itch.io

Nope! This is all on me. I'm fitting in pre-release improvements between my classes so things have slowed down on my end quite a bit. But slow doesn't mean no progress - in fact I'm making another patch as we speak to address more mobile issues.

The reason I'm putting such an emphasis on a relatively polished Play Store release is I've seen how fast attention fell off in Itch when I released this web demo version. I'll likely never have more eyes on my game than in the first week or so after its release on a platform. So to retain those players I need to present a reasonably balanced and complete experience. Current roadmap is to finish the third ascension, then do a round of balancing each of the game phases and adding additional content (more mission paths especially), then doing the Google Play release and dropping into maintenance mode with periodic event updates.

After maintenance mode becomes fairly stable (meaning time spent fixing bugs is very low because there just aren't many left) I plan on starting work on another game featuring space exploration and more graphics. I've already started talking to a couple of artists who are interested, but we're still months away from any serious agreements and have only the most bare-bones framework for what the game might be.

:D

You've been amazing - your feedback and interest has really spurred on the growth of this project. Thank you for everything you've done so far. 3rd ascension is going to take a bit, but when it's ready I'll let you know. 

It was overly active redraws - redrawing every element on the merc page every time credits updated as part of a check for if the player could afford to hire the merc. Limited the redraw to just the buy button and got smarter about how the check was happening (raising credits won't make an affordable merc unaffordable so no need to check sort of thing). A couple other pages had the same issue but weren't hitting the tipping point in elements where the slow down was obvious - yet. Tried to fix everywhere where it was happening as part of the last set of patches.

These issues normally come down to over-zealous redraw events in godot, and if that's the case it should be pretty solvable with some judicious logic. I'll take a look.

Thanks for the heads up. This time was way more benign - I didn't hit the right checkbox convincingly enough apparently.

Merchant tasks just got a bit better. Merchant_2 (aka Courier Drone Commission) is supposed to be selling only 1 loot per. If you're getting a ton of money from it its because your merchant skill is so high, and now merchant skill bonuses also factor in to loot price.

It's pretty important to me that the mobile experience be smooth and easy - I don't want players to have to whip out a microscope to find the spots to scroll. I think the issue is the current touch checks if you're hitting a header but is ignored if it's a card instead. Next patch will have a fix.

You're the second person to make a similar request. I'm a bit reluctant because it'd require handling automissions before I'm ready to, but obviously this is a big enough deal it needs to be higher on my priority list.

It shouldn't be cycling at all  - Definitely a bug. 

Hmm, yeah, they shouldn't have levels which means the no_levels flag isn't being honored properly. The tags should only come into play with mission planning (and I'm working on making that more visible in general). The tooltip should also be more descriptive of what tags are being added and removed (electronic and obvious, respectively) too. I'll get this worked up.

The intent is to either have a stealth difficulty 3 with a mandatory combat if there'd been any combat earlier in the mission OR a deception difficulty 2 if the player has no obvious gear, but the indenting definitely suggests what you're saying. Good catch, I'll double check execution vs intent here

Good to know. Probably no signal running another check for the launch button on credit update. I'll get that wired up

Actually, never mind. It's a race condition that exists for all the tutorials that I just so happened to have not hit. Fix coming in with the next patch

Interesting. I can't repo this one, it does vanish on my and my other tester's screen entirely after being read.

That's a great point. I'm interested in hearing more about the process you use to simulate and test this. 

Yet. Just wait until DNI is common place. Imagine what sort of mad things will come of fever dreams then.

Weird. Reuploaded the proper file. Not sure what I did to mess that up, but let that be a lesson - making game changes while running a fever has risk.

Found the issue, 0.40.1 has the fix

Well, that timing actually destroys most of my ideas about what might have been going wrong. Having a name certainly isn't worth orphaning people's games. Thanks again for all the testing you did with this, and glad I could get you back into the game.

Next patch is going to remove the pop up entirely and function on an opt-in system instead. If you're still having issues then we'll know it's completely unrelated to the name system, and if the opt-in causes issues you can skip it entirely.

Thanks for checking on that. Current version also has disabled background processes while the Handle dialogue is up so if it was a signal storm situation that should fix it. I'll keep poking, because I don't like not understanding, but I'm running low on ideas of why this might be happening. 

Out of curiosity how long have you let the screen sit before giving up on it? I'm wondering if it's just loading save state data and some conflict is making the page slow, not actually crashing. It'd be good diagnostic data to have

That's a pretty important clue and indicates it has something to do with loading a game, possibly with the "while you were away" summary popup trying to compete for the same space. 0.39.4 coming shortly to handle this

0.39.3 should at least help narrow down where the issue is actually occurring with DDG. The expectation is that you'll be able to set a random name at least.

Change is a good thing though! I'll see if I can sus out what the delta is between the two browsers. I suspect its a permission issue as duckduckgo tends to be more restrictive about that than most.

0.39.1 or 0.39.2? 0.39.2 has the latest fix for it.

Have I mentioned yet how much I appreciate all the feedback you've given? It really does mean the world to me. I think I understand where I went wrong and how to fix it, updating coming out shortly to address the issue.

This one is borne from my inexperience as a mobile developer. I think I have a fix coming out in 0.39.1 that will enable a virtual keyboard on mobile devices, but in case it doesn't work there's also a random button that uses the same method as the random mercenary names. I'm very interested in hearing back on this one as to whether the virtual keyboard works or not.

Well that's certainly a critical error. On it.

Found and fixed. Not browser or platform specific, just a regression introduced through a wild chain of events on the backend.

Into the bug tracker it goes. And I'm incredibly glad you're enjoying it; I doubt someone who didn't like it so much would put in the time and effort to make so many bug reports! They've been incredibly useful to me.

Strange. In my local build I'm able to buy the same skill bonus priv multiple times. I'll put some testing around this to figure out if it's an edge case, limited to specific skill bonus type or platform specific. It's fully intended that you be able to buy as many levels in any skill bonus you'd like, though.

This one is because the furniture hasn't been updated to fit with the rest of the changes I've been making to systems - next patch will have entirely new furniture and effects.

Found the bug, dates back to when I assumed Merchant would never be a mission skill. Next update will have the fix. Great job spotting that one.

There's a bit of randomness involved in the opponent's skills, but after the Meat Heads (first opponent) it shouldn't be possible for skills to hit 1 anymore as of 0.36.3, and if it is then there's probably a bug. I'll dig a bit deeper and make sure everything is working as expected.

EDIT: The changes that make that impossible are in the current build, not 0.36.3 so it's fully possible for the first two enemies to spawn with 1 in a skill and the 3rd could spawn with 2. I'll still be investigating, just in case something was miswired. 

Definitely a bug. Exfil should only be available as a final option. I'll get this fixed asa

Added to bug tracker, thanks!

Excellent idea. Give me a few minutes, I'm sticking that into the release that's about to hit.

Yeah, the current build has a bug where street thugs are being generated for even high end jobs that I've solved in the latest build, but I can't release until I finish making Projects functional without unwinding everything I did there. The fix was incidental to the new project territory system that is coming.

Root cause is street thugs have a max combat skill because I didn't want the world to feel like it just infinitely scaled with you - I wanted players to know that when they got better things that might have been a challenge in the past are now cake walks. But the higher level corporate enemies do scale infinitely because they have the same access to training, gear and cybernetics you do plus the advantage of a patron so they should always feel like a challenge. And there was just a typo in a data file that was making street thugs the default for a bunch of opponents.

Update is scheduled for release either late today (in about 17ish hours) or early tomorrow, and I'd love your feedback on how the balance feels when it comes out.