The Planetologists Game Development #10

The Planetologist - Update 0.3.0

Hello everyone!

First of all, we’d like to thank you all for the support and feedback we've received so far. Thank you very much! :D

We're excited to announce the release of the third update for the free demo of The Planetologist, now available on Newgrounds (web) and itch.io (web & Windows).

TL;DR:

• The UI was reworked.
• Now Pardot (the planetologist) can only carry 4 weapons at a time.
• New weapons: Uzi, sawed-off shotgun, plasma pistol, plasma shotgun and Gauss rifle.
• Unlocking a weapon results in your ship beaming it down as a pickup. Enemies in the beam-down area get nuked.
• New sprites for all powerups.
• Fixed major issues with attack speed and reload time. Now the math is correct 🙂
• Changed the “Reload Time” skill to “Reload Speed”.
• Auto-aim is working again (turn it on from controller options!).
• Reload indicator is now on the aim.
• New powerup duration indicators.
• New enemy sprites.
• More realistic shadow simulation.
• Improved performance in both web and Windows versions.

Update Objectives

In this release we mainly focused on further developing what’s already in the game. 

The first thing we wanted to improve on is the HUD. We reworked it a bit so now characters show on the left while companions show on the right, we added XP and powerup duration indicators and we rearranged indicator positions strategically (e.g., reload indicator is now on the aim along with attack-related powerup durations, while defense-related ones are shown on the character).

We also expanded a bit on the planetologist character by adding a few weapons to give you a bit more variety and we set a limit on the number of weapons he can carry at a time, so now you’ll have to carefully choose your gear. Now weapons are beamed-down by your ship for you to pick up or not, along with a convenient “nuke” effect in the beam-down area.

On the pickups front, we made it more likely for them to be dropped by enemies and we added appropriate sprites to make them easily identifiable. There’s a few more pickups too, like the “repair all companions” or the “reload all weapons” pickups.

We received quite a bit of feedback regarding the difficulty curve, so we reworked it a bit to make it more gradual and rewarding ;) Another common report was that mechas (the biped robots) behaved somewhat… silly. Most of the time they would stand their ground until dead, which is not ideal. Now they’ll follow you more closely.

So that’s about all we tackled in this update. As always, your feedback is very useful and welcome, so please keep it coming in! You might find your suggestions realized in the changelog below ;)

Gameplay:

• Now Pardot (the planetologist) can only carry 4 weapons at a time.
• New weapons: Uzi, sawed-off shotgun, plasma pistol, plasma shotgun and gauss rifle.
• Unlocking a weapon results in your ship beaming it down as a pickup. Enemies in the beam-down area get nuked.
• New sprites for all powerups.
• Fixed major issues with attack speed and reload time. Now the math is correct 🙂
• Changed the “Reload Time” skill to “Reload Speed”.
• Auto-aim is working again (turn it on from controller options!).
• New power-up duration indicators on the aim and the character.
• New pickups: “repair all robots”, “reload all weapons” and “pull all XP from map”.

Balance:

• Spawn phases.The difficulty now increases more gradually.
• Weapon attributes were adjusted with the testing team.
• HP has been significantly increased from 10 to 100.
• Enemy attributes were also changed.
• Increased the amount of XP dropped by enemies.
• Since many new pickup power-ups were added, drop chances have been increased. =)

Visuals and UI:

• New sprites for all pickup powerups.
• New powerup duration indicators.
• New powerup pickup animations.
• New reload animation.
• New roll reload time indicator.
• Improved shadow simulation system (WIP).
• Animated summoner idle sprite.
• New hive spawn animations.

Performance:

• Added some compiler level optimizations for Windows build.
• Added some transpiler level optimizations for web build.
• No more weird super-scaling of drawing surfaces when targeting non 640x360-like resolutions.

Fixes:

• Compasses are properly re-enabled when resuming the game after pause.
• Compasses are properly disposed of.
• Now the math behind “Attack Speed” and “Reload Time” skills is correct.
• Left and right shift keys are no longer differentiated to compensate for a GameMaker bug.
• Setting auto-aim on doesn’t cause eventual crashes.
• Improved performance in some resolutions (those that are not a multiple of 640x360, like 1600x900).
• Now resolutions are correctly displayed in video settings.
• Fixed crash when the player dies while the roll cooldown indicator is visible (0.2.1).