2021-01-10 16:11:08

That could work, but I'm not sure how effective it would be. On the later waves the environment was so saturated that almost anything that wasn't right next to me got bumped off course by another asteroid before it became a real danger. What I think would make things more interesting would be to make saucers spawn more frequently and be better at dodging/surviving asteroids. I think during my game more saucers spawned only to immediately hit an asteroid than I actually killed.

2021-01-14 20:44:33

This is the biggest post-release patch yet, so I'm posting the changelog here. If you haven't downloaded updates in a while, now might be a good time to do so. I'm not going to edit the Markdown, so apologies if this forum makes a mess of it.

Release notes for version 21.01.14.1821

Changes:

* Fragmented asteroids sometimes got a speed of 0 and never moved. This is now fixed. Asteroid fragments should all move, rather than sitting around waiting to be picked off.
* _Silence distant asteroids_ is now enabled by default. If there are no complaints, the setting will vanish in the next release. Note that if you've previously disabled this setting, you'll have to re-enable it to use the feature.
* Various sound levels were tweaked to account for the fact that the game is now quieter with _Silence distant asteroids_ defaulted to on.
* Asteroids now move slightly faster in subsequent waves. Hopefully this causes a shift in strategy over time. Initially, it is generally safe to pick asteroids off only when they're close, but on higher levels, you have less and less time to react and need to rely on hunting or focus modes.
* The tutorial was updated to mention the new silent asteroids default. Documentation updates to come soon, assuming this new default sticks.
* Restarting the tutorial from the pause menu should now actually, well, restart the tutorial. Previously, it behaved like resuming.
* Previously, tutorial asteroids all started from the same positions. Now, positions are randomized where it makes sense (I.e. the later tutorial stages.)

To follow up on previous discussions here:

* I decided not to make collision alerts obey the _Silence distant asteroids_ setting just yet because the a) speed boost and b) bug I fixed where fragments had 0 speed might substantially change the balance. As such, I didn't want to risk either taking away a valuable tool, or making a change that won't really matter until players reach waves that previously were easy but now aren't. I'm willing to reconsider, but let's let this batch of changes settle before continuing to shake things up.
* I'm willing to introduce saucer steering and potentially remove the speed boost if it's too much of a challenge, but that's some fairly complex code to write and debug. Massive multi-hour games are meant to be the exception, not the norm, and shooting saucers also changes balance. The fact that they aren't smart enough to survive long also exposes another strategy--pick off enough asteroids so that saucers are more likely to survive, wait for them to spawn, and hunt them to mine points. I want to see what these changes cause before writing complex AI steering code.

Enjoy.

2021-01-14 21:12:31

This looks great and I'm looking forward to trying the new version. To clarify one thing, I wasn't referring to the collision alarm, I was referring to the bang when two asteroids bump into each other. The collision alarm is fine as is.

2021-01-14 22:58:22

@103 Ah, totally didn't get that and it makes a lot more sense. I do completely agree that the other volumes were far louder than they needed to be with the other sounds quieter. I dropped collision, fragment and explosion sounds to compensate, but if I need to drop them more then I will. I do think they're important since they give clues to where you might get a few lucky distant hits in, so I really don't want to remove them entirely from the distant soundscape. But if you're on some insanely high wave then I can easily see how they become the thing that is overwhelming. With any luck, you won't get to such a high wave now. smile And if you do, I'd rather drop the volume a bit more and see if that helps. But, realistically, this isn't the kind of game you should have 2-3 hour runs on unless you're just an absolute pro, so I think this is more a balance issue and less that this mechanic should go. But we'll see--I'm open to being convinced.

Thanks for the feedback--very appreciated!