Instruments of Destruction News

Version 0.124 continues the work that 0.123 started, with 7 of the 8 new islands going from a prototype with 1 mode to near-final versions with 3 modes (and 3 showcase vehicles). One of the 8 initial prototypes didn't receive any attention, but the 7 others all showed promise, and I spent a good amount of time playing and revising them until they all felt worthy of inclusion in the game.

[Full changelist at the end of this update]

7 NEW PLAYABLE ISLANDS

Each of the 7 new islands took about 5 or so hours of work to go from prototype to near-final version. 2 of the islands were added to the start of the game (Pisces and Taurus), while the other 5 were added to the mid-to-late section of the map. I'm pretty happy with how they all turned out, though I'll be playing through everything again over the next day or so to record footage, tweak the showcase vehicles, and finalize a couple more things.

[I'll continue to add even more islands as previously stated, but there's stuff I need to do before that. See below for more info.]

The things I need to finalize soon are the star requirements and bonus discounts. I did a quick first pass for Pisces and Taurus on the star requirements, but haven't touched the bonus discounts at all, nor the star cutoffs for the other 5 new islands. I'll be updating bonus/secret discounts for all the normal missions. I'm calling them "bonus" discounts even though they're still "secret" in the game. They will be made slightly more obvious, but will remain separate from the main objectives. Bonus Objectives were a bit too tedious previously, and I want to avoid making players feel like they need to worry about the bonus discounts unless they really want to. They'll remain strictly tied to giving you a boost or challenge for getting 3 stars.

SIDE NOTE: As I add more islands, I'm having doubts about the celestial naming convention. I have trouble remembering the names, and it would probably be easier if they just had some other kind of designation. Numbers might be answer, even though the islands don't need to be played in a particular order, especially towards the 2nd half of the campaign. Something to think about, but not a high priority to change at the moment.

WANTED: MORE VARIETY AND OBJECTIVE TYPES

17 islands is a decent amount, certainly better than 10, but I want to eventually get 30 or more for the main campaign, and arrange them in groups/clusters. Before I get to that point, it felt pretty obvious that I need more *stuff* in the game before I keep adding more content. By stuff I mean obstacles, interactive objects, and new kinds of objectives to complete. New parts (for flying/etc) will be part of that, but the other things are less certain. I have to try a bunch of different ideas, and see what's working and what's not.

I'll also be looking at other vehicle building games to see what types of missions they use. I haven't played Besiege in years, but I should probably check it out again and get past the 1st world, or at least watch some YouTube videos that do. Lots of people have also asked for Blast Corps-style missions, so I'll watch a playthrough of that as well. And of course I'll check out the various Red Faction Guerrilla activities and missions for even more ideas. Though I don't plan on making the player's vehicle take damage/break apart, combative obstacles/enemies of some sort are something I plan to try creating.

I'm sure there are plenty of physics-based puzzles the game could benefit from as well, though those may wait for a special group of islands (with more restrictive building guidelines/etc). Anyway, feel free to throw out ideas for what you want to see in future islands/missions, whether it's just using the current set of elements (such as more terrain-traversal-centric missions) or new game elements you want to see in Instruments of Destruction.

NEXT VERSION AND 0.124 CHANGELIST

Version 0.125 will likely be out next week, with updated star ratings/bonus discounts and other small balance tweaks. The winners of the Trebuchets & Catapults Theme will also be announced. Any stragglers have until next Monday to get those entries in.

No idea when the version after 0.125 will be out. Need to do a decent amount of gameplay prototyping, and that could take a while. If it goes on too long, I'll probably do an interim update with some cool/fun parts to help keep the game fun/interesting (maybe some projectile firing weapon updates).

Version 0.124 includes the following changes:
* Polished 7 prototype islands to near final status
* Added 7 challenge and 7 expert missions
* Added 14 new showcase vehicles
* Rearranged the world map to fit the 7 new islands
* Increased the UI animation speed
* Fixed some explosions applying way too much force
* Added initial auto-focus to the world map (centers on an unlocked island first time you open the map)

Version 0.123 is now live, and it includes the most significant campaign changes since the game launched in Early Access. We'll start with the changelist, then break down the major changes and give an overview of upcoming changes.

Changes in version 0.123:
* Rearranged world map and changed how islands unlock
* Added 8 new prototype islands (normal + sandbox mode only)
* Removed normal mode budgets and all bonus objectives
* Added specific part requirements to all normal missions
* Created/updated showcase vehicles for all normal missions
* Added option to detonate fixed bombs with an input (in addition to impact)
* Fixed editing a custom island forcing you to always play it in Play mode

WORLD MAP AND UNLOCKING

The singleplayer campaign now uses a data file to create the layout for the world, and link the various islands together. Previously each island stored its location, and which XP level would unlock it, as well as whether or not it showed up in the campaign. Now there's a specific data file that makes arranging islands/etc a lot more centralized, and completing an island now unlocks other linked islands. It's not a major change for players, but it makes adding new islands a lot easier, particularly ones earlier in the game, and it's a bit easier to tweak how islands unlock and are grouped. How the map is drawn has been updated a bit, though the changes are fairly subtle overall.

NORMAL MODE STREAMLINING

I've gotten pretty consistent feedback that the gameplay was a bit tedious at times, and I think this was especially true for Normal mode. The bonus objectives in particular could be time-consuming to finish, or they made accomplishing the main objectives more of a chore (such as on Virgo). So all the bonus objectives are gone. Budgets in Normal mode are also gone, and in their place are Part Requirements. You'll be required to use a specific part for each normal mission. This gives a lot more freedom overall, and it kind of forces you to learn the various parts and how they function. It will also create more distinction between Normal mode and Challenge/Expert. Challenge and Expert mode will remain roughly the same, though specific missions will be tweaked, and the showcase vehicles for these modes will receive an update pass soon.

Speaking of showcase vehicles, all the vehicles for normal missions have been updated, with some having all new vehicles. After all the showcase vehicles have been gotten an update pass, I'll record footage of them all and highlight some of my favorites in a new video.

8 NEW PROTOTYPE ISLANDS

Creating new islands is always exciting, and there are a lot of them in this update. I doubt all 8 of them will be sticking around, but most of them have turned out pretty well. The ones that are more polished are the ones that I think work best, and I'll continue to refine the others, possibly cut/redo a couple, and add more prototypes. I'll be targeting 20 total islands by the end of this refinement period. Normal mode is the primary concern with these islands, but eventually I expect most of them to have missions for all 3 modes. Having all 3 modes is no longer required with the new campaign structure, though each island must have either Challenge mode or Normal mode to appear on the map.

NEAR-TERM PLANS

Now that I've got some good momentum going with the campaign refinement, I'll be continuing to work on various aspects of it until there are 20 polished islands. I'm not actually sure what I'll be doing next, but here are the things remaining to be done:

* Add more prototype islands and refine the less-good ones until there are 20 good islands.
* Refine Normal missions and vehicles as needed (not expecting to change a lot except for most of the ProtoX Late islands, and adding/refining secret discount objectives).
* Add Challenge/Expert missions for all prototype islands. Might not do all 3 modes for every island, but I'll have at least 2 per island.
* Refine the challenge/expert missions and showcase vehicles for existing islands.
* Updating all the Star requirements for every mission.

That doesn't look like a lot, but it's a lot of islands and playtesting (and vehicle refinement), so it may take a while. I'll continue to do incremental updates as things go along, so expect a new update once a week until the 20-island campaign is polished. I'll eventually go beyond 20 islands to 25 or more, but I'll want more parts before going beyond 20 islands (particularly aerial movement parts), as well as other gameplay elements to play around with (new objectives, new obstacles, some sort of enemies, etc). Either way, I'll worry about the long-term plans and other big new features (multi-select in build mode, angled blocks in buildings) a bit more after this phase is complete.

TREBUCHETS + CATAPULTS REMINDER

Just a quick reminder to upload your Trebuchets and Catapults to the Steam Workshop (and set the Featured flag as the Vehicle Origin) by July 20th. Still got some time, but there's no harm in uploading sooner than later if your design is complete, and there are no new parts expected before the 20th.

Lots of quick little things to go over in today's announcement post.

SOUNDTRACK ON SPOTIFY AND SOUNDCLOUD

Let's start with the biggest and most exciting news to fans of the soundtrack: Part 1 of the Instruments of Destruction Original Soundtrack is now available to stream:

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/album/0SqAzTQ5bx3oFhRdamj9pj

SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/auvicmusic

Auvic has done an amazing job on this music, and I'm glad to have most of the songs now easily accessible away from the game. Part 2 of the soundtrack will include the songs not present, along with new tracks coming to the game in the future (no ETA on part 2 yet).

TANKS VIDEO

The TANKS Featured Vehicles video is now ready, so you can see the awesome winners and honorable mentions in action without having to download them all yourself. Thanks to my new video editor Ryan for cranking through the editing of this footage so quickly, and much appreciation to everyone who entered!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

VERSION 0.122B - DROP SHADOWS!

Next, a small-ish update went live just a little while ago. Here's the changelist for version 0.122b:
* Drop shadows added to most text that had no background
* Tripled max delay time for release connector and bomb
* Increased XP needed to level up (only affects new players)
* Fixed gamepad not controlling camera with Gamepad In Menus turned off

The first one doesn't sound like much at first glance, but it affects the game's look fairly significantly, and is something people have been requesting since the game came out. I finally went through the UI and added drop shadows to nearly all the text that didn't already have some sort of background. I wasn't really excited for drop shadows because it changes the "style" of the UI to be less cohesive (IMO), but it's such a minor stylistic change, and a major improvement to readability, that I have to admit it's an improvement overall no matter how you look at it. If you find any text you think still needs tweaks just let me know.

PROTOTYPE ISLANDS COMING SOON

Last minor announcement is that rather than building out only a couple highly-polished islands at a time (slowly), I'll be taking a different approach to new islands. I'll be generating lots of prototype islands as quickly as I can, and getting those playable in the main campaign for you guys to try. These rough islands will available in play mode, probably to the northeast (up and right) of the current islands. I hope to get lots of prototype islands out over the new few weeks, and refine those that are the most fun.

There's a little under-the-hood work to do to make the campaign more flexible in how islands are sorted, but it's easy work. If all goes well, you should start seeing new islands this week, with many more to come soon.

The previous Featured Vehicles theme was Skids, and there were not a lot of entries (less than 20 IIRC), so I chose a theme for June that would be a bit more straight-forward and hopefully gain more attention from the community. The change in theme worked better than I expected, and there were 98 tanks to look through by the time I collected some of the stray tanks created over the last month.

Due to the number of entries, the bar for both Featured Vehicles and Honorable Mentions was quite a bit higher than previously. This meant that both style and usability were quite important, and some vehicles that would normally have merited some mention were left off the lists. I don't have a strict 1-entry-per-person policy, but it did end up this time that no one got 2 vehicles onto the main Featured Vehicles section, though a few people had vehicles making both lists. Let's take a look at the lists first, then a little more discussion about what stood out:

FEATURED VEHICLES

• Walking Tank 777 - Pyroteknikid
  
• Railgun Tank - pephoro
  
• Not a Guntank - Kozuel
  
• Lasifyer - surgexs123
  
• SST Rail - Iro_art_
  
• Starwars Droid Snail Tank - Dangospark117
  
• Bridge Tank - Astronaut
  
• H-377 Peacekeeper - Neo_Runner
  
• Comfortable Laser Tank
  
• Cylontknight Scanner Tank - wc4513
  
• World Shaker Minigun Tank - Kaijp
  
• Rocket Tank - TheUsualSuspect
  
• CSL-26 Croiseur Terreste - StRaNgEr
  
• Raider Tank - ZyberFairy
  
• Tornado - FiniX
  
• Salutaris - detaal
  

HONORABLE MENTIONS

• Railgun Tank ARMAGEDDON
  
• Tonk!
  
• First Huge Tank
  
• U.H.T - Goliath
  
• False Screw Tank (Fire)
  
• Walking Tank
  
• MANTIS Missile Tank
  
• Scorpi-Tank 3.0
  
• Saw Runner Ultima V2
  
• S0519-Lux.Rad-Tank
  
• Samurai Tank
  
• Tiny Tank
  
• Iron Warden
  
• Realistic Tank
  
• Realistic Tank (big)
  
• M5 Armageddon
  
• Heavy Armored Tank
  
• Twin Tanks + Control Car
  
• Pulsar Reactor
  
• AZL1 Strike Tank mk.2
  
• Illuminati Pyramid Tank
  
• Tank Dozer
  
• STUG
  
• Rototo X3000
  
• Imperial Wall Breacher
  
• The Futuristic Tank
  
• The Rhino Tank
  
• Smash A Whirl XL
  

[If someone wants to create a version of the list with the creator names of the Honorable Mentions, I'll update the list above so it has them listed. Steam doesn't make it quick/easy to see creator names in the search results.]

There were a lot of very impressive custom-built treads among the entries, but unfortunately most of them really bogged down my fairly-decent PC, while others just had trouble sticking together with the default physics settings (turning up joint stabilizer would just kill the framerate more in most cases). There were also a number of large cannons/weapons that happened to have treads as a means of propulsion, and only a few of those made either list. I tended to favor vehicles that were more tank-like, as well as those that were relatively easy to use effectively. So some more stylish vehicles that could barely turn/aim or were very difficult to utilize correctly didn't rank as high as they would have otherwise.

Either way, I really appreciate the collective efforts that were put into this Featured Vehicle theme. The creativity and engineering used in these vehicles is inspiring, and I'm happy to spend the time trying out all the entries each month.

JULY'S THEME: TREBUCHETS + CATAPULTS

The theme for July's Featured Vehicles is Trebuchets + Catapults. The deadline will be July 20th for entries, which is exactly 4 weeks from today. The intended island to use is Test Island. If your vehicle is intended to be used on a different island (such as Sandbox Resort), please mention that in the 3-line description.

The "vehicles" this time don't need to move in any particular way. Whether they need to be attached to the ground or not is up to you (using attachers), but the objective is to damage/destroy the large building at the center of Test Island with a vertically swung/tossed projectile. The projectile(s) can be explosive. [Note that we'll have a separate ballista/crossbow-like theme later, so save those kinds of ideas/designs for later.]

Rockets/magnets/etc are allowed as part of the throwing mechanisms, but preferably not used on the projectile (unless used creatively). Using physics/gravity/ropes rather than powered parts will probably give you an edge in the final judging, as will having a limited number of buttons needed, but sometimes complex machines can be surprisingly effective/cool, so I don't want to rule anything out as long as it's tossing the projectile using a swinging motion of some kind (underhand or overhand is preferred to side-arm). Really looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with for this theme!

CAMPAIGN FOCUS

There's been a lot of focus on advanced user features and new parts over the first few months of Early Access, but not a lot on the main campaign. There are some other advanced features I want to get to sooner than later (multi-select in vehicle building, and angular/rotated blocks), but I think I've neglected the campaign for too long, so I'm going to be focusing on improving the existing islands/missions as well as adding new islands for a while. I want the first hour of the game to be more enjoyable for new players, do a better job of introducing parts over time, and give the game a bit more meat for those who want objectives/goals to aim for rather than sandbox-focused building.

The vehicle building learning curve is also pretty steep, so I need to figure out some way of smoothing it out a bit more. The built-in (showcase) vehicle list also could use some updating. I'll need to think about these things a bit more, but either way, expect some changes/additions to Play mode in the next few weeks.

WHERE'S THE VIDEO?

This post was supposed to have a video along with it, but when I went to export the finished version from Davinci Resolve, it refused to export. So I saved the project and restarted. That's when I discovered the project file itself was somehow corrupted. All but the first 15 minutes of work on the video was gone. Around 8 hours of editing/etc was lost to a bug of some kind. Definitely one of the worst feelings when you create digital work. Not sure saving to a backup project would have helped, but I'll be more cautious with the program in the future.

I still have all the raw footage from the testing, and hope to have a video created by sometime next week. Redoing work is usually faster the second time through, or I may get someone to help out with the editing process. Sorry for the delay.

Changes in Version 0.122a:
Added variable strength to Ultra Heavy part (affects mass)
Fixed aiming laser advanced mode label
Fixed vortex push mode being a bit weaker than it should have been
Fixed Vacuum/Vortex not reversing correctly in Normal mode
Brightened the impact effects of aiming laser
More building collapse tweaking
Update bomb model (more cylindrical, slightly narrower)
Fixed Bomb now detonates immediately less often
Fixed some geometry being duplicated on 2 panel parts (created blue flashing on spawn)