So, It’s been a while. I’m gonna split this post into two parts, the first explaining what’s happened, why has it been six months since the last update, the other, explaining what’s coming in v1.1-alpha.10. There is a tl;dr for the 6 months part.

Why 6 months?

This is my first significant break from the project since November of last year. Since then, I have been adding a new alpha, at least once a month. I enjoyed working on Bestagon, and enjoyed playing the game. But I didn’t actually get much of a chance to play it. It’s common, and happens to quite a few people. I am still here though, and working on it again so I haven’t left forever.

The 2nd reason for the break, which when paired with the first make it really effective, was I found another project. An old Minecraft server I used to play on was starting up again with a different owner, and I wanted to help out. After 5+ months of Bestagon development, it was the fresh project I needed. Until I looked at the code. Turns out if I wanted to work on it without losing my sanity, I needed to rewrite it. So, that took a while. And then I could play the work I’d made, and it was fun, especially as I could play it with other people. As the base game was already built, it was easy to add new features. Working with 3 other devs made it more fun, and even easier to make progress. At this point, I had mostly forgotten Bestagon, it was still there, but not a priority. Especially as the game was playable and in a good state.

By the time the Minecraft server was well setup, has most of the features it needed, I then needed to take some exams. So, there goes a month. Then, I start a new job. There goes two more months while I settle into the job. Now, finally, having settled into my job, I’m getting back to working on my projects (of which I also started another one on top of Bestagon and the Minecraft server, go me!)

And that’s where I am currently. I’ve now got to split my attention between these three projects, which means development will significantly slow down, along with having less free time with the job.

Tl;Dr - I working on a different project, than exams and job stuff, and now I’ve got even more projects so while development has resumed, it’s going to be slow

What’s coming in v1.1-alpha.10

This update is certainly the biggest update in v1.1’s alpha so far. Three major features, and some minor, and even some changes for the Unity editor.

New Stuff!

• New Turret - Lancer: Pick one of six directions for it to fire a shot that passes through enemies, knocking them back as it goes. A turret designed for long paths, to help keep back the flow of the fast. Be careful though, place it behind the enemy, and it can launch them forwards!
• New Module - Ghost: Disappointed each time a bullet passes through an enemy and doesn’t hit it? No more! Every time a bullet with this module touches an enemy it hasn’t touched before, it will deal damage as if it touched it!
• New Boss - Splitter: The square boss was nice, but it got repetitive. Exactly what we want to avoid! Splitter comes in slowly, lumbering along, but when it dies, it splits into two, faster, weaker enemies. But when they die, they also split up into 7 tiny enemies with even less health each. This bosses only exist on the Upgrade Level (yes, another level!)
• New Boss - Summoner: This one’s quite the magician. While not strong physically, it’s got the abilities to make up for it. Every 4s it heals all enemies in a radius of 3 for 10% of their max health. Then every 6s it grants all enemies on the map a 1.5x speed boost for 2s. And, because it’s the summoner, every 3s, it spawns 3 minions to help it along the path. This boss is exclusive to Loop.
• New Map - Upgrade: This map is still being balanced, but it will be the 2nd largest map (after Hexagon), with pre-placed turrets, but only two options in the shop per roll.
• New Feature - Selling: A highly requested feature, selling is now in the game! You can sell turrets for 85% of the current shop price.

Changed Stuff!

• Updated Menus - The Main Menu and Level select have both been updated and improved, more specifically with the buttons, but also several of the popups and overlays. The Pause Menu and Game Over screen have also changed to fit the new style. The layout of the menus has not changed, so you can still find the same things in the same places. The shop icon has also changed, and while it’s still a temporary asset, it better fits its purpose. The pause button and turret buttons and the button to show and hide your inventory have not had an update however.
• Boss Balance - Squared: Your old favourite boss Squared got a slight rebalance, the heal now only heals itself, but heals for 20% instead. This should hopefully mean 75 isn’t a hard limit when the boss heals +30% every 3s.
• Percentage Change Modules - The higher the fire rate, the higher the chance to activate the module. This is no longer the case. Now, percentage change modules (e.g. stun) chance is (1 / fireRate) * change to activate. This means change modules don’t always need to go on that gunner.

Development Stuff!

This has also taken time to implement, but will give more options when balancing and (hopefully) make balancing faster.

• Pre-placed Turrets - This is already in the Upgrade level, but it allows us to place turrets on the map from the get-go. It currently doesn’t allow me to grant modules to the turrets, but it’s certainly something I’d like to do in the future.
• Custom Selection Counts - Previously, you’d always get three options when you opened the shop. Well, no more. You can now set the values to whatever you want! This UI probably won’t look great though…
• Option for no initial selection - Currently, when you open the shop for the first time, you will never get a module. You can also have completely different chances to obtain stuff (e.g. Loop’s old balance). Now it’s possible to disable that, useful if you’ve got some pre-placed turrets.
• Use the same curve in multiple places - As of v1.1-alpha.8, I could vary shop chances based on the wave number. Which meant I needed to setup a graph of points for every option. This is slow, and repetitive, and hard to test. I’m currently in the process of allowing shared values, meaning I could make all the basic turrets have the same curve, without having to manually add the points to each curve, they’d share one.

What’s left to do and how long will it take?

I won’t work on this game for the next week, I plan to use my time now to work on projects, one week at a time. So if I spend a week on Bestagon, I’ll spend less time on another project. I don’t always stick to this, as sometimes I suddenly need to do an update, for example a hotfix for Bestagon. However, it does give a bit more structure, and means I don’t burn out, and no project gets left behind.

Firstly, I need to complete getting the curves in multiple places. Then it’s just balance and testing, as long as I don’t let scope creep take me for another week. I’ve got to balance the chances on Loop to restore the level to it’s former glory. Upgrade also needs its shop chances changed, and if possible, I’d like to make the waves different there too. This will likely take at least a week, if not more.

I do also plan to test it a bunch for the competition, so it’s going to be a long week…