{"id":842,"date":"2011-03-04T22:29:33","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T21:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.puppygames.net\/blog\/?p=842"},"modified":"2011-03-04T22:29:33","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T21:29:33","slug":"oooh-ooh-ooh-nearly-ready-for-steam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.puppygames.net\/blog\/?p=842","title":{"rendered":"Oooh ooh ooh! Nearly ready for Steam!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s the last patch before the Steam release (promise!)&#8230; I was going to leave it where it was but a couple of things were bothering me, which were the ease with which levels were unbalanced by having infinite numbers of very powerful buildings, and also a performance problem specifically when the droid factory was used too much. One thing led to another, and I ended up changing rather a lot of things in small but significant ways, in the <strong>v1.80.8<\/strong> patch of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.puppygames.net\/revenge-of-the-titans\">Revenge of the Titans<\/a>. No, I haven&#8217;t quite got around to the Webstart version which is still broken (why the hell is anyone still using it? Webstart is rubbish!)<\/p>\n<p>Humble Bundlers will have to wait a bit, as per usual, for the Tweet of Rosen.<\/p>\n<p>The following things have been done:<\/p>\n<h4>Bugs Fixed<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Fixed: item descriptions in HUD a bit wrong<\/li>\n<li>Fixed: central spawners appearing too close to base<\/li>\n<li>Fixed: survival mode picked up research from the wrong level<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Balance<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Buffed droid factories now cost $1500<\/li>\n<li>Droid factory now produces max of 6 droids, plus 1 per reactor (before, they would just churn out a max of 10 x number of factories)<\/li>\n<li>Sergeant droids produced slightly less frequently when factories buffed by reactors (eg. 1 in 10 droids is a sergeant on a 4-reactor factory)<\/li>\n<li>More gidlets spawned when player is using droids!<\/li>\n<li>Decoys only produced at a rate of 1 per level<\/li>\n<li>Shield generators only available at a rate of 1 per level also; price now fixed at $2500<\/li>\n<li>Droid factory and heavy weapons now available only in limited quantities (1 per level), balanced by hoarding<\/li>\n<li>Less mines and barricades and tangleweb available per level &#8211; balanced by hoarding<\/li>\n<li>The various limited-production buildings now have various limited maximums<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>New Features and Enhancements<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Tangled gidrahs warn other gidrahs when they&#8217;re killed<\/li>\n<li>Unused buildings\/barricades\/mines etc. are hoarded for the next level, up to various limited maximums<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Reinforcements&#8221; (extra buildings) arrive in Survival mode when bosses are spawned<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Internal<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Default sleep=true on single core systems<\/li>\n<li>Reduced sound streaming thread delay to 1ms from 8ms and increased priority; increased streaming buffer count<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Analysis<\/h4>\n<p>The main thing you will notice is that <strong>cool things are suddenly a bit scarce.<\/strong> All those lovely heavy weapons, and the droid factory, shield generator and decoys, they&#8217;re all now only created at a rate of <strong>1 per level<\/strong>. And barricades and mines are suddenly, literally, a lot more thin on the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Balancing this out, <strong>anything you don&#8217;t use is hoarded for the next level<\/strong>. As in, not used at all; not recycled. So you can, if possible, not use your laser capabilities for 3 levels, then have a level with 3 laser cannon on it. Similar with droid factories &#8211; hoard &#8217;em up if you don&#8217;t really need them. Maybe you don&#8217;t need mines one level? Great &#8211; save them for a <strong>fireworks extravaganza!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It remains to be seen how this affects the general balance of play, but it&#8217;s added a crafty little dimension of thoughtful resource management to the game, which I quite like, and it&#8217;s more or less independent of difficulty. It also means those buildings are pretty precious now even if you&#8217;ve got tons of cash, because you can&#8217;t just plonk down a replacement if it gets eaten by ravening monsters.<\/p>\n<h4>No Prizes<\/h4>\n<p>Bah, once again we didn&#8217;t win anything or get noticed by the cognoscenti. What we need is an <em>army of rabid fans<\/em> to hound judges of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indiegames.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/gdc_2011_minecraft_amnesia_win.html\">such competitions<\/a>. I thought we did rather well with Revenge, especially in the, you know, gameplay, graphics, sound and music stakes, and put years of effort into making it perfect&#8230; grumble, moan, etc.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Right, that&#8217;s enough whining. I can&#8217;t wait to see the back of it! We&#8217;ve got a <strong>new game<\/strong> to write.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s the last patch before the Steam release (promise!)&#8230; I was going to leave it where it was but a couple of things were bothering me, which were the ease with which levels were unbalanced by having infinite numbers of very powerful buildings, and also a performance problem specifically when the droid factory was used too much. One thing led to another, and I ended up changing rather a lot of things in small but significant ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puppygames.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puppygames.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puppygames.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puppygames.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puppygames.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=842"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.puppygames.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":844,"href":"https:\/\/www.puppygames.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions\/844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puppygames.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puppygames.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puppygames.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}