Drifting Lands
Closed Beta evolution (0.10 to 0.12)
FEATURES / CONTENT
* New projectile types : mortars which are complex bullets spawning bullets, AoE or small mortars
* New enemies launching mortars : Drone Rings (modified) & Drone Launchers (new)
* A few new waves of enemies for the random generation system
BALANCE CHANGES :
* Improved the encounter with 2 out of 3 Drone Morphers (bosses) which are now a lot more interesting.
* The Drone Gunner firing sinusoid patterns of magnetic bullets has been nerfed.
* All Drone Rings now release mortars when they die instead of a bullet pattern.
* Plasma Mines now deal decreasing damages with distance. The friendly fire radius has been slightly decreased.
* Most painful flaws have been decreased in intensity
* Primary stats bonus from objects follow now a more linear progression. This should decrease significantly the problems of insufficient primary stats to meet objects requirements.
* All levels above 21 now have at least one opponent considered as a midboss.
Version 0.11 (closed beta)
FEATURES / CONTENT
* No more fixed levels (leaderboards are temporary disabled)
* Random generation system of levels is operational : all levels are random for now.
* A brand new notification systems replaced a lot of the verbose dialogues / tutorials
* New music tracks from our friend Louis Godart !
* Added a new weapon : the minigun.
* Added new visuals for all standard items : each item now exists in 7 versions of increasing power (level)
BALANCE CHANGES :
* The whole game system has been rebalanced to take object bonuses into account
* The difficulty balance has been vastly improved between level 50 & 75
IMPROVEMENTS :
* Added complete ships stats in the hangar screen
* New UI to check level progression
* New UI in the hangar to sort items & unload ship holds
* New UI in the store to sell objects by rarity
* States are now displayed at the left of the score for debuffs and at the left of the skill set for buffs
* Added a confirmation before buying skills / ships / storage tabs
BUGS :
* Fixed a visual bug with "attached" FXs
* Toned down the far too loud morphing SFX of morphing bosses * Fixed a duplicate item exploit with the ship hold
* Fixed plasma and magnetic mines which were not correctly placed in front of the ship
Following is a summary of all major changes brought by the last 3 updates of the closed beta.
Version 0.10 (closed beta)
FEATURES / CONTENT
* Introduction of the loot system : Drifting Lands is now officially a loot based game
* You can now equip items in the hangar to change A LOT of ship stats * The pause menu screen during a run now displays objects currently in your hold. You can 'airlock' objects to free some space.
* New location in the ark : the store to buy / sell items and create object from blueprints
* Blueprint system to create objects in the store
* Weapon system : you can now equip different weapons with different effects / geometries
BALANCE CHANGES :
* The whole game system has been rebalanced to take object bonuses into account. This is a new game really.
IMPROVEMENTS
* New tutorials / dialogues
V0.9 & 0.9b - A new level (Lost Quarry), new skills and a lot of balance change
FEATURES / CONTENT
* New Level : Lost Quarry
* New Opponents :
- Drone Hive : a new big enemy spawning smaller shooting orbs
- Drone Dodger : a new small ship changing his behaviour when it takes damage
* New waves of enemy with new behaviours : some enemies will react to damages or death from an ally, etc.
* We now have our random level generator which should allow us to propose new levels more often with a growing library of waves of enemies.
BALANCE CHANGES :
* All big enemies (Drone Hive, Drone Gunner, Drone Morpher) have a 75% resistance to magnetic damages, ie. magnetic mines and bullets reflected by the reflecting shield.
IMPROVEMENTS
* Performances should be slightly improved due to several fixes in our FX animation system
BUGS
* Bullets were no longer reflected by the Drone Morpher in its invicible state. This is now corrected.
* There was a HUGE bug on the damage scaling system for the Marauder and Sentinel which made them useless at higher level of difficulties.
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Version 0.9 (v0.9.5746.29544)
FEATURES / CONTENT
* First Mac OS version ! Please be aware that we currently have no idea of the minimum and optimal hardware requirements on Mac. The game may not run as well as on PC and controllers may not work properly. Please report any problem to support@drifting-lands.com if you want to help us improve this version !
* New Skills & skill variants:
- Bullet Wipe (Conflagration variant) : clear all bullets around your ship and earn focus based on the number of cleared bullets
- Plasma Spear : a new attack skill to perform directional AoE damage but blocking your movement while used. May be more easy to play with Sentinels...
- Magnetic Mines : a new type of mines dealing magnetic damages over 3 seconds when triggered. Also does friendly fire.
* More enemies with special powers from level 20 to 50 appearing semi randomly in the 4 existing stages
* New enemy auras :
- life leech aura
- energy leech aura
- focus leech aura
BALANCE CHANGES :
* Self destructing mines won't give point anymore.
* Dual Flame Blade has been modified: it costs a bit more and does little less damage but the Blade is launched forward and backward at the same time!
* Plasma Mines has been modified and way easier to use :
- mines are now dropped in front of the ship instead of behind
- mines activate after only 0.5s instead of 1s
- plasma mines deal 900 - 1500 plasma damages instead of 900 - 1200
- detonation radius of plasma mines has been increased from 100 to 125
* Self Powered Shield has been modified :
- costs 20 instead of 30
- lasts 1.5s instead of 2s
- cooldown of 10s down from 12s
* Combat Reflexes has been modified :
- cooldown is now only 11s instead of 12
- cost is 20 instead of 25
- Even if the flow of time is slowed, your focus increases at the same speed than normal when you grazes bullets
* Swap Weapons Skills have been reworked :
- focus fire doesn't change your weapon anymore but increases the rate of fire and decreases the amount of bullet spreading (if your weapon is bullet based)
- forked fire doesn't change your weapon anymore but duplicate your main weapon and fire both copies backward
* Die Hard (Auto skill) has been modified :
- now triggers as soon as you health is under 25% instead of 20%
- health regeneration ends when health reach 50% instead of 40%
- cooldown is down to 30s from 40s
* Safe Close Quarter has been modified :
- cooldown is now 2s instead of 3s
* Close Range Recycling :
- you now have a 20% chance to drop a health crystal instead of an energy crystal !
* All-In Bounty has been modified :
- the bounty end trigger is now reached above 80% of energy rather than at 65%. It's easier to keep this skill active.
- cooldown is down to 9s from 15s
* Some Ships stats have been modified :
- Sentinel's shield cooldown is now of 2s instead of 3s
- Sentinel's shield regen base is 25/s instead of 15/s
- Sentinel's energy regen base is now 10/s instead of 8/s
- Interceptor's shield regen base is now 10/s instead of 15/s
- Interceptors now earn only 20% more score per focus level (down from 30%)
- Marauders now earn only 15% more score per focus level (down from 20%)
- Sentinels still earn 10% more score per focus level
IMPROVEMENTS
* Position Warnings for enemies coming from top, bottom or left have been reworked : they are now a lot more visible and they will reappear if the enemy leaves the screen before re-entering.
* Enemies with auras now have a small round marker next to their health bar
* Collision system was optimized for better performances
* Dialogues/Tutorials and some tooltip texts are now bigger
BUGS
* Self destructing mines were incorrectly giving points. It was not a feature.
* Collision order was incorrectly done. This could lead to bullets killing the ship right after an invulnerability period (Dash, Second Wind, Single Impact...) even with an active shield.
* There was a sound conflict between lasers from enemies or from the player leading to strange behaviours in Sand Storm
V0.8 & 0.8b - Introducing the new classes of ships
FEATURES / CONTENT
* New scoring system for the Sentinel : you now earn focus by losing your shield. NOT YOUR HEATH. You have to let your shield build up to lose it once more and gain focus levels. If you wait too long, you focus will start to decrease.
* New SFXs : computer voices associated with specific in-game events.
IMPROVEMENTS
* Better default volume / mix of SFXs with musics. All sounds setting has been reset.
* Cursor in menus now move with the same speed in all directions
BALANCE
* Sentinel scoring system.
BUGS
* Huge bug in the scoring system was fixed : you were earning points only after taking damage or gaining one focus level.
* Fixed dash working incorrectly near screen borders.
* Fixed a rare exception during a tutorial step.
Version 0.8 (v0.8.5625.32382)
FEATURES / CONTENT
* 2 new classes of Ships : the Sentinel and the Interceptor.
* Sentinels are flying tanks with less DPS and scoring capabilities but a lot more resistance. The perfect class for neophyte players of Shoot'em'ups.
* Interceptor is the 'Demon Hunter' of Drifting Lands a glass cannon perfect for scoring.
* The ability to buy, sell and store 8 ships you can upgrade as you ship and equip with different skill sets
* Choose from 7 models of Ships (3 Marauders, 2 Sentinels, 2 Interceptors)
* Compare the ship you roll over with the currently selected ship (keep alt pressed to compare with the upgrade points)
* New weapons : Shotgun like weapon for Sentinels and Laser for Interceptors. Of course later weapons will not be linked to classes but will depend on equiped stuff.
* A new epic music track by our composer and friend Louis Godart
IMPROVEMENTS
* Added a an 'arrival' animation for the player ship at the start of a stage
* Improved the 'escape' animation so it's always visible wherever the player ship is on screen when it's triggered.
* Migration from Unity 4.3 to Unity 4.6
* Modified the analog stick behaviour. Slow and precise movements are now easier to make.
* When you lose a ship, if you have no more ship in your hangar, you'll be given for free the standard version of the last ship you were piloting. If you try to sell one of those free ships, you'll earn 0 credit or 30% of the upgrade points you have invested.
* Faster transitions between menu screens
* In the leaderboard, you can now rollover score entries to discover the ship and skill set used for this run
BALANCE
* The focus levels are now 'non linear'. It's easier to fill the first levels and harder to fill the highest levels. The necessary focus points are as follow for levels 1 to 10 : 25 / 50 / 75 / 100 / 100 / 100 / 125 / 150 / 175 / 200
* Marauders still get 20% bonus score per focus level
* Interceptors get 30% bonus score per focus level
* Sentinels get 10% bonus score per focus level
* Marauders are a tiny bit slower than before.
BUGS
* Fixed several minor memory leaks
* Some parts of enemy lasers were not cleared properly when it was interrupted. This is now fixed.
V0.7 : first steps toward the RPG system.
* Brand new menus. Welcome to the Ark! Meet the first of your comrades.
* No more normal / hard difficulty but 50 levels of difficulty to choose from.
* Higher level of difficulties means
- tougher enemies
- higher damages
- harder patterns
- sometimes more enemies
- Death scenarii (suicide bullets / explosions of black enemies but not mines) above 9
* You earn a score bonus at the end of a stage based on the level of difficulty (1000 per level)
* You can leave a level before the end : press backspace // the back button on the pad or enter the pause mode with ESC or Start. If you retreat you keep what you've earned so far in the level.
* 10% of you score converts into money bound to your pilot to buy skills and ship upgrades.
* You can upgrade the 3 main stats of your ship :
- structure : more HPs
- navigation : more damage with your main gun
- power : more energy and more effective skills (attack / healing mainly)
* You have to buy your skills (later in the game, you'll have to loot the more rare versions)
* 1 New Automatic Skill :
- Automatic Retreat : this is basically a softcore mode which is freely given to you at the start. With this equipped you can't lose your ship. Instead of dying you instantly flee the fight but earn nothing if you lose.
* If you die (without Automatic Retreat), you lose your ship and start with no stat upgrades. You keep your unlocked skills though.
* A new music track !
IMPROVEMENTS
* Pretty menus
* You can fire the main gun with the right trigger of the Pad or bind the main gun to another axis / trigger in the Unity launcher
* A first draft of in-game tutorials
BALANCE
* Energy crystals will give you now 20% of your energy max instead of 60% (which was a bug)
* Life crystals will give you now 8% of your max life instead of 5%
* Plasma mines do more damage (900 to 1200 with no Power upgrade instead of 750)
* The 2 sprays of Forked fire now aims backward which is very useful for enemies coming from the left
* All-In-Bounty (auto skill) has been upped to give +150% instead of +100% chance to drop credits on enemies. Additionally pretty much ALL credit drop chances have been reduced to increase this interest of this skill.
* Black ships do not release their AOE explosion on death until difficulty level 10
* Even above level 10, black ships do not release their explosion if you collide with them which make them significantly less dangerous.
BUGS
* Fixed a bug with invulnerability auras in Night Chase. The area of effect was improperly projected on the game plane and caused the effect to be offset compared to the visual cue.
* Fixed a bug with TextFields causing words to be rendered twice at the beginning of a line
* Fixed a bug with the Multi Dash which triggered improperly the cooldown if you tried to launch the skill during the previous dash animation (it was blocking the skill if you spammed the button).
* Fixed a bug causing energy crystals to give you much more than they were intended to : 60% instead of 20%
Update v0.6 : new level Sand Shard
* A brand new level : Sand Shard (in two difficulty modes)
* 4 New enemies with lasers. Pew Pew!
- lasers inflict focus penalty only on the first hit
- you can earn focus by staying near lasers
- for now, there's no shield skill protecting from lasers
* 3 New Actives Skills
* Plasma Mines : drop mines behind your ship. Activate after one second and will be triggered by contact with anything... including you. Can cause friendly fire!
* Fire Ring : Inflict physical damages in a 75 radius around your ship. Charges are consumed over time or when dealing damages.
* Bullet Warp : Slow down the bullets around your ship for 5 seconds. Good for scoring and a tiny bit dangerous to use...
IMPROVEMENTS
* Overhauled the whole collision system : the collisions should now be fairly consistent even on lower hardware configurations to avoid bullets passing through small enemies.
* Dying enemies are no longer staying in place during a fraction of a second but continue on their trajectory while they explode.
BUGS
* Fixed a bug where auto skills could activate several time on the same frame.
Update 0.5
- enemies can now drop energy or life crystals !
- 3 new skill variants among which is the very expected multi directional dash and a brand new scoring auto skill
- a modification of the standard forward dash which now provides a small invulnerability
- new visual distortion effects (first pass)
- improved sound design (don't worry we're not there yet)
- first implementation of a background evolution system for Storm Range (the storm rises as you progress in the level)
- ...and a temporary winter skin for Night Chase
Update 0.4
* A third level, Night Chase, with an original boss like encounter
* A fourth music track by the talented Louis Godart
* New Skills and skill modifications
* Focus Fire / Forked Fire: modify the shape and power of your main weapon
* Combat Reflexes: slow time for a short period to improve your dodging
* Second Chance (auto): when available, avoid 1 loss of focus but do not make you invulnerable as it did before
* Single Impact (auto): when available, on hit become invulnerable for 1 sec but lose half of your focus score
* Safe Close Quarter (auto): when available, enemies destroyed at close range do not trigger their death scenario and create a zone of bullet cancel
* A new enemy with an invulnerability aura for his allies
* A new type of mine releasing bullets instead of AoE damages
* In the skill selector screen, you can now swap skills between slots
BALANCE MODIFICATIONS
* Leaderboards reset because...
* Some skills have seen their effects / cooldown / energy cost at least slightly modified. Please read the in game descriptions to get the up to date values.
* The focus system has been tweaked :
- the focus gain is now back to something not completely linear with the distance to the bullets so it's harder to increase
- any damage will substract 50 focus = a half gauge
BUGS & FIXES
* Corrected a massive memory leak due to the dash skill. No more need to relaunch the game to avoid slow downs after multiple runs.
* The dynamic shadows option is now only controlled by the setting option of the game and not the quality level of the Unity launcher
* Simplified the explosion of little enemies to improve overall performances on lower end hardware
* Why didn't anyone complain about a sound looping while the reflector shield was active ? Why didn't we notice this earlier ? (Who said because SFXs are mixed like shit right now ?) These questions will stay unanswered... but it's fixed.
[HotFix] Version 0.3c
* The third in-game music was very unlikely to be played. This is fixed.
* Decreased the number of embers when enemies are killed (should improved performances at least a bit when a lot of small enemies are killed)
* Improved the mix of some music tracks. Still work to do on this...
* In the settings, the V-SYNC button was not properly setted. This is fixed.
Update 0.3b [hotfix]
Online highscores are perfectly correct and didn't suffer any loss.
Update to version 0.3
* Full pad control : you can now move the cursor with your stick, access the pause menu with start, exit menu with B, etc...
* Options : visual and sound options at last ! (Still no proper control binding for now sorry)
* Added visual states icons on the upper part of the screen during game
* Perfectionists can now display their hitbox (or rather circle) during the game
* You can now switch off the skill status HUD during the game (Future updates will allow to customize the skill HUD appearance)
update 0.4 scheduled approximately for november 20 with a new level / balance modifications and leaderboards reset.