I've gone ahead and released a minor follow-up patch for update 0.5.2. The update just adds some descriptions for the heavy and shredder turrets, as well as fixes a minor "jittering" issue the heavy turret had.
I've also included an icon for the heavy turret so you don't have to stare at a white box.
Known Issues:
Enemy ragdolls can still spazz out causing weird visual artifacts, I have a solution for this but may take some time to fix and test.
Heavy turret is not yet shooting from the barrels, I'll be updating this soon.
I hope you all had an awesome weekend, more updates to follow soon. As always, if you have any feedback, issues or ideas - let me know in the forums.
Cheers, Fletchy
Update 0.5.2
Good evening!
This update is a follow-up based on user feedback from patch 0.5.1 - the update includes a new turret capable of shredding through low health enemies, reduced enemy wave sizes, reduced enemy wave scaling, reduced income and overall speed changes for monsters.
New Turrets
Shredder turret - The Shredder turret takes the place of the steam rifle turret. It is cheap and has a high rate of fire with a culling effect that scales with its level. Type F in the comments to pay your respects to the steam turret.
Heavy Turret - The heavy turret is what the old steam rifle turret was, but more specialized. It hits hard, initially quite slow, but with the right investment, it becomes a vital turret to any defense layout.
Balancing Changes
Reduced monster speed - Revealed monsters have had their movement speed reduced significantly. While darkness still moves at its original pace to get to the action without wasting your time. Monster speeds will be adjusted further over the course of the next few updates until they feel completely right.
Upgrade costs - Several towers have had their upgrade costs adjusted.
Known Issues
The following issues are visual only and will be fixed in the next update: Heavy turret faces multiple directions, this will be fixed in the next update. Heavy turret fires from the base, this will be fixed in the next update. Some enemies now, occasionally adjust in size when ragdolled and may cause weird artifacts until the body despawns, this will be fixed in the next update.
Feedback
As always, please leave your feedback in the forums and I'll reply to them as soon as I can.
Cheers, Fletchy
Update 0.5.1
Good Afternoon!
The latest riftwalker update introduces some new content and adds more polish on existing features. There's still a lot more to come, but it should feel refreshing.
New Zone: The Valerian Archives
The valerian archives are now yours to explore. - This is the first iteration of the Valerian Archives, which includes a limited number of tiles. I'll be heavily expanding upon this zone in the near future.
First multipath enemy spawning - The archives are the first version of procedural enemy multipathing. I'll be improving the procedural system in the future for less linear zones.
Updates
Improved flamethrower VFX reliability - The updated flamethrower VFX should now correctly trigger on more vertical based tower positions.
Improved performance on the light brazier - Temporarily removed the darkening effect on the light brazier when enemies were close for performance reasons. This will be replaced with a generic flame flicker in the future. This change will also be done to the hanging brazier in the future. You should notice the improved performance when spamming light braziers.
Saving system has been overhauled - This will allow for better and more reliable tracking of stats and make it easier for me to expand upon.
First achievement - The first achievement has been added, which is unlocked when discovering the valerian archives. Several other achievements will be added in the near future, this is mainly a test of functionality.
Final notes
As always, please leave feedback for me in the forums.
Update 0.5.0
Good morning!
Time for another update, the 0.5.0 update contains several quality-of-life changes requested by you. It also paves the way for some future changes.
Quality of Life
Tileset overhaul - All existing tiles have been reworked and rebalanced. The workflow will be carried on for future tilesets in the next content update. The new workflow provides improved performance and improved ragdolls with the terrain. There "should" no longer be any disappearing ragdolls, however, I still need to do more testing.
First iteration of the new tower UI - I've been working on a new tower UI that will allow me to take a modular approach to design the UI, for when I add tower target priorities, and other features. This still needs a LOT of polish, but I'd like to start getting feedback as I work on polishing it.
Camera Speedup - By popular request, you can now hold the camera speed modifier button (default: "Left Shift") to speed up your camera movement.
Tesla tower hit visual feedback - I've added some visual feedback to the tesla tower hits, these changes will allow me to do similar things for new towers as I add them. Please provide some feedback on the intensity of the effect.
Steam Turret added bullet smoke trail - Added a smoke (steam?) trail to the steam rifle turret.
New console commands - I've added new console commands to access experimental features like changing graphic presets, and accessing damage number overlays. You can access the console (default: "~") and type "help" to see a list of available commands.
Balancing changes
Tower platform number reduced.
Starting resources changed from 421 to 500.
Income from later waves reduced.
Monster HP scaling increased.
Tesla tower damage is now the same at all ranks, with only range increasing.
I hope the patch improves the overall experience, as usual, please send me your feedback on the forums. If you encounter any issues, I keep a regular eye on the bug thread.
I'd like to improve the update frequency as time permits, this may be challenging due to difficulties in my personal life. Regardless, what day would you prefer to receive weekly/bi-weekly updates?
Riftwalker @ rAge Expo 2019
EDIT NOTE: INSERT SOCIAL MEDIA BANNER HERE.
A fan of all things geek and tech? So are we! Come and join us at the rAge expo within the Home_Coded Developer Zone sponsored by Huawei, where you'll find us hosting a showcase of the game, answering questions and I'll be discussing the future of Riftwalker!
Come join us at our stand, located within the developer zone at Comic-Con Africa between the 21st and 24th of September 2019. There will be a host of Q&A's, Chats and I'll be discussing the future of Riftwalker!
As the game continues to develop, I'm continually looking for ways to maintain and improve communications with you. Now the tricky part is doing this while minimizing the amount of time it takes to keep everything up to date.
So I figured, why not Discord?
Discord will serve as an extra route of communication, most of the Steam news will be reposted there - but Discord will allow me to respond to messages a lot faster than Steam. Communicating over discord will also feel a lot more natural as I think we've all grown to use discord on a regular basis while talking to friends and playing our favorite games.
This update aims to expand on enemies, adding 8 new base type enemies to the game. The new enemies will offer the player a challenge, and help ensure that a one-tower-fits-all approach will not be an easy solution.
Each new enemy offers unique new challenges, with the watcher receiving a visual update on its shield. The watcher now also heavily buffs nearby enemies.
All existing enemies have had death animations added - and all new enemies also have death animations. Bodies will now also pile up, adding a way for a future update where I plan to add ragdolls to the corpses, allowing your towers to knock around enemy bodies. The ragdoll update will be an optional setting enabled by default in the settings menu.
All things balanced, as they should be.
Or not... I will definitely require feedback from you on where you start to struggle with the game. This update will require a lot of balancing changes, so please let me know in the feedback thread!
As always, let me know what you think of the update in the feedback thread!
Dynamic Resolution, Bug Fixes & More!
Update 0.4.6
This update introduces several fixes, community requests, and dynamic resolution - set to optimize the game even further. As usual, I'd like to thank those who have contributed on the community discussion, be it via threads or bug reports - you are the people who are shaping the future of Riftwalker.
Let's start off with the bugfixes, this patch fixes the following issues:
Critical bug causing the camera to stop responding after picking up a lore fragment.
Upon losing, the main menu button is white and only displays the button upon hovering over it.
Perk tree back button positioning issue on widescreen resolution.
Volume glitch on changing menu settings.
I'm working on addressing any other issues that were brought up. While I was at it, the game now also supports accessing the settings menu from within a roung, pausing it in the progress.
And lastly, this update brings the ability for you to activate Dynamic Resolution, which allows the game to subtly and dynamically lower the resolution on the fly - allowing your frame-rate to remain stable, even in times of absolute bloodshed and slaughter.
If you have any questions, or feedback - drop a thread and start chatting! I am also working on setting up a community discord in order for me to get closer to all of you.
Update 0.4.5
Update 0.4.5
This patch introduces several bugfixes as well as the first iteration of the lore system, search the map for hidden fragments of the past and work together with the community to decipher the past and find meaning in this strange world.
The goal with update 0.4.5 is to begin highlighting the depth of Riftwalker, to begin to lure those fascinated with story deeper into the unknown - and at the same time, begin to offer some progression to the game's mechanics. I've also added a way for you to reset your save data, as previous versions may have conflicting save data. I would recommend if you're already playing Riftwalker, PLEASE head to the options menu, then go to saves - and delete your save data.
As always, thank you to the community - this wouldn't be possible without you guys and girls. Please join the discussion and give me feedback on this update so I can continue to build and refine this game into a gem.
Patch Notes
New Stuff Everyone likes new stuff - so along with the bugfixes, I've included some new stuff. This is mostly the first iteration of the lore system that will allow me to add several new lore fragments with ease in the coming updates.
First lore fragment - a torn note with a magical inscription.
Teaser for the new tileset has a rare chance of spawning, at a later stage, this will be required to unlock the new tilesets and progress through the game world.
New steam rifle turret VFX - I felt the original vfx was feeling a bit lacking and gave it some love.
New menu in the options menu in order to reset your save data if needed, in this case, I would recommend.
Fixes Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to report bugs on the community discussion, here are some fixes for issues that you have brought up. Please keep those bug reports coming!
Fixed a critical bug that caused the perk menu to open mid-game, resulting in the main menu overlaying over the game.
Fixed several tower platforms, there are a few more I need to deal with - please send me screenshots of any platforms that do not work.
Fixed a bug resulting in the incorrect save location for files being used.
Fixed a bug where the player would get several thousand knowledge points when unlocking a perk.
Balance Changes I'll be doing constant, small changes to continually update the balance of the game. This will be highly dependant on the feedback that I get from you on the community discussion, so please join the forums and let me know what you feel needs changing.
Reduced player HP regen slightly in order to make the game sliiightly more challenging.
Steam rifle turret attack speed and damage tweaks. (DPS should be around the same)
Starting resources set to 419 (from 420).
Known Issues It's unavoidable, but there are still some issues that need to be addressed from before this patch, or as a result of this patch. These are issues I am currently aware of, and am working on. Please join the community discussion and let me know of any other issues.
Some tower platforms are still not useable - and/or do not show all available towers.
New steam rifle turret vfx bullets may appear to jump around occasionally.
Beam tower on full upgrade uses the flamethrower attack.
