The War Enders: First Strike News

This patch merges the update from 0.9.2 to 0.9.5, that's why it took us a little more time.

- Swap the order of Original and Arrange Original in Mode Selection Menu.

We thought the Arrange Original Mode was more difficult before. We underestimate the influence of game system's complexities. We change this issue now because we found that most players are screwed after they finishes Arrange Light Mode and head towards Original. (Which has a much more different and complex game system)

Original Version Update 0.9.2:
- Fix a type of medium enemy didn't initialize correctly.
- Enemies' crash ships won't turn to player after 6 seconds.
- Fix a type of medium enemy emit bullets from a wrong shot position.
- Su-97A low-speed attack change, it now switches firing angle after holding ↑ or ↓ for a certain time.

Because the low-speed swing attack is given to Kiruya, and Su-97A shouldn't have the same. We changed its low-speed fire to firing angle change which keeps the same design of its hi-speed attack.

Original Version Update 0.9.3:
- Adjust Occlusion Culling more carefully.
Original Version Update 0.9.4:
- Tweak object pooling and RAM garbage recover to balance the usage of CPU and RAM/VRAM.
Original Version Update 0.9.5:
- Fixed Air-Ground Collision switch issue, adjust some ground enemies' hitboxes.

We wanted more changes since Version Update 0.9.2 had too little content, But we had a hard time adjusting Occlusion Culling. Due to no result in adjusting Occlusion Culling, we started tweaking object pooling and RAM garbage recover……We changed everything we want to change for now as a result.
There can be some problems with such a huge change in the bottom logic. We try to restore the enemies' initializations and collisions, but we are not sure if we perfectly restore all of them. If there is some difference, please bear with us.

Other changes:
- Remake player bullet and hit effect, but player bullets' collisions remain the same.
- Enlarge player hitbox indicator, but the real collision remains the same.

After updating the hit effect, player's hitbox indicator can be blur in some extreme scenario.

- Lower most particle effects' count.
- Update water asset.
- Enlarge player bullets' hit sound effect.
- Fix an error in right side enemy info UI.
- Fix some display bugs in Main Menu.
- Tweak spawn positions for some enemies in a place.
- Getting hit/Using bomb now lowers the Rank by 6/12, instead of previous 5/10.
- Adjust some Manual texts.
- Now if an enemy from bonus area don't spawn, the bonus area will fail.
- Game Clear is now recorded without a save.
- Fix Leaderboard overwritten issue.
- Enlarge the spacing of NGSD slaves and higher the speed of NGSD slaves.


Enjoy,
Crystal Heart's Studio

We just updated Demo version to 0.9.1.
Now Demo version shares the same functions and features with the Early Access version.

Except for:
- Cannot select Training and Leaderboard in Main Menu.
- Can only select the first two fighters.
- After finishing stage 1 the game will load back to Main Menu.

Previous Demo version was build back in Oct 2022, which is buggy, so outdated, and has a huge difference with current Early Access version. That's why we update it.


Crystal Heart's Studio

A tiny update, but with important function.

- Add new option Texture Quality in Settings.
- Add new option Texture Quality to in-game pause menu.

Plus the content in this small patch, we now have 5 graphic options in total. Here is a bit explanation of them about performance influence:
Texture Quality: HIGH influence in VRAM usage. Explosion Light: Influence GPU instant usage Explosion Debris: HIGH influence in CPU usage, Influence GPU usage Volumetric Fog: Low influence in VRAM usage Ambient Occlusion: Nearly no costs

We push this patch urgently because we found that some players have decent hardware only except for RAM and VRAM. Yes, we are exactly talking about 1060 3G VRAM In this situation, the game would run smoothly if it takes lower VRAM. We hope adding Texture Quality setting may help this issue.


Enjoy!
Crystal Heart's Studio

Like what we said in the last event, we are going to talk about "Music Replacement" in this event.

First going into the root folder of this game. (You may right click on the game in the Steam Library, and then select Properties... - Installed Files - Browse.... The file path in sample image is where my game folder is. )


In this root folder you can find "Music_Replace" folder.
Get into this folder, paste the music you want into it. And name them as "Stage1", "Stage2", "Stage3", "Stage4", "Stage5", "Boss".
Only .mp3 and .wav file extension is supported.
The "Readme" and "请读我" is exact the thing we are talking about in this event, so you may delete them as you wish.

Game only detects replaced music in the beginning of launch, so replacement during executable running is invalid. Please close the executable, then do the replacement and launch the game again.

If you are a really experienced player, you may already know that we are using free music in this game. We are really grateful that we can still publish the game with decent music while our budget is limited. But those music still have some mismatches with the game. So after thinking about it twice, we decided to give another option to our player.

If you want to upload a gameplay video with music replaced, to avoid unnecessary problems, please give a note in the video description that you replace the music yourself.


Enjoy!
Crystal Heart's Studio

Our game is now at point where we need to add new functions and fix old problems. Therefore, this update might be the largest update even compare to possible future updates.

First, let we introduce the most impressive new function: Explosion Debris
After enemies are destroyed with creating an explosion particle effect, instead of suddenly disappear, now a real-time calculated debris will be spawn.

It is impressive, isn't it? This not only increases the excitement of destruction, but also satisfies the destructive desire.
But this is done with costs. The physics for each model in debris will be calculated separately. We did some optimization but it still increases the requirement of CPU's single core performance.

Next, we want to talk about the important thing we have mentioned before: Fighters' Revision
Now NGSD finally got the function that matches its name - Next Gen Space Dominance. It controls high-intelligent slaves freely. But for balance issues, the fire power is limited, and the positioning of slaves is particular.
On the other hand, Kiruya moves forward with its instability. It becomes a fighter that focusing on swing fire. We give it relatively higher fire power and this might relief the instable fire.

We are also bringing out functions that is demanded a lot: In-Game Changeable Graphics Options
- Add setting options: Explosion Debris, Volumetric Fog, and Ambient Occlusion
- Add these options to pause menu with Explosion Light in addition.

Remember we said that the Explosion Debris requires more CPU's single core performance. So now, if you find it prevents the game from running fluently, or you find it distracting, you can directly open pause menu and turn those options off.

Below are some other changes in this update:
- Side UI now can only hide right UI stage enemy info.
- Compensate enemies' fire effect.
- Visually enlarges enemy bullets and player hitbox.
- Adjust explosion particle effects.
- Adjust rate UI.
- Final boss now detects entering true boss or not 12 seconds earlier.
- Add move smoke and dust to some ground enemies.
- Redesign stage 3 background scene, slightly improves performance.
- Adjust enemy UI health bar transparency.
- Replaceable music.
- Now right side UI shows correct info when start the game with Original Mode.
- Now player will not regen health when scene is loading up.
- The difficulty progress for Unlimited Mode in mode selection UI changed to 100% fill rate.
- Now in Original Mode, create less suicide bullets of destroying small enemies.

There are some important stuff in those, such as the adjustment in explosion, enemies' bullets, and enemies' health bar. However, from the workload side they are just other little changes.

We will post another event talking about "Replaceable music" soon.


Enjoy the game!

Crystal Heart's Studio