https://store.steampowered.com/app/1932260/No_Creeps_Were_Harmed_TD/ Employ lethal turrets, traps, and gadgets to defend against an onslaught of evolving creeps! Step into a twisted, hyper 3D, mind bending realm. Upgrade and adapt your defenses. Become a master maze crafter. Collect bizarre artifacts. Rush creeps for lucrative rewards, and succumb to greed!
TURRETS FOR EVERY OCCASION
Unlock, construct, modify and upgrade a variety of specialized turrets and structures. Rain down destruction from afar with Mortars and Sniper Turrets. Wall-up the battlefield into a meat grinding maze. Splatter creeps into paste with Pounders and Shotgun Turrets. Go on the defensive with Boosters and Hexers to slow creeps to a crawl. Fry your enemies with Lasers, Flame Turbines, and more!
CREEPS TO RUIN EVERY OCCASION
Forget everything you know about tower defense. Here, creeps are forged to mess with your preconceptions. Build long hallways? Porters will teleport across them instantly, right past your beautiful turrets! Build nice choke points? Fusers will combine into super creeps of overwhelming power! Encounter creeps with cloaking devices, adaptive armor, bubble shields, and creeps that make more creeps! Watch Suicide Boomers and Brutes trash your turrets, and reduce your fortress to ruin.
GO BALLISTIC!
Every bullet, bomb, beam, and blaster is fully simulated in the third dimension! Turrets need line-of-sight to fire, so down in front! Mortars carelessly lob shells across huge distances. Shotgun turrets splatter bullets everywhere, sometimes hitting the intended target. Sniper turrets shamelessly camp from afar, racking up head-shots. Black Hole Bombs do … what black holes do.
Massive update released for the Clanfolk Demo!
Clanfolk Demo Upgrade Released
Hi everyone, I just wanted to let the SPAZ fans know about some developments with MinMax's next game, Clanfolk.
I am thrilled to finally update the Clanfolk Demo with all the new content that I have been working on. I want to give special thanks to the Discord community for tirelessly testing the beta versions over the last few months and providing great suggestions.
Please consider stopping by. We have a very friendly community, and I am on there daily taking notes :) https://discord.com/invite/U6yztRSTxX
New World Building Controls
When starting a New Map, players can now choose to spend points to change the amount of Mountains, Lakes, Forests, Grassland, and Wildlife on the generated map.
Points need to be balanced, so highly increasing one slider, will mean a tough choice on what other ones to decrease.
Custom Clan Builder
After the map has been generated, you are now able to set up a family tree for your Clan to define the relationships between Clan members.
The Clan builder provides pre-built scenario family trees as well as a custom option where you can build up your Clan from a single baby, progressing time until they are a senior.
When building your Clan, you have initially have 2000 coin. This can be spent on Clan members (250 per member), on starting supplies, or be saved for later trading.
Each Clan member will have their own set of Quirks and Skills that develop as time passes in the Clan Builder.
Like/Dislike/Skill Affinity rework. Each person will like one job, dislike another, and be good at a job. This will let you get a sense for their usefulness at a glance within the Clan builder.
Character Re-Roll added for that one lazy/wrong skilled Clan Member (For a progressively increasing coin cost)
Quirks
Clanfolk now develop Quirks over time.
Quirks are situational behavior modifiers. For example, many children are afraid of the dark. This would mean that their rooms should be lit for better sleep.
Quirks can also be passive, for example having a high metabolism. The Clanfolk eats more but also moves and works faster.
The quirk system is currently in a proof of concept phase with many more to come.
New Character Art
New Human art by a professional artist with many component variants to make each Clan member look unique!
Added a new character art system is highly mod friendly
Characters now are made of 15 layers Bodies: Torsos, Heads, Hair, Eyes, Eyebrows, Beards, Mouths Clothes: Hats, Hoods, Shirts, Jackets, Pants, Cloaks, Underwear, Plaid
New Creature Art
All Creature art has also been replaced to keep a consistent look.
New creature art is historically consistent with 1300's Scotland creatures.
The Coo has also been added. (Highland Cattle)
New Music
Two new songs from Michael Pflug our composer from SPAZ 2/Golftopia.
A flute song played by the Clanfolk in the mornings and evenings for fun To be expanded to even more instruments to get a whole band going.
Contextual World Click
You can now click on any tile in the world and get a list of contextual options for it. So click on grass, get the harvest option. No more digging in the jobs menu to find what you need.
Meet the Neighbors
Surrounding Clans from different Biomes have been added!
Neighbor Clans will send Workers, Traders, and Visitors.
Workers: Can be hired for a daily coin wage May end up joining the Clan if treated well enough.
Visitors: Will come seeking a warm meal and a bed for the night Higher satisfaction will lead to improved relations with their Clan
Traders: Will bring Trade items from their Biome with the quantity and rarity based on relations with your Clan.
Desire Paths
The Desire Path system allows Clanfolk to slowly break paths in the grass over time as they move through an area.
These paths become good hints on where to build future roads.
As paths become more established, tall grass will be damaged, but the Clanfolk's movement speed will increase.
This increased movement speed will also make the path more desirable to Clanfolk and well established paths will slowly emerge.
New Clothing Sets Added
All Clothing has been added to the demo! Sack Cloth, Hide, Leather, Wool, Linen variants.
Since it is Summer, only the linen clothing will be desirable for wearing, but since the Demo saves will work in the full game, having warm clothing ready to go for Fall and Winter is a smart move.
Now that this demo update is live, my main focus is getting everything ready for Clanfolk's Early Access launch (Likely mid-May, but not officially)
Marketing is also going to get into full swing now, and if you can tell you friends about Clanfolk and get them to try the demo, that would be a huge help. Every Wishlist really counts and helps with visibility.
I will be posting to Steam more often, but you can always find me on Discord too. I am very open to ideas on how to improve Clanfolk further and interacting with players on Discord each day has been inspiring.
p.s. Here is the official wiki. It is just starting out now, but it will grow. https://clanfolk.fandom.com/wiki/Clanfolk_Wiki
Here is a cute piggy (Grice) for those who made it this far :)
A first look at Clanfolk
Hello Everyone!,
I am very happy to announce Clanfolk!
Clanfolk has been a four year passion project, and now it is about time to show it.
A little history,
Clanfolk was developed alongside Golftopia, its sibling project. After SPAZ and SPAZ2, we needed a break from space combat for a little while and Narlak and I decided to each try a solo side project. Initially, these projects were supposed to only take 14 months, but here we are 4 years later, oops.
When Clanfolk started development, I had been making games for 16 years and had never once touched art or sound or shaders in a game, ever. So I decided that was something I wanted to try. Over time, I think my art has improved, yeah it is coder art, but I like it :)
I also wanted to make a game where I could just escape for a while and really care about the inhabitants. Rimworld is an incredibly well made game that came closest to the feel of non throwaway people (I don't want to call them pawns because that is not how I see them)
So over time Clanfolk kind of became this merging of Rimworld, Banished and the Sims. It is a home away from home for me. Throughout development, I have not focused on combat at all, instead I went the route of trying to simulate the world as completely as possible while researching/implementing historical survival methods.
It turns out that just surviving the elements and preparing for winter is quite the challenge. I also like that you have the time to get to know your Clanfolk while the seasons are more forgiving. Then when they freeze or starve, it is extra horrible :)
Now that the world and life sim has formed a very robust foundation, I am beginning to think on external events. I recently added neighbor clans with hired workers, inn visitors, and traders. These clans will of course bring conflict with them, but it is not a focus yet. Right now it is all about day to day life on the homestead.
I also want to delve into more natural based events like wandering bears, or crop blight, rat infestations, all real world problems that Clanfolk would face.
I just really enjoy working on this game, but yeah 4 years is a long time to not show anything, so here it is.
I am very happy to answer questions in the discussion forum as well! https://steamcommunity.com/app/1700870/discussions/
Andrew Hume (Blorf)
p.s. We will be participating in Next Fest, and there will be a Demo (Oct 1 2021)
Hi everyone. A lot of you have been pretty anxious to hear what we’re working on these days. It's finally time for MinMax to announce our new game! GolfTopia is a retro-futuristic golf management sim, tower defense, pinball hybrid from the makers of Space Pirates And Zombies 1 and 2.
If you’re interested in hearing the story about how we got from space pirates to a futuristic golf course, keep reading …
After SPAZ 2 we both felt pretty burnt out on space operas, having worked on SPAZ 1 and 2 for over 8 years combined. We both knew we didn’t want to jump into another SPAZ right away. We wanted to do something different, and not just become a single game studio. For a few months we rolled around several weird ideas, but nothing seemed to stick long term. We’re both pretty different gamers, which is an asset during development, but can be pretty frustrating when coming up with a seed idea. We both had wildly different ideas we wanted to pursue.
So … we decided instead of making another game … we would make two. We both would own the full development process for the game we wanted to make, letting us fully dive into these as projects of passion. For me, that game is GolfTopia. For Blorf, that game is something you will all get an opportunity to see at a later date. Both games will be “MinMax” games, so this definitely isn’t a breakup letter. We’re still a rock-solid team now more than ever. We still meet nearly every week, help each other, play games, and chat it up. It’s been a crazy learning experience for both of us, but we’re having a lot of fun too!
GolfTopia is something I’ve been wanting to make for a decade now, being a huge fan of the criminally underrated “SimGolf”. The original idea for GolfTopia wasn’t to take place in the future. It was more grounded in modern day, and the invading weeds were modeled after Kudzu. Things really started to shift after I built a simple decorative windmill. I couldn’t help but make it actually functional, blowing airborne balls around the course. Well, that was it! Now I needed to add bumpers, teleporters, and all sorts of crazy fun things. There goes my art style. I started reworking the assets I already had, but also designed a bunch of new features around the theme change, like weed killing laser turrets and the Futurama-Like transport tubes. I just had too many things I wanted to add to the game, and a futuristic art style freed me up to do all of those things.
So yes, we’re two developers making two games at the same time (we’re crazy). Neither game is anything like SPAZ, and both games are extremely different from one another. That said, some of you know us pretty well and we think some of you may enjoy these new games, having enjoyed SPAZ. We both like challenging games with deep strategy and GolfTopia is no different in that regard. Being just the two of us, word of mouth is pretty important to us. If you know someone that might enjoy GolfTopia, please spread the word and don’t forget to add GolfTopia to your wishlist.
Thanks for reading 😊
V1.1 The Proving Grounds!
Hi Everyone,
Here's some new stuff we hope you will like! :)
Proving Grounds: If you have ever wanted to see how your ship would do against the local Arena ship, wish no longer because you can now have a simulated battle vs arena ships to test out your designs with no risk to life and limb.
New Map! (Hexor) This new 110 territory map is hex based. It is a much more traditional strategic map but it turns out to be quite fun to play as well! It is only available in Sandbox Mode.
Engine Boost Changes: We are experimenting with a new boost system that requires 20% boost fuel to start boosting. This is in response to user input that players were holding the boost button down indefinitely in battle because they were overwhelmed or just forgot. This lead to the boost never recharging.
Now what will happen is once the boost pool is empty, it will instantly start filling, but boost cannot re-engage until it is 20% full (only takes a couple of seconds) So if you are holding the boost key too long now, you will get repeated boosts as the pool fills to 20% then drains then fills etc... 20% is about the required boost to actually get the ship moving and it doesn't take too long to fill.
Some had suggested just to let the boost pool totally fill once drained even if the key was pressed, but not to start a new boost until the boost button was released and pressed again. We experimented with this as well, but it felt like a bug to have a full boost bar and no boost happening.
This change is experimental. Give it a few days and see how it feels. Personally we like it, but we want to hear your thoughts as well.
Here is the complete list of changes/fixes/additions.
Relations hit added with a transport owner when it is destroyed.
Relations hit added with faction leader when capital transport destroyed.
Fix for rare case where player is second last in faction and the faction leader gets zombified thus forcing the player into role as faction leader and starting own faction.
Fixed case where you could be moving while the assign starbase menu was active, causing potential weirdness.
Fixed case where strike craft needs 1 blueprint to level up to level 6, but 2 are currently spawned in the level and picking up the second blueprint erroneously says the strike craft is now level 7
Fixed zombified faction member phone call creating non exitable menu after zombie faction destroyed.
Fixed issue where a player base couldn't be built if the zombie war meter filled while the player was a member of another faction.
Added sort captains by distance on the faction info pane. Makes easier to find joiners and get to them quicker when you run a faction.
Fixed case where battlewagon would fire missiles at targets out of range when another viable target was in range, but the lock was still on the out of range target.
Changed: New engine boost mechanic where if you hold down boost it will now regen up to 20% before starting to boost again. Initiating boost now requires 20% boost juice, but if you hold the boost button all the time, it will now do something each time the boost recharges to 20% instead of just staying drained until you release the boost button.
Added Proving Grounds to all Arenas. This lets you test our your own mothership build vs the Arena ship you would usually pilot in a simulation.
Fixed outdated hangar tutorial image from before the big v0.8 upgrade to the new strike craft system.
The weapon group HUD now has text to show what the icons mean, so people can find battle wagon mode more easily if they missed it in the tutorial.
Text and translation updates
Reworked the objective coloring system so that green objectives are things to do, and grey ones are completed so it is consistent throughout the flow.
Added new 110 territory hex based map called Hexor. Can be found in the sandbox options.
The infection balls the zombies shoot now have warning effects on them to show bio hazard.
Fixed the broken alpha mask on the zoom scope.
The being chased line on the map is now more scary so it is harder to ignore.
In VR mode, the cursors now lock to the slide bar they are sliding so you don't need to be a surgeon to use them.
Fixed VR restore defaults button not saving settings.
Improved method for adjusting the VR menu position with motion controls.
Thanks for playing!
Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)
Simplified/Traditional Chinese Added!
Hi All,
Just a quick note, Traditional and Simplified Chinese are now active language options as of v1.001.
There are no other changes in this new version aside from the addition of the two new languages.
We are not able to read either of these new languages, so there may be a few translation issues at first, but please let us know if you find any, and we will collect them and have them fixed promptly.
We are currently taking some personal time until January. We have finished up with the launch PR campaign and now have a bit of time to relax over the holidays and get our heads back on straight.
Happy Holidays everyone!
Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)
V1.0 It's Ready!
Hi All,
Release day has finally arrived!
Early Access has been a great learning experience for us and we are so thankful for all of you who came along with us for the ride, sharing your ideas and support.
SPAZ 2 has been a long haul. 18 months in Early Access, and 18 months as Coming Soon prior to that. So 3 years now we have been on the Steam forums daily taking input on the game, sharing progress, and leaning on you all for support. We feel like we received a massive education in that time. All together SPAZ 2 was in development for 62 months. 62 crazy months.
Going forward, we plan to continue to support SPAZ 2. In the short term, we have a Chinese translation almost ready as well as tools to allow players to localize SPAZ 2 themselves into their language of choice. We also want to create a system to make the sandbox tuning files conveniently sharable on workshop.
Beyond that, we are hoping the community continues to grow and shares their ideas so we can continue to tune and tweak.
So for the Early Access crew, thank you for letting us get to know you and for sharing your ideas. You helped keep us going. It was hard sometimes, but we always had you counting on us and believing in us. We couldn't have done this alone.
For new players, thank you for joining us! We gave it our all with SPAZ 2. We worked harder than we ever thought we could and in the end we think we did it, by some miracle :)
For those on the fence. We have added a robust demo that works on flat screen and VR. Give it a try. Your saves will carry over to the full game, and there are the first couple of hours of gameplay in there.
Thank you all!
Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)
Coming November 7th!
Hi Everyone,
We just wanted to give you all a heads up that we will be leaving Early Access on November 7, 2017.
Code lockdown has gone really well and the buglists for 1.0 are clear, so it is time to give SPAZ 2 its final 2 weeks in the oven before release.
The release should simply be us changing the version number to 1.0 on Novermber 7th, assuming no more critical issues arise. Thanks for your patience with the lockdown. We feel it is the best practice for a clean release.
We want to thank everyone who has been there with us over the last 17 months of Early Access. It has been great sharing ideas each day and SPAZ 2 is so much better for it. We really appreciate you all!
Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)
V0.9.903 The Almost There Update!
Hi All,
We have spent the last month continuing our preparations for the 1.0 release. The month was all about removing those last few hard to find bugs and doing a bit of deeper optimization that was not possible while the codebase was in flux.
We have also begun to work on the Mac and Linux builds in the hopes that they will be ready before for the Windows 1.0 release.
So lets delve into what's been going on....
Bug Fixes/Changes:
Some of these last bugs have been on our list for over a year, but we finally got the time to fix them. It feels great to clear them off the list.
Fixed hang when retreating from battle after destroying a starbase.
Fixed case where is was possible for loading an autosave to force you into a battle instead of being on the starmap.
Fixed rare case where bandit's demand surrender menu would appear at the start of battles.
Removed Scrap and Loose Scrap text from the bandit hive attack menu since it was just confusing. Look at the values of the Rez,Goons,Scrap to see what the raid potential is. Bigger is better.
Fixed scavenge node coloring updating when the owner is changed.
Fixed scavenge nodes losing player ownership when a new node lands on top of it.
Added code to detect and skip loading of corrupted settings/save files.
Fixed case where XP rewards often returned 50 when late game when the player was much much higher threat than other enemies. Now XP rewards will continue to scale down appropriately even once the player is uber strong.
Added Custom Order Parts Max Stars to the Sandbox options. Allows setting how good the custom order parts can be. Can also turn off custom order parts entirely with the slider.
Motherships higher prioritize fighting other motherships in battle, about twice as much as before.
Starbases much higher prioritize targeting other motherships in battle, about 3x as much as before. This is to prevent them wasting missiles and bombs on strike craft. Their local beam defenses will still target any strike craft that stray too close.
Starbases are now priority targets in combat as well for motherships. Targeting weighting 2x higher than before.
Added nice fade out to loading savegames, instead of a frozen screen.
Fixed Kill Captain side objective to only count captains, not bandits or transports.
Fixed special hot swap case when switching medium sized parts left to right sometimes the swap would fail.
B button can now back out of the Tactics Panel in controller mode.
If in escape pod on the starmap, territories are now discovered as you travel.
Spelling fixed across all languages
Bloom now has 4 intensity settings
Optimizations:
These optimizations may not seem like much, 8% here 4% there, but for lower end machines these will be pretty substantial. Whenever the game starts running too slowly, the physics needs to update multiple times per frame, making performance worse and worse. This train wreck feeds on itself when it happens. So what we have essentially done is made the train wreck a LOT less likely for people both in battle and on the starmap.
Major starmap optimization, prevents rolling movement lag in large galaxy. Smooths out the map a lot. This will be a huge improvement on slower machines in big galaxies.
Weapon mounts now cache their battle wagon targeting for 100ms instead of constantly re-thinking. This bought back about 8% cpu in battles.
Weapons now don't rethink targeting while they are reloading, saves about 4% cpu in battles.
Major fighter optimization at lower frame rates. When train wrecks happened, fighters were particularly impacted... Not anymore.
VR Stuff:
VR is really stable now and pretty much final. Reviews indicate that the vast majority of people are really enjoying SPAZ 2 in 3D, and they are surprised that a VR game can work so well in 3rd person. So were we :)
Now the challenge will be to get VR players to know we exist.
In VR mode, the physics update was automatically being set super high by the SteamVR Vive plugin. This caused major slowdown in physics intensive battles. Now the VR updates at the same rate as the flat screen/Rift so big battles are nice and smooth. This will be a HUGE performance improvement on the Vive.
Added display menu for VR to size the output window.
Mac and Linux Build Progress Update:
The Mac version is in a 95% working state, including the Xbox controller functionality. We are using six year old Mac Books to test it (the same ones we used to test SPAZ 1), and the game still runs quite well. Expect to see an experimental version available soon.
The Linux build has been a bit of a challenge so far, mostly because of our inexperience working with the platform. This doesn't mean the Linux build is going poorly, but it's a slow process while we learn something new to us. Expect to hear an update on this front soon.
Going Forward:
So as of September 1, our two year project has hit year number five. We still cringe at being on the most anticipated titles of 2014 list... In the end though, what we ended up with was well worth the extra time, and we love how the game evolved during Early Access.
Our bugs lists are now pretty much empty for the windows build. We still have a set of smaller tasks that are not new feature related that we would like to complete such as adding more achievements, and adding new arena ships to showcase the new weapons added months ago in the super strike craft update. This all all icing on the cake stuff though. For all intents and purposes the windows build is ready.
Code is in hard lockdown now in prep for 1.0 and also to help with the Mac and Linux porting, the Early Access goals are complete, and the bug lists are empty. It feels good... really good!
We are also starting to look at ways of getting exposure for the 1.0 release. This will involve talking to PR agencies, contacting Let's Players, somehow advertising etc. This will take a bit of time, but really is the last step before we release. We need to build a bit of buzz for release and any help with that would be appreciated! As with SPAZ 1, please tell your friends.
Thanks very much for your continued support!
Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)
V0.9.9 Voice Acting
Hi All,
This version was all about completing the final deliverables for the 1.0 release. We are so close now. We have had a ton of great input over the last 14 months in Early Access, and we really appreciate you taking this journey with us!
Major additions:
Professional Voice Acting.
Localization to French, German, and Russian.
VR motion controller support for VIVE and OCULUS
Here we go.
Professional Voice Acting:
Hiring professional voice talent was new to us, but in the end we think that we found the perfect voices for each character. In fact, originally we were not going to professionally voice Mac, Skid or the Computer but in the end the quality of the main cast's voice acting was so high that we decided to voice everything because the difference between the professional voice acting and the text to speech was just too glaring.
We now have over 2 HOURS of spoken dialogue in the game between Elsa, Carl, Jamison, Mac, Skid and Janeframe (the Computer) It was surprising how much voice work is actually in the game, over 18000 words.
We originally tried to have the voice work done locally, but it was too short notice for the local studios, so we decided to try to to do it ourselves. We put together detailed character packages and posted on a couple big voice acting sites (Voice123 and CastingCallClub) and what do you know, we got over 300 auditions over the course of a week. We narrowed and narrowed and finally both Richard and I independently came to the exact same picks for the voices (so no arguing there, phew)
After that we interviewed each actor over Skype and answered questions, we finally had a group table read using a 5 way Skype call. It was really incredible to hear the voices of our characters come alive after 8 years of developing them.
Once the table read was done, recording started individually by each voice actor, and they delivered audio files weekly for about a month. And now we have it all compiled together and balanced and in game, ready for you to hear. We hope you love the voices as much as we do.
Note: The old text to speech voices are still in there and are individually selectable via the sound menu for nostalgia sake.
Localization to French, German, and Russian:
This version was also about getting the localization system ready for public consumption. We were contacted by some fans of SPAZ 2 and decided to Localize French, German, and Russian. French and German because they are fairly large sections of our European player base, and Russian was picked because of its large player base and for having an entirely different alphabet from Germanic languages.
Having fans translate the game was a great choice we think. They really understood the feel of the SPAZ universe and sometimes even suggested inside jokes from their own languages to replace our own. All in all it was a great experience and the translators were super dedicated. They translated over 30,000 words type dedicated.
There may be some translation issues or missed spots so please report any mistakes or omissions. Its a lot of words, and things will have been missed/mislabeled. The translators will want to fix them and we want them fixed! :)
Once the localization has settled, we will be releasing custom localization XML files. This will allow player localization to any language. The process we went through with the translators should have knocked off most of the translation rough edges. Long term, we would like to hook up player translations to Steam Workshop, though that probably wouldn't be before 1.0.
For official translations we are going to see how the current translations do sales wise before branching out further. Managing an official translation takes considerable time and a non trivial amount of funds. So for example if the translated versions suddenly explode in sales, it makes doing other languages more attractive. This is all new to us, so we need to see. In any case we will support custom translation by players, so if there is an interest in a particular language, a translation will always be possible.
VR motion controller support:
As a final step to our VR support, we have added motion controls to SPAZ 2 VR. Richard has prepared a video linked here to explain it a bit. Even if you don't have VR, you may be able to get a bit of a sense of how SPAZ 2 feels in VR.
https://youtu.be/r8b5cgoaL9M
One motion controller is for aiming and ship functions like boosting shields, reloading, and camera controls. The other controller is for movement, switching weapons, and switching ships. It was quite a challenge to get all the SPAZ 2 functions on the few controller buttons, but we managed it by using the grip button as a sort of “shift key.”
Gameplay wise, shooting is definitely my favorite on the motion controls. Lazing targets is just cool. Flight wise there are three modes. Controller relative (point where you want the ship to go), Helmet relative (forward means go toward where you are looking), or Ship relative (pressing left turns you left) Find a mode that is most comfortable to you. Note: VR also allows you to use a regular XInput style controller instead of the motion controls. This behaves the same as on the flat screen.
This version will bring our VR support to completion aside from bugs. Please please give it a try if you can and let us know if you have problems (especially with the motion controls)
Additional Fixes/Changes:
Fixed issue where sometimes the camera could get caught flickering when toggle camera was selected right before pause.
Made AI captains attack Bandit Hives longer so they try to destroy them more vs just raiding them for supplies.
Fixed case where captains would raid bandit hives with bounties instead of trying to destroy them.
Made local governors more likely to clear bandit hives from their territory.
AI captains more likely to complete Starbase building tasks where they have to pay a portion of the cost themselves.
Made the blocked port checker a little more forgiving to allow fitting parts in spots that look like they should allow parts to fit.
Fixed bug where sniper cannons and mass drivers would cause a hitch in the enemy ship's movement when they hit.
Fixed exploit where you could disband a starbase you own to get salavge access to the store inventory which you do not actually own.
Fixed Starbases not dropping their Stockpile contents when disbanded.
Fixed mouse over resource values disagreeing with Starmap values (Ceil/Round Conflict)
Fixed Join faction button round off error, reporting relations too low when it is possible to join.
Fixed issue where bombs on strike craft would impact the player ship when starting combat.
Added Starmap Explored button to the Sandbox level setup options. This makes the starmap fully explored on start.
Accessing Cheat menu easier for a variety of keyboards: (Left Alt or Right Alt or AltGr) + (F7 or 0)
Starbase bounties are now checked vs the bounty taker's relation with the owner. So friends will no longer attack your bases.
Bounty takers will now take into consideration their relations with the faction leader before taking on a bounty to destroy a starbase (So player friends won't attack the bases in the Player faction, even if the player does not own that base)
Fixed issue where you could contextual target parts in the inventory level, causing Battle Wagon to attack them.
Fixed issue where you could lock onto an ally outside of battlewagon mode, then switch to battlewagon mode and your ship would automatically fire at your ally.
Fixed fighter docking issues on high speed motherships where they couldn't catch up.
Increased Rez drop from zombie Starbases from a flat 200 to 400-1000 based on the size of the base.
Fixed case where you could mark a part for hot swapping in the inventory level then attach it to your ship using the tractor instead, leaving the part in a weird state.
Starbase threat level now properly updates when you level up.
Starbase threat updates when transferred to a new owner to reflect their tech level
Fixed knocked off enemy parts attached to player ship not consuming any capacitor power. In fact, it was stealing the power from the old ship.
When the player rams a ship, the ship being rammed now takes it as a hostile act. Especially so if they are an ally and there are not hostile ships left in the region. Allies now react to being rammed to death for free parts after battles conclude.
Fixed case where after player lost a battle and player continued instead of loading that the winning ships did not recover their strike craft and their health was not updated to the proper post battle health.
Taught Motherships not to avoid Strike Craft and since they will rarely collide due to being at different Y heights. (Also taught strike craft not to avoid motherships)
New AI flight system that attempts to de-clump the ships and keep ships at optimal range with each other. Also smooths out their decision making so they stick with ideas longer and don't criss cross each other so much while re evaluating.
New weapon analyzer that weights damage potential of all equipped weapons and decides the best combat range based on that.
AI ships better at deciding when to boost engines.
When clicking “Fight” on a station, you need to click the button a second time within 3 seconds to prevent accidental fights.
On Easy and Normal difficulties the max stars for AI strike craft are 4 for larges, and 5 for mediums and smalls. Hard and Insane unchanged.
Fix for case where ship parts could not reattach sometimes when they were knocked by enemy captains.
Fixed issue where zombie strike craft spawned from eggs were much higher in Y than regular strike craft.
Going Forward:
With the addition of voice acting, localization, and the completion of VR, our Early Access goals are now complete. We still have a bit of tuning and bug fixing to do, but the codebase is mostly on lockdown now in preparation for 1.0. Even seemingly simple changes sometimes cause nasty bugs, so we have to let the build settle before release.
Once 1.0 releases, we will be spending time on a Mac and Linux port right away. Then we plan to re-open the code base in response to the new player input that “hopefully” floods in.
It has been a really long road for SPAZ 2 (5 years as of September 1) but we are thrilled with the results and the support you all have given us!
