Expansion Core
Expansion Core Beta Update! (Beta 0.2.11 Patch Notes)
Major Features:
- The Scrap Golem! This is the first boss that I'll be adding to the game. They're a bit slow, but thanks to their size, they pack a pretty big punch. I'd recommend taking this boss on after you've done all of the beacons and created a sizable army. Otherwise, you might end up needing a lot of energy fragments to pick up the pieces of your broken bots. This is only the first iteration of this boss and I will likely revisit the fight later in the dev cycle.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an issue with turret bots shooting way further than intended and having odd rotations towards their target.
- Various small fixes that I was too distracted to write down in my changelog apparently...
Looks like this is a pretty short update, but at the same time I feel like the boss fight makes up for it a bit! I will warn that I balanced this fight against my mid-tier army, so for some of you it might be pretty challenging. For those with 20+ hours in the game, it might be a bit easy if you have lots of good upgrades. I see this as sort of a test case moving forward. I also wish I could have had more time to work on updates, but some pretty big personal stuff came up and it's temporarily killed my motivation. I'm sure I'll bounce back soon, but it turns out everyone needs some mental recovery time every now and then.
Thanks to everyone who's been playing the game so far! It's always great to see/hear about how people are liking the game. Feel free to drop in the Discord and say hi!
- Jason (Candlebird)
Expansion Core Beta Update! (Beta 0.2.10 Patch Notes)
Major Features:
- Unique Enemies! I cooked up a new feature that allows me to make unique one-time encounters around the map. Right now I've set up 10 mini-bosses throughout the map. Some are super hard, others are just a little tougher than normal enemies. This feature will get expanded in the future, but for now, just look out for tougher enemies near landmarks.
New Features:
- Added way more animations for commanding allies. Hopefully this helps with seeing when commands are successful versus not doing anything at all.
- Added some more UI for trading to help show how selling more items effects the difficulty of the trade pod.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an exploit where the player could duplicate upgrades under the right circumstances
- Adjusted some of the assets around the Mining Station to not be floating above the ground
- Fixed MB teleporting into trade pods when using the unstuck command
- Made scrolling through weapons a bit slower to prevent scrolling past tools
Basically all of the features/fixes in this update were suggested by our small community on the Discord, so thank you for that! Again, I'm happy with how the launch is going and for those of you who streamed or made videos about the game, thank you for putting in the time to do so! Every bit of support, no matter how small, helps motivate me to work that much harder.
- Jason (Candlebird)
Expansion Core is Out Now on Early Access! (Also Patch Notes for 0.2.9)
I'll keep it brief, but for those of you who helped with testing and giving feedback during the last couple months, THANK YOU! It's been great to build this small community and I can't wait to keep building it as time goes on.
- Jason (CandleBird)
Oh also, patch notes for 0.2.9 are just... "Added Unstuck button" and "Made the Mining Station area look cooler and added loot"
Expansion Core Beta Update! (Beta 0.2.8 Patch Notes)
Major Features:
- Event Rebalance Part 2! After last patches balancing, I've received some feedback about the overall difficulty curve. As such, Trade Pod difficulty has been toned back a bit, the difficulty for starting areas is slightly lower, while the difficulty for higher tier areas has been greatly increased. Hopefully this will be less punishing for new players and more of a challenge for players who have progressed to Medium Tier bots.
- A New Unique Bot, the Blast Furnace Bot! I've added another unique bot that's based on the biped bot design. This one has a blast furnace duct taped to it's top and can be used as the game's only current mobile blast furnace! It's hidden in a location that would find such a bot useful!
New Features:
- Beetles have been in the game since the beginning and have had various updates throughout the dev cycle. This recent change makes beetles more jumpy, and take less time to do so.
- Added an end screen for those of you who complete all of the beacons events. There's also a fun secret waiting for you on the end screen.
- Mobile Bases should now jumble their modules when upgrading to move them to the lowest required slot. This is so that if you have a small crate, it doesn't take up a medium sized slot after the upgrade.
Bug Fixes:
- Upgrades should now show their proper icon when in the Upgrade menu
- Mobile Bases should now retain all of their inventory when saving, loading and upgrading
- Changed the refueling tooltip to be more generic for now to avoid confusion
- Fixed a bug causing charger beetles to get stuck after jumping
- Storms should now properly flee during all events
- Flare bot should now have the correct icon
- The Tier Two Mobile Base should now have the correct amount of tier 1 slots
Again, look out for October 10th for the Early Access release. With this extra time before launch, I've been able to add and fix some more features, and will likely put out one more update before or soon after the Early Access launch. Also we just passed 750 wishlists! Thank you all again for the support!
Hope everyone's enjoying the demo!
- Jason (Candlebird)
Expansion Core Beta Update! (Beta 0.2.4-0.2.7 Patch Notes)
Major Features:
- Event Rebalance! The events have long been an issue for gameplay balance. Either they were way too easy or way too hard. In this most recent iteration, they should overall be more balanced. There should now be less waves, but more enemies per wave. This way, they should be more challenging and exciting without being too punishing. I'm sure this will have to be tweaked further in the future, but for now I think it's a net positive change.
- A New Unique Bot, the Spike Bot! I've added a new bot that's a derivative of the Ram Bot with some highly buffed stats. It's hidden somewhere on the map (I think it's really obvious, but you decide that).
- Spitter Enemy Buff! The spitter has long been a favorite enemy for me, but they felt too simple. To remedy a bit of this, I've made them have more variety in attack patterns. This means more jumping, further jumping and in the case of the agile and corrupt varieties, air attacks! They should be a much more deadly enemy if underestimated!
New Features:
- Added a new options to the options menu to hide all of the HUD. This is mostly for my personal purposes for gathering footage, but I know that there are some that will want to hide the HUD for their own immersion.
- Upgrades now have descriptions to hopefully help with understanding how they work. I've seen several playtests where the upgrades were tossed aside as a broken thing. THEY DO WORK! I swear!
- After some feedback about the Storms, I've decided to make them a bit less mean. Now, whenever you're doing an event, Storms should now enter their flee state and peace out while you finish your event. This may change in the future, but for now, it's much more fair to the player.
- Made beetles drop slightly more Energy Fragments to hopefully help with the early game.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed bugs that were causing both the Player's and Allies Cores to fully reset on death/reloading the game.
- Made the main menu look slightly better.
- Hid all of the transfer bot menus and text because they're not ready for release just yet. There's honestly too many bugs with lost items and stuck bots. This feature will likely have to be fully reimagined for it to work as good as I imagine in my head.
- Fixed various quest skips that a player could do. Now you should be able to complete the quests in whatever order without it getting broken.
- Fixed a bug in the launch version that was not allowing the player to research past Medium-Tier.
- Fixed the tutorial room's floor texture.
Launch is tomorrow! I've been excited and nervous all week, but today I'm very calm. I think it's either that I'm mentally exhausted, or I'm confident that the game's in a good place overall. Either way, it's nice to finally see the first finish line of many. I know personally that the game has a long way to go until I personally can call it complete. That being said, from all of the feedback I've received and all of the playtests, I'm confident that the game is at least worth a try.
Thank you to everyone who's supported me through the development. It's been tough making everything solo, but at the same time I've never been alone thanks to you!
Enjoy the game and look forward to the upcoming updates!
- Jason (Candlebird)
Expansion Core Beta Update! (Beta 0.2 Patch Notes)
Major Features:
- Quick Healing! I've made it so that the quick heal button not only heals the player if they have healing kits, but also allies if they have the necessary items! Now it should be much easier to manage a large amount of bots while you're fighting.
- Corrupted Humanoids! I procrastinated on a lot of stuff by adding a new enemy type! There are now Corrupt Humanoids with 3 variants; One Armed, Basic and Miner. They're found in the new mining station, as well as in the Factory. They're pretty creepy at night for sure!
- Better Demo Separation! I have been putting this off for the longest time. Sorry to those who were thriving in the Demo. It was honestly just straight up the entire game, minus some features. Now it's the same thing, but without the Scorched biome!
New Features:
- Enemies now attempt to predict where their target is going relative to themselves. This means that enemies should now hit the player more often when they're circle strafing.
- Altered the spawn radius of enemies to make the world feel more populated.
- Updated the loot spawning to make more sense based on crate tiers.
- Added some sounds to the intro cutscene-type-thing.
- Made coal rocks require copper tools to harvest.
- Made it so that the stat windows auto-hide when all of the player/Mobile Base's stats are maxed out. You can still view your stats by checking your wrist UI (Default RMB)
- Updated the visuals of the compass anchor to be less intrusive
- Made the Mobile Base HUD hidden during the opening tutorial to reduce confusion.
- Updated the main menu text based on the version of the game.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a major bug that caused the Player's Core to not save it's slots and upgrades. I have no idea how this got past me for this long.
- Fixed an issue with HUBs colliders causing AI to completely break.
- Fixed a bug that was causing allies who were defending a location to update their home position during combat. They should now return to their original location more often.
- Fixed an oversight with pryables not always requiring the correct tool type.
- Made it so that you can't swap tools while placing blueprints.
- Fixed a bug that made it so that event spawned enemies wouldn't move towards the player if they were far enough.
Under a week till launch! I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. This whole week has been chaotic life-wise, so I've been having to crunch hard to get work done. I think the game is in a pretty good place, but I'm also preparing myself mentally for when everything blows up on launch. I really hope people enjoy the game that I spent so much of my free time making!
- Jason (Candlebird)
Expansion Core Beta Reset! (Beta 0.1 Patch Notes)
Major Features:
- Unique bots! I added a new system to allow me to place one-time build-able bots in the world. These will be more prevalent whenever I have additional bots to add to the game, but for now there's only one new bot that can be found in the Abandoned Shipyard. I'll keep it a secret, but it's very useful for the early game!
- Pryables! I've added doors throughout the world that require tools to open! Each door is color coded to which tier of tool is required to open them. This change will add to the progression aspect of the game and give the player more of a reason to return to old areas and explore.
- Updated Loot! With the new pryables system, so there are now tiers of crates that require tools to open. This is another incentive to come back to old areas to get some harder to obtain resources.
- More locations! As with every update, I've added a few new structures to the forest area of the map. This time, I've added a new mining building near the Mining Station beacon. It's a bit barren at the moment, but it at least has a bunch of loot inside of it for those who see it early. I also added a small cabin that has a hidden trap door with some more loot.
New Features:
- Updated loot randomization to be more based on the new rarity. As such, all loot crates have been updated and old crates will require a fresh save to have the new drops.
- Made Hardshells randomly choose between using their wave attack and their regular slam to add variety.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a major issue with loot crates not properly loading data, and having broken items in certain saves.
- Fixed some collider issues with the new structures.
Release is a little over a month and a half away... Wish me luck! Hopefully I can get a new Demo version up whenever there's some more major changes in the game. Also, thank you all for wishlisting Expansion Core! We're getting close to 400!
- Jason (Candlebird)
Expansion Core Demo Beta Weekends (Beta 0.21 Patch Notes)
Major Features:
- Added a new system for equipping and unequipping Upgrades to Cores. You can now freely equip and unequip individual upgrades, making everything in the game much more customizable if wanted.
- Added the ability to upgrade Core's slots. Simply hold a Core in your hand and interact with any Beacon that has successfully summoned a HUB. There will be a new window on the left side where you can purchase Core slot upgrades to increase the maximum slots a Core has for Upgrades.
New Features:
- Behind the scenes I had to make some major changes to all of the structs that were used for storing Upgrade data. This meant doing a load of fixes to old code and updating all of my saving stuff to handle it. Upgrades now should retain their value when equipped and unequipped (didn't have to worry about that before this update).
- When looking at a Core on the ground, you can now tell at a glance how many slots it has in total and how many are being used.
- I added a tiny little broken down cabin in the forest area. Just a little pile of scrap. I think it's a nice little looting spot near spawn though.
- Updated the enemy AI for attacking the Trade Pod in order to have enemies target the allies/player first before attacking the pod. If they do reach the pod without being aggroed, then they will stick to attacking the pod until they are hit.
- Added sounds for equipping and ejecting Cores
Bug Fixes:
- There were probably some bugs fixed... I seriously didn't write anything down this time around... Oops.
Thank you all again for playing the Demo and wishlisting Expansion Core!
- Jason (Candlebird)
Expansion Core Demo Extended! (Beta 0.20 Patch Notes)
Enjoy it and keep the suggestions rolling! I've already added some of them to the roadmap!
As it turns out, releasing a game Demo is pretty tough! I've been busy with a whole lot of busy work (which it doesn't help that I'm in the process of moving), but I found some time to make a couple changes. This update has a lot of invisible changes, but I've added some visual updates for the edge of the map, as well as a new world structure!
New Features:
- I've added a Firewatch Station with plenty of loot and some possible cool stuff in the future. I'm excited to put some story bits in it as well, but that will have to wait for some of the more pressing updates that are coming.
- The edge of the world has always been a sort of sore point for me personally, so I finally buckled down and figured out a way to make my vision of the ocean surrounding this island somewhat of a reality. For now it's just a crimson ocean of corruption, but I can see the possibility of making it look and feel more dangerous. I still have some learning to do on shaders, but for now, this is as performant as I can make it without wasting a bunch of rendering a hyper-realistic blood ocean.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed an issue that was causing hyper-evolved enemies to be way too strong in some circumstances.
- Fixed an issue causing Miners to be unable to resume digging after being destroyed/repaired.
- Fixed some of the issues causing HUD overlaps when opening most UI windows.
- Randomized some of the loot to better fit the area that the loot had been placed in.
Thank you again for the support
- Jason (Candlebird)
Expansion Core Demo Out Now! (Beta 0.19 Patch Notes)
New Features:
- Allies now have a weight depending on what kind of bot they are. This basically means that the Mobile Base will try to move to the front of the pack, then melee bots, then storage, etc.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a major bug with drone/RTS commands originating from the player’s body location, rather than the drone camera.
- The Use and Drop buttons in the inventory should now update their text to match the user’s key binds properly.
- The gap in the Tutorial cave’s roof is now filled, so no more peering into the void.
- Some of the large rock collisions have been fixed, making them act as terrain. This will allow allies to rotate to match them.
- Fixed the required item text box to fit the text wrapping.
- Small items’ hit boxes have been increased so they should stop falling through the ground.
- Made the defend location command have a bigger ring of influence so that allies bump into each other less.
- Mother Beetles should now spawn beetles correctly now instead of just menacingly staring at their target.
- Spitters now all have their correct colors to help differentiate them.
- Fixed a bug that was causing group commands to always command all allies.