Added Steam Cloud support to save progress of Unlocked ships, best scores, and coins.
Added a new total score counter to the ship select menu.
Doubled the lifetime of Trail bullets making the power up a lot more useful.
Added new updated GFX and upcoming game Diamo XL to thanks menu.
Finally added and fixed default D pad support! :)
Improved Game pad vibration support throughout.
Resolved Linux Full screen Input problems
Resolved issues where some achievements can get stuck
Upgraded engine to Latest Unity Version
Thank you to everyone for playing and sharing the game with your friends and family I appreciate your support immensely. If you are enjoying Bit Blaster, make sure to leave a brief Steam Review and let others know to check it out. The reviews are extremely important for helping new players find my games.
--> Right click the game in the library tab
--> Click Properties
--> Click the BETAS tab
--> From the Drop down box select "beta_v3.12"
--> Click close
The beta should then automatically download. Make sure that if the BETA doesn't work for you, you use the same method to turn it off.
The BETA version includes some upcoming fixes, changes and additions such as;
--> Added steam cloud support to save progress of unlocked ships, scores and coins (finally, I know).
--> Various small bug fixes, improvements and Linux input freeze fix
It's important you run the game once on the computer with your main save file, as it is going to back that up to the Steam Cloud first!
Also make sure to check out my upcoming game Diamo XL if you like this type of small arcade score chaser :)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/715010/
My new game ‘orbt xl’ now available on Steam for PC, Mac, Linux
orbt xl is now available on Steam for PC, Mac, Linux.
orbt xl is my newest game I have adapted for the Steam platform, it is another score chasing, bite sized, arcade style game. The goal is to orbit around the blackhole while not colliding with an ever-increasing number of obstacles. There are a variety of skins to unlock for your planet and some good leaderboard fun to be had. I think if you enjoyed Bit Blaster XL you may enjoy orbt xl.
Stay in orbit while avoiding obstacles or being sucked into a black hole. Survive as long as you can while dodging and weaving between the various obstacles, the closer you orbit to the center; the faster you achieve points. The longer you last, the harder it gets. The simple one button controls either increases or decreases your orbit as you press it or don’t.
Thanks to all of you for the great support of Bit Blaster XL I have managed to free myself a lot more time to make a lot of cool games this upcoming year. So, I hope you’ll give orbt xl a shot and if you like it, please leave a brief Steam review and share with friends/family as it will really help for the launch success of this game and allow me to keep progressing towards bigger and better things.
As always, please leave any feedback or suggestions you may have, it is with the communities help that Bit Blaster XL become such a solid experience and I want to ensure that happens with orbt xl as well.
Fixed bug that some players encountered that resulted in no sound or music after update to V3.10
Figured out how to make all buttons respond correctly to mouse over and now they will properly highlight and if no mouse movement is detected it will revert to Gamepad or Keyboard detection. (look at me, I'm learning)
Optimized all textures using some new methods I read about, making the game require less overhead.
Upgraded engine to Unity 5.6
Options menu music link now leads to the Free DLC on Steam
Modified exit menu to have link to twitter, other projects, and website. As well reworked my phrasing in the thanks dialog to be more in line with Steam policies.
Modified words slightly in tweet score function.
Thank you everyone for playing and sharing the game with your friends and family. Thanks so much for the support. If you are enjoying Bit Blaster, make sure to leave a brief Steam Review and let others know to check it out. The reviews are so very important.
-Adam Nickerson
Also make sure to check out my new XL arcade series game orbt xl - coming April 21st 9am PST.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/615610/
V3.10
Bit Blaster XL - V3.10
Added Music and Audio Sliders to the menus for keyboard, gamepad and mouse. (rewrote a number of things to allow for this to work instead of toggles. So please let me know if you find any issues) After this patch they will start at volume defaults Music 7, SFX 10.
Added the ability to customize the controls in the options menu. These controls will stick in between plays and can be reverted to default controls in the same menu. This is not a perfect implementation but it should suffice for most players that needed it. These controls will not modify the menu navigation buttons.
NEW Enemy07 - This enemy is a Blackhole, there is a small advance indicator where the black hole will spawn. Then once spawned, the black hole will continue to grow until it explodes. It can be shot five times to destroy. The Blackhole will suck in everything it comes into contact with and will destroy the player on contact. The Blackhole can appear later in the game and will appear with more frequency the higher your score becomes.
Controls will now be shown to all players a couple times each new version there are changes. Previously controls only showed for the first three starts and a couple times after changing autofire to manual fire, leading some players to be confused when I added the new Bomb and it wasn’t showing for them. (whoops)
Controls should now also be shown for when players have Customized their controls.
Fixed Bug where when you toggle the vibrate button really fast sometimes it stays on forever and ever and EVER AND EVER!!!! (no more!)
Modified the pause menu powerups legend slightly and added +Ammo
Modified Enemy05 Shoot patterns, slightly decreasing the amount of bullets on the first stop and increasing firepower with each stop.
Fixed Bug where you could still activate bomb during pause screen (or while alt-tabbing, sorry)
Thank you everyone for playing and sharing the game with your friends and family. Bit Blaster now has over 250,000 players, which just boggles my mind. Thanks so much for the support.
If you are really enjoying Bit Blaster, make sure to leave a brief Steam Review and let others know to check it out.
-Adam Nickerson
V3.10 BETA
Bit Blaster XL - V3.10 BETA
To try out the BETA version;
--> Right click the game in the library tab
--> Click Properties
--> Click the BETAS tab
--> From the Drop down box select "v3.10_beta"
--> Click close
The beta should then automatically download. Make sure that if the BETA doesn't work for you, you use the same method to turn it off.
The BETA version includes some upcoming fixes, changes and additions such as;
--> New Enemy07 - The BlackHole
--> New SFX and Music sliders from 1 to 10 instead of toggle
--> In game rebind-able controls (experimental)
--> Some other small changes, fixes and improvements to be detailed later.
Thank you to everyone for supporting Bit Blaster XL and leaving great reviews. Please continue to share Bit Blaster XL with friends and family, I greatly appreciate it as the game has soared to a strong user base of over 150,000 players!
Please let me know if you encounter issues or errors in the BETA and I will make sure to address them before the wide release.
I have pushed through another version of the V3.1 Patch to anyone that is in the Beta. This should resolve the problem where the brake / boost isn't refreshing and working correctly. It also makes a change to the projectiles involving the new blackhole enemy. As well as fixes a couple small bugs found with the volume sliders.
I have tried many many times to replicate the error where the walls close in for some players and have yet to figure out what causes it. Please let me know if you encounter this and if you know the actions you did to reproduce it.
--- Key things to note or look for ---
1) Does this happen ONLY when someone uses the Experimental custom controls?
2) Does this occur more than once if it happens? Or do the walls fix themselves after losing a round? Or after rebooting the game?
3) Are you using keyboard or gamepad? If gamepad, which gamepad?
Thank you so much to those able to help, I would really like to find this bug before I push this out to the public channel as I don't want new players to encounter it.
-Adam
V3.00
The Bit Blaster XL Soundtrack by Spifftune is now available for FREE as DLC (includes one new track) Get it here!
Reworked ALL in game menus to be more consistent and ‘professional’ across all menus. Can use either a keyboard, a mouse or a gamepad. I understand that the menus are only now in line with what videogames should all have at the most basic, but was a big deal for me to learn and code it to work this way. (please let me know if there are bugs) Looks less like it was designed by an amatuer in his garage studio.
cough*
There is a new Bomb weapon in the game. Pressing ‘Y’ on the gamepad or ‘ALT’ on the Keyboard should activate it. Each ship has different amounts of bombs to start and they can be found randomly floating in space. There is also a bit of UI changes to show the new bomb setup in both the ship select screen and the gameplay UI.
The Laser power up is now nearly twice as long and far more effective, as well it has had at total overhaul to make it look cooler.
The Magnet power up is now more powerful at pulling objects and costs less ammo while working and has had a slight GFX modification
The Trail power up has been modified to make all singular trail bullets also move within their own small circles, really increasing the effectiveness of this power up
The Heatseeking power up has been entirely rewritten and should now correctly reduce ammo as well as not double up or just disappear. It also now has a new look and a slight explosion upon collision that can take out multiple objects like the explode shot.
Grow Shot has been modified to have Increased size of break-off bullets
Through Shot has been modified to look more like a rail shot bullet, to hopefully better indicate that it goes through objects until it hits a wall
Bounce Shot now has a slight green flash to it to set it apart from enemy bullets a little bit more while still remaining difficult enough to be balanced.
Explode shot has had its rate of fire reduced slightly as well as has been shrunk slightly.
Split shots rate of fire reduced slightly
Bomb, Boost, and Shield pickups now look more impressive and should stand out better when things get a little crazy.
Now fully supporting ultrawide displays and all sorts of bizarre resolutions.
Should now properly allow uncommon resolutions to be detected in video menu.
Braking now uses half the resources as boost, allowing for much better control
There are now increased Invincibility frames after losing a shield! The player will receive 1.5 seconds of immunity as well as a flashing ship to showcase it.
The screen will now shake when you use a bomb, lose a shield, die, or crash into a wall. (a small changed but makes a huge impact)
Resolved various spawning issues for Ultrawide displays, including but not limited to ammo spawning, enemy spawning, power up spawning and various GUI elements.
Updated pause legend to have black background and new +Bomb pickup
Updated all Text/Font in game and increased its clarity
Optimized all textures to be better looking for all resolutions
Modified powerups so they don’t spawn to close to walls
Removed some unnecessary debug logs from here and there just to be cleaner
The instructions for both auto and manual fire modes have been updated to reflect any changes.
Bit Blaster XL is now using the latest version of Unity engine
I spent some time and cleaned up the Unity launcher binding labels to make it more easy to understand naming conventions (hopefully helping those who rebind controls)
Enemy00’s Speed now increases as the round goes longer
Enemy01a (small meteor bits) will now shrink, pop, and then despawn if they’ve spent too long floating on the screen instead of just disappearing.
Enemy04 Now chases the player at an increasing speed as the game goes on, as well as taking shorter breaks each time it stops.
Enemy05 Now stops and shoots bursts multiple times as it crosses the screen, with bigger bursts depending on how long its survived. Also has new effect showing charging up shot.
Modified some mid-later round (20000+) balancing with enemy spawning and points allocation, to make the franticness a more balanced of a variety of enemies as well as more reasonable to allow average players to get higher achievements and expert players to get even further.
Later in game rounds (35000+ points) will spawn more effective powerups for crowds far more often than the less powerful or utility power ups
There is now slightly more time in between powerup spawns so multiple don’t wind up on the screen at the same time
Ammo intro + tutorial enemy now spawn in a different location for better visibility
Bit Blaster XL will now correctly run in the background when its window is not the focus
Pause Menu Overhaul with new style menus
Sound when ammo runs outs. Also blink red ammo
Cleaned up nickervision support page and made buttons bigger and clearer
Cleaned up garbage collection and resolved minor lag spikes
Tidied up entire project behind the scenes. Removed redundancies, unused textures, out of date files and renamed many assets, making flow smoother.
Upgraded to latest available Steamworks SDK and Steamworks.Net implementation
Fixed alignment of some swapping GFX in instructions
Bombs destroy powerups, but ammo stays.
*New Leaderboard for V3.0 forward. The old V2.1 Scores are still saved, and you can still access V2.1 through the BETA tab in Steam if you prefer.**
Thank you everyone for playing and sharing the game with your friends and family. Bit Blaster XL now has over 125,000 players, I am BLOWN away!.
If you are really enjoying Bit Blaster, make sure to leave a brief Steam Review and let others know to check it out.
-Adam Nickerson
V3.00 BETA
Bit Blaster XL - V3.00 BETA
To try out the BETA version;
--> Right click the game in the library tab
--> Click Properties
--> Click the BETAS tab
--> From the Drop down box select "v3.00_beta"
--> Click close
The beta should then automatically download. Make sure that if the BETA doesn't work for you, you use the same method to turn it off.
The BETA version includes some upcoming fixes, changes and additions such as;
--> Significant balancing improvements and visual changes
--> Full support for Ultrawide and 4K displays (I think)
--> New screen clearing Bomb that is available as secondary weapon.
--> As well as many more changes, additions, and improvements that will be detailed further in the patch notes when V3.0 is released on Monday December 5th along with the free DLC download of the Soundtrack by Spiff Tune.
Thank you to everyone for supporting Bit Blaster XL and leaving great reviews. Please continue to share Bit Blaster XL with friends and family, I greatly appreciate it as the game has soared to a strong user base of over 125,000 players!
Please let me know if you encounter issues or errors in the BETA and I will make sure to address them before the wide release.
If you love Bit Blaster XL, please nominate it during the first ever Steam Awards. All it takes it a couple clicks on the Bit Blaster XL Store Page to nominate Bit Blaster XL for the "I Thought This Game Was Cool Before It Won An Award" award.
I know it's a long shot but since there are over 100,000 of you out there playing the game, I figured i'd ask for your help in trying to get there or at least make some sort of ranking :)
Also don't hesitate to nominate other awesome games for Steam Awards.
Eg. Stardew Valley for the "Just 5 more Minutes" award
Thanks Everyone
-Adam Nickerson
Over 100,000 units sold and V3.0 Coming December 5th
I just wanted to provide a quick announcement to let all you Bit Blasters know that thanks to your support, reviews, and sharing the game with your friends, Bit Blaster XL has sold over 100,000 units on Steam. I am absolutely blown away by the love and support it's received. With it's overwhelmingly positive reviews and its incredibly helpful player community, it continues to reach more players every day. Thanks to all of your feedback and suggestions I have added, changed, fixed and polished Bit Blaster XL into an even better game over the last ten months with the many successful patches and content releases.
I have a new patch coming December 5th. I have tagged it as V3.0. It Includes a variety of fixes and changes that hopefully everyone will be pleased with. Some of those changes includes; a new secondary bomb power up that can do some good old fashioned screen clearing explosions, some re-balanced endgame and point values to give a better median experience to all players and allowing experts to climb even higher, and a totally redesigned menu system that hopefully improves upon the currently terrible menus that feel like they were designed by some amateur in his garage studio *cough*. I should have a version in the BETA branch in the coming days so people can take a look and give me some feedback. (oh also, the soundtrack will be released as FREE DLC)
I really appreciate all the support and positivity. This experience with Bit Blaster XL on Steam has afforded me all sorts of amazing opportunities like attending E3 2016, Steam DevDays 2016, a visit to the Microsoft campus and much more.
I can't thank you all enough for this experience and hope that I can share more great experiences with you into the future.
