Hello!
Since roughly a week, you can now get keys for Brink of Extinction and Twinstack from the startup www.cloudr.gg
So support us small players in the business by purchasing the games from there. 🙂
/ Dispersing Minds
Hello!
I’ve now set the builds for version Fire Spider live.
The main focus for this update has been to lower loading times, as that had become problematic over time.
The main source of the issue was leaking materials, which has now been fixed. This should lower loading times substantially. There will still be some loading times when the game first loads assets, so in particular when loading a level the first time.
This is the full list of fixes:
– Lowered the amount of objects in each object pool.
– Removed leaked materials in scenes and replaced these with global materials. This was a huge one, because the leak primarly affected decals, causing materials to be duplicated.
– Applied material property blocks to selectable and fading objects to prevent material leaks when objects fade in and out or colortransition.
– Added a fast forward button.
– Added enemy path visualisation at the beginning of the start of campaign levels.
– Fixed a bug where the screen would flash red at the beginning of each level as if taking damage.
– Optimized how sounds load.
– Optimized texture sizes.
– Optimized base localisation at start.
– Cleaned up redundant objects left in some scenes.
– Increased enemy speeds slightly.
– Increased the base turret range slightly.
– Compressed the game as LZ4HC, which will also helps loading times and lowers the size of the build.
That’s all for this time!
/ Dispersing Minds
Hello
First off, the webpage hasn’t been updated in quite a while, but that will improve from now on. About a week ago, I updated Brink of Extinction to the new version, called Blitz Ant. This version of the game adds several new features and fixes a bunch of issues, namely:
– Optimization
Shadow system has been optimized and settings for it tweaked.
FXAA removed in favor of TSAA. This means that the aliasing has been minimized even on low resolution scaling. TSAA is more performance heavy than FXAA, but the added performance cost is offset by allowing lower resolution scales to get the same or better graphical fidelity.
Loading times between levels lowered. Music is compressed into memory in the background instead of on load and SFX uses faster compression.
Improved pooling system and waypoint path generation to allow for pool expansion and drawing from a single pool. This dramatically improves the loading times, in particular it lowers the load of creating many objects on start (noticeable by a lot of stuttering when level is first loaded in).
Optimized UI code.
Some adjustments in large scenes to lower the number of objects and their FPS impact.
– Features and balancing
– General changes
Difficulty ramp on campaign changed. Earlier levels are now a bit easier, later levels slightly trickier.
Powerup costs will increase per use.
Turrets now have a special attack that unlocks when you match a specific stat. The special ability requires a 60/105s (campaign/endless) charge time.
Turret upgrade cost offset. Each upgrade costs more than the previous one for the same stat. In the campaign this generally means the special abilities cannot be unlocked on the early levels and pushes players to build in more locations instead of maxing turrets early on.
Turret recoupable credits from sales the same as before, meaning less of investment on upgrades can now be recouped from sales.
All enemy and turret stats rebalanced. To allow for more finetuning, DMG and HP has been doubled and then tuned further. This means the repair speed has been changed to accommodate higher HP values for turrets. It also means fully repairing turrets is now more expensive than before.
There’s now a 5 % chance turrets will score a lucky chance when enemies fire the killing shot. This sets the turret hp to 1 and stuns enemies for a second, allowing turrets to survive even the most devastating hits. Using the Bull turret’s gentle giant special ability sets the chance to 50 % for a short time.
– Endless mode
Continuous mode leveling system overhauled. Instead of all stats leveling up each 5-8 spawn cycles, either of DMG, HP or yield is randomly picked to level up each 1-2 spawn cycles. This should make each game more different and changes the difficulty ramp a bit – If you are lucky, yields will level up faster than damage and hit point, for instance.
Insect generals added to the continuous mode. Every fifth cycle, the last enemy spawned from one point will be a general – the general is three levels ahead of the wave level for DMG and HP and 5 levels for yield stats. Works as an extra challenge and a way to boost credits. Marked with a red vortex particle underneath.
Wave pause time changed from linear random to normal distribution. Making very long and very short pauses rarer.
Pause time between enemy spawns in wave changed from linear random between -0.1 and 0.2 to normal distribution between -0.1 and 0.4.
Spawn amount per wave in endless mode changed from random between starting value and starting value to cycle, to normally distributed with starting value as mean. This mean shifts up by value one per 5 wave cycles meaning each 5 cycles will increase the number of enemies spawned. Getting very few or very many spawned enemies should thus be rarer in the beginning and more common later in a game.
Yields changed from linear to log normal curve, meaning faster in the beginning and slower later on in the endless mode.
– Graphical changes
Some turrets have had some animations and more particles added.
Explosion effects overhauled.
– Other
The game has been translated into Russian, Swedish, Romanian and French.
Button press sound moved, to avoid “false” click sounds.
First wave starts briefly after placement of first turret to allow planning.
Level 14 deathbox fix. Enemies would sometimes miss the deathbox causing the level to not finish.
Bug where raycasting would bug out when not using SSAA fixed.
Additional hexes on level 5 and 9 and the endless mode highway level.
Unfortunatly There were a things that I had intended for this version, but simply did not have time to implement or finish implementing.
– Remaining additions for the future
I had intended to have these additions added this update, but due to a lack of time they’ve been cut. Should hopefully see implementation fairly soon.
* Mac version added. Was intended for this update, but due to continuing issues with the Mac build it has been pushed to the future.
* In game scoreboards when you finish a continuous level. Will be implemented in the next update.
* Hexagon level. Was pushed to a later date due to lack of time to balance it properly and give it the required time to test it.
* German, Spanish and Chinese translations.
Greetings!
Version ”Fire Ant” is now live and changes the game in a host of ways. Aside from adding two new levels, the update also rebalances the game in a number of ways. Turrets have been differentiated more, so that they have more distinct usage situations. The enemy stat increases when they level up in the continuous mode have also been changed up, making the challenge more consistent. Lastly, the yield formula has been changed in the continuous mode.
The update also adds in a collectible in the form of mem discs, that can be found in the campaign levels. The mem discs contain brief story elements, that pieced together will give a view of the events leading up to the campaign.
Lastly, the update adds Steam leaderboards, so that your best scores in the continuous mode are saved and can be compared to those of other players around the world. For Game Jolt users, leaderboards were implemented already in the launch version of the game.
Here’s the full list of changes, fixes and additions:
Optimizations:
Bugs and issues:
New features and rebalancing:
Minor adjustments:
Hello,
I’m in the process of working out some changes to the game and figured I would list the upcoming changes here. Most of this info has been published on the steam store front for Brink of Extinction as well, but also on IndieDB.
– I will spruce up some of the weapon firing effects.
– Scoreboards were planned for, but never made it into, the initial release, so these will be added also (for the continuous mode levels).
– Some background story. The game does have a bit of a story, but it is currently not conveyed in-game.
– Turret default rotation will be setable with the scroll wheel, and not only by clicking and dragging.
– Tweaking of turret stats.
– Added upgrade info into the turret showroom.
– Camera pan and/or zoom.
– Objectives listed before level starts.
– Two additional endless mode levels, one with Tesla and one without. This also means four more achievements.
The turret nerfs and buffs are as follows (although they may still be subject to change):
Acid turret: Starting HP from 500 to 450, minus 50. Starting Damage from 35 to 25, minus 10. Speed will be equivalent to that of rail (40). HP upgrade will give 125 instead of 100, damage upgrade till give 25 instead of 20. Splash range will go from 1.25 to 1.3.
Bull turret: 10 less starting damage, from 40 to 30. Damage upgrade will give 20 instead of 16. Starting HP up 50.
Plasma: Starting damage 25 instead of 20, and damage upgrade 8 instead of 10. Splash damage radius from 0.9 to 1.
Missile turret: Increased damage upgrade, from 30 to 35.
Overall, the concept is to differentiate the turrets from each other more. So the Acid turret will be stronger and have better range than rail, but is weaker. Bull turret gets a more emphasized role as high HP and strong, but is slower than machinegun turret and double turret. The double turret will remain a sort of all round turret. The plasma turret and acid turret both get splash range improvements, making them suitable for large hordes of enemies. Plasma is weaker but faster than acid. I’ve yet to decide about the cost of upgrades, and some more minor adjustments may still follow after more extensive testing.
Enemies will also get some stat tweaks, but primarily when it comes to their upgrade values, so this won’t affect the campaign, as all enemies are level 0 in the campaign. I have yet to start tweaking enemies, so a post on this will follow once I have done this.
Lastly, the game has been updated from Unity 5.5 to Unity 2017.2, which means some of the assets I use have also been updated. Since the shadow system and SSAA system were fairly new when I developed the game, these have now been updated and optimized, which means the game should run better in general also (although no complains on performance or bugs have been reported).
I have previously stated the release of this update being around February, but it might be available in January already, but no promises!
I’ve gotten the BoE builds submitted to Steam. If all goes as planned, the game will release on the 30th of November on Steam and GameJolt (although a bit of work remains on the GJ builds) for windows.
I’ve also gotten the store front for Twinstack in order and submitted for approval. This means it should be up soon. The game itself is planned to release on the 20th of December, for Windows, Mac and Linux.
On a different note, the Retro 2D Tile Set Dark now has a Light edition, available on the Asset Store.
There are some other things planned for the near future. These things will be announced pretty soon. 🙂
The Brink of Extinction store page on Steam has been submitted for review. In the meantime work will continue on some Steam achievement implementation and setting up GameJolt for achievements as well. The game looks as if it’s still on for a Nov 30th release. 🙂
Having finished the achievement display area, the game is now only further testing and some overall polish away from being completely finished. If I’m not completely mistaken, the game should be on target for a november release. 😀
The achievement area is coming along nicely. All panels have now been placed. What remains to be done is adding in all the details, decals and adding polish to the last area. On another topic, the BoE soundtrack is now all but finished – one main theme, eight in game tracks and three loops. I will go through the sound track one more time prior to release, to add some more polish and make sure they all sound alright, but with this and the achievement area the game is pretty much finished! :O
