This is our first ever MAJOR update. I'm calling it major because it adds an entire new gameplay system to the demo... Item Crafting!
After the fleet arrives at Novus Prime you'll now be tasked with finding and rescuing Engineer Relios. Once done he'll join the fleet flying the Assembler, a vessel that can be used to customize equipment.
Players returning to old saves will find the Assembler has already joined the fleet!
Item Crafting
There are now 3 ways you can customize equipment at the Assembler. They all involve a credit cost and they all involve destroying another item.
Increase Level / Rarity
You can now increase the level and rarity of equipment by destroying other items you don't wish to use. This means if you find a weapon you like you can keep it with you for as long as you want by continually making it better as you level-up.
Replace Modifier
You can destroy an item and take 1 of it's modifiers on to another piece of equipment. You'll still need to go out hunting for the modifiers you want but once you find them you can craft your perfect weapons to match your play-style.
Item Storage
You can also store additional equipment in the Assembler. This new storage includes 2 tabs once for local storage for the player you're currently playing and a new shared storage that will allow you to transfer items you don't want on to other player saves!
There are obviously a host of other changes all detailed below. Including a hugely requested feature (requested by me every time I'm forced to make a new save) the Skip Intro Cutscene button!
There will likely be some hotfixes and minor updates in the coming days, even though I've done 4 updates to this build already as we tested it I'm sure there may be other issues given it's size and complexity.
I hope you enjoy it. Lots of balance changes and requested features coming in the next one!
Patch Notes
New Features / Content
New dockable Assembler ship can now join your fleet.
Added new panel when docking with the Assembler that allows: - Local storage can now be used to store items. - Shared storage can now be used to transfer items between saves. - Equipment level can now be increased for a cost. - Equipment rarity can now be increased for a cost, unlocked at level 8. - Equipment modifiers can now be transferred for a cost, unlocked at level 16. - Some equipment now has alternate appearance options. - Legendary equipment can now be renamed.
New mission added after arriving at Novus Prime to rescue Engineer Relios.
New artwork added for Engineer Relios.
Phantom artwork is now in for their dialog in Sector 2.
Removed faction selection from item display as now accessed via Assembler.
Discovered legendary equipment is now shown in Statistics panel.
Balance Changes
Heat build-up now stops as weapons disable when dodging.
Rare items will no longer spawn with 2 global and only 1 regular modifier.
Sparks (friendly repair ships) now come from the Assembler instead of the Mothership.
Halved amount of time Species-XI ships will spend phase shifted when attacking.
Enemy ships will now only phase shift when targetting the player.
Reduced sell / buy credits of different / rare / legendary items by -50%.
Reduced price of large consumables by 50%.
Legendary weapons no longer have modifiers outside acceptable ranges.
Legendary weapons no longer have negative modifiers.
Adjusted effectiveness and base resistance of infinity stones passive item.
Adjusted effectiveness and base armor of bulwark passive item.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
Button / key bind added to skip the intro cutscene.
Action will now pause during dialog if any enemies target any friendly ship.
Overheat sounds played in settings now play at the selected volume.
Updated all tutorial artwork to reflect current graphics.
New setting added to disable mouse aiming for keyboard-only play.
Equipment comparison tooltip now shows item level.
Admiral image added to corner of Mothership panel.
Fixed color of binding displays to match their backgrounds.
Bug Fixes
Auto weapons no longer fire during dialog display.
Fixed bug with required level modifier not giving weapons higher stats.
Combining velocity and strafing controls no longer results in faster acceleration.
Fixed issue with grapples not disconnecting once attached.
Fixed issue with some weapon types not activating / de-activating correctly.
Enemies with cone attacks will now correctly shoot where their warnings predict.
Fixed issue where auto tesla coil would still animate while out of range.
Fixed display issues in mothership panel on 120% UI scale.
Invisible weapons no longer show on ship images in navigation or missions.
Controller disconnection no longer pauses the intro cutscene.
Fixed null pointer if you manage to leave an encounter while dialog is still active.
Fixed thermal resistors not giving any thermal resistance.
Fixed null pointer when clicking empty slots in cargo.
Fixed bosses in Sector 1 giving the wrong missions if reached at low level.
Targeted ships now correctly show their name below instead of class.
Target reticle is no longer blurry around the edges on larger ships.
Fixed null pointer when clicking on unscanned thrusters.
Fixed parse error when using 'xp' command incorrectly in developer console.
Fixed issue where dragging stackable items onto each other would not merge them.
Fixed background of mothership sale items being too bright.
Fixed null pointer in NavigationHighlight.Update().
Fixed quick sell section of mothership panel not being translated.
Fixed global light error during loading scene.
Fixed auto launchers remaining active when they should not.
Fixed null pointer in HUDWarningGlow.UpdatePulse().
Shortcut keys no longer activate when typing in discard / sell quantity box.
Intercept encounters will now show the correct message when failed.
Fixed navigation highlight with controller appearing below cargo panel.
Removed duplicate recharge item stat on Auto Stinger Launchers.
Fixed infinity stones not giving thermal resistance.
Fixed toggle / checkbox UI elements not paying navigation audio on mouse-over.
Slot selection for Swap and Equip no longer includes the item being replaced.
Hitting escape while dragging an item no longer hides the item from display.
Fixed item stats error when opening projectile details of some weapons.
Fixed memory leak in ship designer due to manual garbage collection.
ESA will no longer randomly threaten to kill you when you encounter Shadow in Sector 2.
Comparison tooltip no longer goes off the bottom of the screen.
Statistics display now scrolls on 120% UI scale.
Fixed credit value on player bar not updating when credits picked up from containers.
Slot unlocking tutorial no longer pops up 5 levels early.
Fixed infinity stones and thermal resistance not improving with level.
Fixed controller tab navigation on stats core panel.
Fixed dev tool / difficulty warning display overlapping tabs on Steamdeck.
Fixed controller tab navigation in assembler panel.
Lowered priority of UI sounds so they hopefully don't interrupt music.
Turret launchers will no longer get construct speed modifiers.
Fixed binding display in settings overlapping label on 120% UI scale.
Hotfix for v0.8.99
Just a quick hotfix this morning. If anyone was getting corrupt save files when they loaded the game this should now be fixed and all your old save data should be accessible once again.
Feedback Focus (v0.8.99)
This update is heavily based off feedback, both good and bad. As such it's a mix of changes to lots of different systems. I expect I may have created some bugs, if you find any please let me know and I'll get it fixed as quickly as possible.
Twin Stick Shooter
A lot of people asked if Star Vortex was a twin-stick shooter and all I could really say was "kind of". Although it had twin-stick controls with a controller this never translated well to keyboard and mouse due to the lateral dodging.
Well this has now changed, you can now dodge in any direction and in the controls tab in settings you can now switch to Twin-Stick Controller mode if you prefer that. Personally I prefer the regular controls, but that's why I have settings!
Cargo and Equipment Changes
As the next big update (v0.9.00) will include the item crafting system I've made some changes in preparation for that. Legendary, Rare and Different items now have slightly different modifier restrictions and I've pulled in a few of the crazier values.
More importantly the change I didn't even know that I needed. Cargo size is now fixed at 40 and you can arrange your items however you like within the grid. In addition stacking consumables now go up to stacks of 99 instead of 5!
Small Ship Meta
In the game the only thing your ship design really impacted was your hit box. As such it became in your best interest to make ships as small as possible. In an effort to prevent this I made ship classes have minimum sizes, but even then you still wanted your ship to be as small as allowed for the class.
Well no longer! Your ships hull is now determined by the size of your ship. Bigger ship... more hull, tiny ship... less hull. Makes sense when you think about it.
Rescue Encounters
Some encounters your tasked with defending a friendly ship against enemies for a period of time. The ship you had to defend had a habbit of flying off at high speed in to hordes of enemies. Turns out you guys did not enjoy this...
Now the friendly ship will limp about like a wounded animal and not engage enemies. So you guys better protect it!
Debris and Debuffs
The point of the different types of debris was to make people have to carry different types of shields for different encounters. While this is still encouraged you will no longer be so heavily punished for not having the correct shield.
Debris encounters will now only double the duration of their respective debuffs, not make them infinite.
In addition you can now purchase consumables that not only remove the debuffs but also grant +10% resistance that last 30 seconds and can be stacked for longer durations.
I've also renamed 'Heat Resistance' to 'Thermal Resistance' as that was confusing when ships generated heat.
Range Nerf
This was a big one in feedback, the short story being that Railguns were over-powered. Their significant range allowed you to kite most bosses. As such all the range related modifiers along with the Railguns themselves have been nerfed. Also, some bosses like the Basilisk now have a longer range weapon at their head in case you try kiting them.
Final Notes
The levels at which you unlock new ship classes, new slots and some parts have been adjusted to match the new level ranges of each sector.
Finally the new boost immunity mechanic now activates a bit faster but cooldowns on consumables stop ticking while you're boost immune as I found myself exploiting this a bit.
Enjoy, full patch notes are below. Keep the feedback coming and I'll get on to it after the crafting update!
Patch Notes
New Features / Content
Cargo is now a fixed non-scrolling grid that you can arrange as you wish.
Drop area for dragging items to sell / discard expanded and moved above cargo.
Ships now have 40 cargo space and it no longer increases per level.
Removed storage space display and sorting options from cargo display.
Players can easily now select from classic controls or twin-stick shooter in settings.
Dodge now works in any direction, it can now officially be a twin-stick shooter.
Aim speed has been entirely removed, equipment now aims instantly.
Removed aim speed upgrade and passive items.
Removed turn speed upgrade and passive items.
Removed thruster reverse and strafe stats, acceleration is now used in all directions.
New dodge factor stat added to all thrusters.
Dodging now briefly stops weapon activations.
Dodging now briefly increases max speed by 10%.
Dodge cooldown is now displayed on ship stats in equipment panel.
All thrusters now have new stats and have been regenerated.
Boost invulnerability now activates at 50% maximum speed instead of 75%.
Technician upgrades to aiming and turn speed replaced with dodge upgrades.
Controller L1 button will now dodge in the direction of your left stick.
Controller R1 button is stabilize your ship's velocity.
Debuff removing consumables have been improved to also grant 30 seconds of +10% resistance.
Player ship hull is now reduced if your ship is smaller than the class maximum size.
Friendly ships in rescue encounters now drift around and don't engage enemies.
Radioactive debuffs now tick for 5% of the weapon that inflicted its DPS (per stack).
Burning debuffs now tick for 25% of the weapon that inflicted its DPS.
Debris now just doubles the duration of debuffs instead of making them permanent.
Balance Changes
Consumable cooldowns now freeze while boost immunity is active.
Reduced damage of Osprey scatter guns by 40% and increased delay from 0.75s to 1.0s.
Reduced damage of Locust plasma blasters by 20% and increased delay from 0.75s to 1.0s.
Reduced range modifiers on weapons to +15% maximum instead of 25%.
Reduced velocity modifiers on weapons to +15% maximum instead of 50%.
Reduced projectile life modifiers on weapons to +15% maximum instead of 25%.
Projectile velocity and other range upgrades now increase range by 3% per level instead of 5%.
Adjusted balance of Behemoth to make it a little less savage.
Laser on head of Basilisk now does more damage with longer range to discourage kiting.
New ship classes now unlock at level 15, 25 and 35.
New slots now unlock at level 10, 20, 30, etc.
Adjusted required levels for all ship parts to match new sector ranges.
Increased price of black market items by 50% after the last update halved them.
Enemies will now only get boost invulnerability when chasing the player's ship.
Reduced legendary drop chances on Bosses by 62.5%.
Reduced legendary drop chances on Elites by 50%.
Legendary modifiers now have more sane numbers in preparation for crafting.
Different item modifiers are now slightly more limited than rare items.
Different items now get 1-2 modifiers (max 1 global / 0 rare).
Rare items now get 3-4 modifiers (max 2 global / 1 rare).
Legendary items now get a maximum of 6 modifiers (max 2 global / 1 rare).
Level requirement remains a free modifier in regard to limits.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
All stackable items now stack up to stack sizes of 99 instead of 5.
Renamed heat to thermal damage to avoid confusion with heat generated by primary weapons.
Keyboard players are now prompted in the tutorial to pick a control scheme.
Rescue targets are now displayed on rescue encounters in navigation.
Durability displayed on ship bar now flashes red if equipment is broken.
Storage space displayed on ship bar now flashes red if full.
Increased time required for some of the tutorial steps for new players learning the controls.
Displacement thruster now tells you it makes you immune to damage while dodging.
Bug Fixes
Fixed cutscenes and tutorials not playing correctly in some languages.
Fixed issue with shield hit effects not animating correctly.
Fixed camera not moving to end boss during final sector cutscene.
Fixed Substring error in virtual keyboard when pressing backspace too many times.
Attempted to fix rare null pointer in DialogOverlay.Next().
Attempted to fix rare null pointer in MajorEventBanner.IsActive().
Fixed bug where projectiles would become immune with their parent ships.
Fixed comparison tooltip sometimes appearing off-screen.
Fixed comparison of passive items showing double negative symbols.
Comparison tooltip no longer flutters between items when highlighting with mouse.
Comparison tooltip will no longer compare unscanned items.
Fixed arrow in left-aligned comparison tooltip to align to right of header.
Equipment hotkeys will no longer break slot selection overlays in panels.
Mission collection is not disabled if cargo space is insufficient.
Fixed navigation map loading at the wrong size due to panel animations.
Fixed error when controller is disconnected during automatic pause.
Fixed big slot-type icon showing on slots that were missing.
Notice that prompts you to infect waypoints is now hidden if already infected.
Debris that hits shields now triggers the animation at the correct point.
Fixed null pointer in HUDController.RemoveMinibar().
Fixed exit game menu option not working in demo.
Fixed display of status effects not showing time remaining.
Fixed auto repair constantly playing repair sound in mothership panel.
Pressing space to dock with mothership no longer clicks buttons inside panel.
Fixes and Improvements (v0.8.96)
Just some quick fixes before I embark on the next big update.
After getting a bit of feedback I've re-arranged the roadmap. Gameplay right now can get a bit repetitive with combat only really being broken up by quick trips to the fleet to repair and re-supply. Also far too many of the weapons can be a bit useless.
As such I think it's important to get the item crafting system in next. This system will allow you to take modifiers from items you don't want as well as increase their rarity and level. Star base sieges will now be pushed back to the update -after- this next one.
I hope you all have a nice holiday, see you in the new year!
Patch Notes
Balance Changes
Reduced number of enemies in rescue encounters.
Halved damage of Species-XI hunter elite enemy.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
Utility slot now remains active despite boost invulnerability.
Ship will now drift in direction they are turning to face.
Using face bindings with a keyboard now auto-enables turret mode.
Controller shoulder buttons no longer turn the ship when aiming with right stick.
New sound effects added for rewards and encounter complete / failed.
Current ship class is now highlighted on upgrades panel.
Overheat warning sound can now be previewed from settings panel.
Friendly tags on arriving ships are now blue to match the rest of the game.
Rescue ships now get a blue reticle around them to make them easier to see.
Faction dialog and echo visits no longer trigger on rescue encounters.
Performance
Fixed a large amount of the latency when buying / selling in the mothership panel.
Bug Fixes
Fixed hash and key test languages in developer mode not being selectable.
Fixed invalid AABB in AABB error when arriving at boss encounters.
Primary weapons no longer generate heat when boost invulnerability is active.
Fixed bug where charges on weapons could get stuck with incorrect value.
Smoothing Things Out! (v0.8.93)
Apologies for the delay in updates, this one has been quite a journey.
This was supposed to be a complete balance pass smoothing out the difficulty through-out the game, but upon playing I encountered some big performance issues and framerate drops. Thus I journeyed down a rabbit hole of profiling, garbage collection and CPU usage. Upon returning to the surface I finished the balance pass and also improved the performance a lot!
Let me start by saying I had great fun. This may seem like an odd thing to say when playing your own game, and if you've ever made a game you'll know just how odd it is. Very rarely can I see past the mountain of incomplete tasks and things that need fixing long enough to enjoy my own creation, but this time I really did and I hope that's a good sign for everyone else.
New Capsule Artwork
Just making things a little prettier around our Steam pages...
Artificial Intelligence Sucks
I made the enemy AI worse... after spending all this time perfecting how they aim I spent this update making them intentionally bad at it. You can now dodge lasers, which is handy. You also get invulnerability when you're boosting at full speed which can be used to tactically avoid some damage. Be warned enemies also get this invulnerability though which makes them harder to kite!
Level / Experience Changes
The sector level ranges have increased and the experience earned for destroying enemies has doubled. What this means practically is you'll progress at the same pace as you did before, but you'll level up more often... because levelling up is fun. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Less Credits
Having too much money is less fun, especially in a game where you can't burn it all crafting your perfect weapons just yet. As such you now get half as much from selling equipment, consumables drop less and cost more. Sorry, you'll thank me in the long run.
Scouts
Speaking of fun, destroying enemies is also fun. We decided to lean in to that a little harder, especially with the performance improvements. There are now twice as many smaller ships, and squadron sizes get bigger the later in to the sector you get. They do less damage, drop less loot and give less experience though so the only real change is more explosions and things to shoot.
Performance
If you're running at maximum framerate you likely experienced big framerate drops every 12 seconds or so toward the end of encounters. This has all been fixed now and should be smooth sailing. The one thing I haven't fixed up yet is the lag in the mothership panel, I'll get that in the next update but this one was already long overdue!
Hope you enjoyed all that. Not a lot of content this time but the gameplay feels quite different with these changes so let me know what you think!
Patch Notes
New Features / Content
Boosting 75% max speed or higher now grants invulnerability but disables weapons.
Enemies now also become invulnerable when boosting and will begin doing so at 300m range.
Tutorial popup added to explain boost invulnerability the first time you trigger it.
Balance Changes
Doubled experience earned from destroying enemy ships.
Adjusted Sector 1 level range to be 1 to 20.
Adjusted Sector 2 level range to be 20 to 35.
Lowered min level of rescue and warzone encounters so players see them sooner.
Sector 2 enemies now have 50% extra damage / hull / shield.
Increased toughness and damage of all enemies slightly.
Made Species-XI 50% tougher and 25% higher damage than other factions.
Species-XI skirmish encounters now require you to destroy all enemies to complete them.
Some enemies are now marked as scouts that only give 50% experience.
Scout scale enemies now fire slower for 50% damage, have 50% health and 50% drop chances.
Number of enemies per encounter now increases with level, mostly with extra scouts.
Erratic movement will now make enemies miscalculate your velocity when aiming projectiles.
Enemies with lasers now take a second to lock on when you come in range or dodge.
Repair rays now only regen 50% of their previous amount.
Mothership now launches 8 x Sparks instead of 5 due to decreased repair rate.
Mothership no longer has turret launchers due to their shorter range.
Friendly Sparks with fleet now only fire 1 Javelin missile at a time when not repairing.
Elite scale enemies now give 400% experience.
Boss scale enemies now give 800% experience.
Halved drop chance of consumables as players were getting far too many for free.
Halved sell price of equipment and increased price of a lot of consumables.
Fixed encounters like bosses may now vary in level depending on their position.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
Made keyboard binding artwork larger and easier to read.
Enabling auto repair will now instantly repair your equipment.
Auto repair now plays a sound effect when triggered.
Moved hyperdrive jump countdown down slightly so it doesn't overlap player ship.
Increased hull of caches so they take a little longer to break open.
Increased time between periodic attacks on the mothership.
Debug display now shows velocity in m/s.
Debug display now shows the point AI is currently aiming at.
Performance
Garbage collection of unused memory now only happens during the loading scene.
Default setting is now Fullscreen (Exclusive) for optimal performance.
Fixed framerate drop when music tracks switch between combat and ambient.
Vastly improved performance of language key lookups even when using English.
Reduced amount of garbage generated to memory from various methods.
Massively improved performance of target scanning by all ships.
Reduced frequency turrets, drones and repair ships scan for new targets.
Optimized enemy counting in encounters that were causing framerate drops.
Optimized method that calculates repulsion between enemies pushing them apart.
Bug Fixes
Shadow Blight ship is now correctly an Elite.
Bosses no longer attack you before encounter dialog displays.
Fixed music stopping when enemies attack the mothership.
Comparison tooltip no longer shows while dragging items.
Fixed incorrect type icon displaying in corner of empty slots.
Equip weapon tutorial arrow now correctly points to equip button.
Fixed position of achievement tooltip so more central.
Fixed bug where input wouldn't work after skipping tutorial.
Fixed null pointer when some enemy ships spawn.
Fixed slight delay with some sound effects in game.
Fixed tutorial display languages with longer text strings.
Echo now vanishes after her cutscenes rather than hang out in the encounter.
Tesla weapons now stop animating when the game is paused.
Fixed errors when you opt-in to analytics but it fails to initialize.
Rare and legendary item containers will no longer emit particles after collection.
Enemies will now only redeploy turrets if the old ones are out of range.
Turret launchers no longer show the manoeuvrability of turrets.
Fixed bug where some locked Steamdeck settings could be changed from their default.
Removed old physics quality setting as no longer functional.
Fixed issue with starting tutorial ship getting flagged as friendly in UI.
Enemies will no longer hyperdrive jump directly on top of you.
Pulse weapons no longer take out enemy projectiles that should be immune to damage.
Friendly ships in warzones no longer boost off away from you when you boost.
Fixed phantom sprites doing crazy high damage with cryo guns.
Fixed weird issue where repair ships would get stuck trying to repair themselves.
Update 0.8.91 - Hotfix
Just a quick hotfix, mostly changes to the demo. If you complete it you'll now get to try out the Skeran ship parts in your ship design before you go. Plus some bug fixes.
Enjoy, see you next update!
Patch Notes
New Features / Content
Skeran parts are now awarded -before- Sector 2 and thus at the end of the demo.
Sector gateways now show as blocked with a barrier if content beyond is restricted.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
Added wishlist button and demo specific news to main menu (Demo Only).
Added wishlist button to pause menu (Demo Only).
Added wishlist button to end of demo pop up (Demo Only).
Final pop up added on quitting to ask players to wishlist (Demo Only).
Added a review our demo prompt to main menu (Demo Only).
Added note to encounter arrival banner to say when a sector is still under development.
Logo now displays differently in Simplified Chinese due to name change.
Rescue encounters now always pause if dialog is played on entry.
Encounters should now wait until hyperdrive jump animation ends before playing dialog.
Increased size of item stats display due to excessive stats on Auto Stinger Launchers.
Bug Fixes
Moved hyperdrive jump countdown lower in HUD so it doesn't overlap notices.
Fixed null pointer in GameShip.StartActivating() method.
Fixed item stats mis-aligned when using asian languages.
Update 0.8.9 - Story Time
I've tried hard to make Star Vortex feel like a classic ARPG. Whether I've been successful or not remains to be seen but there is one thing that has been missing is an interesting story-line. In this update I hope to address this.
Story Overhaul
The patch notes may look unimpressive for this version but don't be fooled. Every bit of dialog has been re-written, thousands of words in total. On top of this new dialog and encounters have been added, along with a new character.
A new creature named Echo will now join you during the introduction and tutorial. And then a few more times through Sector 1 (not Sector 2 yet). A mysterious and cryptic entity she will offer guidance and aid but her motives remain a mystery.
Translation - Work In Progress
In the coming days our professional human translation of our store page will fall in to place. We're aiming for English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Simplified Chinese and Spanish. I have also enabled these languages in game so I can start working on and fixing layout issues.
Important! I'm changing content far too quickly right now to get the game itself translated professionally. It costs about $0.10 USD per word per language and the game currently has over 8,000 words in it. As such the game is using Google Translated content for now, we'll look at options to get it translated when we go in to Early Access.
The next update is aimed at addressing repetitiveness in some of the encounters. New siege encounters will be added where the player assaults alien structures along with dense nebula encounters where visibility is limited. I'll also be doing a full balance pass of Sector 1 and adding a few exploits with excessive kiting of bosses.
Hope you enjoy the new story, more to come!
Patch Notes
New Features / Content
Rewrote most of the dialog in the game and added lots more.
A new creature will now interact with you at various points in Sector 1.
Infecting a waypoint is no longer ESA's bad idea.
Shadow avatar in Sector 2 is now a different color to regular Skeran.
AI translations are enabled again, I'm aware they're not the best.
Added Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Korean AI translation.
Gateways are now purple to match the color of the void they pass through.
Species-XI no longer hyperdrive jump into encounters they appear from the void.
Updated phase shift description to make clear its usage of the void.
Balance Changes
Auto specials are now disabled when the parent ship is hyperdrive jumping.
Increased base strafe speed of all thrusters.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
Hyperdrive jumping now has its own loading screen animation, different from gateways.
Font size of dialog is now slightly smaller to fit more text.
Increased padding around achievement grid so navigation highlight is visible.
Added item name header with arrow to comparison tooltips to make it clearer.
Friendly ships now show friendly tags when they first arrive.
Radial display and heading assist now scale with Camera Zoom and HUD Scale.
Floating text, Minibars and Target Name now scale with Camera Zoom and HUD Scale.
Added larger type icons to empty slots to try and make meaning more obvious.
Slot labels in equipment panel now include type icons.
Replaced X (Twitter) link in game with Bluesky link.
Bug Fixes
End particles on tesla bolts no longer play while weapon is inactive.
Changed default dodge modifier back to CTRL as too many OS functions use ALT.
Music that plays during loading before intro cutscene is now correct.
Behemoth and Basilisk achievements are now the correct way around.
Fixed distortion at end of hyperdrive jump trails.
Fixed null pointers after clicking play with credits / patch notes panel open.
Fixed various language displays around the UI that were overflowing text areas.
Fixed null pointer in item stats display.
Update 0.8.86 - Improvements from Feedback
I've recently been running some playtests and this update is pretty much all changes and fixes from the feedback I've received. Mostly quality of life improvements.
Demo Change
As much as I loved the idea of having a Free Edition that players can play it's beginning to hinder our marketing efforts having it out before release. It's an idea I hope to re-visit after we go in to Early Access but for now the demo is back to being a restricted experience of the first Sector.
If you were enjoying playing beyond that and would like to continue to do so jump on our Discord and check the #faq channel for information on how to become a tester!
The release date has been pushed back to Q2 2025 as a result of some of the recent playtests. I want to make sure I have the strongest release possible and I'm going to use these extra months to improve the storyline and content in Sector 2 and 3. Hopefully I'll also be able to cram in some extra features.
Encounter Variety
Warzone encounters felt fun when I made them, waves of friendly and enemy forces colliding leads to some enjoyable chaos. They soon get old when you realise that Intercept and Elite encounters are just warzones with a different final waves though. No longer!
Intercept encounters no longer have waves, the transports will be there at the beginning and to complete the encounter you must destroy them in under 30 seconds before they escape. Kind of the opposite of a Rescue encounter.
Elite encounters no longer have waves either, and you have 60 seconds to destroy the initial enemies before the elite arrives... ready or not.
In addition to this I will add Siege encounters soon, which will be attacks on stationary enemy star bases. These will take the place of the final elites for each faction and be scattered around Skeran and Phantom space.
Narrative Overhaul
While I may have captured the gameplay of old school ARPGs like Diablo it is becoming apparent that I've fallen short with the story-line. Look out in the upcoming updates for some new characters, backstory and strange encounters that hint at some things to come.
Mailing List
We now have a mailing list you can join! I don't always trust social media to show me things I actually want to see, so to be sure not to miss out on our news you can signup here.
Demo is now restricted to Sector 1 and Developer Mode is no longer available.
Intercept encounters no longer have waves and have a 60s countdown to destroy the transports before they flee.
Elite encounters no longer have waves and have a 30s countdown until Elite arrives.
Species-XI will now invade intercept encounters with infected seed transports instead of warzones.
Species-XI now use and drop Void Thrusters.
Balance Changes
Destroyed transports will respawn if you fail an intercept encounter but will not drop credits.
Locusts with Plasma Blasters no longer attack the fleet.
Moved Infernum and Waypoint Bravo spawn ranges slightly further apart.
Mine damage reduced slightly but they now have an 80m explosive radius.
Increased base aim speed of ships by +25.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
Skip tutorial option will now only skips on-rails tutorial and still shows situational advice.
Your first visit to each encounter type will now include dialog to explain what you need to do.
Quick sell buttons now also sell everything below the selected rarity.
Containers no longer show their names if their rarity or type is set to be ignored.
Default dodge modifier is now ALT instead of CTRL, you can change it back if you wish.
Novus Prime is now green as it's in Skeran space.
Increased visibility of cloud layer so movement is more obvious.
Increased size and screen shake from ship explosions.
Ship explosions now emit light of varying degrees depending on size.
Lowered volume of smaller ship explosions.
Added default keyboard bindings for some shortcuts in equipment / mothership panel.
Halved fade time of ship parts when a ship explodes but increased velocity.
Reduced brightness of light lance.
Transports, Elites and Gateway Disruptors now get a special icon on their sensor arrow.
Added new tutorial to explain how to link slots when additional slots are unlocked.
Cost of auto-repair in mothership now displays for 5s instead of 2s.
Ambient music will now play when all enemies are defeated, not when encounter completes.
Fixed small text in dropdowns hard to read on Steamdeck and smaller screens.
Removed setting / bindings related to showing item names on containers.
Hyperdrive jumps now leave streak effects behind for a couple of seconds.
Replaced incorrect thruster descriptions with flavour text.
Cleaned up upgrade descriptions so they should be easier to understand.
Added link to join mailing list to main menu social links.
Bug Fixes
Unscanned items will no longer become scanned when moving between encounters.
Removed vignette setting as no longer used with newer lighting.
Fixed null pointer in navigation when sector generation is changed by update.
Fixed null pointer in debris updates when destroying asteroids.
Moved dialog display down slightly so it doesn't overlap arrival banner text.
Moved skip dialog keybinding to right side so it doesn't overlap ship bar on 120% HUD scale.
Fixed ship design tutorial overflowing screen when UI scale set to 120%.
Fixed overlap between major event banner an dialog at HUD scale 120%.
NPC only templates no longer show in ship design presets.
Fixed cloud layer not flashing with thunder since background change.
Fixed black background on Elite / Boss ship previews.
Players can no longer hyperdrive jump before collecting tutorial mission.
Radar now correctly stays at 2x camera distance when zoom is adjusted.
Radar camera is now attached to main camera and will move with it.
Items can now be purchased and equipped by dragging them directly on to slots.
Fixed issue where ambient music would play while invaders still attacked.
Fixed invalid AABB in AABB error during tutorial.
Fixed turret tutorial completing too quickly when using mouse and keyboard.
Live Stream - November 15th!
I'm excited to announce that tomorrow at 4:00pm (UTC) Bumpy McSquigums will be live streaming our game on our Steam page for a couple of hours. So if you're online don't forget to jump in and say hello in the chat!
This will be his first play-through of the game so if you've been playing a lot please be sure to keep him on track. Hopefully he can work out what to do with the Infected Seed when he finds it...
Update 0.8.81 - Spaaaaace!
Part of being a solo-developer is establishing your own limitations. For example, I'm not a musician and I can't make music so I paid someone else to do it for me. That seemed like the obvious choice.
Background Artwork
Well I'm also not an artist, and while most of the art in the game is made by myself I certainly couldn't draw character artwork and I also wasn't that great at drawing planets, stars and nebulas. Finally I've accepted this fact and got someone much better at art than me to draw them for me.
Faction Icons
Turns out I'm also not that great at designing icons. Luckily I know a guy who is, so we have some new faction icons in the game as well
Music
I've also replaced all the Skeran music in Sector 1 with a new music pack. One of the reviewers pointed out that the old music was quite jarring, so this all have a similar vibe.
Enjoy! Sector 3 and the new Flora enemies are coming next!
Patch Notes
New Features / Content
Remade all backgrounds with new artwork from one of our artists.
Added faction icons to encounter details, dialog background and template folders.
Main menu now uses a random background.
Replaced all Skeran encounters with a new music pack.
Balance Changes
Swapped Basilisk and Behemoth around so the Behemoth is now the first boss in Sector 1.
Behemoth now has 6 x long-range fast roach drones to give it some constant damage.
Increased damage of all laser weapons due to faster overheating.
Reduced range of enemy Basilisk lasers by 10%.
Increased velocity of Citadel plasma guns by 25%.
Citadel now summons 4 ships instead of 3 and they're 2 levels higher.
Reduced the level requirement of lots of ship parts to give more options earlier on.
Mothership will now get sector-specific shield types when not in combat.
Quality of Life / Accessibility
Beams now overlap their target slightly to make the larger hitboxes less obvious.
Shields now show beam hits immediately instead of waiting for the first damage tick.
Increased spacing in the navigation panel so it's easier to read.
Removed old stat tracking system from sandbox as no longer needed.
Console will now display a warning when you use developer tools on a player save.
Performance
Optimized encounters with debris so they cause framerate drops (especially on Steamdeck).
Bug Fixes
Fixed null pointer when tracking A Bad Idea mission.
Fixed invalid slot position in Species-XI Nautilus.
Overall achievements will no longer progress when playing in the sandbox.
Fixed achievements for completing sectors to correctly award progress.
Renamed rarity achievements to say item rarity so it's clear that they include all equipment.
Missions to destroy an enemy target are now only granted when the whole target is destroyed.
Fixed overall disabled message at bottom of achievement panel wrapping on higher UI scale.
Achievements for missions are now retroactively granted at load.
Low pass audio filter is no longer disabled when dialog displays over the core panel.
Fixed achievement tab text overflowing button on 120% UI scale.
Fixed achievement panel not correctly scrolling when UI scale causes the container to overflow.
Fixed achievement tab highlighting incorrectly.
Fixed invader debris debuff not giving damage bonus or permanent burning.
Fixed bosses and elites in Sector 2 having the wrong factions assigned.
Fixed difficulty modifiers for reward rarity not showing in navigation.
Sector complete achievements should now sync up properly for old saves.
