Let's turn a few recent frowns into smiles.

Main Update 7 (Build 0.84) Changelog.

• 9 new planets added.
• Difficulty sliders added
• Collision damage reduced by 30%
• Additional collision damage reduction with refinery ship, planet surfaces, stalegmites, crystals and illmenite.
• Per frame damage cap added to particle based damage to help reduce one-shot deaths.
• Boss 2 laser damage reduced by 20%
• Act 3 power-cube cave cable damage reduced by 33%
• Jetpack thrust power increased to lift more.
• Replicon expansion speed increased
• Upgrade descriptions updated to be more informative.
• Damage ring threshold added to show only significant damage.
• Time between non-critical Dave messages increased by 50%
• Bubble plant lifting power increased by 60%
• The 'Play Now' button now reads 'Continue' after exiting via the jump-gate
• Bob can now slide down steeper slopes without taking damage.
• Fixed a bug that caused a power-cube cave to be not have a fog-of-war and no jetpack disabling effects.
• Fixed a bug with archic resource balls giving 2000 micro-electronics rather than fuel or energy. (Leaderboards scores using this bug will be removed)
• Added a failsafe to prevent a crafting bug exploit.
• Fixed the cave entrance on one planet that could cause the lander to get stuck.

Patch Notes Full Information and Reasoning

• Difficulty Sliders Added
  • Space Bob's design philosophy was always to keep things simple and clean and so difficulty options were resisted up until this patch. In hindsight, the benefits of offering the player the choice to change difficulty outweigh the desire to keep things simple. I think the chosen implementation is super clean and intuitive to use while also adding more strategy and depth to the end-game. On the game select screen, each game mode start button now has a slider below it which allows the player to alter the difficulty of the game. The slider for each game mode has 6 settings. 50%, 100%, 150%, 200%, 250% and 300% incoming damage. At 50% damage, the score multiplier system is disabled. This mode is great for practicing the game but not good for setting highscores. For each additional 50% damage over the base 100% damage, the score multiplier will increase by 1. So for example at 200% damage you will start the game with a x3 score multiplier. A similar difficulty system was used in my previous game NeonXSZ and allows players to tune the challenge to suit their current mood or taste while offering tangible rewards for players who want to challenge themselves. Incidentally, playing at 150% incoming damage in this update should feel similar to the damage levels in the last main update. Playing now at 200-250% incoming damage is closer to how damage felt in the original version of the game when it first released to early access.
• Collision damage reduced by 30%
  • This was first reduced by 50% (many patches ago) then tweaked back to only be a 30% reduction (a couple of patches ago), and now it's back to the 50% damage reduction. This is the equivalent of a 30% damage reduction over Main Update 6. This reduction was first applied in the hotfix earlier this week.
• Collison based damage with certain biome type environments reduced.
  • Desert, grass and savannah surface collisions have been reduced by 50%. Bumping into the walls and ceilings of planets that are supposedly covered in softer surfaces like grass, moss and sand should not do the same level of damage as bumping into the walls of rocky planets or hard metal surfaces. This helps to ease down the difficulty in a more interesting way than a universal damage reduction.
• Collision damage with stalegmites, crystals, and illmenite reduced by 35%
  The various stalegmites, crystals and illmenite each have different collision damage values based on their type. They have all been reduced by 35%. It's meant to hurt more bumping into these than many other objects because they are considered sharp, but the damage was a little too high in hindsight. It's still not advisable to attach these objects so close to Bob or his lander that they constantly bump into and damage him though. That's just common sense and this type of damage is very easy to avoid.
• Per frame damage cap added to particle based damage
  Running into the seed of a pink lancher plant causes the seed to explode and this used to be instant death. This was always intentional but although they are super easy to avoid it seemed unfair to insta-kill an inexperienced player with full shields. Dave warns the player about the dangers of things like these plants but some players feel that listening to Dave is a waste of their time. The new maximum damage possible from particles in a single frame now prevents this type of insta-kill unless the player's health is already below 50%.
• Boss 2 laser damage reduced by 20%
  • It was previously possible to defeat this boss without taking any damage at all.
  • It was previously possible to defeat this boss by upgrading to titanium armor and letting the laser hit you if you were quick.
  • It was previously possible to defeat this boss relatively easily with the carbon armor upgrade.
  • The 20% reduction in laser damage should allow less experienced players to defeat this boss more easily.
• Act 3 Power Cube caves electric cable damage reduced by 33%
  Contrary to a certain review it is possible to navigate past these cables without taking any damage at all. You need to learn to 'throw' Bob by grappling the ceiling, shrinking his grapple line to launch him into the air, and release the grapple so that he flies through the air at a speed that is faster than normally possible. They are also meant to be hard and require practice before they become easy. However, the cost of making a mistake and landing on the cables was a little too severe so the damage from the cables has been reduced by 33%.
• Damage from collisions with the refinery ship walls reduced.
  This was already so minimal that Bob would need to bash his head into a wall 100 times in a row to kill himself, yet we still had a negative review complain that this was ridiculous damage and that flying around inside the refinery ship was somehow an unnecessary challenge because of this. To ease this terrible situation Bob can now bash his head into the walls of his refinery ship 200 times before he kills himself. (Seriously people, if you are going to complain and write negative reviews, ease up on the exaggerations otherwise it's hard to take any of your points seriously).
• Bob's jetpack thrust power increased.
  The game is all about solving the logistics of lifting loot out of caves so making this too easy would be a problem. I've recently been wanting to increase the speed of loot extraction and this is a great way to do it without making any dramatic changes that could spoil the challenge.
  • Default jetpack power increased from 475 to 575. (Previously this was enough power to lift 2 crystals. It now allows lifting of 3).
  • Enhanced jetpack power increased from 575 to 675. (Previously enough to lift 3 crystals. Can now lift 4).
  • Advanced jetpack power increased from 675 to 775. (Previously enough to lift 4 crystals. Can now lift 5).
  NB: Bob's lander has 3500 basic thrust power so if your jetpack isn't strong enough try to figure out how to get your lander closer to the loot you want to lift. If that's not possible then you'll need to winch heavy loot which has infinite lift power. It's all part of the challenge of the game. Winching is slow but always effective. It's not always worth doing it but that's something that comes from experience.
• Bob can now slide down steeper slopes without taking damage.
  A recent negative review made many highly exaggerated claims like "slightly slanted surfaces did damage to me". This is simply not true. Bob could happily walk up and down slopes at angles up to around 60 degrees off horizontal without taking damage. However, HIGHLY slanted slopes could still do damage to Bob. This is because as he slides down these highly slanted slopes his jetpack can drag against the slope/floor behind him and cause damage. This is intended. This tweak increases this angle closer to 75 degrees off vertical. This causes the jetpack to clip through the walls but makes this intentional damage less common.
• Replicon expansion speed increased.
  This may seem like a strange one considering this patch is all about making things easier but a recent negative review complained that "Just starting you barely see them ". The player needs time to grab a few resources before the Replicons attack, so the fact that you barely see them at the start is intentional. In the past we had many complaints that Replicons expanded over the game world too quickly so it was slowed down. Now we have a complaint that it's too slow. This tweak puts the expansion speed somewhere in the middle. It's impossible to please everyone but hopefully this finds a happy medium.
• Upgrade descriptions updated to be more informative.
  The descriptions for the armor upgrades have been altered to stress the strength of these upgrades. Rather than being vague they now state that each upgrade doubles the players defenses/protection.
• Red Damage Ring Thresholds altered.
  When taking damage, a red damage ring appears at the point of damage. This varies in size based on the amount of damage taken. Previously this would show even minimal levels of damage and I felt this was creating frustration for the player where it was not needed. Taking 0.1 points of damage from 100 points of shield is not worth creating a damage ring for and it's unlikely that the player would notice that they took such minimal damage. They would see a damage ring and become frustrated. This change ensures that if the player sees a damage ring it is due to noteworthy damage being taken.
• Extended the time between non-essential Dave messages to 6 minutes from 4 minutes.
  Essential messages are considered time dependent or situation dependent. Non essential messages are general small talk etc.
• The 'PLAY NOW' button on the main menu now changes to read 'CONTINUE' whenever the player escapes through the jump gate.
  This is to make certain that new players understand that reaching the jump gate is not the end of the game but only the end of the first act of the story.

No changes to Bob's momentum or fuel usage in the air.

A recent negative review stated " the character physics were slow..." and "...the character has too much momentum" Too fast and too slow at the same time? I'm struggling to work out how to resolve that issue for you. The same review also claimed that Bob always used fuel while in the air which is also completely untrue. If you want to alter or maintain your momentum in the air or change direction then that requires the jetpack and therefore uses fuel. The jetpack has both horizontal and vertical thrusters. releasing the controls and simply falling uses no fuel. No change required.

Final Thoughts

I hope these tweaks resolve the difficulty related issues a few of you have with the game because if I make it any easier you'll be able to play it with your feet. I'm kidding of course but the game does need to retain a certain level of challenge and difficulty for it to be rewarding and worth playing. If it can't kill experienced players occassionally then it's too easy. If less experienced players quit out of frustration then it's too hard. Finding the balance is always going to be tricky but hopefully the new difficulty sliders will resolve this for everyone. A recent negative review simply said that permadeath ruined the game. As permadeath is expected in rogue-lites I can't fix that without 100 others complaining but I'm hoping the reduction in overall difficulty makes the permadeath less common and less frustrating so that it's no longer an issue for you. Have fun, let me know if you run into any problems, and please share your thoughts on these changes. Next up: Linux and Mac support. (If you are interested in helping out with this let me know. I'll be putting together a group of testers for this over the next few weeks) Edit: Build 0.8401 contains a tiny extra fix for one of the exploit fixes in the main update.

[ 2018-07-06 16:14:19 CET ] [ Original post ]