Beat Invaders News

Hey everyone!

it has been quite a while – over two years already!
While Beat Invaders is a finished project for me, and I continue to work on my new game, Engraving, it is still a project that I love dearly.

There were a couple of bugs that bugged me (pun intended) and some things that just broke down with services that I used that were taken offline (Dailies/Weeklies).

Originally, I planned to fix those bugs and release a minor patch. But then I had way too much fun!
So, this month’s development time was poured completely into Beat Invaders.

If you find new bugs, I would love to hear about them via the in-game Feedback tool or on the Beat Invaders Discord server.

I really hope you will enjoy playing the new version of Beat Invaders as much as I did making it!



[h2]Highlights[/h2]

• Season 3 started: Leaderboards are fresh and clean - I will post the top scores of the last season in the upcoming days.
  
• Hyper Lone Wolf game-mode was added: This was requested a couple of times by the community.
  
• Added slight Vertical Movement: General gameplay change - Delivery HQ installed the Convoy Control Protocol into every Ship. This will allow the Ship to gain a bit of vertical movement, which Convoy Freighters will react to. Talented pilots can use this to employ new defensive or offensive tactics.
  
• Route Effect System: Whenever you jump to a new System, you can alter your run by adding Route Effects. These stackable, optional effects will make the game a bit more challenging while offering bigger rewards!
  
• Steam Community Items: Trading Cards, Badges, Backgrounds, and more!
  
• German language: I finished my work on the translation integration and added German as a second language. If you want to play Beat Invaders in your language, reach out on the Discord and help me with the translation!
  
• Missions menu: In this new menu, you get an overview of your Achievements - and maybe a good idea of what to do on your next run!
  
• 7 new Achievements!
• Three new Meta Upgrades: You can now equip up to three Hacks, repair your Freighters, and store up to three Specials - very common community requests.
  
• 5 new in-game Ship Upgrades!

[h2]Improvements[/h2]

• Improved appearance of Upgrade Icons. Added Rarity labels and made Rare upgrades easier to recognize.
  
• Damage Numbers: With more damage influence from different Route Effects, this helps to get more information about the damage you deal! You can enable it via the options.
  
• Added Attract mode: This starts the game automatically in demo mode after idling in the main menu; you can enable it via the options.
  
• Added a Shield display over the health UI when your ship is protected by the Shield provided by Defensive Refactoring.
  
• Added a template to the Feedback Reporting tool’s bug section.
  
• Added Option for low Screenshake; previously, you could only enable or disable it.
  
• Added Option to confine mouse to the game window.
  
• Improved Hack Selection screen: Selected Hacks are now easier to recognize, and the layout was rearranged for consistency between screens.
  
• Improved Options Menu: Restructured to make it easier to navigate and look less cluttered.
  
• Reworked Dash charge UI element to make it easier to read.
  
• Clicking/Selecting a profile in the profile selection screen now directly changes to this profile.
  
• Added Icons to profiles to make it easier to recognize which is active.
  

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• Increased enemy life with increasing wave count.
  
• Boss: The Hammer now shoots additional projectiles.
  
• Meta Upgrade cost becomes more expensive with increasing levels of the upgrade.
  
• Increased the maximum amount of Dash charges that you can get via in-game Upgrades (3 > 4).
  
• Added level up options to Evasive Attack (launch 1 additional missile per level, up to 4 in total).
  
• Immensely buffed damage of Ultrashield shards (400% + bonus based on absorption + wave count bonus).
  

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Fixed double inputs with external controller on Steam Deck.
  
• Fixed broken Daily and Weekly leaderboards, making the achievements available again!
  
• Fixed bug where additional Upgrade Levels were awarded after loading a game with the Cutting Edge upgrade equipped.
  
• Fixed typo in Repair Bot description.
  
• Fixed a bug where "Meta Upgrades" button glow did not update after changing profiles.
  
• Fixed a bug where "Meta Upgrades" were not sorted correctly.
  
• Fixed letters in the Upgrade screen appearing in incorrect colors.
  

It was quite some time since the last patch!

I just read in the community forums that dailies/weeklies were broken.
This was because I used an external service/api to supply that information to the game.

I updated the game to work with a different service now - So dailies and weeklies are now available again!

Another small bug that was reported in the community forums was that the screenshake setting is not saved properly - this should now work as intented!

There are still known bugs about certain controllers and double inputs. This is unfortunately an engine issue and will be fixed in the next release of it. I will update the game and release another patch as soon as this happens.

Hope you enjoy the game!
Raffaele

Hey everyone!



I will be showing Beat Invaders on the Game Developer Conference 2023 as a part of the Godot showbooth.
I would love to see you there to chat!

As part of the preparations for the show, I also implemented a feature that was suggested on the Steam forums, a "Attract Mode".

Attract Mode starts after idling in the main menu for about 10 seconds (just the main menu, not upgrade screen or ship select etc.) and is of course an option that you can enable or disable in the game settings.

I also added a couple smaller, gameplay/visual updates!

The next patch will be coming after the GDC - so in about 2 weeks.

By the way:
[h3]The game is on 35% discount at the moment, so grab it while the plasma is still hot! 🤘[/h3]

Hey everyone!

Patch 2.2.33 was just set live! Thanks to feedback on the Discord and a new way of testing, I found two more bugs in the game that decreased performance on longer runs.

Hey everyone!

Patch 2.2.32 was just set live! Thanks to feedback on the Discord, I was made aware of some bugs that I fixed right away 😁.

• Meteoroids did not get cleaned up properly when leaving the play area, this resulted in auto-acing the Meteoroid event and other issues.
  
• Spreadshot: Spread upgrade did not display the correctly calculated damage.
  
• There was a performance problem with the Spreadshot ship class that was leading to decreasing performance on longer runs.