Folks, just a little longer until the next update. Thank you for your patience! Most systems for the new Campaign Mode are in place, as you can see in the video below:
https://youtu.be/JIAG_XQub4M
What I'm going to do the next couple of days is create the content, i.e. the levels and tutorials. Here's what's coming:
Complete levels to unlock special abilities, gain ability charges and access to more levels.
Each level can present you with a variety of objectives and limitations. ( along with custom-tailored enemy waves of increasing difficulty as you progress in the campaign).
Configure your starting loadout: assign charges to your favorite special abilities or the ones that are most effective to complete the current objective.
Side-grading options for Arcade and Co-op Modes: unlock additional starting slots for each special ability and redistribute the fixed number of available charges as it pleases you. These unlocks are persistent once you've acquired them by beating the corresponding campaign levels once.
Some objective examples: -Reach Wave Level x
-Get a Multiplier of x
-Survive x secs
-Score x points
-...
Limitation examples: -Time Limit
-Deadly Walls
-Never die (i.e. don't lose any avatars)
-...
Also planned (but may be part of a later update):
Online leaderboards based on campaign completion time (separate leaderboards for 100% levels and any percentage)
Alright, back to work... :-D
Hotfix 0.7e: Mini Stun Duration
The version you have installed is shown in the main menu screen.
Bugfixes
The Stun power-up's duration, when only one avatar is alive, was 0. Set it to something more reasonable...
Updated the Stun power-up's sound effects so they work like the rest of the audio.
Fixed an issue where the edges could flash in the wrong rhythm if players didn't zap anything before level 1.
Hotfix v0.7d (Advanced Tutorial fix)
Hot on the heels of the main update...(You can always see which version of the game you have in the Main Menu.)
Bugfixes
Fixed a bug in the Advanced Tutorial where the wrong power-up would spawn, preventing tutorial progress.
Fixed power-up sprites so they match the new special ability icons.
Power-Up Update: v0.7 / See You at EGX!
Folks, you now have a new special ability at your disposal: Invincibility! Quickly press [LB, RB, LB, RB] and your avatars will grow bigger, faster, and indestructible for a little while, allowing you to cheerfully bump into all those pesky enemies without a care in the world and watch them pop!
This is the most defensive of the four abilities and it's quick and easy to activate, too. The trade-off is that your multiplier won't apply to points you score this way. It represents the opposite of the Spinning Beam on the risk-/reward-spectrum and thus is also particularly well-suited for new players.
This completes the set of special abilities planned for the 1.0 release. However, additionally to fine-tuning balance aspects of the abilities themselves and polishing some parts, I also have some ideas to evolve the power-up economy. Mainly, I'm thinking about letting players customize their load-out a bit. I'm also considering moving away from the fixed-schedule, semi-random-selected spawning of new ability power-ups.
Since the special abilities have a significant effect on balance, the leaderboard has been reset. Like previous resets, the old leaderboard is preserved (Community Hub --> View Stats).
As always, the previous version remains available for download under the correspondingly named branch.
Check out the full change list below:
New Features
Added Invincibility ability. Press [LB, RB, LB, RB] and see what happens :)
Balance and Other Changes
The Stun ability now paralyzes enemies for a longer duration. This provides a more meaningful respite and helps balance it against the similiar Invincibility.
For now, you start out with 2 charges for each ability. This may change again in future updates as I tweak the power-up economy.
Slightly changed controller behavior, see the detailed example below.
Modified some special ability icons to better align them with their corresponding input gestures. Ideally, the icons will help new players remember how to trigger the abilities.
Bugfixes and Polish
Fixed a bug where the Spinning Beam Power Up would never spawn, random system would always pick one of the other two.
Fixed a bug where the Stun Ability sometimes would end too soon.
Fixed a visual bug where the "screen wipe" beam would pass under the avatars instead of over.
Changed the flashing light effects when one avatar is dead to something less seizure-inducing.
Avatars now always match the position they had in the main menu and post-game menu when hitting Retry/New Player.
Added various animations to the "Start" button in the pre-game screen
Added various animations to menu buttons.
Added color transitions between screens.
Controller Behavior Change Example: The avatars are within linking range and the player presses LB to connect them with the blue laser. Keeping LB pressed, they also press RB, now changing the laser color to orange. Then they let go of RB again, still keeping LB pressed.
Previously, this would disconnect the avatars, despite one button still being pressed. Now, it changes to that button's corresponding laser color (blue in this example). If your finger tells you you have your avatars connected, then that's what should happen.
In Co-op, this change does not apply, because here it's more important that players be able to break free from unwanted connections by briefly tapping their button and letting go again.
What's next? I'll be exhibiting MODSORK at EGX Rezzed in London this week, so I please bear with me if I'm slower to respond. When I return, I'll start working on Progress Mode. It will consist of a series of discrete challenges players can complete (as opposed to the other modes' open-endededness) and unlock loadout customization options.
Tiny Post-Update Update
In the video settings, setting flashing to "none" didn't properly disable background flashing.
Now it does. :-)
Update 0.6.7: Improved Controller Support & Bugfixes
Hi everyone!
As some of you know, I invested some time into the Switch port of the game recently. That also was a good opportunity to work on the controller support on the PC version. Since MODSORK revolves so much around its unique control scheme, I've always wanted to pay special attention to how you physically interact with the game and to make the best of what the hardware can offer.
What's New:
Customized rumble patterns for DS4 and XBox360 controllers. In the past I noticed the rumbling felt weird when I wasn't using the controllers I normally worked with, so now it's calibrated for each device.
New rumble events, for instance when teleporting.
Light bar support for DS4: it shows correct player color and also blinks in the color of the surviving avatar when the other is dead.
.
Bugfixes and Other Changes:
Updated game engine to Unity 2018.3 to take advantage of various features. Miraculously, almost nothing broke in the process.
Co-op: Players should now always be assigned the same color when playing another round.
Fixed a bug with teleport sound sometimes not playing in the "EDM" SoundSet.
Fixed a bug where changing SoundSets would load an outdated version of EDM.
Fixed a visual glitch of the Stun ability's charge animation.
Changed bomb screenshake to better match the sound effect and controller rumble.
Cleaned up some misbehaving button labels in the menu and removed a duplicate button from a submenu.
Please Note: As always, the previous version of the game is available in a correspondingly named branch. This update brings no balance or leaderboard changes.
A long time ago, there was feedback from players that felt confused when their controllers rumbled when they teleported at the edge of the screen, because it felt similar to colliding with an enemy and dying. I'm hoping with the recalibrated rumbling, the two events will feel distinct enough not to cause any confusion. Please let me know your experience with it (maybe give it a bit of time to get used to it first) and what kind of controller you use.
What's Next: The next update will arrive before I leave for EGX Rezzed in London early April. There won't be enough time to implement a nice version of Progress Mode until then, so I will leave that for when I return and instead use the next two weeks for a variety of improvements and new features.
Time For Some Music (Update)!
I'm excited to share this update with you. It is mainly about the music and the synchronized visual effects. As always, you can choose to stick to the previous version by selecting it in the beta branch. There are only insignificant balance changes, so the leaderboards won't reset this time.
At some point I'd like to do an in-depth devblog post about the game's audio systems and how it all works, but for now here's the update notes:
New Features:
Better support for music structure. Instead of escalating and reaching a plateau early, a run is now divided into music phases that allow changing things up further into the run.
Support for lots more variations in looping sounds like drums (instead of simply looping sample A until it's time to loop sample B over and over, it's now possible to play e.g. AAABAAAB before changing to playing CDCD)
Seamless audio transitions between the menu, pre-game and post-game screens to keep you in the flow
Support for dynamic pattern and rhythm changes for the flashing backgrounds
Support for flashing arena boundaries that can adapt to events
New Content:
New sounds in both the EDM and ROCK SoundSets
New dynamic sound effects that change the music as stuff happens (e.g. while the arena is in a shrunk state and while the big screen-wiping beam is active)
Variations for looping sounds
New harmonic progressions ( the guitars / the synth in the background)
New: flashing boundaries, as well as new background flashing patterns
Bugfixes:
In some cases tutorial enemies could follow you into the pre-game area. No more, They Shall Not Pass!
The previous minor update broke the Spinning Beam tutorial. fixed.
Various audio playback issues fixed.
What's Next? I'm thinking I'll finally tackle the third game mode, "Progress Mode" for the next update. I intend to squeeze in a smaller update before that so it's not such a long wait, since I also will invest a bit of time in the Nintendo Switch port in the next two weeks.
I'm looking forward to doing another big audio pass and iterate in the future, because there's still a lot of unused potential in the existing systems (and some rough edges).
Music Update: Preview Available in Beta Branch
As the Music Updates approaches, there's now a new preview version available in the beta branch. Check it out to get an sneak peak of what's coming! (You can do so by right-clicking on the game in your library, and going to the beta tab).
Here's some highlights:
Seamless audio between menu, pre-game and post-game screens
Expanded musical structure: as the game progresses, the semi-random chord progressions can change, samples can change (for instance different hihat patterns later into the game), all sorts of things can adapt to how far you are into a run
various visual effects that are synchronized to the music can now adapt to various rhythms. some were previously deactivated (like the flashing lines on the edges of the arena, I think it looks quite cool)
the patterns themselves now allow for variations, so for example a drum pattern can play 3 bars of pattern A and do a little variation on bar 4
various events such as the big screen-wiping laser and the collapsing walls now have musical effects
various bugfixes
The preview includes only the electronic music sound set, which is why I didn't make this an update of the main branch. That will follow soon as I get to implement the actual audio content now that the systems are mostly done. (I'm hoping for next weekend).
If you give it a go, please make sure to let me know if you encounter any issues, especially audio-related ones!
Enjoy! :)
An Update on the Music Update and Miscellanous Stuff
Dear Current Players: The Music Update is coming along nicely, and soon[tm]!
I ended up redoing a lot of the systems for the interactive music and extending their features. As every game developer will tell you, increasing the complexity of the features a game has also increases the time it takes to create content, but I'm very excited about these and the game will benefit from it.
In other news, with the coming update, the "beta" branches will be named more appropriately. Currently, the "beta" branch holds the most recent previous version of the game. In the future, the previous version will be available in a branch called *drumroll....* previous_version! Yes, I did come up with that name myself, thank you! ;) The branch called "beta" will contain the latest version and experimental versions.
Dear New Players: Welcome! I'm working on a Steam Guide that should come in handy with the learning curve and shed light on some of the less evident features and settings of the game. Have a gander MODSORK Guide It will be updated as the game evolves. Also, you're welcome to join us on the official Discord Server: MODSORK DISCORD
Dear Prospective Players: (and existing players who want to feel good about having supported the game early). At some point in January, the price will increase very moderately to reflect the progress the game has made since it launched into early access. So I guess now's a good time to support the game! ;-)
Hotfix 0.6.2c
Just a little fix to address a very old and a very new issue:
The Spinning Beam ability now shouldn't miss far-away enemies anymore and reliably zap everything it hits.
Minor Update 0.6.2b introduced a bug where the revived avatar wouldn't move during its invulnerability phase. Sorry! It now works again as intended.
The Spinning Beam fix may have an impact on performance, please let me know if you notice anything when you use it.
