Devader
Balance Changes 29.8
- reworked repair path
- moved back chest cannon special on weapon upgrades
- reduced explosive ball damage
- fixed issue on loading Titan Wall (it created normal Matrix instead)
- nerfed weapon upgrade, it was too strong compared to all other options
- tentaclos on deity is now more dangerous/fires bullets
- for the final level a wall is built to protect the matrix
- starting wave of final level on weapons path commences slower
- grazing bullets reduced to 1 dmg, the extended range makes it so much easier
- grazing health gain reduced to 0.5
still Windows only atm. The next update will include localizations for French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese (Brasilian)
Devader Update 28.8 (Windows)
- went through every single boss on deity today, to see if it might be beatable and made some adaptations
- grazing range extended from 100, to 150
- grazing shot power reduced to 2 from 3
- fixed Snowflake, did not fire on Easy/Normal since last update
- altered shot patterns on final boss, reduced randomness. seems better
- turret upgrades have been buffed, more shields/armor, fortify also increases shot rate a bit, protect increases firepower
- turrets are stronger on higher difficulty levels
- using phase shift makes the nuke timer go up again, 1 sec phasing -> 1 sec longer wait for nuke
- final scene, fixed a position jump in mother ship
Windows Update 26.8
- added new menu for accessibility
- white under Devader turned off by default again
- missile/pulse ready-circle is smaller but more visible
- adjustment for foe "deru"
- pressing F11 a lot caused crashes, should at least be more resilient now
- font changed to Montserrat with adapted numbers (should be easier to read)
- photosensitivity warning on start
- Snowflake less HP, faster bullets on Hard+
- Tower of Power, less HP
- Supply Drop nerfed, only one item per type per drop
Patch for Windows
- reticle should be more visible, targeting line always on top
- nuke/emp preparing is signaled visually at reticle/around Devader
- weapon power ups that die, leave an energy trace that can still be picked up within 8 seconds
- deity allows choosing of your nuke/turret/etc, no longer random
- standard ending can be selected in highscore view
- white circle under Devader (accessebility test)
- background can be turned off
- splatter opacity can be set
- fixed game pad bug that only could happen if you had never played... great bug for new player and even better to find. Fun!
- made some adjustments to level sequence + added two new waves
- fixed weapon path level "bravery"
- added sound-effect when a special upgrade is selected
- armor/shield/turret containers start to smoke before they get destroyed
- fixed continue information on main screen to show the level, not wave
Devader Build 2010821
So I am just going to list some build changes that occurred in the last 10 days
---- 10. Aug
+ painting the ground with not working clicks can be turned off in settings (opacity to 0)
+ tooltip not going away is annoying if you are using a mouse, fixed
+ removed the storm layer
+ bullet grazing gives 8*3 special bullets, strong and full range
+ turret path, changes weapon but now you still have one. charge to fire
+ hard+ enemy bullet speed increased
+ UI with audio-feedback and some mouse-over stuff
+ only 2 power up pods now, but the last one collected get infinite ammo
+ hitting targets increases the impact explosion of shots
---- 12. Aug
+ circoloss (more hp + additional panic weapon) and tower boss (reduced laser intervall) have been changed a bit
+ steam overlay works now, but I have no idea what it's for. not sure if that might be related to the crash
---- 13. Aug
+ fixed issue with sacrifice... new method: executing player is nearly killed, all other units heavily damaged. this can kill allies
+ temporary scores were not showing correct information
+ additional game speed setting, you can now set to full control. this means the game will not change your settings no matter what the difficulty level is. (you can speed up with +, slow down with -). minimum for going to speeds below the game difficulty setting is "allow slow down"
+ now exports 3 translation files with full information, I will have to add the missing option again later
----
-> full: export: JSON with key, the selected language, english, german, hint
-> blank: exports a file that can be used to translate the current language
-> csv: key, the selected language, english, german, hint
+ pick up power-ups as "ghost" is possible again
---- 14. Aug
+ translation export extended (all data Ctrl-9, just current iso Ctrl-0, just missing for current iso Ctrl-8)
+ some changes if you go down the Weapons upgrade path in the final levels
+ some balancing tweaks
---- 20. Aug
+ starts in windowed by default (if you have set to fullscreen, it will switch to fullscreen on startup)
+ F11 switches between windowed and fullscreen
+ windowed mode now has a border, as it was confusing people. changed even though it was prettier
+ fixed a bug where some enemy shots did not damage the matrix -> slight rebalance required
+ hyperloop on hard is a bit more aggressive
+ updated a lot of localization data
+ added button info on the startup screen for cancel/confirm and F11
+ some events were lost when going into pause -> the gun could be on kind of auto-fire after unpausing/new level, fixed
---- 21. Aug
+ first level on Hard, the intro boss now has much less health
+ linux version should now start in windowed mode, F11 for full-screen
+ mac version F11 does not work for some bloody reason
+ fixed a sound issue (crackling, then mute) caused by too many "electricity-spiders"
Results from the Devader Demo
Turns out a lot of people chose easy. I guess everything that looks a bit like bullet hell is assumed to be terribly punishing and hard. But easy in Devader really is meant to be easy.
Normal mode was the top choice. Even a few let's players gave it a go. The video I enjoyed best was recorded by Blended Threat Games, where they play Devader in 2 Player co-op.
Blended Threats Gaming - Play Devader
One player gave me some very informative feedback. He had expected Devader to be more of a tower defense game + felt the early game was too repetitive. As "feature creep" is my middle name, I could not let this chance go and added a new button for "skill". There are 8 new skills to discover right from the start, that can strongly influence the way you play the game, or at least give you different options. Among the new choices are player enhancements (~dodge roll), weaponry (bombs) + additional defensive tools.
Furthermore I've removed one of the difficulty options. Normal was the one mode I personally felt was most useless for a long time. Due to the new skills, normal mode became entirely obsolete. Skills are not available on easy, so nothing changed there, but normal was suddenly too easy. So the old Hard is the new Normal and I am happy to say it's a good improvement.
I won't be updating the demo and will probably remove it in the coming days. It has always been a limited view of the game and now even more so. Plus I have enough to do with the main build and don't want to provide support for both.