Sipho 1.0.1f3 is now available - better performance and AI!
Hello all!
We have been gathering feedback from community forums and watching various streamers play Sipho and got a nice list of notes that we are addressing with this update!
Budlings now feel much safer next to their parents and should not run away from big enemies. Especially those enemies who are threatening their mother colony! There seems to be a disturbing lack of self-preservation among your offspring...
Enemy AI has been tweaked to be less aggressive to enemies that are much smaller than them - that makes more sense to make them dispose of something that is more threatening and only then go after small ones. The change is most impactful when the small one is the player!
A lot of bugfixes and performance have been done - especially related to level spawning and whirlpool level destruction. While there are things to optimise further, we hope this will help with stuttering a lot.
Version 1.0.1f4
More robust way of holding consumables should fix Polyp sometimes causing consumables to be unholdable
Do not update Environment Grid if things have recently been spawned
Version 1.0.1f3
Optimize whirlpool level destruction
Tweak Advena areas
Cache level spawner texture values - improves performance for levels based on texture lookup spawning
Version 1.0.1f2
Add Tooltip to separate canvas in Main Menu
Mover camera fast while in transition - fixes camera flying around after entering new zones
Fix growth zooid type categories not being disabled correctly
Version 1.0.1f1
Refactor enemy spawning to allow having different enemy counts per campaign level. Adjust enemy aggressiveness and counts
Add option to slow down game simulation if it is unable to keep up with target framerate
Alphas are guaranteed to drop relevant mutations
Fix whirlpools not spawning in Freeroam
Saenus Boss 3 creates currents a bit more rarely. Other boss fight enemies never flee
Pathfinder completes its path requests when setting new ones
Allow Mutations have differently constructed titles for localization. Add missing translations.
Refactor how campaign sipho zooids get swapped for variety - dynamically determine if swapping is possible instead of being hardcoded. Fixes enemies with impossible layouts appearing
Megalocyst explodes instantly instead of 0.1sec delay
Do not regenerate health when losing nutrition to overnutrition - fixes some bosses healing themselves for a while before allowing themselves to be over-dps'ed
Make Advena campaign areas a bit wider to navigate
Boss battle arena does not care if there is null sinkable to sink
Fix zooid info tooltip text to contain proper newlines
Better Leader following AI for minion Siphos
Enemies are less likely to attack smaller enemies
Display zooid type next to breed name in the tooltips
Improve some zooid descriptions
Fix leech teleporting
Mutation generation can skip types - allows Abrasive mutation to be applicable to Puffer, but not be generated for Structures
Enemy Spawner tracks and manages children of the children as well - fixes boss arenas sometimes being stuck after killing a boss
Siphos drop recently eaten nutrition if they're killed fast enough
Don't clump up enemies when spawning
Correctly dispose of player minions when starting new Epoch
Version 1.0.1a1
Revert to shape matching correctly when detecting NaN deformation values
Add obstacle inside shrimpy's centre so nothing gets moved or spawned in it
Cra'Than second boss waits before attacking
Update Environment Grid over several frames - reduces stuttering
Update pathfinding grid 1 chunk over time as now obstacle spawners spawn more consistently
Obstacle spawners update chunks dynamically over several frames
Do not spawn sizzler arc if distance is lower than 0.1 - fixes arcs flying away
Claw Weapons and Twister Swirls have unlimited overlaps
Fix flower petals in Buginis areas and enable their fade-outs
Polyp damages their target immediately when attaching
Use realtime in breed selection breed chosen animation so the animation isn't affected by time scale
Give spawner manager one frame delay to spawned chunk checking - should allow physics to catch up and have valid raycast queries
Improve Enemy Spawner checking for unspawned chunks - include radius in search so moving spawned enemy is guaranteed to not later overlap the enemy
Sipho Trading Cards and Emoji are now available!
Hello, Gamers! ːsiphoPogː
For all your gamer conversations and cool profile backgrounds Sipho Emoji and Trading Cards are now available!
Impress your friends with your grabbing skillz: ːsiphoPogːːgrabberStartːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberMidːːgrabberEndːːnutritiousEggː
Or make silly faces: ːpoisonBombːːlickItːːpoisonBombː ːskellyHandLːːseaheadːːskellyHandRː
Are all now available in Steam through card collecting and points shop!
Sipho 1.0.0f7 is here with Brazilian Portuguese language support!
Hello Sipho players!
Almost a week has passed since 1.0.0 launch and it was exhilarating! After so long in the Early Access tunnel the release and tons of new players experiencing the game for the first time were the light at the end of the tunnel.
Development isn't over though - we want to "unlock" the intended Sipho experience for everyone. After watching many new Let'splays and collecting players' feedback we noticed that onboarding to the game needs more work. It is something you can develop a blind eye on - the playerbase was experienced, you, as a developer know how things work - so nobody notices the missing first steps as they've already passed them.
One of the things we can immediately fix are certain moments where players can't get up on their feet anymore: Losses at the end of levels sometimes put players in soft-lock state, where there is no more nutrition left and only large enemies. Our solution - spawn some "snacks" so if player has lost any nutrition they will be able to regain before having the courage to dive deeper.
Other things were obvious quality issues - stability, problems with input and polish in general. We will continue to improve new player experiences, controller support and add more polish to the game. As well as new in-game languages.
Sipho is now also available in Brazilian Portuguese language!
We had a good friend to help us and translate to Brazilian Portuguese language. The language can be accessed through Options -> Player Settings menu. New players, who have their Steam client set to available and fully translated language will have it selected automatically. Divirta-se!
Changenotes:
Version 1.0.0f7
Fix Leech and Polyp teleporting their tentacles around
Deep Zooid Layer no longer collides with Ignore Raycast layer - fixes Flail Chain Links connector colliding with Deep Zooids
Fix second Advena zone to no longer spawn food into walls
Peapod distance stiffness when relaxed is a bit higher
Expand player vision under top level decortaions if siphonophore is covered
Optimize Environment Settings shader property upload by using property name hashes
Projectiles that carryover buffs check for null colliders - fixes rare error
Apply tint to Saenus whirlpool sprites
Enemies properly spread out
Spawn snacks when player is below expected progression to help with soft-locks when a level ends but there's no nutrition left
Tweak Piston stats - increase mass to 5 (up from 1) to allow better deformation stability when many heavier zooids connect to it. Increase angular connection stiffness to 0.5 (up from 0.1) to prevent oscillations
When changing constraint values also lerp angular constraints - reduces physics overshoots even more
Fix wrong distance constraint stiffness step amount when undeforming - that caused overshoots and sipho mangling-up
Auto-set languages that have marked as fully translated when first launching the game. Set Brazilian language as fully translated
Add Translators credits
Separate different environment depth layer gradients to ensure that they are selected properly for their depth layer. Fixes rare occurences when certain objets appeared uncollidable when they were
Tweak Buginis boss 1 arena to have smoother outer walls
Fix that UI toggle button didn't toggle off certain parts of UI
Change Frakir minion value range from 200-400 to 150-250 - less broken layouts to fight against
Previous hotfixes contained:
Version 1.0.0f6
Caltrops penetrate things one frame ahead of time which prevents them getting physics reaction forces and bouncing off penetrated objects
Caltrops do not immediately die when penetration expires
Skin Flower has more accurate colliders
Add DPad defaults for growth mode picking zooid category to grow - those were unused and are kind of nice. Always rebindable in Options menu
Add input detection mode to allow overriding automatic input type
Do not unparent objects when they're about to be destroyed as part of scene unloading - just some game-log santiziation
Clamp caltrop pull force after 5 seconds - fixes some crazy scenarios where caltrops no longer collide due to huge forces acting on them
Version 1.0.0f5
Enemies after first boss are bit more chill
Final boss now enrages properly and does a bit more to survive
Reschedule path if Sipho radius changes
Slow down time earlier in transition effects so the game doesn't play while while is about to be chomped on
Fix respawning in Aquarium sometimes setting overshot values to transition and time effects
Make relaxed peapod a bit stiffer in distance constraining
Buginis Guard doesn't aggro immediately when passing by
Greatly reduce number of unintentionally destroyed poolables - a slight performance improvement
Puffer projectiles are not containable in Voider
Fix deep rocks showing up in growth mode incorrectly - various boss arenas had weird black shadows from deep decorations that were close to the surface
Add cursor lock to window option to gameplay options
Append extra zooid info when hovering grown zooid and holding Alt key
Don't destroy on load Time Master
Version 1.0.0f4
Add Full Screen Mode option to Graphics menu - using Fullscreen Exclusive could help improve performance on low-end machines
Reduce overall music volume just a tiny bit
Fix memory leak in deformable jobs
Fix memory leak and improve performance of pathfinding clearance calculations
Fix Grabber erroring out in rare occasions and do not exert firing force if it stayed connected
Version 1.0.0f3
Add translations incomplete disclaimer
Fix polyp not attaching correctly
Tidy up music playing and play it in Aquarium
Upload to Workshop with Public visibility by default
Fix layouts marked in layout Browser as Do Not Spawn were still spawned
Things that do not want to be held are no longer held - fixes Polyp attaching to Zooid unlock consumables
Correctly request for Depth texture rendering when depth blur is on - fixes the game being super blurry if Ambient Occlusion is off, but Depth Effect is on
Sipho 1.0.0 f6 hotfix is now live!
Hello all, We have a small batch of hotfixes from recent feedback. Some have reported controller auto-detection not working, so we added an option to override input detection mode. It can be found in the Options menu. We notice a lot of runs end after the first boss - enemies are noticeably more aggresive there and gang up on the player. As a temporary solution we have tweaked their aggresiveness and range of detection to be lower - making them less likely to gang up on the player. Let's see how this goes. Caltroper is one of the newest Zooids who is quite hard to control. These changes make it a bit more predictable by pre-penetrating objects without obstruction of movement. Old behavior was that they would bounce-off for single frame and penetrate on the next one.
Version 1.0.0f6
Caltrops penetrate things one frame ahead of time which prevents them getting physics reaction forces and bouncing off penetrated objects
Caltrops do not immediately die when penetration expires
Skin Flower has more accurate colliders
Add DPad defaults for growth mode picking zooid category to grow - those were unused and are kind of nice. Always rebindable in Options menu
Add input detection mode to allow overriding automatic input type
Do not unparent objects when they're about to be destroyed as part of scene unloading - just some game-log santiziation
Clamp caltrop pull force after 5 seconds - fixes some crazy scenarios where caltrops no longer collide due to huge forces acting on them
Version 1.0.0f5
Enemies after first boss are bit more chill
Final boss now enrages properly and does a bit more to survive
Reschedule path if Sipho radius changes
Slow down time earlier in transition effects so the game doesn't play while while is about to be chomped on
Fix respawning in Aquarium sometimes setting overshot values to transition and time effects
Make relaxed peapod a bit stiffer in distance constraining
Buginis Guard doesn't aggro immediately when passing by
Greatly reduce number of unintentionally destroyed poolables - a slight performance improvement
Puffer projectiles are not containable in Voider
Fix deep rocks showing up in growth mode incorrectly - various boss arenas had weird black shadows from deep decorations that were close to the surface
Add cursor lock to window option to gameplay options
Append extra zooid info when hovering grown zooid and holding Alt key
Don't destroy on load Time Master
Sipho 1.0.0f4 hotfix
Hello Sipho players!
A small patch build has been uploaded which addresses several issues. There were some memory leaks in new and improved pathfinding code. Aquariums were lacking music and they won't anymore! We hope you are enjoying Sipho and more improvements will be coming!
Version 1.0.0f4
Add Full Screen Mode option to Graphics menu - using Fullscreen Exclusive could help improve performance on low-end machines
Reduce overall music volume just a tiny bit
Fix memory leak in deformable jobs
Fix memory leak and improve performance of pathfinding clearance calculations
Fix Grabber erroring out in rare occasions and do not exert firing force if it stayed connected
Version 1.0.0f3
Add translations incomplete disclaimer
Fix polyp not attaching correctly
Tidy up music playing and play it in Aquarium
Upload to Workshop with Public visibility by default
Fix layouts marked in layout Browser as Do Not Spawn were still spawned
Things that do not want to be held are no longer held - fixes Polyp attaching to Zooid unlock consumables
Correctly request for Depth texture rendering when depth blur is on - fixes the game being super blurry if Ambient Occlusion is off, but Depth Effect is on
Sipho 1.0.0 is now available!
Dear Sipho players,
Sipho is out of Early Access with all its glory! New content awaits you!
A new Mushroom-inspired Breed!
Wild new parts - Zooids!
Improved Enemy AI
Steam Workshop support for creations - Layouts
New soundtrack
Polished boss fights
Visual and other various improvements - just can't name all of them here!
In coming days we are going to be releasing Steam community content and gradually releasing new languages. We are also monitor game's balance - expect more polish in that area!
As always - we invite you to join our community:
Changelog
Whole changelog is just too big for this post, so we put all changes in a single pastebin
Thank you for being with us for almost 6 years - we can't you all. Here's to a great future with Sipho!
Sipho 1.0 will come out of Early Access this September!
We are very happy to announce that Sipho will be coming out of Early Access this September of 2023!
The upcoming Sipho 1.0 will have:
A new Mushroom-inspired Breed!
Wild new parts - Zooids!
Improved Enemy AI
Steam Workshop support for creations - Layouts
New soundtrack
Game translations to different languages
Visual and other various improvements - just can't name all of them here!
We have prepared a little teaser trailer to get you all hyped: What new things can you spot in the Trailer?
As Sipho comes out of Early Access its price will be increased to $18 USD or your regional equivalent upon launch. If you haven't tried Sipho yet - now is the last chance to get it for Early Access price.
The Time In Early Access
Sipho has come a long way since it entered Early Access. As we developed the game publicly, we tried to listen to player feedback and guide the game towards common vision. Creation contests have proven to be immensely valuable and uniting our whole community. Fostering such creativity in the game and outside of it has been our goal from the beginning. In the end, Sipho has become bigger and better than we expected it to be at the start. From what would have been made in 1 year of Early Access, we now have almost 5 years of love and labour put in. Thank you for your support and here's hope to another 5 years!
Thank you for following us for so long!
Poll: Which Zooids need improvements?
Hello Siphonophorians!
We're just inches away from Sipho 1.0 and there is still some time to improve our beloved Zooids. It would be very interesting to hear which Zooids, in your opinion, need the most work - so I've created a poll. Let me know which Zooids are the most underwhelming by moving them to the top/giving them the most points in the poll.
If you have additional comments or would like to participate in discussions - we have a lively discussion and some sneak-peaks into development of Sipho on our Discord or leave a comment under this announcement.
Cheers and keep on diving deeper, Dominas
Sipho 0.9.5f2 Hotfix: Rebounce
A quick hotfix for players which experience only Head zooids spawning instead of fully grown enemies. This was caused by game not handling several invalid custom Layout cases which should be resolved now. All invalid layouts are moved to /Layouts/Invalid.
Version 0.9.5f2
More robust Layout importing
Fix old Cra'Than obstacles being referenced by several sprite atlases
Sipho 0.9.5 - Bounce Back
Hello Sipho society, we have an update!
Bounce Mutation
Ever since the Mutation Creation Contest I've had this urge to implement a Bouncy Mutation. Many shoot-em-up games have this because bounciness is chaos and chaos is fun. You can land trick shots over corners, get surprised by enemy fire that bounces off or even create some Rube Goldberg machines. These are the ultimate goal of Sipho - a collection of mechanics that complement each other and allow creating complex systems for you to have fun with and beat the game.
A new Bounce Stat was added and a Mutation to go along with it
Thus the Bounce Stat has been added - as of now, only used by Projectile weapons - Flak, Sniper, Soul Eater and Sprayer. In the future other Zooids might support Bounce stat too, however, it can be trickier to balance as bounce can sometimes be non-beneficial. One of benefits of having some Bounce is to guarantee your shots in tight areas. Now what do I use to reach that food?
For Projectiles Bounce works by keeping an internal counter of "remaining bounces". When a projectile hits a solid, non damageable object it checks if it has bounces left and bounces off if it does. If it doesn't - it dies as usual. This works with Obstacles and even with Spikes and Flails - projectiles can bounce off them!
Aquarium Obstacle Menu Overhaul
One of the silent and huge updates we had some time ago was updating Aquarium content. This was motivated by the need to tidy-up obstacle names for future game translations and update the old content in general. As a result we now have a pretty nifty spawnable object categorization with previews:
Notice the pleasing column/row ratio 😩👌
It is now also possible to change at which depth objects are spawned - on, below or above playable surfaces. In future, Decorations and Obstacles should become one category - as spawning Obstacles at non-collidable layers makes them Decorations and some Decorations can be interesting to collide with or even have some gameplay function.
Tooling, like changing depth or moving already spawned obstacles is also something I keep in mind.
Shady Business
One of graphical improvements that I really wanted to do for a long time were shadows. Fancy name for a simple thing - blurry black outlines that get thicker if an object covers another object from higher distance.
Sipho action happens in deep waters and I really want to emphasize the atmosphere of this depth. While 2D by definition does not have depth we can do some tricks. One of which is parallax to add depth to lower layers - the deeper things are, the less they "move" when camera moves. This trick only works for deeper than playable layer. Playable layer can't have parallax as it would creation confusion around collisions. Higher layer in theory could have parallax, but it felt too distracting. So to add some depth emphasis on all layers at once I added Ambient Occlusion effect. It can be tweaked in Graphics Options for your liking!
There is some good stuff hidden in the patch notes - movement improvements, performance optimisations for late game, secret features.
Version 0.9.5f1
Add Tier 3 Projectile weapon bounce mutation
Use Factions to determine what Mutations UI represents
Remove separate debuff drag logic and use stat-baed logic for Muck - fixes spazzing out
Modify third Buginis Boss arena walls to have less sharp corners that Siphos can get stuck on
Add Bounce stat, icons, description
Skill use also gets queried in Fixed Update - fixes skipping input for fast skills when framerate is low
Cache Shell Grower results which greatly improves performance for Siphos with large amount of far-reaching Chitins
Add GetAllNeighborZooids variant with HashSet which has optimized search for Contains()
Destructible objects can be indestructible
Version 0.9.4f8
Experimental symmetrical building by holding Alt button
Handle single zooid sipho velocities better when trying to move
Update angular velocity after zooid rotations were updated - fixes incorrect velocities at frame-after-frame level
Add ZooidDeep layer and use it for Deep zooid. Deep is no longer affected by Pushers and Twisters. Deep collides with large obstacles
Mines no longer explode on contact with Consumables
Version 0.9.4f7
Puffer spike thicker
Fix Auto Grow messing things up
Detached/Reattached zooids can get callback
Tweak Tank movement to work with new movement logic
Enable Ambient Occlusion in Postprocessing Profiles
Correct offset falloff and handle inverse orientation
Better constraint tester
Add perpendicular function
Use interpolated Zooid transform positions instead of physics positions when positioning Zooid Growth buttons and Growth Point indicators - fixes them being offset when Sipho is edited in high motion
Fix some nested particle effects getting incorrectly scaled
Support more debug vectors
Extract Rotation constraint calculation method for easier debugging
Apparently I could save one normalization in rotation constraint - more Soft Body Physics performance!
Soften up sentence for The Condemned One and allow it to be included in builds
Apply position and rotation offsets after constraints are calculated - fixes symmetrical builds with contracting muscle zooids spinning out of control
