I took 5 weeks off game making to learn Unreal and make "Bobs" https://vimeo.com/597525805 This marks my return into movies and, coincidently, game engines are now common on set as you've seen with the Mandalorian so this feels doubly right at home. And now I am back on McDROID Switch Edition. It seems that every last bug is gone and I will send the last build to Lotcheck... right about now. As always you can join the discord https://discord.gg/faBNMxr where I added a movie section. I've worked on a few movies which you can check here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk1xPyKr3qkfepZsCQzuDGg

McDROID has been in development since December 24th 2011, it was released in 2014 and last updated in 2020. If that's not labor of love I don't know what is so since this is the only category that such a old game can be voted for, press that vote button, por favor, s'il vous plait m'kay? Oh and latest in the Switch porting camp. Would you like to know more?

I just added McDROID 2016 and 2014 and 2013 in the branch menu for those who like to see the evolution of a game through time. You can thank @supernet2!

One of you (@supernet2) showed me how fun co-op can be so, for the next few days, I'll try something different:

• Old build with CO-OP by default moved to the main branch (with minor fixes and + Asia region).
• NEO build with the new engine, single player and all the fixes for the NX VERSION into the "n-e-o" branch.

Wow that was a weird one! After playing (and dying) in that funky Arena you can no longer play the game: you'd get snow then crash until you reset progress. Here is what was happening: Arena 4 had its exit spawn in the wrong place, as a result McD was being respawned in the closest location which was near level 1, but on certain machines the respawn was throwing poor lil macky to infinity and beyond resulting in physics freaking out (NAN collider) and the camera following it in the netherworld of float error causing weird stuff in the view frustrum which Unity turns to snow. So the UI was fine, the 3D camera was snow. Solution: move the respawn point close to the navmesh so it's within the 2 unit radius. R.I.P. weird glitch. Thanks to Will and JY help so they get goodies.

I fixed the DLC bug and waves bubbles not popping, in the process. Also, after talking and playing co-op with one of you, I decided to make a little experiment: always on co-op. You can access it in the BETA>public beta and if it works I'll push it to the co-op branch or maybe *maybe* the main branch. Report all bugs (bugs?!) following this post: https://steamcommunity.com/app/252970/discussions/1/2792748953544942324/ If you want to chat and talk next game and choice of tech, join me here https://discord.gg/uvMETkX

Why this update after so long? Well I got a surprise for ya! As you all know McDROID is very taxing even on a powerful PC. Now imagine how mad someone would have to be to port it to a mobile console like, say, the Switch... it would just melt. Well lucky you, I'm mad and you're getting the sweet fallout of this mad enterprise: improved engine, improved graphics, improved controls and no more bug (really). And if you want to participate and get some goodies, Go there: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elefantopia/mcdroid-switch?ref=ajekey Now let's get on the juicy bits, the changes, "so many of them":

CORE

GAMEPLAY

GRAPHICS

AUDIO

INPUT

EXTRA

The other day I wanted to play co-op but no one was on the server so I looked on the photon website and was shocked:
A maximum ccu of 3 means that if you want to play co-op, you need to sync with your friends via steam chat. This means that the auto discovery and other complicated lobby features are no longer useful and co-op in general is beyond marginal. Co-op code doubles my dev time and it is so intertwined with the gameplay code that it depletes my sanity so I keep breaking it. Here is an example with net code:
Now without net code:
Read more here https://elefantopiainc.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-trap-of-multiplayer.html This + marginal use = it makes no sense to keep the net code so I took it out of the main dev branch. I Zima Blued McDROID. As I pulled the code out it was heart breaking because I realized how much effort went into it, there were truly clever bits to make your experience seamless. After a while of working on the now-lean code I have no regret. It is SO MUCH easier and now I can focus on gameplay, fixing long standing bugs, it feels good. I'll soon post the result of tons of alterations on a new engine and you'll see how much better everything runs. What I can do for those who love co-op is keep the servers up until another project needs it and keep the co-op build in the co-op branch so if you want to play with your friends you all can switch here.

Imagine how cool McDROID would be on the Nintendo Switch!
It's a mountain of work to optimize and balance this game for the Switch so I'm starting a Kickstarter to raise money. It launches on 07-07-2020. If you have a Switch and want to help out, click on the preview link and then on [Notify] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mclaurent/mcdroid-switch Thank you!

Bugs can be cute, some eat your strawberries and others won't let you play co-op. So I pushed an old build that used to work fine in co-op. To access it, go to McDROID properties in Steam, click the beta tab and chose the co-op build.

Make sure your friend also play this build or they won't connect to your game and let me know if this works here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/252970/discussions/0/2257935717970766341/

And because it's my birthday I added a fabulous present hat that shoots out diamonds! If you want to get me a present, send coins to BTC: 1M8YuC7Bv7Jiz8qc7aXDyM63sno7J1rzxv BCH: 17ZZGQM8MwQFKCWNMaWQPXe1fQJdraw3vX DASH: XasBLMfxpDYJdeKcCwY6u1Wt73vAina8H5 ETH: 0x76705d647e0268e1789e534ce0bc4c46fd446a15 DOGE (man's best friend): DSL2sbvWrfYaCfaZchNE1niLdWv84JqLio RIPPLE: rJjhUfj9cafqUcDcVgHM8fQYX3JEjHPGrB :)

And because it's my birthday I added a fabulous present hat that shoots out diamonds! If you want to get me a present, send coins to BTC: 1M8YuC7Bv7Jiz8qc7aXDyM63sno7J1rzxv BCH: 17ZZGQM8MwQFKCWNMaWQPXe1fQJdraw3vX DASH: XasBLMfxpDYJdeKcCwY6u1Wt73vAina8H5 ETH: 0x76705d647e0268e1789e534ce0bc4c46fd446a15 DOGE (man's best friend): DSL2sbvWrfYaCfaZchNE1niLdWv84JqLio RIPPLE: rJjhUfj9cafqUcDcVgHM8fQYX3JEjHPGrB :)

Today is my birthday, no it's not but it's Eminem's birthday, and also it's Ivo of Kermartin's which is a very cool name and a saint of Brittany (hello to all our Briton friends). So I made a promo sale that will start on the 23rd. Also, as promised, and with appropriate Valve-like delay, here is the first DLC ever for McDROID. If you bought McDROID early you don't need it, it unlocks the 3 levels that you probably had as early adopters. If you don't have them and want something really fun and challenging, these 3 levels have very different gameplay mechanic. [olist]

Today is my birthday, no it's not but it's Eminem's birthday, and also it's Ivo of Kermartin's which is a very cool name and a saint of Brittany (hello to all our Briton friends). So I made a promo sale that will start on the 23rd. Also, as promised, and with appropriate Valve-like delay, here is the first DLC ever for McDROID. If you bought McDROID early you don't need it, it unlocks the 3 levels that you probably had as early adopters. If you don't have them and want something really fun and challenging, these 3 levels have very different gameplay mechanic. [olist]

Ladies and Gentlemen, I know I was saying Souls was the last update but there was something bothering me. See, back in 2014 and 2015 I made several levels for the players who were good to us and bought the game early, I gave these levels for free. The levels ranged from wacky experiment to intricate new gameplay mechanic. Now some people have been asking for new levels so I've decided to make those bonus levels accessible to everyone. But that wouldn't be fair to the early adopters so I'll make these levels a DLC instead - and in the process make some money to buy some more trees (real life trees) The DLC will include: [olist]

Ladies and Gentlemen, I know I was saying Souls was the last update but there was something bothering me. See, back in 2014 and 2015 I made several levels for the players who were good to us and bought the game early, I gave these levels for free. The levels ranged from wacky experiment to intricate new gameplay mechanic. Now some people have been asking for new levels so I've decided to make those bonus levels accessible to everyone. But that wouldn't be fair to the early adopters so I'll make these levels a DLC instead - and in the process make some money to buy some more trees (real life trees) The DLC will include: [olist]

Hello everyone! This is the final update! It's got Japanese language - FINALLY!! Thanks Greener to that (Since I don't read Japanese he might have added pranks in there.) A few players were complaining that the game had become too easy so I added difficulty "SOULS" and this is the new default. Beating level 13 in SOULS took me 7 tries when normally I finish it glancing at the screen every now and then, beating this level was very gratifying so I added an achievement for it. SOULS difficulty also triples the score. Some balancing was also done to make the game feel more punchy, also many bugs were shown the door and I even threw in some optimizations which make it run roughly 16.7% faster on my old macbook. What else, oh yes: level 1 is much more fun by giving an early taste of what 80 monsters feel like and for good measure I left a few repairable "Wave Canons", for you R-TYPE lovers - hold the button to charge, then release, charge is twice as fast on the grass. I also fixed a few levels, like the 13-arena is now playable past wave 10, which is good for an infinity level. That's it, I hope you'll enjoy :) Final update you said, so what's next? Farming (IRL) and tinkering with AI. A few people have asked me to make another game in the McDROID world and I still hesitate between an "Animal Crossing" farming game where you build your own robot-pets and an RTS where you play the Brain Bug's mother armed only with the ability to harvest genetic material and design your offspring. We'll see...

Hello everyone! This is the final update! It's got Japanese language - FINALLY!! Thanks Greener to that (Since I don't read Japanese he might have added pranks in there.) A few players were complaining that the game had become too easy so I added difficulty "SOULS" and this is the new default. Beating level 13 in SOULS took me 7 tries when normally I finish it glancing at the screen every now and then, beating this level was very gratifying so I added an achievement for it. SOULS difficulty also triples the score. Some balancing was also done to make the game feel more punchy, also many bugs were shown the door and I even threw in some optimizations which make it run roughly 16.7% faster on my old macbook. What else, oh yes: level 1 is much more fun by giving an early taste of what 80 monsters feel like and for good measure I left a few repairable "Wave Canons", for you R-TYPE lovers - hold the button to charge, then release, charge is twice as fast on the grass. I also fixed a few levels, like the 13-arena is now playable past wave 10, which is good for an infinity level. That's it, I hope you'll enjoy :) Final update you said, so what's next? Farming (IRL) and tinkering with AI. A few people have asked me to make another game in the McDROID world. Vote here for the next game!

Hello everyone! This is the final update! It's got Japanese language - FINALLY!! Thanks Greener to that (Since I don't read Japanese he might have added pranks in there.) A few players were complaining that the game had become too easy so I added difficulty "SOULS" and this is the new default. Beating level 13 in SOULS took me 7 tries when normally I finish it glancing at the screen every now and then, beating this level was very gratifying so I added an achievement for it. SOULS difficulty also triples the score. A few balancing were also done to make the game feel more punchy, also many bugs were shown the door and I even threw in some optimizations which make it run roughly 16.7% faster on my old macbook. What else, oh yes: level 1 is much more fun by giving an early taste of what 80 monsters feel like and for good measure I left a few repairable "Wave Canons", for you R-TYPE lovers - hold the button to charge, then release, charge is twice as fast on the grass. I also fixed a few levels, like the 13-arena is now playable past wave 10, which is good for an infinity level. That's it, I hope you'll enjoy :) What next? I'm moving to a small farm and will be planting trees and take care of llamas and chicken, maybe alpacas and building real life stuff.
The adventure was incredible. Making this first game was the most chaotic, uplifting process in the 996 years I've been on this planet (building the first flying submarine zoo in 1605 was cool too), getting such good reviews on a first - 90% - wow, you guys and gals are too good to us!!! Thanks to the very awesome Fraser who worked on this with me, it was great to learn together. Thanks to the amazing people who helped me spontaneously Greener and Pysiu and that Dan guy! Loads and loads of gratitude flow towards the universe for allowing me this madness with so little stress and so much fun, I wish the same fortune to those who try their luck. Love you all, Laurent.

It's got tons of optimizations, new level loading system (which might suck, you tell me) and two difficulty levels: "TODDLER" and "SOULS", which is insane because I can't even win level 13 and need to change strategies on pretty much all the levels. Go switch to the beta branch and tell me how it goes!

Hello everyone. A big news for us: our first game was just launched on PS4 and XBOX 1. The port was done by Grip Digital and they made it run at a smooth 60fps @1080p, you'll recognize the store front artwork by the excellent Greener. If you own these consoles you can get it there: XBOX1: https://store.xbox.com/en-US/Xbox-One/Games/McDROID/abd1216e-4763-478e-bc4d-ab7b63435bf0 PS4: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/mcdroid-ps4/ Wish us luck that the console is a success.

Hello everyone. A big news for us: our first game was just launched on PS4 and XBOX 1. The port was done by Grip Digital and they made it run at a smooth 60fps @1080p, you'll recognize the store front artwork by the excellent Greener. If you own these consoles you can get it there: XBOX1: https://store.xbox.com/en-US/Xbox-One/Games/McDROID/abd1216e-4763-478e-bc4d-ab7b63435bf0 PS4: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/mcdroid-ps4/ Wish us luck that the console is a success.

Quick patch for some long forgotten achievements: - uzumaki now works - new gummy bear achievement that you can do in the gummy bear (gelatinous cub) arena - also a gummy bear head as prize for this achievement. - level 2 has less boring pause between waves - small shell loot is much easier to destroy

Flew back from Honduras yesterday, it was amazing! Swimming with dolphins, monkeys crawling on my head and big spiky dogs. It's nice to re connect with nature. And I just looked at the sales figures and the 2 weeks birthday sale was a really good surprise, selling far more than any steam sale ever did. So thank you for the birthday gift :) That super motivated me and I just finish tending to a few support requests I received for those 10 days. -Now the Mac version works, I had turned on mac store validation by mistake -I added FXAA, so now antialias should be faster and look better, also added a setting for that if you want extra fps. -Lowered the shadows PCF # and removed PCF on many of shaders that didn't need it, this should gain you a few FPS -Optimized the shadows draw distance so people setting Quality to low will run at a faster framerate -Finally, foliage setting properly persists. So give it a shot, it's in the publicbeta branch, if all is good I'll push it to the main. Have a great day. -Laurent

That's right, 5 Jan is birthday time! And with that, I added a new arena filled with Zombies, based on the MJ level, the arena is filled with not 20 waves, not even 30 waves, but with infinity waves. No winning thins one :D

A quick patch to fix a bug where the missiles blew up near McD, and also excised the code that clipped the cursor to some unreasonable low res, on some machine. That last one was legacy code to handle multi screen, no longer necessary.

Howdy do! I just main-branched the new level. New Level: -THIS IS THRILER: Save The King Of Pop himself after he got lost in a rather inauspicious cemetery! Don't let him turn into a ghoul or at least try to convert him back. Co-staring Murr and Q -FARMVILLE: New environment placed in a farm where most of the population is 6 feet under. -ZOMBIES & CO: New enemies -SHEEPLE: Humans follow flags, odd creatures, herd them away from the spreading zombie infestation. -TURTLE UP: Farm for strawberries and build up your village's defenses -GET TO THE CHOPPA!: Escort the fermers to safety. v.222 Changelog:

• New pathing system that's much more responsive. It means instant response from your bots but also tougher enemies.
• People. That's right, humanoid from planet Earth.
• New mission type: rescue. Because these creatures like to get themselves in trouble.
• New mechanic: herding people.
• Now People are more medically accurate : they turn into zombies when they die.
• McSamurai achievement works and I cleaned all achievements that don't. You can now reach 100%.
• Soft shadows. This may kill some GPUs but look so nice.
• HDR. Only works in low settings (!)
• Research button shortcut. No more running islands just to buy a Tesla MK3.
• Lobber no longer generate corruption field.
• Screen Resolutions no longer out of reach
• Cursor reaches the bottom of the screen on windows
• Many bugs fixed.

I just finished the Halloween special. It is called "Thriller Night" and [spoiler]Michael Jackson is in it[/spoiler]. New game mechanic: [spoiler]protect and herd farmers[/spoiler], [spoiler]save them from turning into zombies[/spoiler] and [spoiler]escort your humans to rescue zone (a schoolbus)[/spoiler] . Also removed all unachievable achievements and coded McSamurai, so now you can reach 100% achievement. If you want to test drive the new level, it's in the beta branch. right click mcdroid > properties > beta

But maybe tons of things broke? As I'm preparing to release a new level that take advantage of these improvements, I count on you to check in the beta branch (Properties>Betas) and play "about bliss", "too many berries" and "anti bliss". So What's in this beta's menu:

• Big fat optimization in the pathing. What that means is no more bots waiting around, they now respond instantly to commands, also monsters are much more responsive to your shenanigan so the game may be harder. Level 13 is a much smoother walk in the park of hell, now.
• Added HDR option, that's right, now you can melt your GPU and feel good about how it looks, the glow may be a bit overkill in HDR but some levels are just 90s awesome! Note that it only works in low settings, because it's not compatible with hardware antialias.
• Particle improvements
• optimized navmesh on cub, antibliss and last stand
• sentry gun more powerful and wider tilt range but longer spinup time, also new sounds ... and you can hear them now.
• Various fixes

changes: - tuned score thresholds for stars - stars appear in synch with scores - fixed giant diamonds - fixed multiplayer nullrefs - level 13 challenge harder - rotten no longer destructible (would cause mission hangups with large amount of rotting diamonds)

I just pushed a build that fixes a few regressions and also tunes the look in ways that makes things clearer when you're assaulted by 100 monsters. Also the viewID updated by themselves by magic, thanks to photon being a mystery box, this may solve some of the glitches you guys are seeing in co-op. Note: You should be able to play only games with the same version, if for some reason that's not the case this will cause havoc in your multiplayer. Finally I gave some love to achievement which for some reason hadn't been rigged. So now you have: UZUMAKI DESKA ?, TURRET ABANDONMENT, LONELY TURRET, ANTI-SOMANTOISM, STRAWBERRY PIGGY, CHLOROPHYL ALLERGIES and FRIEND OF NIKOLA. Happy new year!

Unleash Santa's true pawa in this Christmas Special DLC! Santa is held prisoner by SOMANTO corp, a sacrifice to the mutated worms and spiders that live within the planet, or maybe because they're just a bunch of dicks. So here you are, McDROID, saving the children of the world, or the merchants if you're into that stuff. So go go GOO and Free Santa, then walk him around like puppy. Also build some defenses, because the good ol' chap is wearing red velvet, not toughtanium armor. He's not senile though, he can bash a real beating with his bag-o-tricks. A brand new gameplay type where you can move your protectee around and have him attack, just click a monster and see what happens. petite video récapitulative Also, thanks to Guus, we now have Dutch translation. Oh and Merry Christmas :)

Some of you were experiencing freeze or black screen at launch. This should be fixed. YAY! More coming for Christmas.

http://i.imgur.com/Kx3CgyD.png It's giant! It's angry! It lays all sorts of nasty eggs! Will it be your burger lunch or will it crush you? Defeat the Giant Turkey King and acquire a hat made of turkey feathers (with moving eye) as well as the beak of the beast! This level will unlock only to those who purchase the game by December 3nd. (Extended it one day to be fair to all the time zones)

We have been CoD-ing McDro! Now the first few levels give you more hints on the game mechanics which make it so simple that, even if you have played Call of Duty all your life rigged to a CoD brain washing machine, you can play McDroid! Also, in the spirit of adventure of our forefather, and their fore fore fore fathers, we offer you what all forefather dreamed off while invading, uh I mean exploring Americas: a Hat made of Turkey! And if you explore the level selector you will even find the Uber™ Epic™ Turkey Beak! [spoiler]These will allow your McDroid to pass unnoticed when infiltrating the Turkey base.[/spoiler] And from Italy, I say thee "Arrividerci".

This microbrew of a patch may fix all of Linuxer's cursor glitches, definitely, I think, maybe? You let us know!

Level "Too many berries" was insane. As soon as you land, spawners started attacking you with swarms of enemies. That was a strange bug with prefabs reseting values behind our back. This is fixed so no longer will there be an insane difficulty cliff. Also lots of cosmetic changes to make the UI more readable, and a few fixes off course. Hope you enjoy.

We received a lot of feedback saying they wanted traditional survival and we listened. Now survival works as expected: you rush to build your economy and your defense, enemies waves ramp up and when you die your base is gone. The waves in lost, rail and antibliss are more spread out, these levels are still hard but now they are fair. The GUI has been improved, now you can tell the top left corner things are health bars! And a few cosmetic improvements to make the Somanto Device more clearly unfriendly. Happy Halloween!

Many positive reviews of McDroid were complaining that accessing high tech required too much grinding so we've slashed the diamond cost of research. That should, as a result, make some of the extremely hard levels far more accessible. Mutatosaurus is tougher now because he's one hell of da boss! Lobbers and Lobzilla were over powering all defenses because they were generating their own bliss field, took that out, now they need their personal Toxo (smoker) to boost their already destructive snots. Also in this build are a few improvements made to clarify that YOU MUST LOOT THOSE CORPSES!! Hope you enjoy, and if levels are too easy, remember you still have challenge and nightmare.

Just a couple of changes in this one: - Difficulty should scale better with number of players (particularly in normal mode) - Limit to number of monsters spawning from rotten diamonds et al. which should alleviate connection/framerate overload issues on late game nightmare et al.

Shuttle has barely landed on planet Steam and we already have a hotfix for you! It's on the PUBLICBETA branch only. Let's see what's on the menu today: - Fixed issue that sometimes prevented Bonsai chest appearing on Level 5 - Fixed a typo on the research description for tesla weapons - Linux cursor no longer quite so crazy - Misc UI tweaks To access it: Open your steam library and right click on McDROID. Click "Properties" at the bottom of the menu that appears. Click on the "Betas" tab Select “publicbeta” from the dropdown (if you don't see anything on the dropdown you may need to restart your steam client). Close the window, the game should now patch to the beta version.

• (Batsh!t crazy) story campaign where each level uncovers a new game mechanic and research blueprint, and where you heal a planet.
  
• Hard as nail Survival Levels with persistence: your towers and economy stay with you from death to death, but also bomb trees, unfortunately.
  
• Persistent Research. Do you focus on improving your lasers first or branch out into bliss engine as you climb through the research trees?
  
• Drop in/Drop out Co-Op: if you're overwhelmed in single campaign, have some robot-buddies join you.
  
• Persistent base building: Complete a level on Normal and you can play on in Challenge and Nightmare modes. Your base and economy will carry over but will have to withstand much deadlier attacks!
  
• Unique towers that create powerful synergies such as boosting power of automatic robots or teslas chain linking.
  
• Space age cartoon graphics.
  
• Not 40s, not 50s, not 80s but 60 rock!
  
• Harvest the only sensible resource of the future: Unfeasibly large strawberries.
  
• Achievements awarded for tasks ranging from tricky to insane.
  
• Find the decals and paint to customize your McDROID, they are scattered about.
  
• Supports Xbox 360 controller

• OS: Ubuntu 12.04
• Processor: core 2 duoMemory: 4096 MB RAM
• Memory: 4096 MB RAM
• Graphics: nvidia 6800 GTNetwork: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 1024 MB available spaceAdditional Notes: 64 bits only for new branch. 32 bits for the co-op branch QWERTY only and Gamepad not supported

• OS: Ubuntu 12.04
• Processor: i7Memory: 4096 MB RAM
• Memory: 4096 MB RAM
• Graphics: nvidia 9800 GTXNetwork: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 1024 MB available spaceAdditional Notes: 64 bits only for new branch. 32 bits for the co-op branch QWERTY only and Gamepad not supported