Posted September 30, 2022 by CarboHydroM
#release
Greetings! Since the previous release this year, after a lot of playtesting and mulling over feedback I got about Second Legacy, I've worked on a few quality of life improvements and stuff that will allow customizing the gameplay moving forward. So this version I'm releasing today contains a couple new features, and as usual various fixes. I'll elaborate a bit on the new features and an important change below.
New ark modding mechanic
From now on, after selecting your ark, you can configure it with mods that are installed into one of the 4 available mod slots. Each mod is responsible for implementing one of the already established gameplay mechanics, such as firepower increase when collecting power-ups, shield-bombs storage, or even the EX mode. The goal here is to allow players customizing the way they want to play the game to a certain extent. More mods could be discovered in-game later on, and I'm thinking about allowing players changing gear between stages as well.
Of course, I'll have to add some sort of equipment tracking to the score ranking system. So that one can check which gear was used to achieve a given score.
Auto-targeting cannons for the green ark
At long last, the 2nd ark, the green one gets different to the 1st one (red). It now features auto-aim. Which means that bullets will be fired towards enemies, but not beyond a maximum shooting angle. Note that it does not mean that bullets are homing on enemies either. Once fired, they still go on a straight trajectory. To compensate for the advantage that this gives the player, I weakened a bit the power of the bullets themselves.
Checkpoint selection
This is still quite incomplete, but you should now be able to select the checkpoint you want to redeploy from on bailout. That way if you need to strengthen your ark or gather bombs before taking on a boss, it should be possible, provided that proper level design allows it.
Training simulator removal
As of late, I often thought that letting Eileen (the training simulator operator character) explain how to play with dialog lines was kind of awkward and that directly reading the full text would be faster. Additionally, after adding the new ark mod system, it was difficult to ensure that the content of each training simulator trial would always remain on point. So I replaced this whole mode with an in-game manual instead. This manual only contains information that was covered by the training simulator before for now, but later I can add more stuff in it (tips about equipment, and information about enemies, etc...). This manual will likely turn into a full fledged codex sometime.
Note that if you'd rather read something lore-free, the Readme.md file that accompanies the game executable is still there.
EX forecast overhaul
On top of merging both players' EX forecast gauges into a single one located at the top center of the game viewport, I've rewritten the whole energy loop so that it feels more like an economy of some sort. Shooting enemies with normal fire still stacks up energy, but now shooting them with focused fire takes energy back from the stacked up amount (that was not the case before). Big enemies like bosses will also release energy on simple hits, and not only on destruction, to allow players filling their ark tanks gradually during a long confrontation. If this approach is viable, balancing it correctly will still take some time.
Anyway because of the redesign of this system, I think achieving high scores will be more difficult than before as well.
RELEASE NOTES - 0.48.0a
New features
General Changes
Logic fixes
Presentation changes & fixes
Thanks a lot for your interest in Second Legacy. See you next update!