Beat Invaders News

Hey everyone!

2.2.31 was just deployed. It has only minor changes.

• Meteoroids in higher event waves have received a boost to their health.
  
• Meteoroids have a damage modifier depending on where on the play field they are.
  
• Meteoroids no longer damage each other when they overlap.
  
• Smaller changes to the effects when hitting Meteoroids.
  

Hey everyone!

I just uploaded a new patch!

2.2.3 is mostly a bug fixing and balancing patch, but it also has some new things for you!
Thanks again to Hugo from the community for a lot of feedback for this patch and the rest of the community for reporting bugs and problems.


[h2]Balancing was reworked[/h2]

• All ship classes have adjusted damage output values and should now be competetive! I'm still looking for feedback to adjust balancing in the future, shall there be the need for it.
  
• Adjusted Hyperbeam damage to wave be useful in higher waves.
  
• Adjusted Hunterswarm missiles to be useful in all wave counts and have high enough damage to cause chain reactions again.
  
• Meteoroid health was adjusted to match the new damage output.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Coins now come at different colors representing different values. (Gold = 1, Green = 3, Purple = 10)
  
• Pods: Double Up now changes the appearance of your pods.
  
• Added a "boost" effect before starting a new wave.
  
• Added different sound effects for each ship class on the ship select screen.
  
• Added a new button for "Details" in the Upgrade Screen, now it will be finally usable on a gamepad.
  
• Changed how a lot of stats are displayed in the detail view (e.g. Ship Speed is now also an absolute value, not just a percentage change)
  
• Reworked how the Magnet powerup works, it now has a much stronger pull on tokens, but it also can "lose" grip on tokens if they leave the magnet area.
  
• Railgun Ship class has received an impact effect on Meteroids, making it finally possible to move Meteroids with the Railgun Ship.
  
• Pulse Blaster: Charge Boost is now Epic rarity
  
• Spreadshot Ship Class: Main weapon now acts much more like a shotgun and has a increased bullet count by default.
  
• Certain Graphic Options that had no effect on the Steam Deck are now not displayed anymore when playing on the Steam Deck.
  

[h2]Fixed Bugs[/h2]

• Destroyed Freighters are now not displayed anymore after continuing a run.
  
• Run savegames do now properly get deleted on the Steam Deck.
  
• Some of the new achievements weren't properly awarded, now they work!
  
• And a LOT more bugs...
  

I hope you have fun with the new Patch!

Hey everyone!

another patch is live and with this patch, there is finally a Demo waiting for you if you haven't yet played Beat Invaders!

Another new "feature" is a new trailer - I finally took the opportunity to use some of the footage I collected during the recent patch development to refresh the old trailer. It didn't really do the game no justice anymore. So check it out and let me know what you think in the comments.


Let's jump right into the changes!


[h3]Skip Track list[/h3]
WIth this feature you can add up to four tracks to a list of songs that won't be played anymore from that point on. You can edit the list in the options menu.

[h3]New Special: Auto Tracker[/h3]
Activating this Special will give your projectiles homing capabilities for a moment.


[h3]New Upgrade: Pods - Double Up[/h3]
Adds a projectile to your pods - that means each round will fire one more shot - Missiles and the Attack Pods. This can be leveled to level four which gives your Pods a lot more power making Pod centered builds more interesting and viable.


[h3]New Achievements![/h3]
13 new Achievements are waiting to be unlocked!


[h3]Detailed Upgrade Menu Stats[/h3]
This was requested more times than I can count: The ability to show in detail what an upgrade does for you. Now you can press the detail button and get all the information about what you will get from an upgrade!


[h3]Outline Effect[/h3]
Fans of a more Comic like look can try the new Outline Effect by activating it in the Options menu.


[h3]Tutorials[/h3]
I added a series of small tutorials that will explain the basic gameplay mechanics of Beat Invaders. Some mechanics were always very obvious while others, e.g. Enemy Shield Link weren't. I hope this will help new players learn the game quicker!


[h2]Changes[/h2]
[h3]Attack Pods manual fire[/h3]
Attack Pods are back to manual fire mode - At some point in the past I changed it to auto-fire. But it felt a lot less powerful to press the shoot button. Not that all charge-up times (Railgun and Pulse Blaster) have been reduced, it's more fun to shoot it manually.

[h3]Automatic Settings on the Steam Deck[/h3]
For Players that did not have played the game so far on the Steam Deck, it will select good settings on the first start up automatically.

[h3]Special Info in Upgrade Menu[/h3]
The effects of a Special were not explained anywhere. Now you will get a small box during the Upgrade Screen when you have a Special in your Special Slot, explaining what the Special will do for you on activation!

[h3]Repair Special repairs Convoy[/h3]
In the past, the Repair Special only repaired your ship, with an amount that could be improved from the "Special Power" upgrade. The Repair Special will now also repair your convoy ships, making it more valuable.

[h3]Performance improvements![/h3]
The game should, in general, have a noticeable better performance on most systems (including the Steam Deck).

[h3]Rebalancing[/h3]
I had the feeling that the higher waves were a bit too easy, oftentimes the screen was cleared before the action could even start. This was adjusted and to make up for it, point rewards for some enemies were increased.

[h3]Smaller Changes[/h3]
Token pickup has a new sound, Tokens got a new look, the Player ships got a visual upgrade, You will now have a level up indicator on the ship... and a lot more!

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]
And of course, this new patch also has a lot of bugfixes, especially for some bugs related to continuing saved runs.

Hey everyone!

Thanks to Hugo from the Beat Invaders community I was informed about a bug that needed hotfixing.
While I was at it, I also took another look into performance issues and optimized performance some more.

Because the Spreadshot class had some massive performance issues on very high upgrade levels there was also changes to that ship class.

Changes in 2.2.1

• Spreadshot Upgrade: Shot Amount is now capped at lvl. 30
  
• When Shot Amount is capped, a new Upgrade is unlocked: Spreadshot Damage. This will directly increase the damage of each projectile.
  
• The time it takes to ramp up Spreadshot: Focus Fire was increased, the time it takes to reset the effect was decreased.
  
• Spreadshot: Focus Fire now has a visual effect on the projectiles.
  
• Performance increases.
  
• Fixed a bug where area damage decreased performance over time.
  
• Fixed a bug in the Spreadshot Class where sometimes performance would decrease over time.
  

Hey everyone!

With this patch some new features made it into the game.


I knew for quite a while that some runs can really take some time. And there is nothing worse then having to cancel a run just because of running out of time to play.

[h2]In-run saving[/h2]
Now it is possible to leave a run and continue it later from the last successful wave.


[h2]Profiles (Save Slots)[/h2]
Another feature that is especially helpful when multiple people play on one machine are the Profiles (Save Slots). You can now select from three Profiles that will track progress individually.


[h2]Tutorials[/h2]
I also know that some game mechanics were never really explained very well - for example the Enemy Links. To help with that I added a series of small in-game tutorials, highlighting and explaining the different core mechanics. If you are a Veteran, you can of course disable the tutorials in the game options.


[h2]Performance Boost[/h2]
The games performance was improved. This will be especially noticable on the Steam Deck and in scenes with a lot of enemies. This should also help a bit with the battery drain on the Steam Deck 🔋

[h2]Railgun Class rework[/h2]
Before this patch, the Railgun class felt a bit on the weak side. Especially the game design around the Attack Boost was a bit weird. Fire Rate was an upgrade that really only helped for Attack Boost while Charge Level did not help a lot there. This left players at a decision on upgrades that always felt a bit meh.



The rework did the following:

• When having an Attack Boost, the charge rate is doubled and the shots are automatically released when fully charged.
  
• Fire Rate was removed from the Upgrade Pool.
  
• A new Upgrade was added to the Pool: Discharge (The first hit of the railgun explodes, dealing 30% of the charged damage. - Upgrades increase the explosion size.)
  
• This Upgrade will also help with horizontal clear speed.
  

[h2]Smaller Changes[/h2]

• Hyperbeam can now be chained (using a Hyperbeam while a Hyperbeam is active will restart it.)
  
• Spreadshot Class: Spread Upgrade now also increases Damage.
  
• A bug was fixed where sometimes it was not possible to use a Repair Bot even though it should have been.
  
• Smaller bug fixes.