This week change log may look small, but it packs a lot. We started integrating the final boss!
We are going to ship the boss in two parts. This week, you can try the first phase of the boss, and next week we are adding the full experience with more story bits.
Once the final boss is fully implemented and running, we will go back on the boss system. We are fully aware that bosses are not quite always enjoyable and we are dedicated to make them smoother!
Cheers! and have a great weekend!
New
/!\ Spoiler alert /!\
The final boss has been added, it only is the first part of the fight for now, the second part will follow in the next update
Changes
Game logo and title has been updated
Fixes
Fixes Bullet Wiper skill range being twice larger as it should be
Fixes black screen on Intel GPU if the option -hideVersion is used
A new weapon category has been introduced: the disk guns, which can ricochet on walls. There are also new enemies wielding them (who have the skin as what was before the railguns, before we updated them last week).
The grenade launcher gang is now part of the game, and you can drop items with their skin too.
We also added new weapon sprites so that they are all unique (no weapon type share the same sprite now).
We also worked on better hit feedback, making the Bullet Wiper skill better, fixing some flame thrower behaviors, and gamepad hot plugging/unplugging is now supported while the game is running (a bunch of gamepad issues have been fixed as well).
Have a great weekend!
UPDATE: Beta 37.1 has been release to fix a crash during the tutorial.
New
New weapon category: the Disk Guns
New enemies: grenade launchers and disk guns
Steam version now requires that Steam is launched and logged in (but works offline, of course)
There is now a better feedback when players are hit
Hot gamepad plugging/unplugging is now supported
Shocker weapons have new unique sprites
Laser weapons have new unique sprites
Changes
The Bullet Wiper skill has been enhanced to correctly counter rockets (it nulls splash damages) and will clear bullets for 500ms instead of being on just one frame.
Shotgun and rocket launcher weapons have updated sprites
Explosive bullets (e.g. grenades, rockets) now blink
Frag bullets (e.g. plasma bomb) now have an animation to warn you
Railgun bullets are now a bit bigger / visible
Explosive barrels HP have been reduced
Flame throwers damage over time will start to hit at the moment of impact, and no more once the hit "charged" (TL;DR; flame throwers don't "lag" anymore)
Flame throwers hit sound will now be limited to few times per second to avoid heavily repeated sounds
Fixes
Fixes railgun enemies having their warning laser even if impaired by EMP
Fixes possible crash when plugging a gamepad while the game is running
Lots of changes ahead! We reworked the skills (better feedback, new/replaced/modified skills) and we started tweaking the boss fights.
There should be less enemies during boss fights, and some attack patterns have been nerfed to appear only in advanced runs. Hopefully this should make the bosses more manageable, but it's only the first part of more boss rework to come.
We also tweaked the difficulty of standard enemies to avoid situations where you could get ganged too hard (hey there rocket launchers...).
Flame thrower & railgun enemies have a new design (the previous ones will be used for new weapons), and there will soon be new grenade launchers enemies.
Have an awesome weekend!
New
Grenade launchers now have their own sprites (they were using the shotgun ones as placeholders), parts and enemies with the same design will follow next week
Changes
Railgun enemies & items sprites have been updated (their old sprites will be used for a new weapon family)
Flame thrower enemies & items sprites have been updated (their old sprites will be used for a new weapon family)
Repairing between levels is now a bit cheaper
The nemesis will no longer have the ! icon above its head when it notices you so that you can clearly see its nemesis icon
Dropped items list visibility has been enhanced and use the rarity color code instead of the player's color
More repair packs will drop on Arcade difficulty
Changes to bosses:
Close range (pink) enemies won't spawn anymore during boss battles
The number of enemies spawning during boss battles are been reduced
Grenade launcher has been removed from bosses
Bosses will not use their full set of patterns from the very first boss, it is now progressive (first boss has few patterns, while the last one will have all of them)
Changes to enemies:
Rocket launchers are now less agressive and deal less damage (this should avoid to be ganged too hard)
Small shotguns and small railguns are now less agressive
Most elites and mini-boss are now more agressive (except mini-nuke and railgun, these are already tough enough ^^)
Changes to skills:
Active skills now have a triggering animation as well as when they are ready
Most skills recharge requirements have been nerfed
Jackpot now gives 10% more scraps when scraping items instead of giving a one time bonus at the start of the game (and is affected by Visor skill bonus stats)
Loaded has been replaced by a new skill called Mechanic which makes repair packs to give more HP (and is affected by Visor skill bonus stats)
Fast-paced has been replaced by a new skill called Bullet Wiper which suppress all enemy bullets within a range
Fixes
Fixes a few colliders in the Lab environment
Fixes some misaligned boss part outlines
Fixes a crash during resuming if there is nothing but "new" items in the inventory
Fixes pause menu having an invisible option when playing with a gamepad
You can now interrupt a game and continue it later! :happyNV: This was a lot of work to put together, let's see what will be your longest game!
Mind that it only works for solo games. Also mind that this is not a save system: you can't resume after a game over.
Now that this feature is in, we're back on adding more content. Next updates will bring new stuff.
Happy NeuroVoiding and have a good weekend!
New
Interrupt & resume your game (only for solo games)
You can now access the pause menu in the inventory and the skill selection screen
The quick restart option has been removed from the pause (it was misleading and not compatible with the save system)
Changes
Because of the pause menu being accessible everywhere now, "start" is no more the button to be ready in the inventory, it is now X (Square) on Gamepads (keyboard/mouse not affected)
Fixes
Fixes a crash related to some gamepads unable to init rumble support (e.g. Logitech F710, F310)
Fixes an abnormal memory consumption if restarting a game from the pause menu
Fixes resolutions order in settings menu
Fixes a bug where the AI couldn't see the player in the lower part of a level if the map with vertical
What's new? You can now see the seed which was used to generate your random game, set your own seed and share it with friends to compare your scores! A unique seed will always generate the exact same game.
This is an important step which will be a corner stone to the future daily runs and online rankings.
We are curious to see your best score, feel free to post your score and seed! We will do the same and see who will beat ours. :happyNV:
Other big news: we completely changed the game backend (we switched to SDL2). What does that tech gibberish mean? A lot of bug fixes and a better cross-platform support! The changelog details everything. This is the result of months of behind the scene work.
Great weekend to all of you!
UPDATE: Beta 34.1 has been released to fix an incompatibility with 32bit Windows introduced in Beta 34.
New
You can now set a custom seed to create and share unique game. A unique seed will always generate the exact same levels, enemies, items, etc. so you share and compare your score with your friends or online.
The seed of your current game will be displayed on the game over screen as well as in the pause menu
Changes
A lot of NeuroVoider's internals have been updated to shiny new bits, this fixes a bunch of issues:
seamless 32/64bit support
better OS X & Linux support
the game will not warp your mouse when using windowed modes
the window is now properly centered when using windowed modes
better fullscreen & windowed modes (the "fullscreen mode" options is back in the settings and allows you to use the classic fullscreen mode, or a false borderless mode)
better 4K & Retina support
fixes any mouse issue on OS X
keyboard mapping now respects the language of your keyboard
new gamepad drivers which should fix gamepads on all OS (check the forum to know if your gamepad is supported and how to help us add it if it's not there)
loading are now properly multi-threaded and will not micro freeze anymore
fixes crashes related to HOTAS and exotic controllers
Fixes
Fixes the feedback panel
Fixes a possible crash when dropping crystals during boss fights
Remember last week when I said that we were working on the save / resume and the final boss? I lied! :trollNV: Well, no, I swear I didn't, but we thought that it would be better to enhance a couple things in priority.
Long awaited work that is at last in: keyboard remapping. Pffeewww, sorry for making you waiting, but now we can call NeuroVoider a real PC game!
We are also going to add mouse support to the inventory & to the level selection in a future update.
Please mind that we changed the default keyboard mapping to use the arrows instead of WASD / ZQSD, but you can remap that now. :happyNV:
Now we are back on save / resume (for real).
Have a great weekend!
UPDATE: Beta 33.1 has been released to revert the default mapping to WASD instead of the arrow keys.
New
Keyboard / mouse remapping
You can now choose to display Xbox or Playstation buttons in the settings (it replaces the keyboard layout selection, which was not relevant anymore)
The introduction level can now be skipped in the pause menu
FAT.32 will now explain to you what items are during the introduction level
You can pause and restart / exit in the level selection screen (we will also add this to the inventory in a future update)
Changes
The default keyboard / mouse mapping has been modified to something (hopefully) a bit more universal (it's hard to find good controls that fits every keyboard / people, but there's remapping now =)
Buttons for skipping level and rebooting rng have been swapped
Forge gamepad button has been changed to X / Square
Feedback are disabled in this build due to broken non-qwerty keyboard detection, it will come back soon
The "echo" is now disabled when playing in single player
Controls in the pause menu have been simplified / cleaned (the loot button has been removed since it is now always auto, and the echo has been removed too from single player)
Tips are now hidden in the pause menu while in the introduction level to avoid any overlap with FAT.32 explanations
Renamed "GUN.1" & "GUN.2" to "GUN.L" & "GUN.R" to better match the default controls mapping (left/right click/triggers)
Fixes
Fixes item stats not scaling correctly like described in Beta 32 changelog
Steam cards are now dropping!
This has been a frequent request since the very first alpha of NeuroVoider, but here they are...
Behold, the Steam Cards! Dropping now! :happyNV:
Did I mentioned badges and emoticons? Who will the first player with a max level or foil badge?
We are back from the Stunfest, it was awesome! And it's already been 10 days since the last update, but we are back to full time development.
This week update is mostly a maintenance build. A pack of fixes and some balancing!
We have been very busy on some of the engine's internals, and still are. This work is not complete yet, but will be ready to be published next week. It is the kind of heavy work that isn't visible (we're basically replacing the whole graphical and input backend by a shiny new one), but will greatly increase the game reliability. So next week, you can expect the game the run better on all platforms, with a better gamepad and keyboard support, as well as a better OS X and Linux support.
Here are what we are currently working on: the final boss, a help menu, and reworking the existing boss system.
You can also expect Steam Cards to start dropping very soon. ;)
Happy NeuroVoiding! And have a great weekend!
Changes
Fortress shield EP consumption is now a multiplicative value of your EP regeneration (x1.5 without considering Core bonus), this fixes an issue where the shield could be held forever with enough EP regeneration
Item bonus to stats (e.g. Skill power, Skill recharge, Special cost, etc.) now scale with the progression (e.g. before the first boss, stats should be about 1-10%, while end-game bonus should be near 15-25%)
Fixes
Fixes Steam Cloud not working
Fixes a crash when exiting from the tutorial level with the pause menu
Fixes boss health bar appearing in tutorial level
Fixes tutorial level being pitch black is a game over occured during a pitch black level
Fixes a few glitched pixels appearing after selecting a skill in the skill selection menu
Fixes robot always being damaged in the inventory menu when using the hardcore skill
Fixes a couple Furnace lava tiles and Frostbite/Station colliders
Yes, it's not Friday, but this week, we are off to a gaming festival (the Stunfest, in France), hence we are pushing this update earlier. We'll be back with the normal update pace next week (we are working on the resume feature and the final boss now).
What's new? Difficulty settings! Let us know what you think about them (we still have to rework the AI and the boss fights logic, but we'll get there soon).
Annnddd... Steam Trading Cards are coming! We sent them to Steam, now it's up to them to publish them. It should take a few days before they start dropping.
Have a great week!
New
Difficulty options to choose when starting a new game:
Arcade (easy): enemies have less HP, do less damage, are less aggressive, and drop more repair packs
Rogue (normal): the base experience, similar to previous updates
Voider (hard): enemies have more HP, do more damage, and are more aggressive
Fixes
Fixes some error handling (the game should more precise when it detects hardware problems)
Fixes special level being generated twice per boss section if the tutorial is enabled
