Newtonia v1.54.0
New late-game content
The mid-teens onward are now a full escalation ladder, each new threat with its own intro screen:
- Interceptors (level 16): fast vanguard ships in the station's waves, with a tighter fire window.
- Tough Elites (level 17): asteroids pairing TOUGH with a second special - armoured, teleporting, and quantum variants.
- Bombers (level 18): slow barges that stand off and lob proximity-fused mortar shells that burst into flak rings.
- The Hunter (level 19): the seeker's elite - bigger, takes 3 shots, and steers at where you're going, not where you are.
- The Armoured Station (level 20): a rotating shield arc that deflects everything; the gap is the weak window. Destroying it pays a 2500-point bounty.
- Rammers (level 21): gunless hammerheads that never break off the charge - but a committed straight-line escape always outruns them.
- Enemy gunners now lead their shots, ramping up to full intercept aim as levels climb.
New weapon: the Turret
A deployable sentry drone that seeks, leads, and fires on its own for 60 seconds or 30 shots, survives your death, and comes back with your save on CONTINUE.
Boost
Boost now has a 2-second cooldown, and a first-use hint shows the key (E) or button (left bumper) so nobody misses it.
Menus & stats
- New AUDIO options screen: master and music volume, applied live.
- New STATS screen: lifetime numbers - high score, highest level, games and time played, kills, deaths, accuracy, special types destroyed, and more.
Leaderboard
At game over the board now tells you when your score would place this season and offers to upload it, and it says plainly when RECORD REPLAYS being off is the reason scores can't enter.
Online play
Joining a room that refuses you now shows the real reason instead of a generic "could not connect"; picking up secondaries online feels instant; rejoin-after-disconnect got more robust; and all the new late-game content syncs correctly in co-op.
Fixes
- Guns going silent in busy late-game levels (audio channel starvation).
- Explosion debris and thruster trails no longer vanish on certain Linux GPUs.
- Error on quitting via the window close button on Windows.
- Missile homing corrections and ricochet sound attenuation.
- Smoother frames when invisible asteroids are on screen.