusing and unexpected death! This has been fixed by making collecting any power-up time power-up impossible while already using a Smasher or Cannon Ball. Note that you should still be able to collect power-ups like an extra Spi-roll, an extra ship, MESA, an A-55 Kicker, and Mother Sucker while using either a Smasher or Cannon Ball power-up.
Also changed in this update was the game information on the difficulty selection screen to give more detailed information about the importance of the G.E.O.S. gems and the new scoring system if you are successful at saving the Earth in your game.
As always, have fun when you "Rock 'N Roll" and Happy Holidays to you all!