Normally, this would be the "introduction" of the post followed by a list of changes. Though there has been many changes, that list is not the focus of this post.
(you can read a decent amount of the changes at the bottom of the post)
Almost every month I try to inform you all of what is new with the game. This month I decided to spend my time polishing what was there for future improvements, but mainly additions.
With polish comes tough choices, and one of those choices was to reset every leaderboard currently in the game. Why? The game is meant to be a fun, arcade shooter to play with your friends, or as a highscore killer. It always has had this vision aside from the core idea of "make a game that supports controllers". To let this idea come to light, I decided to update the game to be entirely score based rather than based how many enemies you killed. It has lead to an overall more quality experience and I hope you find this to be true.
At the bottom of the page is every level that is/was in the game and who the top players were over the last 4 years. With this is also a video from myself thanking and naming the top players for each level. It's about 10 minutes long.
So what's next?
The next update, Novembers Update, will be a bunch of map overhauls and obviously: more polish.
-Enemies: New, and Morphed Enemies.
-Items: Lots and Lots of new items, powerups, etc.
-New Music: Jesus dude, we need more/better music.
-More Focus on the Splitscreen, and the improvements that need to come.
-Lighting
The Normal Monthly Update Stuff
I spent all a bunch of time agonizing over the sandbox game I showed a bit ago. Development is Hell sometimes. This game helps me focus on something far easier to deal with, the problem is that this game is sometimes also it's own development Hell and I end up being annoyed at how messy some aspects of the project is due to it's age, and my original lack of caring to organize anything. At least it is fun to improve this game, and it's not like anything is counting on whatever outcome I come up with considering it is released, and out (technically).
Most of the month was spent upgrading this game, and as you read above: the leaderboards were reset.
I really do not have more to elaborate on than just to say "I did it to make this game better".
I paid good money for DEAD+/MAP PACK DLC
I have completely removed Round Based Levels for now, this will come back. Everything is free. For those of you who bought the map pack/dead+ please note that content will be reintroduced specifically for those players and that the price will go to $5 (and be worth $5) instead of being $1. It is still $1, anyone can take advantage of that right now as I plan to leave that up. The DLC description has been updated to reflect this post and my feelings. This change/improvement will happen by January of 2025.
If there are any specifics you would like to see out of DEAD+ when it comes back, let me know. I have, for 4 years, been open to feedback of any kind and many people message me about this game every month. It's really hard to bother me.
Some of the Changes and Improvements
*SCORE is now entirely score based. All scores have been reset for the infinite round base, it will not happen again.
*Singleplayer now displays ammo, hp, and score differently.
*Colored Blockade visuals have been fixed.
*Optimized some achievements to not be being called every second.
*Bombers speed towards you visual has been changed
*You are no longer able to fire or use a weapon while n the pause menu (i just never tried)
*The time no longer ticks up when you are "paused"
*The hitbox of enemies is now different to feel more responsive.
*The door block buy code has been optimized down to 10 lines instead of like... 100 copy/pasted nonsense.
*Optimized shooting to be more optimized (less lines of code doing the same things)
*Re-added screenshake, will be changed later.
*Updated Box Expanded to have less visual issues. I will revisit this map to redo its flow.
*Updated Box to have less problems. I will potentially revisit this map to re make it.
*The color of wood has changed.
*The Absorber not being in the game means I removed the achievement. It was barely an achievement, but it was one that you could earn.
*I changed some of the skin colored heads. Anyone other than the whitest white guy is hard to make not "hard to look at" for pixel art. I've kept these 6 variations in the game for years and do not plan to remove them, the challenge of keeping the color of the skin of a pixel art character to be visually pleasing is fun. There are 50 variations and tones of every main "type" of skin color. White guy 1 wont be the same as white guy 2, etc. The 6 I chose a while ago were basically the main 6 types of people from super white to the darkest black, I felt these 6 were a pretty solid representation of the generality of people. Your skin color is chosen at random as God intended. The challenge for me is to make sure it isn't impossible to play as your skin type. I mention any of this because I changed the body sprite once again. I wanted it to be more visible and my hope is it will make the darkest skin type easier to look at as before it was sort of a blur of dark orange and grey. (everyone in the universe is a shade of orange btw, nobody is "black" or "white")
*There are now 10 skins for the "skincolor" variable.
*Besides wood, various ground objects like "brick" and "mud/dirt" sprites were changed.
*The Hedge map has had a minor art overhaul.
*changed bomber size.
*so much more.... i mean, just play it. the game has been overhauled haha.
Thank you for reading, if you thought this was a decent enough read please react to the post.
Infinite Levels
Round Based Levels
