Hello, Chroma Engineers!
The time has come to unleash the Supporter Pack, featuring the complete Chromata Novel and the Reverie combat expansion with its map editor.
Some of you may like the idea of a Supporter Pack, while others may not. At the end of the day, it is entirely optional and exists for those who want to support the continued development of Project Chromata.
Still, I could not help myself. I wanted to make sure it included something fun and meaningful for anyone who chooses to pick it up.
It has been slightly over a year since I first started working on Project Chromata. Without your help, feedback, encouragement, and support, the game would never have come this far.
Thank you for being part of this journey.
Nevertheless, the chromatic effort to make Project Chromata even better continues!
Patch Notes - Version 2.1.0
GLOBAL
Improved: Music and SFX volume are now drag sliders with a typeable percentage box, instead of stepping buttons.
Fixed Bug: Tabs are no longer cut off when they do not fit. The bar shrinks them first and scrolls if it still runs out of room.
Added: Touch devices can now drag to pan and pinch to zoom the Fractured Void, the Realm map and the Home World.
Fixed Bug: Touch input on iOS is no longer offset from where you actually pressed, which made dragging and steering unreliable after a reload.
VOID HUNT
Balance: The Signal Uplink run upgrade now also lowers the per-level growth, so it still helps once the base requirement is at its minimum.
Improved: Signal Uplink is no longer offered as a level-up choice when it can no longer reduce anything.
VOID DIVE
Balance: Stabilizers now grant +1% depth during a Realm Dive. They previously gave only charting and stability, which a Realm Dive discards, so charging them cost signal for nothing.
Added: A box next to the tier buttons lets you type the tier you want to dive instead of clicking through them.
Balance: Diving a high tier and dying immediately no longer pays out. The tier multiplier now only applies to what you actually earn during the run.
Balance: Reward caches now have a per-run limit, like charting and stability already did.
Fixed Bug: The version and shortcut bar no longer covers the depth rail and the bottom of the playfield during a dive.
Improved: The depth rail sits higher with clear space around it, and now glows with a pulsing head that tracks your progress.
Balance: Deep tiers are no longer nearly empty. Spawn rates now scale with how fast the field scrolls, so the number of enemies and pickups on screen stays consistent at every tier.
Fixed Bug: Fast-moving enemies and pickups no longer pass straight through the probe at deep tiers or high run speeds.
STAGE 1
Fixed Bug: Fill From Bottom no longer flickers between tiers. Full tanks keep just enough PIPs to hold their level, and the fill tier only moves back down if a lower tier has genuinely drained.
Fixed Bug: Balanced now keeps every colour at break-even before sharing out the remaining PIPs, so colours that feed several mixers no longer run negative.
Fixed Bug: The Production AI now reallocates at a steady rate instead of slowing down when the frame rate drops.
Improved: The selected Production AI mode is now obvious: it is named at the top of the Auto-PIP panel and its button is clearly highlighted.
STAGE 2
Fixed Bug: The Star Chart no longer drags your view back to the centre once Super Convergence is available.
Improved: The 'Auto-Zoom' setting is now called 'Star Chart Cinematic Zoom'.
Improved: The navigation hint and Reset View button stay on screen while Super Convergence is offered.
Fixed Bug: Super Convergence now charges the 2,000,000 Light it advertises.
STAGE 3
Performance: Fixed the Fractured Void redrawing its entire map every single frame, which made the whole tab slow.
Performance: The Fractured Void map also uses far less video memory and only draws the part of the map you can actually see.
Added: Hold the middle mouse button to pan the map, including while a build or dismantle brush is armed.
Fixed Bug: The Build Brush now says you cannot afford the structure instead of blaming the sector, and tells you when a stroke ran out of resources part-way.
STAGE 4
Fixed Bug: Resonator auto-fire now targets Ash Piles and Crystal Shards, not just Root Barriers. Furnace Doctrine's Ash Piles had to be cleared by hand one at a time.
Fixed Bug: Resonator auto-fire no longer wastes shots on Root Barriers while Mycelial Claim makes them immune.
STAGE 5
Performance: The Home World map got the same treatment as the Fractured Void.
STAGE 7
Balance: A failed Realm handshake now locks you out for 60 seconds instead of 300.
Added: A failed handshake unlocks 'query [realm]', which lists that Realm's full security question pool so you know what to look for in the logs.
STAGE 9
Balance: Creator assault strength now follows the territory you currently hold, so a cascade failure no longer leaves you rebuilding against enemies with up to 8x HP.
Performance: Small drawing optimisation for The Architecture's hex grid.
POSTGAME
Fixed Bug: The Production AI can allocate PIPs to colour wells and standard mixers again after finishing the story.
Fixed Bug: Resetting the Home World no longer locks you out of Stage 5.
Added: The Spark and Terminal are now permanent tabs in the postgame, with their own partial resets so you can replay Stage 6 and Stage 7.
Fixed Bug: Creator assaults no longer arrive during EMP recovery, and the assault timer resets once the core is restored.
Fixed Bug: The Continuum tab no longer appears in Story mode. The Continuum is entered from the main menu.
THE CONTINUUM
Fixed Bug: Realm Dive telemetry no longer shows the drone at 0 hull after a successful dive, and the summary no longer reports depth 0%.
Fixed Bug: Two Quietus tree nodes described their bonus as 'Bits' when every other node calls the same stat 'Logic'. They all read the same way now.
Added: New Survey Array drone upgrade raises how much a single dive can chart, from 20% up to 50%.
Balance: Realms now chart at their own rate, so hostile realms take more dives to survey than gentle ones.
Added: You can repair a damaged drone instead of waiting for it to be destroyed. Repairs cost the same per hull point as a rebuild.
Improved: Realm Dives now talk only about charting. Dive results and telemetry no longer report realm stability, which suggested you were damaging a realm rather than surveying it.
Fixed Bug: The 'system' axiom works from the start. It was listed in the opening instructions but rejected until you had earned AS.
Added: New 'bonuses' axiom lists every permanent bonus from your realm trees and the Echo Tree in one place.
Added: Report and Discord buttons in Settings. You can now report a bug or send a suggestion from inside the Continuum.
Fixed Bug: Typing in the console during a Realm Dive no longer triggers dive controls. F, WASD and the arrow keys reach the input instead of being swallowed.
Fixed Bug: The mouse no longer stops responding in the Bridge dive after any touch input, which previously required a reload to clear.
SUPPORTER PACK (DLC)
Added: The Supporter Pack is now available, adding Reverie and the novel to the main menu.
Added: Reverie is a hex-grid strategy game played solo against the AI or online against other players.
Added: Online matches let you pick from four factions, each with its own core and signature structure.
Added: Solo play includes 52 maps drawn from the Realms, plus any map you build yourself.
Added: Reverie's map editor lets you build your own maps and publish them to the Workshop.
Added: You can browse and play community maps from the Workshop browser.
Added: Online play runs through Steam lobbies, with a room browser and in-room chat.
Added: 'Project: Chromata, the complete story' is a 38 chapter novel readable in-game, and it remembers where you left off.
Thank you again for all the feedback, bug reports, and patience while I continue improving Project Chromata.
Don't forget to join the Discord to share your progress, report issues, and help shape the next updates!