Waves 2: Notorious News

This is just a small patch to address a crash that occurred when using the Flamethrower weapon.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed crash when an enemy dies from a Status Effect.
  
• Re-enabled Datavaults in Dive mode.
  

Starting at 1am GMT on October 1st the Arcade leaderboards will tick over to the Fall 2019 Season.

The Fall Season will last for 2 months until December 1st when we will transition into the Winter Season.

Rankings for the Summer 2019 season will be archived and available to view in-game as will all of your past scores. Rankings for the Fall 2019 Season will be reset and start from scratch as the latest patch includes several new enemies and gameplay tweaks that would make it unfair to compare scores between updates.



All the Arcade game modes have 3 completely new enemies added as well as some changes to existing ones.

Blobombs

The Blobomb (aka the Red Slime or Exploding Blob) now explodes on proximity to the player.



You have a short window in which to escape the blast zone before taking damage so think fast.

Lime Jelly

The Blobs have also added a new flavour to their arsenal in the form of the "Lime Jelly".



Like the Blobomb it too explodes on proximity and death but rather than just doing damage it leaves behind a slime patch that slows down anything that touches it. Flying enemies are immune to the goo but you are not so watch out.

Epidemic

There are some new Viruses in town that are exhibiting some strange behaviours. The First of them is known as "Epidemic" and it replicates incredibly quickly.



Epidemic like all Viruses can mutate into a Boomer but due to its tendency to die off when surrounded the opportunities for mutation are much rarer.

Epidemic also has lower health but is worth only half the points of the regular Bloom Virus.

Worm

If you walk without rhythm then won't attract the Worm they say. That's not true when you're a ball inside a computer and the Worm is a virus.

The Worm makes a point of replicating towards intruders (IE You) with the older cells dying off to make room for new growth.



Be careful of Boomers that mutated from the Worm as they will continue to replicate spawning new Worm cells that will continue to track you.



Dive mode has gotten it's first update in the form of a new Arena Type called "Maze". These new arenas are much larger and take the form of Rooms connected via Corridors.



In future updates the Maze map type will be integrated with the existing arenas and will increase the variety in Dive (and eventually the Campaign). For now they still need more testing and feedback on their size and the amount of time they take to complete.

When playing on the Maze arena type you will get slightly more time to complete a level than normal to account for the increased size of the maps.



The game sometimes gets stuck in an infinite loop when trying to spawn enemies/triggers etc. I have added additional failsafes to try and reduce the chances of this happening.

If this was happening to you then please let me know if it is still happening after this patch. I've not been able to reproduce it myself so I'm mostly just guessing at what might be causing it.

As the title says: There is exactly one month left in the Summer 2019 Arcade Season so get those Highscores in!

There will be a big patch to accompany the Season change which will include new enemies, AI changes and new Arenas to play in. If you want to get a preview of what's to come then keep an eye on the SquidInABox Patreon where I will share everything I'm working on in my Wednesday vlogs.



This patch removed the old camera and replaces it with a fresh new one!

This means new Camera settings are available in the Game Settings menu so you can fiddle and tweak it to your hearts content (you can even choose to turn it off and just lock it to the player if you want).

- Camera
● Camera code completely rewritten to be faster and smoother.
● Camera no longer gets distracted by nearby Triggers.
● Camera no longer lags behind the player.
● Camera handles small spaces better.
● Camera can now be "Locked to Player" in settings.
● Max Offset determines the maximum distance the camera can be from the player (defaults to 350 which is max).
● Wall Strength determines how close the Camera is allowed to get to a wall (defaults to 350 which is max).
● Aim Strength determines how far the Camera can be offset based on players current Aim direction (default is zero or off)

I'd like to thank my Patrons for helping fine tune the new default camera settings. If you are interested in all the behind the scenes work that goes into the development of the game and getting access to highly "experimental" builds then please check out the Patreon at Patreon.com/SquidInABox

This is entirely optional!

Some people have been asking me to set up a Patreon so they can further support the development of the game and who am I to tell people they can't do that?

https://www.patreon.com/squidinabox

Every Wednesday I will be writing an in-depth post going over what I've been doing the previous week, these posts are going to be fairly programming and process focused so you can peak behind the curtain at what I get up to on a weekly basis.

This weeks post is entitled "How New Levels Required A New Camera" and details how adding new levels to the game had the knock on effect of requiring an entire camera re-write.

There will also be some Patreon only test events going on for features that are VERY Work in progress (IE they are pretty much guaranteed to break and may never make it to the actual game and definitely won't have leaderboard access) so if you want to get even earlier access to changes to the game then you might want to check it out.

At the end of each month Patrons will also be invited to take part in a live Q&A session. Only Patrons can submit questions but the resulting Livestream will be available afterwards to everybody.

As I said before this is entirely optional and if you just want to play the most stable version of the game then you don't have to do anything however if you do choose to join the Patreon then it will really help me out.

Rob

I've re-enabled the Campaign but added a pop-up explaining that it isn't ready for prime-time and is not being actively developed right now. You can still play it if you wish but most of the fun stuff is going to be prototyped in Dive mode first.

I've also made some small fixes for Dive mode which were actually being caused by changes to the Campaign.

-Dive

• Dive mode uses Wanted Levels.
  
• Dive modes timers don't reset when you destroy a control node anymore.
  
• Structures De-Rez at the correct time during level transitions.
  

Currently I am working on improving the levels used for Dive mode including making them more complex the deeper you go and adding visual aids so you can locate Control Nodes more easily.