Hello, all!
I'm excited to share the latest update to the demo, which
includes some balance tweaks and QOL improvements. Recently NeuroSquad has made an appearance in some online festivals (most recently the Roguelike Celebration, but also was on the Steam page of Realms Deep and DevPlay), resulting in some important feedback from a larger set of players. Many suggestions are still in development, and I plan to include more of them in the coming updates.
[h2]Version 0.3.7 is up![/h2]
With this update I focused mostly on implementing suggestions from the community, and adding quality of life improvements. There's still a lot I want to do with the demo, So while I'm working on optimization (which is a loooong process and frankly, a huge rabbit hole), I thought I'd publish this update with some of the changes that I implemented based on feedback. (This update lines up well with
the game being selected for the Bullet Heaven Festival, more on that below.)
Here you can find the full list of changes:
[h2]0.3.7 Changelog[/h2]
- π€π€ [Based on feedback]: Increased the number of enemies spawning in the early game of the demo stage (waves 2, 5, and 7), and increased the cap of maximum enemies allowed in the beginning.
- Adjusted the XP gain in the beginning to balance the higher number of enemies.
- π€π€ [Based on feedback]: Removed the reloading mechanic, as people found it unsatisfying. Since it was part of the manual shooting method, reworked that too, now there are three options: auto-fire with manual aim, auto-aim, and on-the-fly auto-aim, as requested by players:
- π€π€ [Based on feedback]: Implemented a dynamic auto-aim system: when not moving, the character aims automatically. While running, the character aims in the direction of movement.
- Added a new key binding for quickly switching between shooting methods: toggle for the preferred auto-aim method. If auto-aim is turned off in the settings, it toggles between "off" and the regular auto-aim.
- π€π€ [Based on feedback]: Added the option to reset the key bindings to the defaults.
- Rebalanced the fire rate of the Helldart, the Biosense mines, and the Spark cannon. Lowered their cap, and made their starting values higher for the hero.
- Increased the lifetime of Biosense mines.
- π€π€ [Based on feedback]: Fixed a bug that allowed the level of implants to display higher than their maximum levels, if they were leveled up before their cap was tweaked in previous updates. (Used to apply to Neo-cortex).
- Slightly increased the starting pickup range (from 300 to 350 units).
- π€π€ [Based on feedback]: Changed the way the Biosense mines react to the Ghost detonator being applied: now the mine deals 2.5 X base damage (like usual) instead of just 1 dmg, and the Ghost detonator's effect is applied to the scattered bullets only. This ensures the mines still damage enemies, even if the bullets have Energy locker on (which would otherwise result in 0 damage most of the time).
- Reduced the range of the Godlight weapon (default bullet lifetime from 1 sec to 0.7 sec).
- π€π€ [Based on feedback]: Changed the damage increase of the Microshard injector weapon mod from 50% to 30%.
- Changed the first objective timer: now it's only required to survive for 3 minutes instead of 5 for the reward.
- Added notifications under the XP bar that appear upon completing an objective.
- Added the two Chinese logos into the game (for the main menu and pause menu).
[h2]Some notes[/h2]
β Important note: β
Since I've made some changes to the inputs (deprecated two and added a new one: toggle auto-aim),
the key bindings had to be reset to the defaults for everyone who has played the demo previously. You don't have to do anything, but if you were using custom input settings, you'll have to set it up in the controls settings again.
I apologize for this, please keep in mind that the game is still in development and changes like this are expected for now.
β Also... β
The current version has a known bug, unfortunately the order of the key bindings in the settings menu can sometimes get reshuffled, so similar keys (such as ones for keyboard VS ones for gamepads) might not always line up neatly underneath each other. This doesn't affect anything (apart from clarity), but my very next task is to hunt down this bug. Hopefully will be fixed in another update soon. - Fixed![h2]Performance optimization progress[/h2]
I'd like to share some info about the progress I've been making regarding performance improvements. This in my case mostly means diving into the engine code and making custom solutions for the things that are the most demanding in NeuroSquad.
So the game is being developed in Unreal Engine, which is a powerful beast, and gives many well thought-out things out of the box. But of course, every game is different, and has different needs. For NeuroSquad in particular, I quickly found that handling a large amount of player-bullets and enemies is where the bottleneck lies. On the bullets front, I decided to use my own particle-driven solution early on, which has been working great so far (I might post some stress tests and benchmarks later if there's interest in this kind of stuff).
Now I'm in the middle of tackling the other big performance-hitter, the large number of enemies. Testing shows promising results so far (with clusters, a custom movement controller, vertex animation, etc), hopefully you can see the effects of these in the game soon.
[h2]NeuroSquad is part of Bullet Heaven Fest![/h2]
I'm excited to share that NeuroSquad has been selected to be part of
Bullet Heaven Fest, which starts... today! I'm honored to be included among such great games that have been inspiring me throughout development.
As the organizers say, "You'll be flooding the screen with your own arsenal in a storm of firepower that puts traditional bullet hell games to shame." - Indeed. Check out the sale page here:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41046058/sale/BulletHeavenFest
[h2]Follow the development on Discord[/h2]
If you'd like to discuss changes and follow the development of the game, you can find me on the official NeuroSquad Discord server:
Happy slaying!
-Matt
