Welcome to the Uranium Season Update! It's a big Update so that means a new Season, new Leaderboards and new toys!
First I would like to say a big Thank You to Cntrpl and Pilzkopf from Discord who did excellent work testing this update before it went live! If you want to help or just chat then the Discord is the best place to join in!
As with every Season Update the Leaderboards for the previous Season are archived and will no longer accept new scores.
So without further ado...
ACHIEVEMENTS
There are now 36 Steam Achievements in the game; one for each program.
I've tried to make sure the achievements are challenging and encourage different ways to play the game that rewards in-depth knowledge of how everything works.
There will be more Achievements coming in future Updates so keep checking back!
ITEM BALANCE
There have been some balance changes to Programs, too many to go into detail but here are the highlights...
Utility Programs:
Repel - Now gets placed in your aim direction and as well as knocking back enemies leaves behind an area that enemies cannot enter for a short time.
Stun - Now briefly pauses enemy spawning when triggered and "Confuses" stunned enemies instead of stopping them.
Glitch - No longer for Emergencies only this program lets you dash between points without passing through the intervening space. Yes you can in fact Glitch through walls and across gaps.
Attract - Replacing "Rage" Attract places a Trap in your aim direction that sucks in nearby enemies.
Barrier - Barrier now lasts longer and heals you if it ends without breaking.
Weapon Programs:
Frag - The Mine Launcher has been changed into "Frag", a rapid fire shotgun whose projectiles bounce off walls with great single target damage at close range.
Sharpshooter - This Beam laser was cutting through Bosses from across the map so now it's damage is reduced by distance. Don't worry though it's still the best single taret damage in the game at any range.
Burst Programs:
Prox - Wyldfire has been replaced by "Prox", a Burst attack that drops multiple "Smart" Proximity Mines that will home in on nearby targets. Excellent for Area Denial.
Buffer Programs:
Focus - This Buffer now grants you a stack of "Focus" each time you use a Utility program. Focus can stack up to six times and each stack reduces the cost of using your Utility program.
Equilibrium - Equilibrium now massively increases your Energy regeneration when you aren't firing your main weapon but has much lower passive Regeneration.
Cache Programs:
Overclock - Similar to Focus this Program grants a stack of "Overclock" each time you use a Burst attack reducing the Adrenaline cost of future Bursts. Stacks up to six times.
Dive
The Boss Fights have each had a second pass and have gained unique Arenas, new abilities, better balance and are more polished.
You can now find Extra Lives in Dive mode.
Bug Fixes & Performance
There have been a lot of bug fixes and performance improvements in this version.
Quality of Life
The Directional Pad on controllers is once again supported in the menus. There may be a few places where it's not 100% so if you find any areas it's not working as expected please post them in the Discord!
Waves 2 in the WN Unreal Dev Contest Quarter Finals!
Vote for Waves!
Today is a day of excellent news! Waves 2: Notorious has made it to the Quarter Finals of the WN Unreal Dev Contest!
The top prizes for this contest include Publishing Deals and Development funding that would help support the rest of the game's development.
The next update nears closer. I have consistently overestimated how much work I can get done while being part-time on the game but the end is now in sight.
During today's live stream I managed to get the number of broken or untested achievements down from 9 to just 3 out of 36. There are still 5 that need changes to Items before they can be tested but those changes are minor and should be done by this time next week.
User Interface Improvements
At some point, the ability to use the arrow keys and the D-Pad on controllers stopped working to navigate the menus. Next patch this will be fixed and there have been multiple tweaks to the UI flow and layout to make things easier for those players using control pads! No longer will you have to go all the way back to the main menu just to edit your loadout and picking your loadout will be much easier than ever before!
While most of the languages are sitting around 50% complete the reality is that most of the remaining strings have been translated by Google and are getting upvoted by native speakers of those languages so the most popular languages are almost ready for their first trial in-game!
There are still ways to help out! The more votes a suggestion gets the more the green bar will fill up indicating the confidence in the translations are high. In order for a string to be considered "finished" it needs at least 3 votes so at this point we really just need help proofreading what's already there!
Thank you to all the members of the community who have helped translate the game to date!
Dev Stream Today @ 4 PM GMT (10 AM ET)
I am streaming some Live Dev of Waves 2: Notorious over on Twitch today from 3 PM GMT. These streams tend to run for 3-4 hours so feel free to pop in and say hi!
This week I am working on some of the unfinished achievements in the game trying to push for the next update. Fairly dry stuff so I could use some company!
You can join the Discord or follow me on Twitter for notifications on when I go live as well as just hanging out with other fans of the Waves games!
Dev Stream Today @ 3 PM GMT (10 AM ET)
I am streaming some Live Dev of Waves 2: Notorious over on Twitch today from 3 PM GMT. These streams tend to run for 3-4 hours so feel free to pop in and say hi!
This week's project is a new UI flow, testing some achievements and maybe getting in some new Structures into the game if we have time.
You can join the Discord or follow me on Twitter for notifications on when I go live as well as just hanging out with other fans of the Waves games!
Dev Stream Today @ 3 PM GMT (10 AM ET)
I will be streaming some Live Dev of Waves 2: Notorious over on Twitch today from 3 PM GMT. These streams tend to run for 3-4 hours so feel free to pop in and say hi!
This week's project is making some changes to Buffer and Cache Programs to reward you with Stacks of certain Buffs when you use your Utility or Burst Programs.
You can join the Discord or follow me on Twitter for notifications on when I go live as well as just hanging out with other fans of the Waves games!
Introducing "Attract" - A Utility Program That Sucks!
Over the last few Dev Streams, I have been working away on the new Attract Utility Program. Like the previously announced revamp of Glitch it uses the same slot as Slowmo but has significantly different functionality.
Attract gets dropped in the direction you are aiming and any enemies that come into contact with it will be sucked towards its core rendering them temporarily helpless.
Multiple Attract Programs can be active at once letting you herd enemies or cluster them together for a powerful Burst (Quake is a good fit here).
Attract lasts 5 seconds however if you want to end it early and get some energy back you can always collapse it by touching the Core causing a shockwave that knocks away enemies.
The downside? Attract has a limit on how many enemies it can manage at once. Go over this limit and it collapses early potentially launching those enemies right at you. If you plan on using this to counter Bosses in Dive then you might want to upgrade it so it doesn't collapse quite as quickly!
Attract will be replacing Rage so if you've already unlocked Rage you will automatically receive Attract in the next update.
Another Dev Stream Today @ 3 PM GMT (10 AM ET)
I will be streaming some Live Dev of Waves 2: Notorious over on Twitch today from 3 PM GMT. These streams tend to run for 3-4 hours so feel free to pop in and say hi!
This is starting to become a regular thing! 4 in a row that I've Live Streamed some game dev and I don't intend to stop! Thanks to everybody who joins me it's great to have some company!
This week I will be working on Particle Effects for the Attract and Glitch Abilities as well as general polish on both of them. I will also be testing (and probably fixing) their related achievements.
You can join the Discord or follow me on Twitter for notifications on when I go live as well as just hanging out with other fans of the Waves games!
Localization Update!
Thank you to everybody who is helping localize the game over on localizor!
Since we started I've added Spanish and Slovak by request and translations are underway for both of them already.
I also spent a few days going over the text strings in the game and pruning all the ones that either aren't used or won't be used as well as combining most of the duplicates together into string tables.
This means the word count has now dropped by two-thirds and the number of keys to translate has gone down by over 400!
I've also been responding to requests for contexts and providing screenshots where needed.
We still need translators for Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic (I'd really like to try and get Arabic right as it's almost always butchered in games).
We also need more proofreaders to vote up the accurate translations. Once a suggestion gets 3 votes it gets approved and once enough of a translation is approved I can start putting them in the game.
There will be more keys getting added as development continues but I will try and keep everything as up to date as I can.
Thank you again!
Dev Stream Today @ 3 PM GMT (10 AM ET)
I will be streaming some Live Dev of Waves 2: Notorious over on Twitch today from 3 PM GMT. These streams tend to run for 3-4 hours so feel free to pop in and say hi!
The stream will mostly be focused on turning the "Attract" prototype I built last week into a working Item and I will also be fixing some bugs, and tracking down some localization issues.
You can join the Discord or follow me on Twitter for notifications on when I go live as well as just hanging out with other fans of the Waves games!
Help Translate Waves 2!
Join the few, the proud, the multilingual!
If you speak any languages in addition to English then perhaps you can help translate the text in the game so that others might enjoy it as much as you do!
I'm using a site called localizor to manage the community translation of the game and so far Polish is winning by about 30%.
Joining is free for translators and you can suggest translations and vote on them, the top voted translations go into the game.
https://www.localizor.com/waves-2-notorious
If a language is missing from the list then just leave a comment or DM me either on Twitter or Discord.
Several members of the Discord are already hard at work translating the game into French and Polish and will be happy to help if you have any problems.
