--> New songs added by Spiff Tune; now there are unique songs for each ship.
--> New mode; Autofire mode can be enabled/disabled at the ship select screen. Will allow the player to hold “CTRL” or “X” on gamepad to shoot. The shooting is still tied to the ship’s and active power up’s rate of fire, but allows the player more control over their ammo usage if they so choose. Manual shooting mode will track separate local high scores for each ship as well.
--> New Passive Power up #1 - Magnet; shoots normal bullets but attracts all ammo and coins at more than three times the speed.
--> New Passive Power up #2 - BulletShield; has four round bullets floating around your ship protecting you from close calls and spins faster while boosting.
--> New Player Ship 08; Max stats of four shields, four speed, and four rate of fire. Also has hidden passive ability to gain double ammo with each pickup.
--> New Steam Achievement for unlocking Ship 08.
--> New Steam Leaderboard for players using Manual Fire.
--> New enemy 06; A big enemy that breaks apart in the same fashion as enemy 01, but has four bullet shields floating around it that absorb most shots, once the core enemy gets destroyed, the enemy breaks apart and the bullet shields fly at the player.
--> Modified explode shot slightly to have a bigger blast radius and slightly longer fuse.
--> Re-Balanced some enemy spawning and appearances below 20,000 points.
--> Modified the power up pickups GFX to look a little more obviously power up-ish
--> Re-Balanced the cost for ships slightly and added new ship to menu. Now (5,10,20,30,40,50,100).
--> Upon purchasing all ships, the coin collection indicator will disappear from ship selection screen but will still track coin collection in the background in case more coin purchases are added in the future.
--> Correctly updating the highscores list directly after earning a new highscore.
Thank you to everyone for playing and offering feedback and leaving great reviews. Please continue to share Bit Blaster XL with friends and family I greatly appreciate it.
Adam Nickerson
Nickervision Studios
Upcoming Bit Blaster XL v2.00
Hey all, I just wanted to provide a quick announcement that I will be releasing the public build of Bit Blaster XL v2.0 this upcoming monday, March 28th around 10am.
The new update will be available to test out in the BETA branch at some point today or tomorrow.
The new version contains a number of fixes, balancing, and new content like new powerups, enemy, player ship, music, and a manual game mode. These features and changes will be more detailed in the patch notes when it's released.
I just want to say a big thank you to everyone that has helped make this game a success for me. Over 20,000 people have bought Bit Blaster XL and with a customer rating of 96% positive, I am just overjoyed. I hope you will all enjoy the new update, as always don't hesitate to send me any feedback or issues and I will do my best to make sure its a solid game for everyone.
Have a good weekend, hope to see you playing come monday :)
Adam Nickerson
Nickervision Studios
V1.30
Bit Blaster XL - V1.30 Patch Notes:
--> V-sync button added in options menu for those that want even smoother gameplay (or for those with micro-stuttering issues)
--> Steam controller support now defaults to generic gamepad and bindings can be customized through steam.
--> Implemented vibrate on ship explode, shield loss, & while boosting for supported controllers
--> Adjusted GiantShot Collider to be more effective and changed visuals slightly
--> Adjusted BounceShot Collider to be more effective
--> Adjusted BlastShot visuals and effectiveness slightly
--> Balanced enemy 02 shooting to be at a more reasonable pace throughout
--> Balanced enemy 05 shooting to be at a more reasonable pace at endgame
--> Added new achievement for 75,000 points
--> Added new achievements for 500,000 & 1,500,000 total points earned
--> Added button to turn off/on vibrate
...more still to come.
Thank you to everyone for playing and offering feedback and leaving great reviews.
Please continue to share Bit Blaster XL with friends and family I greatly appreciate it.
Adam Nickerson
Nickervision Studios
Bit Blaster XL V1.30 BETA patch
I would greatly appreciate if a variety of players could test it out and leave feedback in a comment below on whether or not it worked for them.
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 the Testing 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.
Some of the fixes include:
--> Added a V-sync button in the options menu
--> A couple new achievements
--> Various GFX and colliders modifications on weapons, making them feel better and more effective.
--> Several more changes to be detailed in patch notes when live.
Thank you to everyone for playing and offering feedback and leaving great reviews. Please continue to share Bit Blaster XL with friends and family, I greatly appreciate it.
--> Added a new weapon "Giant" shot that is a large bullet that will split into four small bullets upon impact.
--> The last heatseeker bug was found and fixed (even though this one was very rare)
--> Explode shot is now correctly untied from frame rate so effect should be more visible and useful
--> Exploding enemy ship now has a warning blink that makes more sense on more resolutions.
--> Menu system has been correctly slowed down and balanced on all builds, no more "a" button restarts and having the menu in your face while playing.
--> Bounce bullet has had minor modifications in its color and size and ability.
--> More implementation of fixes for various frame rates and hardware. Should now run more balanced and smoother on more machines (hopefully all at the same speed) So a slower machine will no longer get weirdly varying speeds of ships.
--> And a variety of other small GFX changes and tweaks.
Thank you to everyone for playing and offering feedback and leaving great reviews. I really appreciate it. Please continue to share Bit Blaster XL with friends and family.
-Adam Nickerson
Bit Blaster XL V1.20 BETA Patch
I would greatly appreciate if a variety of players could test it out and leave feedback in a comment below on whether or not it worked for them.
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 the Testing 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.
Some of the fixes include:
+Added a new weapon "Giant" shot
*More implementation of fixes for various framerates and hardware. Should now run more balanced and smoother on more machines (hopefully all at the same speed)
*The last heatseeker bug was found and fixed (even though this one was very rare)
*Modified various little things like shields, GFX, and fixed a shield bug.
*And a variety of other small changes.
Thank you to everyone that has been playing so far, left great reviews, and shared Bit Blaster XL with their friends and family. I really appreciate it.
-Adam Nickerson
V1.10
Bit Blaster XL - V1.10 Patch Notes:
-> Rewrote the shield system, should now work as intended, flashed the GFX up a notch, and added an indicator showing how many shields remain, may play into more features in the future. ;)
-> Mouse cursor will now disappear during the active round of gameplay and reappear for menus.
-> I am pretty sure I resolved the heat seeking problem. So now it shouldn’t crap out, and just never come back.... please let me know if it craps out and never comes back.
-> Fix in place so that slower systems don’t have an advantage by the enemies moving slower. Modified a bunch of things to try to balance out this problem. (initially the problems was just caused by an amateur coding move by myself) So may still be kinks to work out.
-> Fix so systems with 120 hz+ monitors run correctly.
-> Added a little sparkle effect to the boosterbar at the bottom.
-> Enemy bullets are now top priority in layers and will always be at the top.
-> Slightly adjusted red of bounce bullet.
-> Add image to configuration launcher. Hold (on win)“ALT” or (on osx)“OPTION” then click play to see configuration options.
-> And i'm sure some little tiny fixes I forgot to document. Whoops.
Thanks for playing everyone. This week has far exceeded my expectations, I greatly appreciate all the awesome reviews, sharing it with your friends, and helping me find bugs and issues. More to come :)
Adam Nickerson
Bit Blaster XL V1.10 BETA Patch
Hey Everyone,
I just wanted to send through an announcement of the V1.1 BETA patch now being available in the BETA branch for Win32, Win64, Linux32, Linux64, OSX.
It features a variety of fixes and improvements. I would love if some players could test it out and let me know that it works. If you do test it, please leave feedback in a comment below (good or bad) with whatever important/unique details you can provide about your machine (Operating system, 32 or 64 bits, 60hz, 120hz, etc)
To try out the BETA version of Bit Blaster XL V1.1, just right click the game in the library tab. --> Click Properties --> Click the BETAS tab --> from the Drop down box select the Testing beta. It should then automatically download. Make sure that if the BETA doesn't work for you, you use the same method to turn it off.
Some of the fixes include: -All Objects should now move at the same speed regardless of framerate
-Super fast gameplay and super slow gameplay should now be resolved
-Heatseeker should work great now
-Fully rewritten shield system, should be far more stable and allow for a couple upcoming features
-Mouse cursor should now disappear correctly during a round of play and reappear in menus.
-Slightly adjusted colors here and there, and modified various GUI details ever so slightly.
-And a variety of other small changes.
Of course I don't want to push this until I have a good handful of people from a variety of machines telling me its working great. Many people have shared videos with me too and that's always very helpful as well, send them to info(at)nickervision(dot)com
And lastly, thank you to everyone that has been playing so far, left great reviews, and share Bit Blaster XL with their friends and family. This launch week has far exceeded my expectations and it feels great to be embraced by such an awesome community. Thanks so so much.
-Adam Nickerson
V1.02
Bit Blaster XL - V1.02 Patch Notes:
-> Bit Blaster V7 Achievement should now correctly activate. (including retroactively to anyone that had already earned it.
-> The skybox and other various details should now appropriately scale to the outrageously sized 21:9 monitors :)
-> Dead zone on gamepad issues should now be resolved. (dpad is not in use currently due to my own programming limitations, will hopefully be back in the future)
-> The Orange "H" powerup will now correctly find targets, if the target is destroyed, it will find a new target, if no targets available it will disappear. Should also no longer get jammed and need a game restart to work again.
-> I have discovered how to manage the questionable leaderboard scores and will do my best to remove all the ones that are completely outrageous.
-> I added a slight acceleration to keyboard left and right controls allowing the player a little tighter control.
-> When dying while boosting, the booster would auto be on next life, this has now been fixed.
-> I have correctly added both the Windows 32 bit builds and Linux 32 bit builds so that people having trouble booting the game should now be able to play.
-> Please make sure to check the discussions board for a stickied post where I will do my best to track all issues.
Thank you everyone for the feedback; this has been a wonderful experience and a super intense 36 hours to start the launch. I will do my best to fix any issues you encounter and post in the discussion thread or email me info(at)nickervision.com.
I want to thank everyone for the AWESOME reviews you've been leaving. As well as all you that are sharing the game with friends and family. You're all very kind and it makes me feel absolutely amazing that you are enjoying a goofy little game I made. :)
-Adam Nickerson
Bit Blaster XL is Now Available!
Bit Blaster XL is a throwback to the classic quarter-eating arcade games of the 80's. It's a retro styled, addictive, and fast paced arcade shoot 'em up! (shmup). It is now available on Steam / iOS / Android.
This is my first solo effort on Steam so please let me know if you encounter any problems and I will do my best to clean them right up ASAP. info@nickervision.com
Thank you everyone for the support.
Adam Nickerson
