Hi Steam Flyers
After 18 months in development, HDog is finally approaching the 1.0 release on Steam. On the 14.05.2018 you'll be able to blast of into colorful missions full of explosions and weird jet loot.
Since the last Steam announcement we continued to add content to the game. Here's a quick recap:
(January) HDog Alpha 0.851: Radio Waves has been shipped. This update focused on wave goal variety and UI improvements.
Early in development I floated the idea of having a large pool of available goals for each wave, but then scratched that in favor of a more arcady design. In Strasbourg we discussed whether the player might feel lost at times if no clear purpose is given and I was encouraged to revisit the differentiated wave goals. In the process of implementing the goals I also added a more direct splash text framework to telegraph goals. In general I tried to move away from ui text to tell you about wave goal progress, instead many new goals work with symbols and bars exclusively.
So how does this look in game then? When starting a wave you now always get some splash-text in the close background, telling you your wave goal (I'm considering supporting this text with images to create proper splash screen for boss fights). Wave goals range from recon mission to various types of target elimination. You'll raid convoys, eliminate enemy aces or take down storage balloon. The previous “decimate enemy forces” wave goal is also still there, but way less prevalent, with survival waves being another spin on that. Wave objectives might till get extended further, with the UI moving away from plain text some more.
The update also featured many small tweaks and fixes. I tried to build more of a connection between the ui and player actions/reactions, by blowing up UI elements like the heart ui or the SRM counter whenever their values change. Your ship now constantly explodes while you are on your last half heart, simple thing but I'd probably never considered it if it wouldn't have been suggested directly at Strasbourg Fantastique. The player being jammed/interdicted became more relevant even in the early game with the recently added Naval Cruiser boss, so I revisited the UI connected to that. The game now tells you more clearly that your jet is interdicted and late game EMP enemies also cause custom UI effects now, causing your entire UI to reboot after EMP effects wear off. I'm still not entirely happy with the UI, other devs pointed out that some important stuff like health is too far away from the visual focus (your jet) and I agree, so I might still iterate more on this. Oh and your active now wiggles in anticipation when charged, that's important!
There are dozens of conceptual or half-designed items I still want to add. The game is in a state where this is really easy (unless their mechanics require something entirely new that is). Wiring a new weapon into the game takes can take less time than making the weapon sprites, but with all the testing and tuning that comes afterward it still always takes longer than expected still. So I try to not do this and save stuff for a post release content patch, but couldn't resist the temptation this time. The nine new guns make use of previously added status affects, so you got stuff that's really good at EMPing enemies or causing the damage-over-time cascade effect. One new late game melee option, the Halberd, can be used to pull escaping enemies towards your. There are also two guns that fire those nasty photon shots used by some late game enemies and bosses, allowing you to better deal with shields by simply piercing them. And there are a few bread-and butter kinetic guns.
(March) HDog Alpha 0.901: Vis Light has been shipped. This update focused on jet build choices and loot management.
The loot system has been re-organized, with chests now having color-coded tiers, each tier with its own loot pool. You'll need to hunt down those sweet red chests if you want access to the more broken weapons and items (looking at you, shot displacer). Chest quality increases the further you'll get into the game and how well you play also features into it (as in how many times you consecutively flawlessed a wave).
But the loot revision isn't all about limiting you, rather the contrary. The new zone store and choice chests actually give your more control over how your jet evolves throughout the game. Choice chests give you a choice of three items after you opened them (you can only pick up one). The zone store comes in the form of a store vessel. You'll have to hack and defend it during its own new wave type in order for it to become available for the remainder of the zone. The store ship will then come alongside during each hyperspace jump and you can access it's store chests there. Until the end of the zone, which will now destroy all remaining chests and pickups, as well as the store ship. Overall the whole loot management aspect of the game got funneled more into the intermission scene. For now I cut the possibility of opening chests during wave combat, since that didn't mix well with choice chests and store offers. But the intermission scene now allows for better chest interaction in return, enabling button controls to interact with items. If you use button controls you no longer need to switch to mouse each time you'll go into the intermission and if you you have mouse aiming enabled the intermission will use mouse controls too.
When testing the new stuff I also came across a whole lot of problems with the recently added wave objectives. So yeah, lots of bug-fixes, again. I also nerved zone two a whole lot, so it should feel less like a brick wall now. Zone three is where the game seriously tries to kill you, but you should be able to get to the second set of bosses more consistently now.
The final alpha content update (0.95, Full Spectrum) will give you multiple player jets to choose from and will start gating some content via an unlock system. After that its just bug fixing, testing and tuning till the release.
(April) HDog Alpha 0.96 has been shipped. This update added additional player jets to choose from and introduced persistent unlock progression.
Since that we basically just deal with bug reports now and prepare for the final release. :)
<3 <3 <3 Much Love! <3 <3 <3
Stefan