Surprise, an update! It’s not a huge one, but it brings in some pretty important pieces. For some background on this project and where it’s at, take a look at the previous devlog. With that out of the way, let’s get into what’s new and what’s next.

The Inter Screen

The main addition is a new screen between levels, including tabs for stats, map, upgrades and companion conversations. At this point, it’s mostly just scaffolded out with no or placeholder content, with the real content planned for future updates. Stats are saved, missions can be selected from the map screen, upgrades can be purchased and companion conversations can be… well, they can be started. This has all been planned from the beginning but I only started putting it together in the past month and the development process went surprisingly smoothly.

Upgrades

Technically, this is part of the inter screen, but it’s significant enough to warrant its own section, and it’s the reason this was codenamed the Economy Update. Since the first D759 demo you’ve been able to collect etherium crystals but they haven’t had a purpose until now. You can now use them to upgrade your weapons, generator, and shields, adding an element of progression to the game. This was one of the earliest planned elements and I’m pretty satisfied both with how it turned out and how implementing it went. It’s going to need a lot of balancing, but most of the planned items are in the game already.

Other Tweaks

Most of the gameplay changes I wanted to make were either part of the last update or are planned for a future one, but there have been a few tweaks. Autosaves happen in the inter screen, and save metadata has been cleaned up a little. The physics update rate has been increased, etherium crystals no longer block bullets, and the core has been updated which probably fixed a few bugs.

What Next?

In the previous devlog I mentioned another planned stepping stone, codenamed Story Mode. I’ve added another one to the list: Bits and Bobs. There’s a growing list of small gameplay changes to make which I originally planned to fold into other updates but now I feel it’s long enough to be its own thing. I’m not sure which one of those I’m going to tackle first. I’m planning to rework the story significantly, but for now I’m stepping away from this project to work on a few other things, so who knows what I’ll come back to first. The next update could be like this one, with a quick development cycle, or it could be more involved with a few teasers before release.

Thanks for following along, and feel free to give the latest update a try. It’s a long, slow journey but we’ll get there.