Smooth camera
Thanks to Twitch viewer RayMarch for this one. They suggested adding some lag and springiness to the camera so you can better see when your drone hits something.
This makes things much less confusing when you bounce off an enemy:
The camera locks up again when you're done dashing or flying, so you can still do precision aiming.
UI cleanup
After seeing the first gif above, someone pointed out the "danger" sign blocking your view of the spider drone. The UI has a number of status indicators that turn on and off depending on the player state. These were scattered along the central vertical axis. I standardized their size and position and made the stack up nicely to the right of the reticle.
Turret tweak
Also visible in the second gif above is the newly tweaked turret design. Previously the base of the turret was dark, meaning spider drones could not shoot or climb on it. This caused some issues, as you're trying to aim at the turret and suddenly get a big confusing X on the screen indicating you can't shoot there. The new turret base allows you to crawl on it while avoiding other gameplay issues by having the actual turret body hover a foot above the base.
Build ID overlay
You can also see the new build ID overlay in the screenshot above. This will help me debug issues when people submit screenshots, and hopefully prevent people from taking pre-alpha screenshots as final quality.
Staggered grid experiment
I tried staggering the grid points to create a triangular pattern rather than rectangular:
I found the rectangular pattern emphasized the level geometry more clearly, while the triangular pattern distracted from it. I ended up undoing this change.
Kicking
Server admins can now kick people. You can even kick someone playing on the same screen as you.
Progressive upgrade pricing
Each upgrade you purchase now increases the price of all future upgrades. This makes the order of purchase more important, and also allows me to price things relatively cheaply at the beginning, which gives the player more options. Previously you really could only choose between the four cheapest upgrades at first.
Map work
Revamped Office:
Cleaned up and updated Refinery:
Cleaned up and updated Plaza:
Also, I tested out how Samsa looks in-engine. :)