Hello, cannoneers!
After months of work, v0.2 is finally here! I'd like to make another huge shoutout to the many people that have playtested the game - a lot of this update is the direct result of your feedback!
And now, without further ado, let me introduce you to Gravity Cannon's largest update yet:
First up, the demo now has a third game mode! Welcome to Soccer, a chaotic spaceship-based team sport for up to 8 players! Yes, that's right - the demo now supports 8 player madness on both Linux and Windows! Get out there and make your home planet proud, Pilot.
Second, a significant revamp to the physics in the game makes for a much smoother experience. Ever find yourself repeatedly and frustratingly bouncing off of that huge space lever in Targets? Or wondering why the puck took that weird angle off the wall on that last banked shot in Hockey? Not anymore, my friend! Collisions are now much more stable and predictable.
Those are the big things, but a lot of small improvements made it into v0.2 as well:
Subtly improved tutorials experience, and better behavior for the Targets tutorial in particular
Fixed positioning of dialog boxes in tutorials to better serve 5+ players
Additional particle effects, including smoke when missiles collide
Better, clearer dialog boxes
Reduced the target icon size at the bottom of the screen in Targets so that they will no longer be confused for actual targets
Missile SFX are now much quieter when high projectile velocities are selected in the physics settings
Added a small X icon for when an attempted cannon shot is not available (for example, if a missile isn't loaded)
Fixed occasional offscreen indicator 1-frame flash when a ship respawns
Removed the background star twinkle SFX, which got to be a bit eerie if the music was turned all the way down
Team markers (the colored outlines for team objects) are now rendered behind all other objects, making collisions clearer
Fixed a bug where the rumble setting in the settings menu wouldn't necessarily rumble the current player's controller
Added new secret leaderboards in Targets
Fixed goalpost "tink" sound occasionally getting paused and playing later
Fixed occasional wonky music behaviors - intensity ramp across a match is now way more consistent
Radio buttons for dropdowns are now properly themed
Updated the demo first run screen layout to accommodate 3 playable game modes
Fixed a bug where offscreen respawns for ships would sometimes count as "crashes"
Badges now have thresholds - no more getting the DIALED badge with a 10% missile accuracy rate
Fixed some buggy behavior around pausing the game while a secondary projectile is charging - behavior should feel quite a bit more predictable now
The most important stats for a particular game mode now show at the top of the stats list
The most important object for a particular game mode will now be the first one you see when opening the heatmaps screen
Revamped barrier modeling to prevent extremely unlikely scenario where the puck in Hockey escapes the screen and flies off into the void
v0.2 brought a lot of progress to the full game as well - I can't wait to share it with you all!
Thanks for everything, and happy cannoning!