Update v0.14: Guardian, Barbarian and UI improvements

Update v0.14 focuses on improving existing systems and giving better feedback about what’s happening to the player.

Guardian changes and improvements

• Guardian firing range is much shorter than before.
• The blue firing range preview is now a half cylinder (it was a full cylinder before) to show that Guardians can’t fire behind them.
• The blue firing range preview is not as tall as before and less visually intrusive.
• Guardians are automatically dismissed when they are out of ammo again like they were before. This makes it easier to keep track of Guardians that still have ammo.
• Previously the player would buy a Guardian and this Guardian’s ammo would be fully stocked. You now buy ammo in packs instead, with up to 5 packs you can buy in total. Buying a Guardian makes the Guardian start with one pack. Clicking on a recruited Guardian while you are still in Build Mode buys another pack.
• How much ammo is inside one pack varies for each type of Guardian.
• The Build Menu shows how much ammo is in one pack of ammo
• You buy ammo in packs, but the ammo is counted individually. If a Guardian has 1.5 packs of ammo left and you buy another pack of ammo, the Guardian has 2.5 packs of ammo.
• You always pay the full refill price for the fifth and last pack of ammo, no matter how much ammo this pack has left. This discourages players from constantly and compulsively checking on Guardians and refilling them all the time to the brim.
• A Guardian’s ammo is now only shown for the Guardian right under the crosshair. Previously ammo would be shown for all Guardians close to the crosshair.
• Looking at a window / Guardian in Build Mode highlights the window to improve the feedback for the player.

Here’s a short video that shows some of these changes in action:

New options menu with video settings

• There’s a new Options button in the main menu that opens a menu with three options:
  • Run in fullscreen / windowed
  • Borderless window
  • MSAA Filtering with the options Disabled/2x/4x/8x/16x
• All settings are applied instantly, but they are not yet saved permanently. If you restart the game you have to reconfigure them for now.

Changes to Plots

• The placeholder villager houses are twice as wide now, so they have the same footprint as the hotels
• Houses and hotels have collision now and enemies no longer run through them.
• Known problem: the collision is always there, also when the plot is empty. The player is not able to shoot or walk over the area that is usually occupied by a building for now; this will be improved later.

Enemy improvements and changes

• Enemies have a new placeholder mesh that looks more like a construction worker and replaces the Unreal Engine dummy model.
• All enemies slightly vary their movement speed when they enter the level, so even enemies of the same type don’t have the exactly same movement speed. Together with the new detour behaviour from game version 0.13 this further breaks up the “beads on a string” effect.
• All enemy auras are stronger to make them have a more noticeable effect on the gameplay.
  • Partyboy (pink) reduces physical damage by 50% (previously 33%).
  • Inspector (blue) boosty movement speed by 50% (previously 33%).
  • Boss regenerates 50 Courage per second (previously 10).
• Enemies now drop their hardhats 100% of the time when they are defeated. This makes it easier to discern them from enemies that are still fighting.
• Enemies now wear hardhats that have the same color as their shirt.
• When fleeing, enemies will look for an exit door and run to the closest one they can find. If there isn’t at least one exit door in a level, they will instead run back to where they came from (like they previously did).

The player now gains experience

• For every point of Morale that the player earns he also earns the same amount of XP.
• The current amount of XP is displayed as a bar at the screen’s bottom.
• The player gains a level when he has gathered enough XP, but there aren’t any rewards for it yet. There probably will be soon.

General new UI features and improvements

• Made all UI panels darker to improve readability of text.
• The player’s Morale was previously in the HUD’s upper left corner. It’s now at the bottom center, alongside the player’s Courage and Ammo.
• The HUD no longer shows the maximum ammo for each weapon, only the remaining amount. The player is able to figure out the maximum amount on his own quickly, after which the information becomes unnecessary. It’s one less value that clutters the screen.
• Item pickup messages now stay visible for two seconds (previously one second)
• When a Barbarian has reached the plot and begins working on it, a bright red warning will appear in the screen’s top center. The warning disappears if a plot hasn’t been worked on for three seconds.
• A blue info message announces a round’s end in the screen’s top center when a round ends (by defeating all Barbarians or when they retreat).
• Values for Morale, Courage and Ammo are now depicted in green, red and blue to make it easier to see at a glance which value stands for what and which value it has.
• All Morale values in the HUD are now accompanied by a placeholder green dot icon, which makes it easier for the player to find and understand Morale values in the HUD.

Tutorial improvements

• Added a short note in the first tutorial box that the player can also read the tutorial while the game is paused.
• Added a tutorial page about the player’s weapons and their firing modes.
• Moved the info about the weapon controls from the Control the Player page to the new Player Weapons page.
• Added a tutorial page about Barbarians and their auras.

Miscellaneous changes

• Picking up an item awards 2 Morale. Previously picking up items didn’t have any benefit.
• Increased the wait time between enemy waves from 30 to 60 seconds to give the player more time to refill his ammo and inspect the Guardians. Wait time can still be skipped by pressing V.
• The activation radius of teleporter doors is larger than before, so the player doesn’t have to press himself against a door to open the Travel menu.
• Updated Godot engine version to 3.3 RC 6

Fixed bugs

• Particle trails are now correctly cleaned up when a map is restarted instead of getting stuck and staying in the map forever.
• When orange Sweeper Barbarians removed a Stinkbomb, the Stinkbomb’s particle trail would stay in the map indefinitely as a small white dot. This has been fixed.
• Restarting a game via the menu while the game is in Defense Mode and enemies are still spawning no longer causes the game to crash.