Art: Grenades will now show different visuals depending on whether they are enemy or player grenades. This is to better communicate if a grenade contributes to a combo and whether a grenade will be affected by the Friendly Fire Escalation Protocol.
Art: Show icon in world on player death that indicates reason for death.
Gameplay: Changed tech targeting rules so that special (previously hazard) tiles are always valid targets for the player.
Gameplay: Dash Vactics can now move when they are on cooldown. This cooldown behaviours consistent across enemies.
Gameplay: Implemented a new discrete ending point for the demo.
Gameplay: Ranged Vactics and Dash Vactics can now destroy buildings with their attacks.
Gameplay: Reduced cooldown between attacks for Grenade Vactics by 1.
Gameplay: Removed redundant Target Special Tiles mod from game as rule changes made it redundant.
Presentation: Added new option to the settings screen to run transitions between levels at faster speeds.
Presentation: Generally sped up the transition speeds between levels by shortening or removing some repeated elements.
UI: the re-centre button on the map now will only show when the player has scrolled away from the mech on the map. This will prevent instances where it can be pressed but nothing will happen.
Bugfixes
Fix bug where game text was not being loaded properly when system language was set to French.
Fixed bug that allowed Towerfall Escalation to appear in demo when not intended.
Fixed bug where enemies targetted by the Swap Location Tech mod were not being marked as moved by the player for the purposes of determining combos.
Fixed UI bug where text elements on the map would not be updated if the color palette was changed.
Fixed visual flickering that could between enemy and shield visuals.
Made some changes to audio file path lengths in project to reduce chance that previous unzip issues will occur.
Demo Version 0.100.3526 - Release Notes
Changes
Audio: added new sounds to play when rebinding controls.
Audio: added some new enemy specific death sounds
Codex Panel: added a completion indicator showing how much of the codex has been found.
Codex Panel: added toggles to collapse different sections of the codex.
Settings: added new Retro Style graphic option
Settings: added new option to change the animation style for building a level. Current options are Vertical and Random.
Tutorials: added icon indicators to show valid tiles when first seeing the attack tutorials.
Updated text that is shown when scanning enemies to include when they are currently in a cooldown state.
Updated visuals on scanned tiles to make blocked tiles more obvious.
Updates to wording in tutorials, tech and tech mod descriptions to make some game elements more clear.
Upgrade/Loadout Panels: Added new label to indicate which mech segment an upgrade will be installed to.
Bugfixes
Fixed bug where scanning a grenade at the end of a level would highlight tiles outside the level.
Fixed bug where some tutorial popups would show repeatedly.
Fixed incorrect icon being used on the city map when districts are increasing their level.
Fixed overflowing text on the desync label on level tiles.
Fixed the game not displaying correctly on some screen resolutions.
Fixed very slow mousewheel speed when scrolling some UI elements.
Early Access will launch on 22nd June
I'm very happy to announce that Vactics will be launching into Early Access on June 22nd, 2022 on Windows and MacOS. It has been a long journey for me in getting the game to this point and I am very excited to very soon show folks where the game is at and take the final steps in the development of the game with players along for the ride.
I am also very happy to announce that there is now a demo available for Vactics that people can play now. My hope for the demo is for people to see if Vactics is the kind of game for them. If you play the demo and enjoy it please wishlist the game and share it with your community.
I will be updating the demo periodically as I make improvements to the project in preparation for Early Access and beyond the launch.
