Last week's update didn't happen, and that means - you guessed it - this week's is a BUMPER UPDATE :D We've been talking a lot about player accounts and enemy balancing, and the game loop. Well, as of today, it's all in and ready for you to smash apart!
PLAYER ACCOUNT & SYSTEMS!
This is huge. Lazarus now remembers not only what Ship and System loadout you had when you quit, but also if you swap Ships about it'll store their loadouts too. No more overwriting of Systems accidentally, no more swapping Ships and cheating with weird combos of Systems that aren't 'allowed', etc. This really improves the game a ton. You should only ever lose what you equipped when you die (see below).
PLAYER RESPAWNING.
You now get to choose where to respawn! We bring up the usual Death Screen, but now you see a map of the world and can choose where to spawn from the two closest player-controlled Xenotaphs to where you died. You're also shown the lcoation of your death, and the cost of respawning is described too - that you lose all your equipped Systems and any non-Banked loot. This is also accompanied by a little Tutorial from the Pug himself the first time you die.
FTUE.
We've implemented fixes across the tutorial that nail most of the issues we've seen. We know there's more to do, but right now every player should be able to complete the FTUE, and failing that, be able to skip it without any bugs spoiling things.
CHAT.
Hit 'enter' to focus key presses in the chat window. Nice and simple, if you want to keep typing after sending your current message you just have to hit enter twice.
MAP!
Now you can't hide it! You toggle between mini and fullscreen now. We'll introduce a proper 'minimise' button soon, we promise.
MELEE.
The Melee Enemy used to spam errors, now it does not. Affects performance, as well as the error log on the HUD.
CAPTURING XENOTAPHS.
We've balanced this nicely after playing it in the wild, so now capturing does not reset but rather pauses when interrupted (either by a defender wave spawning or just through bad luck). You're also able to see the capture progress bar at all times.
AI GENERALS & FLEETS.
There have been a ton of fixes & tweaks to how the AI Generals of each enemy faction behaves, and the result is that you should come across a lot more enemies, as they move through the world and try to capture territory much more aggressively. We're aware of some balancing we need to undertake, but right now the world of Lazarus is tons more exciting and dangerous!
TURRETS!
So we've balanced these, and rather than give you a total stock (for now, we'll see how this goes...) we simply prevent more than 8 turrets being spawned within a set radius. Turrets now also register to the Player faction, and they more reliably target stuff, with Drones being higher priority than Asteroids.
SHIP UNLOCKING
is now fixed, so you have to earn those extra Ships to play in rather than just having them unlocked from the start. Hopefully it makes the early game slightly less confusing for new players, who may've tried the Ship with 0 Core System Slots and died a few painful deaths as a result.
EQUIPPING
now allows you to back out of a decision, which is nice.
CODE REDEEMING
is back, so if you had a code, you can now redeem it. We know the game tells you it fails (working on a fix), but actually it gives you the skin just fine. So try it out!
VARIOUS
improvements to the FTUE, general text alignment and font fixes across the game.
Next week it's all about polishing up the FTUE to a MASSIVE sheen so that we can move on, and we're going to being bringing the Wipe back in to the game too. Not sure we'll have it ready to play with by next week, but you can be sure we'll be packing the update with more good stuff regardless!
Hit us up on the Discord to let us know what you think about this week's push, and what you'd like to see next!
No weekly update this week, because of bitbucket
Sorry to say we can't push a new version this week because BitBucket has fallen over - we can't push fixes, we can't get the latest, we can't build anything to test so... yeah we're really annoyed right now.
Here's something to cheer everyone up:
What I have done is restart last week's server so anyone who wants to play still can, and the world is fresh.
Really sorry about this - we don't want to push something from two days ago because we've achieved so much since then, and it all makes a kind of sense.
What it does mean is that next weej's udpte will be MASSIVE. Trust us.
ANOTHER WEEKLY UPDATE! WAHOO!
We did not do quite as much on player accounts and whatnot as we'd hoped, but we HAVE fixed quite a lot of things and brought a lot more existing features to the front of the game. Read on!
- Enemy factions now warp jump in to defend any territories that you try to claim back from them. This makes the whole game a lot more fun, with tons more combat and exciting times as a result. You can see it happen here:
- Capturing has been fixed, so now if there is even one single enemy craft in the capture zone, you won't be able to start capturing. Be aggressive!
- Death has been worked up properly now! You'll get a nice wee results screen, where we tell you what you lose... and we've also made sure any crates or MEV you were carrying in your ship are wiped on your death. Worry not, anything you bank at a Xenotaph is totally safe! this is to reinforce the core loop of going out, farming asteroids or getting into fights to collect resources, but then importantly getting back to base safely.
- The Drone Carrier now does a TON more damage to you, as it should! Still shoots slowly but shoots a LOT, so it's fun dodging in and out of the fire and dicing with death.
- Enemies that are spawned from Asteroids can now be of any faction. Previously, a nasty little bug meant they were all on one team, making the fight for the world a bit one-sided.
- Please do use the ingame chat! We know the debug box is a faff but we could really do with everyone testing the ingame chat :D
Known issues:
- When you send a message to the chat with [enter] you will need to click again to focus the inputs on the chat window. We'll be fixing this with a keyboard shortcut soon.
Next week we're focusing on even more lovely quality of life stuff. We're carrying on working on the player account/systems work, but also expect some polish and fixes around the new FTUE, and of course some Pugbot chat talking players through their first death. And with any luck you'll be able to choose where you respawn, too!
A NEW WEEKLY UPDATE! AGAIN! :D
Well, this is a HUGE week for Lazarus, with so many fixes and improvements I'm actually a bit shocked. Genuinely. I wrote the list, came back up here to edit the intro and was like... "Whoa, how much scrolling do I have to do to get here?".
- Carrier! This is the big one. We've made tons of changes to collision, how it chooses targets, and what happens when it dies (hint - plenty o' dat MEV). Not to mention, it spawns bad guys properly now, with gfx and everything! Go find one and (try your best to) take it out! Oh, and it on longer takes damage from Asteroids. So nerr! That said we'll be tweaking this in the future for people who want to throw 'roids at it with Limpet Boosters...
- Bullet collision! It's too convoluted to go into the full details here (ask us in Discord!) but suffice to say for ages now shots have had slightly unreliable collision. That is no longer the case, and the combat is SO MUCH BETTER NOW. Bear in mind it works both ways - enemy shots are not more likely to hit you too, so things might get tougher.
- Juking now works a lot better. Hit Q or E to dodgeroll left or right, with some invincibility frames for extra fun! Right now it takes into account what direction your ship is facing, so it can be a bit fiddly for some players. We're open to changing that - but regardless, beware it has a cooldown and uses Energy too.
- Chat is back! So, you can chat away to your heart's content in the chat box, and because we're clever, it supports some rtf commands too. Now, ne nice though:
Bold - Use and .
Italics - Use and .
Underline - Use and .
Superscript - Use and
Subscript - Use and
Size - Use to set point size to 36.
Colour - Use to set the color to red (several other colors are pre-defined).
More Colours - <#FF8000> or any other hexadecimal code to define a color.
- New FTUE! Now, it's going to need more polish, but right now when you boot into the game (or restart the tutorial via the Esc menu) you will play through the new First Time User Experience. We think it teaches the game's Systems in a much more engaging and satisfying way. Let us know! If you have any issues, just skip (hold X), but don't do this in the Xenotaph menus!
- Tech Screen now updates properly to reflect any new Systems or Upgrade Tokens you've unlocked. So that's WAY more fair than it was before.
- Breach button moved, now named PLAY. We think it's a bit more obvious now, plus it's always in the bottom right of the Xenotaph menu no matter which tab you're on. Makes it easier to get back into the fun!
- Scavenger changes include capping its maximum size, and also scaling the model up more sensibly to make it more fun to fight against. Also, it can get closer to asteroids which makes it much better at mining.
- Shielder changes are that the movement is smoother, and its mesh also gets removed the instant it dies. There's plenty more to come for this enemy in a future update, but these tweaks make it a lot nicer to play with.
- We fixed the Mixed Up System issue from last week.
- Hooks to monitor how often you change ships, what to, how often MEV is picked up, and more.
Known issues:
- There's a bunch of odd bugs around your account/System management that kicks in when you die/when you log off. It's nothing new, you've been living with them for months, but we got halfway into a fix and realised it was a bigger job. So that's the main focus for next week!
Next week's update should include some fixes around Death and Systems, as mentioned above, plus a ton of polish and fixes for other annoying bugs. Let us kow in discord what's anoying you the most!
NEW WEEKLY UPDATE!
UPDATE! ANOTHER WEEKLY UPDATE!
Aaaand we're still not unleashing the new FTUE on you guys and gals (it's not perfect, so it's not ready), but we HAVE fixed a bunch of stuff that will improve your time with the game. Read on!
- Enemies (other than the Shielder) now die when dead. That is, they no longer hang around for a few seconds like unwanted party guests. Smash them up, it feels a ton better now!
- All Asteroids of ALL SIZES can now drop Loot Crates. This was always intended, but a wee bug crept in. Fixed! Also, we tweaked the drop rate to accommodate this fix. Otherwise they'd be dropping left right and center with all the smashing and bashing you lot do.
- Performance issues sorted. Now we're not saying we've fixed all of them, but in last week's update a bug snuck through that meant that after a while, and in certain areas, you were seeing some really bad connections/lag/gameplay. That should all have gone away now.
- Enemies now take into account the size of an object that they're trying to get close to when navigating. Sounds odd, but basically means they act way more cleverly around things like asteroids of variyng sizes, not to mention Carriers.
Check them out!
- Thief/Scavenger enemy has had a bunch of tweaks thanks to your feedback last week. It no longer heals quite as much when it picks up MEV, so that kinda helps. It has a capped maximum size too,and we've changed some of the model properties so it is easier to hit when it gets bigger.
- We've tweaked the spawning weights of enemies from Asteroids. When an enemy is spawned in, the order of likelihood is; Fighter, Melee, Shielder, Scavenger. No Carriers spawning from tiny rocks!
Regardless, here's a sneaky peek at the FTUE:
Known issues:
- Right now there's some odd artefacts in the Xenotaph menu, but they don't affect functionality.
- When you equip a System, it won't register properly. But if you equip another System of the same type (Core, Passive, etc), then it will equip the previous one. So if you want a Trident Blaster, equip one, and then equip another Blaster type. We'll do a hotfix for this on Monday!
Next week we should have another update for you all, featuring Carrier updates, hopefully some work on remembering your loadouts between sessions, and more! In the meantime enjoy and tell us what you like/dislike!
WEEKLY UPDATE - OUT RIGHT NOW!
Ok so we're not rolling out the FTUE (these things take time to do right) but we have a TON of great stuff for you. Some was on the roadmap. Some was just annoying us or excited us to tweak. So here we go!
THIEF ENEMY
This wee drone is design to be a bit of a pest. It'll scoop up any MEV it can get its hands on, as well as Loot Crate s(worry not, they're slow and fairly puny!). As you shoot them they drop MEV, and you can kill them to make them drop all the MEV they've collected so far, but for now any Loot Crates they've grabbed are gone. Anyway, they also shoot at you if you threaten them, and will shoot at asteroids to mine MEV for themselves.
They're faster than they used to be, plus a little lower HP. PS: they grow as they eat... and there's no cap. These things can get BIG.
ENEMY SPAWNING
We've tweaked spawning rules so you should see much a more varied selection of all the enemies in the game. Fighters, Melees, Shielders and the Thieves... while Carriers remain huge and terrifying, but less common.
LOOT CRATE SPAWNING
We've reduced the Loot Crate spawn rate by a chunk, but are still balancing them. We want their appearance to be exciting, and then for their contents to be valuable. Before now, they were too common to be exciting. We think we've addressed that now.
CAPTURING
Capturing a territory earns you a Loot Crate, and now that Loot Crate can be opened. Unlike last week.
BOOSTING
We've fixed boosting, so now even if you're not holding a directional key, you'll accelerate to your max speed. Useful!
MEV CHARGE
This option in the Equip menu is now 100% removed. It might come back down the line, but don't hold your breath.
MAP
The keys along the top and left edge is now aligned properly, making it easier to narrow down where you are for your mates to come and find you.
ASTEROIDS
Asteroids are now fully coloured relative to the resource they're carrying. Blue for Mass, Yellow for Energy, Purple for Void. Up till now they were all a mishmash of Blue-And-Another-Colour.
SYSTEM SHOTS
We've fixed the issue that meant every time your triggered a System, be it a gun or not, it shot a bullet.
Enjoy, and as per usual, the next patch is due in a week - why not let us know what you think of the update over in our Discord channel: https://discord.gg/Ua4rkvU
NEW PATCH OUT NOW!
This week has been spent on FTUE behind the scenes (expecting it to be in next week's update, yay!) and AI, as promised. And yup, some of that AI work is now in the game. Let me explain...
AI REWORK
So the underlying systems that drive the AI have been reworked, to make our updates and tweaks much faster, which allows us to iterate more, which means the game will get better faster. That has led directly to the following two updates this week.
FIGHTER ENEMY
Much smoother movement, they keep a wider berth of each other too. They shoot in bursts of 4 to 5 shots, and then wait before firing again. Their bullets are way bigger (still not final) too and move more slowly, so en masse they create problems for you in terms of movement. Previously they were small and fast so didn't really deny any spac.
MELEE ENEMY
Smoother movement just like the Fighter, but also we've fixed their animations and damage so now they will catch you and smash you between their claws. We've also played with their collision, so you'd be advised not to take them on headon.
TUTORIAL
We've taken out the masking of the Xenotaph's tabs for now, as it was causing some issues with the new FTUE. The old tutorial is getting removed next week anyway. If you seem to be stuck in the tutorial, or your have a tutorial mission box on screen, just hold 'x' for about 5 seconds and all should be fine and dandy.
PLAYER COLLISION
This is a weird bug that we're struggling to find the exact casue of. We've reproduced it, and have fixed some small issues related to player collision, but we're not sure we've fixed the root cause. Essentially, if anyone sees MEV and Loot Crates around the entire screen get picked up the moment they spawn, we've failed and will try again next week!
EQUIP SCREEN
The 'shop' no longer refeshes its stock when you change tabs. This is a part-fix that will lead to a new feature in the not too distant future, whereby all Xenotaph stocks are defined at world start, and stay that way until the end of the server/wipe.
MEV DESPAWN
When MEV despawns, it no longer plays a particle effect. This was bugging us as it confused players - did I pick it up or did it despawn? Well, now you'll know.
TECH SCREEN
Several Systems, ones not avaiable in the shop yet as we've not finished them, are no longer viewable in the Tech Screen. Mostly the Beams :D
SHIP VIEWS
In the Xenotaph, you can now use your mouse ot rotate your ship again. This was lost due to a small bug, and has now been brought back.
QUEUING INFO
You won't see this until we have multiple live servers around the world, but we've finally got queuing info and world population being fed to the front end of the game.
See you out there! Next patch due in a week!
Another weekly patch released!
Let's cut right to the good stuff:
ASTEROIDS DIE PROPERLY
Yup, we've solved the case of the Undead Space Rocks. Shoot them, they take damage, they die, they leave behind smaller asteroids and some MEV. Enjoy! And sorry for the bug in the first place...
EQUIPPING
You can equip any System you've unlocked now! WOOOO!
TELEPORTING FIXED MORE/AGAIN
So apparently if you spammed the teleport button, it'd send multiple 'confirmed teleport' messages, and just hammer your MEV bank account, often into negative numbers. Well, no more! Yay!
TERRITORY CAPTURING
You used to be able to nip in, start capturing a territory, and then go on your merry way safe in the knowledge that it'd be captured in you absence. Not anymore - you want that territory? You gotta stick inside the Capture Zone until it's claimed!
MENU BLOOM
We thought that, after a long period of playing and 'hmmmm'-ing, the bloom on the 3d elements inside the Loot Crate and Tech Screen menu tabs was a bit much, detracting from the cartoony style. We've turned it right down, and while we still need to get our 'not toon' shader on those assets, this has helped a lot.
UPSIDE DOWN REWARDS
No more upside down Loot from the Loot Crate. We saw it hiding in the back, but no amount of shyness was going to stop us from fixing it right up. Get it? Right Up!
HUD FRAME
Small tweaks to the HUD frame, territory name & capture layout so no more overlaps or unreadable text
SERVER INFO
We've added functionality whereby when you see a choice of servers, you'll see how many players are in, and what the max is. Not that we're using that in the Public build just yet, but honestly, it's there and working :P
WHAT'S NEXT
With luck next week you'll see improvements to AI - we're hoping to have jazzed up versions of the Fighter, and with any luck the Melee too, as well as the usual plethora of nice quality of life and gameplay improvements. Exciting times!
New Update - tons of fixes. Seriously, tons.
UPDATE HYYYYYYYYPE!!
So we have pushed a new patch, been working hard all last week on FTUE and combat stuff, and then on Friday & today we had a lot of fun fixing tons of those little niggling issues that everyone hates. This one's a doozy!
Changelist:
<*>We've disabled upgrading/feeding enemies. This would happen when a player with a weapon Charge that matched theat of an enemy shot the enemy in question - instead of taking damage the enemy would level up. It's a neat mechanic but in an attempt to narrow our focus to the Core gameplay, this has been temporarily removed from the game. It would also happen in EvE combat, and that's been switched off too.
<*>If you place a turret and then kill it, it no longer has a chance to drop a Loot crate. This was an exploit and won't be coming back :D
<*>Players should no longer get negative amounts of MEV. Mostly because...
<*>...we've fixed the cost of teleporting too!
<*>The smaller the Asteroid, the less HP it has. Finally!
<*>Enemies of the same faction no longer do damage to each other with friendly fire (inter-faction fire should still work though). This used to make bigger fights too easy, but also combined with the Feeding, made things a nightmare to fix/balance.
<*>Enemies no longer collide with each other while moving, apart from the Carrier. This is one of those things that is a real subtle improvement to the gamefeel, as enemies move more freely and smoothly, and you will be able to more accurately and satisfyingly predict their movement during combat. Not to mention it massively reduces the amount of data we're firing across the servers :D
<*>The 'Death' steps of the Turorial are now switched off. We're replacing the whole FTUE at the moment anyway, but this one was just annoying due to a bug that kept replaying that step every time you died.
<*>When you place a waypoint on the map and then minimise the map, it will no longer draw the dotted green line on the screen.
<*>The Leaderboard has been removed from the HUD; a temporary fix to keep thigs focused on the core loop, as opposed to highscores. Likely to return before long!
<*>Tidied up the fullscreen map UI, text overlaps and centre aligning it in the process.
<*>All Passive System icons in the Tech Screen were rotated 90 degrees. No longer!
<*>Tidied up the game UI; note the screen 'frame' is not longer pixellated.
<*>Fixed a typo in the Ship Shop Tutorial
Known Issues:
<*>Sometimes (quite often) a Xenotaph shop will not let you equip a System. We're working on a fix, but to mitigate it try other Xenotaphs too.
<*>Asteroids often don't die. They still split apart, they still drop MEV, bbut you'll see 'undead' asteroids floating about a fair bit. Again, we're working on a fix but it only occurs on the invisible 'boundaries' between the workers on the server, so it's not too bad. Just a bit weird.
Later this week, or maybe early week, we should have another update for you all, in the meantime enjoy and tell us what you like/dislike!
New Year's Patch!
Well happy 2018 everyone!
We're back at work, ready for this exciting new year, and we've already got a wee patch put out there for you.
First up, you can now successfully equip your hard earned and upgraded Systems, 100% of the time! Woo!
Check me out here, with a fully loaded SH-15. Cross Blaster, Shield, Limpet Booster and a classic Energy Efficiency on my Passive, all displaying nciely on my HUD as I hang outside a Xenotaph I've captured:
Secondly, for those of you who missed it last year, we snuck out a cheeky update just before we broke up for Christmas, and in that, amongst a few stability fixes, we have improved the UI in the Equip screen, and added HP bars to everything that you can kill. Helps us debug, helps you see how well/badly you're doing.
Here's the HP bars as I mix it up with some bad guys and a few asteroids:
Then if you look closely here you can see the Equip screen draws lines to illustrate where and how the Systems apply to your Ship Slots. It's often little things like this that really help new players out:
And finally we've fixed the weird blue screen a lot of you were seeing. It's a hang over from an old old OLD version, and shouldn't show its face for a long long time now.
Enjoy!
Next update... maybe next week, maybe the week after... but expect even more improvements and bug fixes! We're concentratong on the FTUE and combat at the moment, so it should have something for everyone.
