Gross
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Some risks are worth taking. Others are not. Watch the trailer.
Patch Notes 31.05.2022
Bug fixes
Minor bug and performance fixes.
Changes/Features
New separate playlist with tracks that are less intense. This music is played in the tutorial, in HOME, and during construction. Remember you can skip music tracks you don’t like (default: PageUp).
New key to show information about the current song (default: M).
Overhauled construction interface:
- No more scrolling through all constructables. The secondary construction action (default: Right Mouse Button) now opens a menu that shows all available constructables). They are divided in four categories: automatic traps, manual traps, utility, turrets.
- Mousewheel is now instead used to rotate rotatable objects (like the cannon, the fan, the nailgun, …). This can be done both before and after they’re bought.
- When looking at an object, the secondary construction action (Right Mouse Button) is now always used to sell it. It needs to be pressed for half a second to prevent accidental selling.
- You can exit out of both the old upgrade dialogue and the new select constructable dialogue by pressing your secondary construction action (default: Right Mouse Button).
Changed the default key for submitting feedback from F12 to F1, because F12 is used by Steam to take screenshots (d’oh!). Existing players need to manually rebind they key or reset their keyboard bindings.
Reduced the brightness/intensity of the Tesla turrets sparks. Seizures caused by this visual effect will now be substantially milder.
Changed the VFX for the flamethrower and zombies that are on fire to make it less obstructive and maybe even better looking. But mostly because you couldn’t see anything anymore when a flamethrower was nearby.
New players now get a default loadout after completing the tutorial, so they can jump into the action straight away.
Some small visual changes to the upgrade dialogue. Less color, more rounded buttons. That sort of thing.
New option to automatically send reports for internal crashes. You can activate this in the settings under “Game -> Automatic Crash Reports”. If this option is checked, the game automatically sends a report when there an exception happens somewhere in the games code. The report contains the same data as when you submit feedback manually (screenshot, PC specs). As this sends a screenshot, which depending on your resolution can be a few megabytes, this can slow down your internet, so better not activate this if you’re streaming. Only the first 3 crashes are sent (the counter is reset at level start), so even if something goes completely bananas, your computer doesn’t just send out crash reports by the dozen. Feel free to switch this on if you want to help us identify crashes, but it’s completely optional.
Balancing
Reduced the Tesla Turrets maximum distance to 9 meters (6 squares), because someone had to use them in a way not anticipated by the developer and ruined it for the rest of us. Thanks, someone.
Significantly increased Zombie health past wave 25 to prevent “endless” mode to become “endless mode”.
Increased the damage for the FMJ ammunition for both snipers by 25%.
Patch Notes 24.05.2022
Bug fixes
Explosive damage did not always affect the green "goo" blobs that incapacitate the players turrets. In fact, "never" is the precise word for it, although "not always" is also technically correct.
Fixed bugs in the construction system that made it hard to target existing constructables (like turrets) behind a preview (green/red) constructable. This is hard to explain. Construction should be slightly less clunky now.
Enemies hit by explosive bullets (default ammunition for the two sniper rifles) were affected both by knockback (intended) and knockdown (unintended), which kept the proper animation from playing and looked silly. Only knockback is applied now, which looks a lot more serious.
Minor performance improvements.
Changes/Features
Current threat level (how angry is the tax man) is now displayed in the UI in the form of 5 stars. This will make it easier to understand when and why Combat Drones spawn. This will not make it easier to not get angry at Tax Drones.
When interacting with a saved loadout (backpacks), you can now see in detail which items are in the loadout, which ones you're carrying, and where there are differences.
The backpacks with the saved loadouts now have arrows to interact with in order to save or load a loadout. The bin underneath to reset your current loadout now has an "X".
Disabled text tutorial when entering HOME for the first time. There was too much text that didn't explain things very well. Who reads anymore these days anyway? No one, that's who. I bet even if you clicked on this link to read this change log, you gave up long before getting to this point. Good for you! There are better ways to spend your time.
New neon hints in HOME that mark all areas of interest (like the map, the saved loadouts, etc). The hints can be switched off at the barn door. Some people might say this got out of hand, but I disagree.
The option "Enter Main Menu At Start" is now disabled by default. Existing players can disable this by going into the menu (press Escape or visit the menu in the barn) and going into the "Game" category.
Changed lights in TUTORIAL to a yellow that's less yellow than the previous yellow.
(Internal) Completely overhauled construction system to work on slanted/rotated surfaces (necessary for future levels that are in the works). This should not affect demo players, but if you build something and it ends up upside down, this would probably be the reason. If that happens, please press F12 and vent your anger, ideally in a descriptive way that helps us fix the specific issue.
Balancing
Reduced lifetime (15s -> 10s) and health (400 -> 300) of the green "goo" blobs that incapacitate the players turrets.
A few tweaks to the threat system:
- Killing a Tax Drone generates 1.1 stars of threat.
- As soon as the threat level hits 3 stars, Combat Drones start to spawn.
- As long as the threat level is above 3, a new Combat Drone spawns every 45 seconds. (30 seconds at 4+, 20 seconds at 5).
- Killing a Combat Drone reduces the threat level slightly (0.5).
- If the player stops shooting Drones for a while (that includes Combat Drones), the threat level will start to go down on its own, very slowly.
- At the end of each attack wave, if the threat level is above 2.5, it is reduced to 2.5 and all Combat Drones pull back.
Missiles from Combat Drones deal a lot more (collateral) damage to Zombies now. Having said that, if you're relying on them as a source of damage against Zombies, I commend your creativity in playing this game.
And so it begins.
Patch Notes 26.04.2022
Bug fixes
- Increased performance in level DEAD END.
- Minor bug and performance fixes.
- When pressing H for a long time to constantly show the key bindings, and afterwards picking up a piece of equipment or a weapon, the icon for that equipment/weapon slot still faded after a few seconds.
- Clicking on “Credits” left the settings menu in an inconsistent state.
- Melee attacks are no longer possible during the construction phase. Why would you want to attack anything at that time anyway?
Balancing
The cost of upgrades was prohibitively high, which was not intentional. Upgrades become more and more expensive, because if you upgrade both damage and attacks per second, your turret becomes more powerful than if you only improve damage. However, the current system went too far.
Old: Each upgrade increases the the cost of the next upgrade.
For example take the missile launcher with a base upgrade cost of 150$ and a multiplier of 1.5:
The first damage upgrade cost 150$, the second damage upgrade cost 225$, the third damage upgrade cost 338$. The next upgrade (to its range, for example) would then cost 506$.
New: Stat upgrade costs are now based on the number of different stats that were upgraded.
For example (again with the missile launcher): The first upgrade to its damage cost 150$. The second upgrade to its damage still costs 150$ - you are still upgrading the same stat. If you also want to upgrade its range, then this upgrade will cost you 225$ and raise the cost. So after buying both damage and and range upgrades, these upgrades (damage and range) will now cost you 225$ a piece, and upgrades to a third stat (like explosion range) will cost you 338$.
If that doesn’t make any sense to you, here’s the TLDR: Turret upgrade costs are now a lot lower and actually make sense.