This update includes the first part of the rework for the Laboratory. The old Laboratory had a really messy appearance due to the inconsistent look and feel of the various experiments. Combined with arbitrary balancing and lack of quality of life features in many areas it was a really tedious building to work with.
In the rework we focused on creating a consistent overall style for the UI with a shared header bar that includes the 4 main tabs that every experiment now features: The experiment, goals, prestige upgrades and help.
Whenever you can prestige an experiment or claim more goals it will show a visual indicator on the icon of the experiment itself.
The experiments that require you to purchase multiple components now feature a "buy maximum"-button while all other areas with upgrades that can be bought multiple times allow you to right click in order to perform a "buy maximum" operation on that upgrade.
Chosen prestige upgrades can now be viewed in form of a small skill-tree. You can also reset them now at any time which will cause a regular prestige reset but allows you to reallocate them however you want.
Why did we replace the old light experiment? From a technical viewpoint the old experiment was really messy to work with. It used a render-texture and an offscreen camera to render a room outside of the regular scene just to simulate the lighting orb. The experiment was also completely out of our control in terms of how it functions on a lower level since it used the built-in physics of Unity to handle bouncing and collision logic which even caused some weird issues in some cases where the orb glitched through the wall. Additionally the experiment had a very high randomness factor which you would have absolutely no control over no matter how often you upgraded it.
What can you expect from the second part of the lab rework? Due to time constraints we couldn't finish reworking the exotic experiment for this weeks update but it will definitely be part of the upcoming releases. The same goes for most of the experiment goals. There are going to be many more goals in the future which will be tied a lot stronger to the various values inside the experiments (for example damage boosts that will be directly linked to the current heat in the fire experiment or similar things). We additionally planned to add more quality of life features for the grid based experiments like importing/exporting as well as shortcuts to store specific patterns so you can quickly switch between them (if you have enough resources). And last but not least we plan to add more worker tasks to add even more automation to the various experiments.
Changelog
Laboratory Revamp
The rework for the exotic experiment is not part of this update and will be released with a future update.
values of all experiments have been rebalanced
replaced the UI to match the new style and for better UX
added UI effects to highlight that an experiment can be prestiged or that it has unclaimed goals
refactored the prestige system
added new prestige upgrades to experiments
prestige upgrades can now be reset
replaced the Light experiment with a new experiment
added new mechanics to gem experiment
lightly changed mechanics of the air experiment
lightly changed mechanics of the electricity experimentlightly changed mechanics of the earth experiment
added new components to universal experimentprogress bars in the exotic experiment now appear filled instead of flickering when they get too fast
buy max options are now available for most upgrades
experiment goals are now based on highest score instead of current score
more complex mutations now yield more points in nature experiment
'+' buttons have been removed for gem/exotic gem amount display
updated help pages
New Stuff
added adventure room coordinates to debug overlay
added tooltip to Blueprint Button in Workshop
added skill 'Science Funds' to Laboratory
added exotic skill 'Fundamentals' to Laboratory
added exotic skill 'Forces' to Laboratory
added exotic skill 'Universal Theorem' to Laboratory
added AI action 'Workers: Toggle Group'
added AI action 'Workers: Pause Group'
added AI action 'Workers: Toggle'
added AI action 'Workers: Pause'
added AI action 'Workers: Assign Group'
added AI action 'Workers: Assign'
added AI action 'Workers: Set Name'
added AI action 'Workers: Set Group'
added AI function 'Workers: Task ID'
added AI function 'Workers: Is Paused'
added AI function 'Workers: Get Name'
added AI function 'Workers: Get Group'
added AI function 'Game: Number of Enemies'
added module 'Rak`s Curse'
Changes
increased heart/bomb drops in Adventure past distance 100
- fixed AI recordings package name - fixed a UI scaling issue with contracts in the Headquarters - added option to disable online services
v0.9.8 B2
- fixed a critical bug in Adventure that causes crashes - fixed Camera sometimes being null (Tower Testing) - fixed AI script functions/actions name line-breaks
v0.9.8 B1
Hey everyone!
We're excited to finally be able to provide a new version to the public! ːhealthyhearthlingː
Some of you may believe that progress has come to a halt, however this is far from the case. If you're a member of our Discord server, you're presumably already aware of this.
We continued to publish almost weekly updates, but only to our supporter branch. This was due to the fact that there were a lot of unstable changes that needed to be properly evaluated.
There has been a longer gap between updates due to this and a few additional factors that we'd like to share with you:
For the boss 5 update, we conducted a closed test phase, which revealed that it required further development before it can be released to the general public. We want Boss 5 to be exceptional because it is meant to be the game's finale. Dont worry, we have some post-endgame stuff planned as well.
During the Christmas/New Year period, we were on vacation for a few days.
We've upgraded our Unity version and switched from collab to plastic scm for source control. This change took a significant amount of effort to ensure that everything was in good state.
In the upcoming Dev Diary, we'll go through this in further detail, as well as our plans for the future.
Arcade revamp
It's finally done. The Arcade has been completely revamped. There will be some minor changes and more content, but in general the building is fully functional.
The new Arcade has three minigames (Lucky Wheel, Jumble, and Adventure) with similar yet distinct gameplay. All of the games require the use of Arcade resources and provide various rewards. The amount you wager has an influence on the quantity of resources/gems you may win, but it also affects your luck factor. In all three games, the luck factor is crucial since it influences your chances of receiving better rewards. If you wish to unlock additional modules, artifacts, or skillpoints, you should strive for the highest potential luck factor.
You may also win cards from a specific set in each minigame. There are presently nine sets of five cards each. In addition, each card comes in a variety of rarities.
A set's completion unlocks additional skillpoints based on the set's maximum rarity, for a total of 32 skillpoints per set.
The Arcade provides you with a total of 1488 skillpoints, which can come in useful at any stage of the game.
Hardmode Challenges
Once you reach a certain point in the game, the few challenges that exist are no longer difficult. As a consequence, we've added a hardmode for challenges. The Town's Tower boosts aren't applied in hardmode, and waves are doubled. It all boils down to finding the best blueprint for the challenge. Let us know what you come up with!
AI alterations
AI scripts can now be organized into packages that can be exported and imported. Some bugs and annoyances have been addressed (see changelog below)
Changelog
New Stuff
added hard mode challenges
added audio sync setup to Boss 3 in Statue of Cubos
added option 'Size (UI)'
added experimental option 'Dynamic Rendering' to disable rendering when the game is not focused
added AI function 'UI: Size'
added Power Plant Boost for Arcade
added Power Plant Boost for Trading Post
added tooltips to all military requirements
added tooltips to crafter scan requirements
added tutorial to Headquarters
added tutorial to Arcade
added trading cards to Arcade
added worker for Arcade
added AI functions for Arcade
added skill 'Synergy' to the Workshop
added skill 'Foretelling' to Arcade
added skill 'Gamblers Luck' to Arcade
added skill 'High Stakes' to Arcade
added skill 'Fate Forging' to Arcade
added skill 'Extended Possibilities' to Arcade
added skill 'Determination' to Arcade
added exotic skill 'Metallic Tokens' to Arcade
added exotic skill 'Spiked Tokens' to Arcade
added exotic skill 'Charged Tokens' to Arcade
added neutral damage infinity perk
added Arcade boost infinity perk
added artifact 'Heart of the Cards'
added module 'Refined Armor'
added module 'Neutral Response'
added module 'Fracture'
added module 'Reboot'
added module 'Power of the Cat'
added module 'Void'
Changes
revamped the Arcade building
replaced 'favor conversion' Town Perk with 'coin rewards'
changed base conversion rate of Arcade from 100000 to 25000
downgrading modules inside the Workshop does not require a skill anymore
changed Workshop skill 'Reforge'
changed icon of Workshop skill 'engineering'
changed Headquarters UI to match the new style
modifier UI in town now properly refreshes upon reopening
AI scripts can now be put into packages
converting an invalid double to an int via the AI does not throw an exception anymore
using a negative length for the AI substring function now returns an empty string
What's this, it's the end of November?!:winter2019surprisedyul: Just one more month left until the new year celebrations can start!
The past two years have been a wild ride and The Perfect Tower II has evolved so much throughout this time. Even though there's only two of us, we're trying to make the game as fun, exciting, and bug-free as possible, and all your awesome ideas have helped - and continue to help - in achieving that goal!
Like every year, this is the time when Steam asks for your favorite game of the year. We would be very grateful if you nominated The Perfect Tower II for the "Best Game You Suck At" award!
Thanks to everyone who has supported us and Dr. Cubical so far! We hope you’ll stay for the ride.
Cheers, Speedy & XmmmX
v0.9.7 B2
- fixed UI bugs in Shipyard due to refactoring - fixed 3 statistic goals not rewarding a power stone slot
v0.9.7 B1
Hey everyone!
Another week of refactoring goes by and brings us closer to an even more modular core of the game. The final boss is reaching the polishing phase very soon and should be in a testable state any week now. Statistic goals now need to be claimed before you receive the reward. This change has been done in order to prepare for future rewards that will be things other than PowerStone slots. We added a migration that will auto-claim all your previous unlocked goals, so you should have the same amount of slots unlocked after loading the game.
The remaining contracts for the Headquarters have been finally added to the game. This change actually revealed a few invalid or missing module tags which have been added and fixed in the course of this update. Let us know in the comments which blueprint has the highest possible multiplier you can achieve while still being useful!
Changelog
New Stuff
added contract 'Activist'
added contract 'Elementalist'
added contract 'Neutralist'
added contract 'Trickster'
added contract 'Annihilist'
Changes
AI now forces all strings to be lower case during editing, import and export
AI waiting time counter now uses 64-bit floats
statistic goals have been refactored to allow other types of rewards in the future
statistic goals now need to be claimed to receive the reward
contracts now require a specific Headquarters tier to unlocked
swapped position of 'pacifist' and 'glass cannon' contract
Fixes
fixed Power Stone limit being tier 49 instead of tier 50
fixed error message if units are being destroyed after the tower has been destroyed
fixed fabricator sometimes consuming too much mass when fabricating
fixed 'AI: Trigger Impulse' returning it's own script name instead of the parent script name when being triggered by another script
fixed ranged enemies being able to attack while stunned
fixed some module tags
fixed critical wave jump not being toggle-able via AI
Technical
migrated artifacts location inside the save game
slight increased AI performance by removing string conversion to lower case during runtime
statistic goals are now being loaded via mod loader
