The Mid-Mid-Mid-Mid-Midway Mid-Update! (0.9.99.99997693)
Endless Tactics · published · build 20655154
As you can see, we've recently launched a give away contest for suggesting your own Artifact Anomaly! Essentially a challenge mode, comprised of a fixed set of Artifacts, usually in some kind of synergistic (or totally chaotic) manner, with a solid reward for enduring it up until the end (CONTEST THREAD). And phew, it had way more people joining in than I initially expected, so thank you all very much for your participation ;) I'll definitely be doing more of these later on, given how successful it was!
(31/50 keys gifted btw, so hurry up and grab yours!) ... Alongside that, this is a packed one, and you'll see why right below:
CHANGES
ARTIFACT ANOMALIES - A brand new game-mode! Yep, this down the line, and even though I said we were "feature complete" cause why not? Tbf it was something that I had in mind since the beginning, but didn't know exactly how to properly fit it into the game loop, make it interesting enough - and I finally (hopefully) figured it out! As said above, it's essentially an Artifact-based challenge mode, with X Waves to endure for each and a reward (difficulty/reward greatly varies). With the twist that I'll be adding tons of Anomalies suggested by the community as well! To further amplify our focus on player-input and dialogue - to great results so far, as many of you also chimed in to give your thoughts on the game, which always helps a lot! I'll be also potentially designing a few "special" Anomalies myself later on (and who knows, maybe even a few for the community), Anomalies with a "special" modifier beyond Artifacts... So keep an eye on that too!
UNIT ASCENSION - And that's right, another brand new mechanic has just been added! Well, not entirely new, but rather a major rework for the reward given by Ascension Cores (main drop of Apex Units) - which, self-admittedly, was lazy af. Now Ascension Cores will actually ascend your (or the enemy's) Units progressively, making them scale their (Damage and HP) Stats at every Wave, so that they'll never fall behind Enemy Scaling! They'll also be granted literal Halo at doing so, which gets stacked up depending on their Ascension Level... The overall goal behind this one was to make the reward for beating Apex Enemies actually meaning and unique, rather than the unimaginative flat stat boost we had before; due to it being a new mechanic, I've also gone ahead and added a new exclusive Epic Artifact that interacts with it (Elystrum)!
NEW ARTIFACTS/MISSIONS/UPGRADES - Brand new Corrupted Upgrade Immune Response, which reduces Nest-spawn-interval to a single Turn for those feeling especially confident! New Artifact Anomalies Mission Overtime Enjoyer 1/2/3, for clearing up Artifact Anomalies (well duh)... and new Artifacts: Minimization, Scorvia, Assimila, Elystrum, Coliseum. Check them out at our ARTIFACTS LIST.
NEW ART/VFX - Major rework to Nest animations (still in progress); brand new VFX for Corruptor Unit, so now it properly signalizes when its capturing a foe Unit (+ new attack animation); plus the addition of the Unit Halos for the new Ascension mechanic. Oh, and the Corruptor Unit is finally in btw (soon we'll add its SFX too)!
MAIN MENU REWORK!
10 OFFICIAL ARTIFACT ANOMALIES + 39 COMMUNITY ANOMALIES! (if you're one of the remaining 8 suggesters, please join our Discord to grab your key!)
MAJOR OPTIMIZATIONS - Almost a 100% perf gain on late-game Waves! (also affects Shop, and many other gameplay elements).
QOL - Actual hardware Cursor mode; Unit Hover Panel Rework (trimmed out Unit hover icons to further de-clutter the screen); general readability improvements; Custom Artifacts Mode improvements; More/Better UI animations; Shop improvements, Upgrades Menu improvements; Tooltips improvements; Brand new visual effect for dialogue "glitches" (eg.: [NULL], [INVALID_REQUEST], etc); auto-grabbing for the nearest scrollbar whenever using the "scrollbar" hotkey.
MAJOR FIXES - Major cursor-mode switch fix, major leaderboards fix (user names previously not appearing sometimes), Custom Artifact Mode fix to mission-completion prevention, several (very rare) crash fixes, proper AOE explosions for certain non-aoe Units (that turn into AOE via Artifacts), fixed death AOE preview for multi-tile objects (like the Apex Nest), major fix for death AOE calculation for multi-tile objects, general UI fixes...
AND MORE!...
More and more polish, on all departments, that's how the next Update's gonna be too, it looks like, and it feels good to every time make Endless Tactics a more rounded up and complete experience! Looks like some of you (contest winners) have been playing for over 10h lol, so looks like my efforts are starting to pay off at last! We're also possibly launching the game on Itchio early on! So keep an eye on that ;)
As always, most of the feedback gathered and addressed from our Reddit.
Discord Server (Dev Updates)
- the_procrastinator