The main update for this week is the ship editor. I have experimented a bit with new positions for the elements. I am not 100% satisfied yet, but it is another step in the right direction. Especially because you can now always see the stats of the current ship and the changes.
The following changes have also been included in this patch.
New content:
Added the Destructor Pod heavy missile launcher
Added the Swansong medium multi missile launcher
Added the Directa heavy missile launcher
Added the Tirqa anti building projectile launcher
Added the Reload cycler module
Added the King heavy ship
Added the Ratler medium cannon that fires in bursts of 3 projectiles
Balancing:
Reduced Blossomer damage from 20 to 12
Reduced Brackaria damage from 18 to 16
Gauss repeater increased range to 185 and damage to 12 (from 7)
Gauss slinger reduced cooldown to 8 (from 10)
Gauss cannon decreased range to 175 and damage to 16
Reduced Daedalus cost from 1000/1000 to 800/800
Misc:
Decreased border radius in unlocked ships menu
Algor has been helping with some texture fixes to make the textures look more uniform
Improved challenger texture
Updated Light Frigate model
Algor retextured more ships
Algor did some nice color experiments again
When placing a building you now see a maximum of 5 'cant build' circles to save on performance
When placing a building you now only see 1 'canbuild' circle based on which object is closest to the new building you are trying to place (can be both a building or a surveyor)
The distance check is now using sqrddistance instead of vector3.distance to save on performance
The distance to start drawing 'can build circles' is now better matched to the actual distance where you can place in. So the circle only shows when the building you want to place is already in range.
The red 'cant build circles' distance is now better matched as well, meaning they only show up if the building you want to place is too close to an obstacle
Added the current ship stats for the ship that is being inspected (Health bonus, speed bonus, shield bonus, metal and power cost reductions)
Moved speed row up by 1
Ship inspector now also shows custom properties like 'Has lasershield' or 'Increased projectiles'. In the future this will be replaced by actual values.
Fixed a bug where modules in the editor were being added indefinitely
Rounded stats values to nearest integer and applied more styling
Improved ship editor layout more
Added a custom dropdown size for each ship so that it doesnt overlap other labels
For the metal and power cost bonus I've removed the double 'minus' icon
New build effect, black holes and direct unit control
I've added a whole bunch of features in the last two weeks or so. You can find the summary below.
Main gameplay changes:
New building construction animation effects
You can now control ships directly
Black holes added to the maps
Unit and weapon changes:
Increased Offender price from 600/800 to 800/1000
Increased Relentless HP from 2400 to 3000 and reduced speed from 60 to 40
Duo Cannon now has proper weapon description (from heavy to medium)
Fixed "Lancer flavor text calls it slow despite a base speed of 104 for a medium."
Added the Photon Devastator
Added the Magma Devastator
Added Anomaly Extractor that can be placed near wormholes for a big energy and metal bonus
Black hole minimap indicator visual added
[previewyoutube="aTcXL8hZXI4;full"]
Gui changes:
Unit thumbnail health values now update 1x per second
You no longer have a few seconds delay when making your first unit
Selected unit thumbnails are no longer being shown in direct control mode
Updated ship editor visuals
Fixed "Start game menu from the fleet editor does not have base assault option."
Tweaked lighting in multiplayer menu
Updated Anomaly Extractor thumbnail (with black hole)
Updated Anomaly Extractor again (without black hole)
[previewyoutube="9YbCflSI5d4;full"]
Other gameplay changes:
Ships now take damage when too close to black holes
Units under Direct Control now have only half cooldown
Made shields less bright in direct control mode
Default shields are now less bright @Rysten (will be in next patch)
Fixed the 'ship under attack' and 'building under attack' notification being played incorrectly
Uploaded the latest changes to the playtest build on steam
Tweaked missile launch sounds
Anomaly Extractor 'in use' visual is now disabled while being created. It is shown while placing however as to indicate it is in range of the anomaly
Reworked sound limiting. There is now a maximum of 10 sounds being played every second with a minimum of 0.2 seconds in between sounds. This is to prevent audio distortion in large scale battles.
Increased purple planet brightness
Skybox tweaks
Updated black hole visuals
Updated thumbnail weapon indicators
Added black hole indicators to the minimap
Buildings do not take damage while near black holes
Map Void now has 1 black hole in the centre
Map Nebulea now has 1 black hole to the side
Map Deep Space now has 2 black holes to both sides
Updated black hole positoning
Fixed a bug where the 'is active' effect from the Anomaly Extractor was invisible after placement despite being in range of an anomaly
Increased the damage dealt to units near black holes
[previewyoutube="BOn4DA7jCc4;full"]
Big bugfix round for the new functionalities:
fixed new build effect for sp
fixed new build effect for mp
disabled bomber launch while still building
disabled metal storage while still building
disabled power storage while still building
disabled popularion increase while still building
disabled fighter launch while still building
disabled weapons while still building
fixed 1 extra building being spawned per building placed in multiplayer
fixed new building effect original building not being sent over network
fixed new building effect dummy building not being sent over network
fixed isDummy bool not set for the new building in multiplayer
fixed new building dissolve effect nog working properly for pre-placed buildings in campaign (caused huge fps drop, fixed now)
fixed engless error bug upon structure completion in mp
fixed reference of original multiplayer object not setting the dummy reference correctly
fixed defensive structures colors being incorrect while building because it would try to base the entire texture set on a weapon texture instead of the building model texture
fixed an issue with the GUI staying visible even when it should be disabled
fixed an issue with GUI visibility not reverting to the previous status when exiting bridge cam
Thats it for this update. Make sure to check out the TenseGames Youtube channel if you want more visual updates. Or join the Discord if you want to do some pvp or coop!
New ships and tweaks
Added the Indomitable heavy ship
Added the Repentful cruiser
Added the Relentless
Increased Hive heavy carrier health to 2200
Added the Damara bulky medium bomber carrier
Stats changes:
Changed Heavy Corvette stats after discussing it with @High Council
Changed Patroller cost from 150/50 to 125/75
Changed Discus cost from 50/150 to 75/125
[previewyoutube="JdjOoYaZMaY;full"]
Quality of life additions
Its not perfect yet, but I have added some quality of life additions. I'd test this a bit more and roll it out later, but since the amount of ships in the build queue is currently not visible in the live version I will roll out this update to fix that anyway including the following:
Added light effects to all projectiles. Might remove if it costs too much performance
Fixed "In any game mode, the number of ships underconstruction is no longer visible"
Fixed flaktripler doing no AOE in SP
Fixed shift-drag-select multiple time keeps adding units to the selection list
Doomed ships deaccelerate to 15 speed now while dying. This makes them die more naturally rather than stopping abrubtly.
Doomed ships now add a random rotation upon entering doomed state.
Uploaded the new 'lights on projectiles' and 'deathroll' build to the playtest build on steam for @🥇 Backer reward role to try out
You can now scroll through the unlocked ships @Algor (GMT+3)
Added icons based on used weapons to the selected unit thumbnails
Added healthbars to the selected unit thumbnails
Added icon colors based on weapon used to the selected unit thumbnails (green for anti-light weapons, red for anti-building etc)
Styled unit thumbs more
Fixed Hive and Auxillum thumb
Added easy loadout inspection for ship thumbs (weapon type & damagetype)
Added 'click unit thumb' to select that particular unit
Made unit thumbnail Click = select single unit
Made unit thumbnail Shift + click = remove single unit from selection
Made unit thumbnail Ctrl + click = select similar units only (removes others from selection)
Made unit thumbnail Ctrl + shift + click = remove all similar units of the clicked thumbnail from selection
You can now shift-leftclick to add 5 units to the build queue instead of 1
You can now shift-rightclick to remove 5 units to the build queue instead of 1
Next up I will make the unit-thumb selection a bit more smooth. Its currently a bit wonky I feel, so I will be improving that asap.
[previewyoutube="euZR80Wr0OA;full"]
GUI Tweaks & shipyard upgrades
I'm trying out a new font. I'm also slowly replacing the yellow accents wherever I can with blue ones because it looks more stylish. I am still looking for an artist for a compete GUI rework, but until then I will improving little bits here and there to keep making it better and better.
Apart from that I also:
Added The Rattler
Added The Megarepeater
Added The Gauss Slinger
Added The Agoniser heavy ship
Replaced shipyard flak with Shipyard Super Autocannon
Improved shipyard beam weapon and beam costs
Added the Overwhelmer missile pod
Removed unneeded json volume load file
Added several checks to try to prevent the volume-slider-reset-bug
Building placement improvements
Alt + left mousebutton click = center the camera on an object in 3D space. Using that feature building construction now works as follows:
When you alt-click on a building or asteroid in 3D the camera jumps to it. If you then click on a building to place then it will place it at the same height.
When you try to place a new building it will try to place it at the same height as the last building you placed. With exception of alt-clicking beforehand.
Buildings you place are now being hit-checked on a certain height below the camera rather than 0 height ('ground height'). This makes placing buildings really high up or very far down way easier.
[previewyoutube="F8EVHmsRgww;full"]
FPS improvements, colored missiles and Iron Dome/Laser Defense warning
Missiles now have a color based on their damage type (anti light = green, anti medium = orange, anti heavy = blue, anti building = red
Fixed a bug with unit kills tracking
Fixed a bug with muzzle flares and explosions never being removed causing a memory leak and lower framerates
Fighters and bombers efficiecy improvements
Made stuff blowing up from a player losing more efficeint
Big rework: Added a team component to all ships and projectiles. When a projectile is created it inherits the TeamID, playerName, playerID and some other stuff from the ship that fires now. Bombers, Fighters, Ships, Buildings, Projectiles, Missiles, Beams and some other elements all have this component now.
Uploaded backers build to the steam test branch
Replaced a lot of team checks in over 153 files and read through about 5.000 lines of code
Removed variables and added teamcomp to the bomberhangar and cleaned up variables from unitproperties that were unused
Testbranch missile defense now shoots down 4 enemy missiles instead of 5 per Laserdef. Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 20 seconds. Also lowered the amount of 'checks' from 1x per frame to 1x per second, making it hundreds of times more efficient.
Tweaked the amount of colored visuals added to missiles. There were 2 visuals added per missile. Instead I am now adding 1, but making it 30% bigger to keep the same visual effect.
Made the Iron Dome more responsive by checking for new targets/if it can hit targets ever .5 seconds rather than ever 2 seconds. Will no longer try to get a new target over network if it is the same as the previous target to prevent a network call being made every .5 seconds.
Fixed bug of allied shipyards in multiplayer not having a team assigned
Made laser defense twice as responsive + increased the range by 20 @Brackman
Fixed memory leak with impact explosions and muzzle flares thanks to @Algor
Increased power income of powerplans to 25% because of @Brackman (CET)s suggestion
Warning: These fixes will improve FPS. However I have noticed a bug with the Laser Shield modules no longer working correctly (the built in laserdefense of the Destroyer MKII for instance does still work. The Iron Dome has some similar issues currently because of all the changes I made. Fighters do still work as anti-bombers though, so please use those temporarily until I have time to fix this. I discussed uploading this build with some players to see if I should upload this build or not. I decided to do it even with these 2 bugs because the FPS framerate fix outweighs the downsides of the Iron Domes and Laser Shield Modules temporarily not working.
Hopefully I can have those last 2 bugs fixed by the end of the week though!
Gameplay in action while discussing stuff: [previewyoutube="rVf1FO7fkd0;full"]
Fixed reported bug on 32:9 monitors
Fixed a bug on 32:9 where the buy menu was not accessible (thank you Bristolbulldog for reporting it on the Steam community forum)
Added a description to singleplayer game modes
Added a description to multiplayer game modes
Fixed some miscellaneous bugs
New singleplayer game mode: Base Assault
I have added a singleplayer base assault mode. In this mode you face off with your fleet against an enemy base. Neutral repair stations help you survive and to win you need to destroy all enemy structures.
Beware! Enemy reinforcements do show up! And if you lose all your ships then you will lose the match.
Added a base assault mode
Enemy reinforcements now spawn in base assault
Base assault buildings are now based on difficulty
Amount of reinforcements in base assault is now dependant on difficulty
Enemy ships in base assault mode now update their target to attack every 10 seconds
When your flagship is destroyed in base assault you a new one is now the new flagship
Added custom win/lose conditions to base assault
Added warp entry flashes for both enemy and friendly untis spawning in
Enemy units in base asasult mode now use random loadouts
The enemy will spread out its bases more above difficulty 20 and even more above difficulty 40
Medium and heavy ships are now unlocked by default in base assault
You now get starting funds of 4000/4000 in base assault. This number is modified based on difficulty
You now get full population in base assault without having to build habitat stations
Added 20 neutral repair stations to Base assault
Added script that prevents buildings from being placed inside eachother
This new feature is another big step closer to getting the game to where I want it to be eventually. A healthy mix of singleplayer and multiplayer game modes is one of the goals I have for this game.
Recently other often requested features have also been added. The main ones being Carriers, Bombers, Fighters, CIWS systems, new shipyard upgrades and the return of colored missiles.
I have other things planned as well like improved controls and more quality of life features. I also want to improve on the campaign and be more informative to the players about the possibilities of the game since there are so many features that only a few people know about.
Added a singleplayer Base Assault game mode!
Added a base assault mode
Enemy reinforcements now spawn in base assault
Base assault buildings are now based on difficulty
Amount of reinforcements in base assault is now dependant on difficulty
Enemy ships in base assault mode now update their target to attack every 10 seconds
When your flagship is destroyed in base assault you a new one is now the new flagship
Added custom win/lose conditions to base assault
Added warp entry flashes for both enemy and friendly untis spawning in
Enemy units in base asasult mode now use random loadouts
The enemy will spread out its bases more above difficulty 20 and even more above difficulty 40
Medium and heavy ships are now unlocked by default in base assault
You now get starting funds of 4000/4000 in base assault. This number is modified based on difficulty
You now get full population in base assault without having to build habitat stations
Added 20 neutral repair stations to Base assault
Added script that prevents buildings from being placed inside eachother
