Phobos Down 0.0.9 alpha released
It's time for another Phobos Down alpha update!
I had a very loose plan for the content of this update. Some changes are based on tester feedback, others are random things from my task list and as usual, there are changes I never planned at all. Despite the lack of planning, this update brings many significant improvements.
Score items dropped from killed enemies are now always automatically picked up, so there's no need to go collect them manually.
There is a completely new enemy type called "tank" with differently sized variants. It's a quite rare boss type enemy with special weak points that can be destroyed in order to deal huge amount of damage and to slow down the enemy.
Another noticeable addition is data storage devices fallen from the wreckage that contain confidential data and can be destroyed for additional score reward. These devices also reveal tiny bits of backstory as text excerpts.
You'll also notice that drop pods have changed. They have a new model and instead of exploding on ground they now return to the support ship in orbit. This makes more sense than having an infinite supply of drop pods on the small ship. The devices delivered by the drop pods have different models now to make it easier to tell them apart.
Weapon management UI has also changed a bit. It now shows the total change in weapon properties when assigning a modifier to a weapon, taking into account the original modifier that will be replaced.
Here is the full change log since version 0.0.8:
- Made the "free" mouse aiming mode the default.
- Properly capture mouse cursor in photo mode when using "free" mouse aiming mode.
- Fixed small error in distance calculation when applying damage from explosions.
- Increased score item attract distance to cover whole mission site.
- Improved enemy shoot recoil handling.
- Adjusted enemy gib size and count to better scale with enemy size.
- Fixed explosions with origin inside an enemy body not causing damage.
- Added two variants of a new rare "tank" enemy type.
- Show total modifier effect on weapon properties in weapon UI.
- Force walkers to step their feet if they stretch too long.
- Fixed first walkers sometimes spawning without legs.
- Added a new evasive floater enemy variant.
- Removed score cost from all devices.
- Added separate sound effect for score penalty.
- Use the normal terminal sound when displaying score messages in-game.
- Updated models for drop pods and all devices.
- Refactored droppod and device handling to make adding new devices easier in future.
- Fixed artifacts at edges of device and modifies icons.
- New much better device destruction sounds.
- Added data storage devices that can be destroyed for score bonus.
- Fixed screen edge indicators not getting drawn in priority order.
- Drop third medical station device if player's health falls below 25%.
- Show screen edge indicators for medical station devices already below 50% health.
- Fixed melee enemies not always getting close enough to player to attack.
- Emit smoke particles from damaged containers.
- Improved thruster plume shader.
- Fixed broken dust particle placement inside explosion volume.
- Fixed drop pods spawning in front of camera with low FOV setting.
- Made orbital strike device indicator show the time to missiles hitting the ground.
- Fade out world grid as the camera zooms in at mission start.
- Fixed camera FOV setting affecting sound volume level.
- Hide device icons and time indicators in photo mode.
- Replaced directional camera push from explosions with more traditional shake.
- Added a subtle camera push on player weapons firing.
- Added menu setting for strength of camera shake effects.
- Removed camera FOV setting from menu.
- Improved gamepad vibration effects.
- Play heartbeat sound when health is critically low.
- Fixed menu move sound playing everytime the game starts.
- Prevent undodgeable enemy ballistic attacks at very close range.
- Prevent enemies spawning directly under obstacles or characters.
- Delay failed mission info box a little after player's death.
- Lower the damage applied to the player when already badly hurt.
- Scale enemy projectile size based on the size of the shooting enemy.
As usual, all feedback is welcome! You can contact me through the contact form here or leave a comment on Itch.io page.
Downloads are available on Itch.io:
Posted on 2024-07-31
Phobos Down 0.0.8 alpha released
This update to Phobos Down comes sooner than usual because I needed a new version for Game Development World Championship 2024 submission. Despite the fast schedule, there are some significant improvements.
I have made some changes to reduce the idle waiting time during the missions. The idle time between enemy waves has been shortened and messages are now shown when waves start and end.
Previously there were indicators at screen edges that guided the player to stationary enemies. Now the same indicators are shown for all enemies. This might make the screen edges a bit more "busy" than I'd like but it removes the need to track down the first wandering enemies and gives a better view of the overall situation. Storywise it also makes that the support ship in orbit provides this information.
There are now random crystal formations growing from the ground. They act as simple obstacles that provide some cover and add visual variation to the mission sites.
Here is the full change log since version 0.0.7:
- Adjusted player character recoil animation to be more visible.
- Bumped up projectile hit impulse on enemies.
- Fixed unburrowed digger enemies sliding while shooting and on impacts.
- Added screen edge indicators for all off-screen enemies.
- Added screen edge indicators for healing devices while player is badly damaged.
- Fixed edge indicators breaking up at screen corners (especially at high aspect ratio screens).
- Increased the maximum number of simultaneous enemies a bit.
- Decreased the idle time between enemy waves from 20 to 10-15 seconds.
- Show messages on enemy wave start and completion.
- Added new sentry gun shoot sound with more variation.
- Return camera to orbit when returning to main menu.
- Prevented enemies from climbing on top of obstacles.
- Fixed enemy projectiles not triggering impact effects on hit.
- Added crystal formations as alternative obstacle type.
- Made enemies change position if their ranged attacks are continuously blocked by obstacles.
- Added two new walker enemies.
- Increased fire rates for some of the tougher enemies.
You can contact me through the contact form here or leave a comment on Itch.io page.
Downloads are available on Itch.io:
Posted on 2024-05-27
Phobos Down 0.0.7 alpha released
It's time for another Phobos Down alpha update!
Once again there is a long list of bug fixes and improvements. Probably the most visible additions is the glowing waving "trees". In practice, they are just simple static obstacles but they bring some much needed variation and more dynamic lights to the mission sites.
Another small but important visual change is that the player now turns into the direction of movement while not aiming instead of walking backwards long distances and looking stupid.
The character controller has received a lot of improvements. Walking up steep hills should now finally be smooth. This applies to the player and especially to the larger enemy types.
While there are no new enemy types added this time, I have made some changes to the existing ones. Relative enemy appearance frequencies have all been adjusted and fixes made so that the rare enemy types actually appear as infrequently as intended. One bigger change here is that the "spawner" enemy (the floating egg-like thing that spawns other enemies) has been turned into a rare special enemy type that appears at most once per wave. I did this because multiple simultaneous "spawners" were very tedious to fight and made the mission last way longer than intended.
As for new content, I have added stun projectile modifier that makes a weapon stun enemies for a while. There is also a stun device drop pod that can be used to stun a large number of enemies within range. The stunned enemies are then an easy source of kill streak or multi-kill score rewards. Stun projectiles make hitting fast-moving enemies a lot easier.
Here is the full change log since version 0.0.6:
- Fixed blast waves not affecting gibs and smoke particles.
- Added glowing trees as obstacles and additional dynamic lights.
- Made plants and trees sway after hit by projectiles and blast waves.
- Improved explosive plant model and vertex animation.
- Fixed a couple of worst (CPU) performance bottlenecks.
- Limited auto-aim to a reasonable range.
- Prevented explosive enemies from exploding until fully unburrowed.
- Add blinking light to triggered devices.
- Fixed enemies getting stuck to friendly obstacles while wandering idle.
- Increased explosive plant damage to the enemies and lowered the damage to the player.
- Lowered container explosion damage to the player.
- Removed the option to manually enter game seed.
- Fixed containers sometimes getting placed too close to the player start point.
- Turn player slowly towards walking direction while not aiming.
- Dim existing modifier icon while installing a new one to indicate that it will be replaced.
- Fixed wrong colors in explosive plant damage range indicators.
- Added explosion damage range indicator to badly damaged containers.
- Added move sound loop to crawler enemies.
- Show player health bar temporarily after closing weapon wheel.
- Properly disable player UI and controls behind mission completion info dialog.
- Always spawn score items above the ground even if the dead enemy was burrowed.
- Play a sound on equipment level upgrade at mission end.
- Fixed score label changing position with long message texts.
- Properly hide challenge/game status in main menu after game completion.
- Fixed enemy randomization to properly respect set enemy type specific probabilities.
- Rewrote the character controller to better handle climbing steep slopes.
- Fixed enemies not respecting their type specific avoidance distances.
- Smoothly turn enemies to align with ground.
- Fixed enemies forgetting their targets even if getting shot at.
- Fixed a crash when drop pods are spawned after the player's death.
- Made the lower enemy rotation speed limits actually work.
- Added projectile stun weapon modifier.
- Fixed digger enemies sliding down slopes.
- Added stun device drop pod.
- Reduced the mission count range to 6-9 (from 8-12).
- Fixed completely broken rotation handling in all particle systems.
- Fixed walker leg damage flash being one frame late compared to its body.
- Turned spawner enemies into rarely seen "special" enemies.
You can contact me through the contact form here or leave a comment on Itch.io page.
Downloads are available on Itch.io:
Posted on 2024-05-06
Phobos Down 0.0.6 alpha released
Next Phobos Down alpha update is here!
This update brings many improvements to visuals and audio. First of all, there is now music playing in the menu and during the place-holder intro sequence. During the gameplay, depending on the landing site's wind conditions, a wind sound is playing in background.
Only bit of actual game content added this time is the orbital strike device that lets you order a missile strike from the support ship in orbit.
Splatter and other particles effects have been fine-tuned to be more consistent. Most noticeable change is the splitting of previous fragment cubes emitted from explosions into two separate types: Metallic fragments and fleshy gibs. Both now vary in size and play sounds on contact with the ground. Gibs also leave a blood trail while flying through the air.
One problem that nearly all new player face with the weapon management UI has been accidentally destroying modifiers. Another problem that has been bothering even more experienced players is accidental weapon changes while interacting with devices. I previously made destroying modifiers require two button presses but that was just confusing. I now made a bigger change in the weapon menu interaction: A weapon is selected by a button press and installing or destroying modifiers requires holding the button down. This seems to be much more intuitive and also prevents the accidental weapon changes.
Here is the full change log since version 0.0.5:
- Added muzzle flashes to sentry guns.
- Added proper controller specific and localized control guides.
- Fixed menu sounds not playing in high scores page.
- Accurately align weapon mesh to player aiming direction.
- Dim auto-aim reticle while light of sight to target is blocked.
- Added orbital strike device drop pod.
- Added language selection in settings menu.
- Added title music in menu.
- Added ambient wind sound.
- Added collision sounds to containers.
- Added menu back navigation using ESC/back button.
- Added varying wind effects to different sites.
- Added a custom splash screen.
- Strip leading zeros from week numbers challenge names.
- Show high "loading" text while high scores are being loaded instead of an empty table.
- Lots of minor particle effect tweaks.
- Fixed some particles flashing at full brightness for one frame after being emitted.
- Separated metal fragments and gibs to their own systems with different properties.
- Added particle trails to fast moving gibs.
- Added sounds on gibs and fragments hitting ground.
- Added random variation to enemy gib count and size.
- Improvements to the splatter sounds.
- Added simple slide animation to switching between menu pages.
- Show total time in game completion screen.
- Changed weapon selection to require shoot button press.
- Changed weapon modifier installing and destroying to require holding shoot button down.
- Improved interaction sounds in weapon UI.
- Added "cleared" text in site information to indicate already cleared sites.
- Halved "fast crawler" melee attack damage.
Note: From this update on, I will be building Godot engine myself instead of relying on the pre-built binaries. This has the downside that Microsoft Defender will likely warn you about an "unrecognized app" when launching the game executable. This is because you're one of the first people to ever run the executable, so Defender knows nothing about it. You can either click "more info" from the dialog and then "run anyway" to let it run despite the warning or install the game through Itch.io application. Please let me know if you are having problems with this or you are seeing some unexpected warnings related to the game binary.
You can contact me through the contact form here or leave a comment on Itch.io page.
Downloads are available on Itch.io:
Posted on 2024-02-26
Phobos Down 0.0.5 alpha released
Time for another Phobos Down alpha update!
This update adds the long-promised "online features" which means global weekly challenges and high scores tables for them. Weekly challenge is a game mode where all players play the same game (same procedural generation seed) for one week and compete for the highest scores. Every week the game changes and the high scores are reset. Additionally there is a "release challenge" that works similarly but is active for four weeks after a new version is released.
One new feature which is probably not that important for the players, but was necessary to me, is the pause/photo mode that lets you pause the game and freely fly around with the camera snapping pretty screenshots. Press P or gamepad Y/△ to toggle photo mode.
The medical devices have been completely redesigned. You no longer need to stay standing close to the device because that made it really hard to use while being attacked. Now you can just activate the device and continue dodging bullets while slowly regaining health.
The previous update made last remaining enemies target the player at end of a wave to prevent having to hunt them down. This was a good change but I completely forgot that there are immobile enemies too. I now added indicator at screen edges pointing towards the stationary enemies to make finding them easier.
Here is the full change long since version 0.0.4:
- Fixed stutter when first shot is fired in mission.
- Fixed stutter when first drop pod opens in mission.
- Fixed menu not fully fading out before mission start.
- Made nearest drop pod highlight a bit more visible.
- Added visible device meshes to activated device drop pods.
- Added global weekly challenges.
- Added online high score tables.
- Randomize planet hue for each game.
- Changed minimum aspect ratio to 16:10 to use all screen estate on Steam Deck.
- Randomize initial damage to containers.
- Improved initial container placement.
- Replaced medical station "healing bubble" with simple health regeneration for limited time.
- Show blinking health bar while below player health is below 25%.
- Added pause/photo mode with freely controllable camera.
- Added photo mode auto-triggers based on gameplay events.
- Enable menu navigation using the analog in-game controls too.
- Made all shadows a bit darker.
- Added explosive bio-luminescent plants.
- Made diggers avoid unburrowing under obstacles.
- Fixed missiles ignoring aim offset on enemies and seeking towards center point.
- Show indicators at screen edges for remaining stationary enemies after a wave has ended.
- Fixed player walk animation not playing when moving slowly.
- Require shoot button release before interaction after opening the weapon wheel.
- Fixed total number of containers randomly exceeding expected count.
Give it a go and let me know what you think! You can contact me through the contact form here or leave a comment on Itch.io page.
Downloads are available on Itch.io:
Posted on 2023-12-18