Star Vortex News

[p]This update brings together months of system changes that have been building toward this moment. Previously, the ship designer capped you at four weapons of the same type. That restriction is now completely gone.[/p][p][/p][p]As you level up, you can now equip as many of any slot type as you want. Go wild with 15 drone bays, 15 lasers, or even 15 vortex arrays if you feel like testing the limits.[/p][p]This update is definitely going to cause some performance issues. I’ve already started optimizing the biggest offenders, but more work will be needed. If you notice heavy framerate drops when stacking weapons, please report it on the Steam Community or Discord.[/p][p]Full patch notes are below. Enjoy and good luck![/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]New Features / Content[/h3][p]• Removed the limit that restricted ships to a maximum of 4 slots of the same type.[/p][p]• The HUD ship bar now expands with additional slots and has been shrunk down slightly.[/p][p]• Equipment panel slot layout now adjusts dynamically depending on slot counts.[/p][p]• Pulled orbiting drones into a much tighter range to accommodate many more drones.[/p][p][/p][h3]Quality of Life / Accessibility[/h3][p]• Leech seeds now follow the Particle Quality setting with their spawn amounts.[/p][p]• Equipment slots now animate slightly when you select an item of the same type.[/p][p]• Players can no longer skip the tutorial on their first player.[/p][p][/p][h3]Performance[/h3][p]• Removed hit effect from flamethrower-style weapons to reduce latency.[/p][p]• Improved lookup time when pulling objects from the object pool.[/p][p]• Fixed multiple memory leaks when firing projectile weapons.[/p][p]• Fixed memory leak from sensor arrow string conversions.[/p][p]• Fixed memory leak from settings retrieval.[/p][p]• Leech seeds now have limits on how many can spawn per enemy.[/p][p]• Reduced needless instantiation of objects by HUD ship bar.[/p][p][/p][h3]Bug Fixes[/h3][p]• Fixed bug where player drones would still take damage from non-PDL weapons.[/p][p]• Fixed enemy drones sharing parent immunity when hit by projectiles.[/p][p]• Fixed bug where Hull Leech buff would repair twice as much as intended.[/p][p]• Early access pop-up no longer shows in demo.[/p][p]• Fixed binding display on pause menu for lower resolutions.[/p][p]• Fixed bug where dragged equipment would sometimes snap to a further away slot.[/p][p]• Fixed bug activatable selection could be deselected entirely.[/p]

[p]Apparently, I'm meant to post news when Star Vortex goes on sale. So here's your official notice: the game is now 10% off for the weekend.[/p][p]The demo is fully up to date. If you're still on the fence, check it out. Your saves will transfer to the full game without any issues.[/p][p][/p][h3]Next Update (v0.5.90)[/h3][p]I've decided that the next update probably doesn't count as a major update. It is however, quite game changing, especially at higher levels.[/p][p]After this update, ships will no longer be limited to four slots of the same type. I'm finishing up the last UI fixes and performance tweaks now. Some of the chaos this update is already causing in testing can be seen below.[/p][p][/p][p]Hopefully it should be finished in the next week then I'll be on to the new upgrade tree, which is starting to take shape, and will remove the need to unlock weapon types.[/p]

[p]Just a quick fix for the latest build as it had a few issues. Full notes are below and the demo will be updated shortly to match.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]Balance Changes[/h3][p]• Encounter XP is now scaled by level difference, the same as XP from destroying enemies.[/p][p][/p][h3]Quality of Life / Accessibility[/h3][p]• Cleaned up Russian translation for some conflicting strings.[/p][p][/p][h3]Bug Fixes[/h3][p]• Item drop container names now correctly retain their size regardless of camera zoom.[/p][p]• Item drop container names now respect the HUD scale setting.[/p][p]• Fixed bug where Stalker Missiles would cause PoolController.GetObject() null references.[/p][p]• Fixed null reference in ShipPart.ToggleGlow() when saving settings as a ship explodes.[/p]

[p]This update is mostly visual improvements to explosions and projectiles. Just to temper expectations a bit... this isn't Reality Break. I'm not a VFX Artist as my main profession, but I think this has been a pretty good overall improvement that should make using weapons and shooting stuff more satisfying.[/p][p]In addition are the some changes that didn't get done in time for my last update.[/p][p][/p][h2]Polish Update[/h2][p]That's the Polish language now fully human translated by HAKIMODO. In addition to this I've also dropped the price in Poland by 25% permanently as I feel the old price was a little too high.[/p][p][/p][h2]Russian Translation[/h2][p]Core systems, Settings, UI and HUD have now been human translated for Russian using the same translator Laious uses for Star Valor. That should be enough to list it as a supported language on the store page. Full human translation for all languages will be done for the 1.0 release.[/p][p][/p][h2]Next Update[/h2][p]Currently the game limits you to no more than 4 weapons of a single type (Primary, Secondary, etc). Next update will see this limit removed. I have some changes I need to make to slot display in equipment and the ship bar in the HUD then I'm good to go.[/p][p]I feel this change is going to have such a big impact on gameplay I should probably label it a major update. It's almost certainly going to break some things performance wise if people start rocking huge stacks of Drone Bays and such so that will be fun.[/p][p]As always full patch notes are below. Enjoy![/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]New Features / Content[/h3][p]• New modifier for Explosive Radius of projectiles added.[/p][p]• New projectile type added for a new primary weapon.[/p][p][/p][h3]Balance Changes[/h3][p]• Enemy non-PDL weapons no longer damage the player's constructs or missiles.[/p][p]• Increased debuff chance, crit chance and velocity of Arrow Launcher.[/p][p]• Doubled the turn speed of Fire Bolas projectiles and reduced reload time by 75%.[/p][p]• Reduced reload time of Shurikens by 75%.[/p][p]• Crit Chance and Debuff Chance are now capped at 100%.[/p][p]• Increased recharge time of Proton Torpedo Launcher by 50%.[/p][p]• Increased explosive radius of Javelin Missiles by +50%.[/p][p]• Increased explosive radius of Tornado Missiles by +33%.[/p][p]• Reduced hull points of Stalker missiles by 25%.[/p][p][/p][h3]Quality of Life / Accessibility[/h3][p]• Non-shooting weapons can now be made invisible on your ship in the Assembler.[/p][p]• Enemies will now sometimes lose parts from their ships when taking hull damage.[/p][p]• Arrow launcher projectile now has a much brighter trail.[/p][p]• Explosive radius of projectiles is now shown in item stats.[/p][p]• Improved particles and hit effect of Freeze Gun.[/p][p]• Improved particles and hit effect of Inferno Cannon.[/p][p]• Improved particles and hit effect of Magma Gun.[/p][p]• Improved particles and hit effect of plasma weapons.[/p][p]• Improved particles of Leech Gun.[/p][p]• Improved particles of Shard Missiles.[/p][p]• Improved hit effect of Acid Gun.[/p][p]• Improved hit effect of Blast Wave Pulse.[/p][p]• Improved hit effect of Electromagnetic Pulse.[/p][p]• Improved hit effect of Fire Bolas.[/p][p]• Improved hit effect of Javelin Launcher.[/p][p]• Improved hit effect of Radioactive Pulse.[/p][p]• Improved hit effect of Shuriken Thrower.[/p][p]• Improved hit effect of Stalker Launcher.[/p][p]• Improved hit effect of Tornado Launcher.[/p][p]• Improved hit effect of damage surges.[/p][p]• Added leafy explosion for Seed Cannon.[/p][p]• Added trail to Railgun bullets.[/p][p]• Added light to Thorns to make them more visible.[/p][p]• Reduced brightness of trails from Aether Mines.[/p][p][/p][h3]Performance[/h3][p]• Optimized various calls within modular ship bodies when spawned in-game.[/p][p][/p][h3]Bug Fixes[/h3][p]• Fixed infinite credit bug from buying back sold items in the trade panel.[/p][p]• Returning rebound projectiles should no longer orbit their parent ship.[/p][p]• Fixed null reference in CoreNavigation.ShowLevelDifference().[/p][p]• Railgun now ejects cartridges when firing like the Machine Gun.[/p][p]• Neutral ships in the sandbox will no longer damage their own projectiles.[/p][p]• Fixed bug where clicking cancel when selecting a custom avatar did not reload UI.[/p]

[p]Still working away at the next update. This one will see a lot off VFX improvements (for projectiles mostly). Along with some balance improvements for PDLs and some weapons that see less use.[/p][p]After that will be the MAJOR UPDATE where I remove the 4 slot limit on weapon types. I fully expect this update to bring absolute chaos, so it'll likely be followed by some frantic optimizations for performance improvements. Especially when you guys start stacking drone bays and other madness.[/p][p][/p][p]While you wait I thought I'd take the time to highlight a few games I've tried out during Next Fest. I obviously love 2D space shooters so these are the few I've played so far.[/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]I don't think I actually knew what an "incremental" roguelite was before playing this. I loved Rogue Legacy though and I guess this is why. Either way this one is excellent. The demo can be completed in quite a short amount of time (although it took me like 30 minutes) and was so much fun I did it twice.[/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]I need to go and put a bit more time in this one to fully understand what I'm doing but the mining here felt great. Also the music when enemies appear and the AI voice over were dramatic and awesome.[/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]This one has the base to be a really good ship builder. As much as I love freedom in ship designers sometimes it's nice to just build with squares. The artwork in this one is also really nice and I love that they went with tiny drones to pickup loot instead of tractor beams, I might have to steal that idea one day.[/p][p]If I missed any drop a comment and let me know. Always happy to play indie space games. Enjoy![/p]