Miners Mettle News

This week we’ve made some substantial changes to the game’s HUD, added in a colour blind mode, made several net code improvements and cleared up a large amount of technical debt in the background.

UI
Our HUD has been changed based on feedback, leading to a light-weight and minimalist aesthetic. Check it out!
Passive Income Indicator – Shows the amount of minerals you’re passively accruing per second
Reconned Enemy List – Located in the upper-central part of the HUD, this lists all the enemy units currently visible to you.
Colour Blind Mode – Based on feedback, we decided to prioritize colour-blind mode and release it sooner rather than later. We are eager to get feedback on what further improvements we can make to the mode to make the game more accessible. You can find this option in our accessibility section of the menu, but must make the changes prior to starting a game.

Graphics
We’ve added in basic gamma settings like Brightness.

Netcode Improvements
Improved net-code for various in game activities – building chip upgrades, facilities and AMPs, salvaging facilities, repairing AMPs, and mining. These improvements and the imminent movement net-code improvement will significantly stabilize and improve our multiplayer experience.

Fixed
An issue with researching chips adding them to all AMPs and compartments
An issue where building chips did not have a cost. Now both research and building have separate costs for chips
An issue with game setting save prompts not consistently showing up

It’s our third-year anniversary at Singular Scheme. We’ve really enjoyed it so far, making Miner’s Mettle and hope to be able to do it for many years more! Thank you for your support!

This week’s patch clears up several bug. We’re excited for next week, which will be quite sizable – new HUD elements, significantly improved networking, colour blind mode, and more.

Gameplay
Added in Sound Diffusion chips – which increase the size of artillery sound rings, making it harder for enemies to pinpoint your exact location

Fixed
An issue with bricking your artillery station and unit if you switched between them while aiming
An issue with moving Totem abilities from your unit to inventory would break the ability
An issue with researching Totem abilities
An issue with programming code showing up in the combat logs
A crash if the game exits to the main menu while in the middle of loading
A crash on client if the skill tree isn’t replicated
A sporadic crash on client when adding upgrades to units
A crash while trying to display a selected unit’s path
A crash on client if right-click movement is ordered immediately after the game begins
An issue with damage not displaying correctly for destroyed facilities
An issue with sound effect levels being too soft on certain new sound effects

Some crash fixes this week, keeping it relatively light while we work on some new features that should see the light of day soon. We’re also working on improving our net-code and clearing up some of our technical debt.

UI
Added a Return to HQ icon on the HUD to instruct units to return to HQ with one click

Fixed
The end game stat screen not showing up for 1v1 games
A crash when adding Sniper Shot to the train in the Research Tutorial
A replication crash on client
A bug when using the middle mouse button while aiming
A crash when switching the gameplay log category

Production Baby
Added Zofia to the dev team

This week’s patch includes a notable change to our economy, with mining platforms giving a passive income per platform, and Recon Orb cooldowns reduced by half to 30 seconds, to allow players to engage in battles quicker. We have onboarded our new sound designer and this is the first week of better sound, something that will be ongoing for the next few months.

Gameplay
Drone Delivery – Building a mining platform also grants a passive income per platform. We’ll be building a whole suite of upgrades with this new functionality in mind, allowing players to be able to drastically reduce the amount of mining trips required if they focus their research on that.
Headquarters – Each HQ also gives a small passive Iron income, reducing the moments when players must concede because they have no undestroyed compartments and no way to restart their economy.
Reduced Recon Orb Cooldown – Reduced the cooldown from 60 to 30 seconds. This should allow players to find enemy units quicker and keep combat flowing.
Improved tooltips further, with improved placement as well.
Added in level 4 versions of certain chips, such as improving Critical Damage, Damage, AoE size, and Critical Chance.

Audio
We have onboarded our new sound designer and should be able to improve our sound quality and increase the variety of sound effects. New sound effects for switching tracks, units going through facility shields, firing projectiles etc.

Fixed
An issue with the health bars for facilities not updating correctly
An issue with erratic reticule placement while rotating the camera using middle mouse while aiming
An issue with UMS in the tutorials (we disabled it for now, basically)
An issue with the Totem Launcher ability now showing properly in the UMS
An issue with certain chips not actually improving the artillery cannon
An issue with ability titles and ability renders overlapping

This week we have our new tool tips for our abilities. These tool tips are both much easier on the eye and simultaneously more informative.

UI
Tooltips 3.0 – a new tool tip system that works particularly well for our abilities, giving players all the crucial information.

Fixed
A crash that occurred while docking using right click
Multiple issues with the Targeting Beacon ability
Missing meshes for the Totem abilities, so the compartment would look empty