Genome Guardian News

[h3]Still busy with other life stuff for a couple days but found some time to push out an update that's been in the works for a while.[/h3]

[h3]🆕 CONTENT[/h3]
8 new cosmetics - now all 81 cosmetics are available to be obtained!

Additionally...

• Your cosmetic selections are now saved to each turret! (Note that this required that I remove your currently-equipped cosmetics first)
  
• The TURRETS menu no longer instantly returns you to SETUP when you select a turret. This will mean an extra click, but it'll be easier to select a turret and then compare it to others, or select it for setting cosmetics. (it'll take some time to get used to 😅)
  
• Time for you to dress up all of your turrets!
  

[h3]⚖ BALANCE[/h3]

• (perk) Mushroom: Look, don't freak out - I think this is quite fair. I'm attaching "-25% Heat Max" to this for 3 reasons: (1) It's too safe of a pick currently considering the lack of downsides, (2) It's a must-pick in many people's builds even if they aren't particularily oriented around Mushroom, (3) there's an upside to this - you'll be able to trigger it on demand more easily if you have less Heat Max.
  
• (perk) Ferrofluid: Previously, if you had Ferrofluid and 4 Shield, you would lose all of that Shield and it wouldn't protect your Health when hit, so you'd also lose 4 Health. Now, the "lose all Shield when hit" behaviour occurs after your Shields absorb damage.
  

[h3]🔄 CHANGES[/h3]

• (turret) Jester: I have once again made Jester more Jestery. 🃏 Nothing that Jester does to your UI will be considered a bug.
• The evolution menu (the one you see when you click on a weapon's name during a run while paused or in the SHOP) will be formatted differently if the weapon can't receive any more DNA letters on the mount that it's installed on.
  
• The GUIDE has been split across 8 pages now, and there's a bunch of new information in it. The "Variants" page will be enabled once turret & perk variants get released.
  
• (turret) Fume: Its description now mentions that Offspring don't damage you when you come into contact with them (mentioning this in an update note so people are aware).
  
• Turrets that require 10 victories in a specific mode now tell you how many victories you've achieved in that mode in the unlock conditions.
  
• The "benign!" mutation now explicitly states that it does nothing (I severely overestimated how many people understand this term).
  
• (Turret Trial) Castle: Modifiers: Firerate -50% → Power-up Duration +100%.
  

[h3]🔨 FIXES[/h3]

• (Hopefully) fixed a bug where the starter weapons on the WEAPONS menu would show a bunch of 999 (placeholder) values.
  
• The "Skip Shop" and "Auto Heal" buttons will now move out of the way when you're selecting an item to Banish.
  
• Before this update, the game only ever saved your progress when the application properly closed - this doesn't occur if, for example, you get a power outage while playing. The game will now save your data when you return to SETUP as well.
  
• Changing stat style (via changing "Show Stat Icon & Name" in SETTINGS) now affects your currently selected turret's description.
  
• (perk) Turbine: Will no longer hurt you at the start of each wave when you skip the shop (via "Skip Shop" toggle or from when all slots are filled in Classic Mode).
  
• (turret) Fume, (perk) Extinguisher: Now works as intended - eliminating microbes triggers harvesting, and so does absorbing offspring.
  
• (mutation) Mucus Membrane: It would block the perk tooltip from showing for your 4th perk.
  
• The awards for having 3000 unspent Biomass and 10000 unspent Research used to only be checked while in the shop - this was a problem, since these checks wouldn't happen if you're skipping the shop. They'll now also occur at wave end.
  
• Perk descriptions wouldn't be adapted to your selected turret's heat type if your selected turret uses an alternative (like fuel or electricity) when you start the game.
  
• (weapon) GGT Flak Cannon, GGGT Flak Howitzer, GGTT Moloflak: Their pellets weren't getting as much from Homing as they should have been (it's been doubled).
  
• When using a gamepad in Shmup Mode, the speed that you'd move your turret side-to-side with the analog sticks would sometimes be inconsistent, but it's consistent now.
  
• (turret) Spyglass: Will no longer attempt to track microbes or power-ups that are out of bounds (too far to the left or right to be visible) in Shmup Mode.
  
• (turret) Fume: Fume's gas clouds can now damage all 8 of you-know-who's you-know-whats. P.S. I want you to consider right now how good Fume is against the big guy.
• Fixed a uh... Research exploit 😬
  
• Fixed getting trolled by Heart Pattern (it would just keep increasing in price without ever letting you buy it).
  

[h3]Fixed the mod bug! Also: I'll need to focus on some other life responsibilites from now until 8 July - pushed hard to get a bunch of important fixes and such out before I needed to do so.[/h3]

[h3]🆕 CONTENT[/h3]
8 new cosmetics (and the next 8 will be the final batch, which means you'll be able to unlock that center cosmetic soon!)



[h3]⚖ BALANCE[/h3]

• Let's face it, Sticky is insanely strong. Sticky will now last 4s instead of 5s, and the mod that increases Sticky Duration will follow suit. This will also mean that AATT Homing Mine Launcher and ACTT Anti-Air Torpedo weapons last roughly 80% as long as they used to.
  
• (perk) Radar: The Murky Fog mutation makes it so that microbes take a long time for their brightness to build up to full. Radar prevents this, but otherwise had no effect on Murky Fog itself, which meant that it still covered microbes just as much. Now, Radar will cut Murky Fog's opacity in half.
  
• (weapon) AAG Flamethrower, AACG Frostthrower, AAAG Plasmathrower: I noticed an error in how I was calculating their DPS. Their DPS, respectively, is now: 41/s→39/s, 46/s→45/s, 52/s→48/s.
  
• (microbe) ACC Warpistol, ACCC Telepanzer: These two make the "microbes charge straight towards you" mutation (especially in Brood Mode) significantly more difficult, so I've decided upon a way to balance them that I think is justified: Their Microbe Speed will get reduced by 87.5% once they're within 50% Range of your turret. I think this makes sense considering they're supposed to be warping in first, then (if they can) they start actually moving normally.
  

[h3]🔄 CHANGES[/h3]

• The text that appears when selecting an item to Banish now specifies that it won't reduce the chance that an item of the same type appears (ex. Banishing a weapon mod doesn't result in fewer weapon mods appearing in the SHOP), and that it Banishes all colours of a mod if you Banish a mod.
  

[h3]🔨 FIXES[/h3]

• (I think this is solved - at least, I found one way to reproduce it) The bug that would sometimes prevent you from adding a fully-compatible mod to an open slot has been fixed.
  
• Perk names that appear when hovering over perks during gameplay will now be properly aligned with the perks while playing Shmup Mode.
  
• Hovering over the name of the first weapon during a run now shows the stats, just like hovering over other mounted weapon's names.
  
• Hitscan Weapons: Remember when I increased the Range of all Hitscan weapons? Yeaaah… Their hitboxes never actually got longer to coincide with that. Fixed.
  
• The before→after values for Biomass when selecting a slot to place an item into would sometimes be inaccurate (they would occasionally reflect the cost of opening that slot instead, even though the slot is already open and you're not trying to open the slot).
  
• The before→after values for Biomass won't change while hovering over items in the shop to select one to Banish.
  
• The lock buttons are now hidden while you have a shop item selected and are selecting a slot to place it in.
  

[h3]You know how I said last patch that my top priority was that critical "can't equip mod" bug? Well… I've been trying to solve it… and I still can't figure it out. IF IT IS HAPPENING TO YOU, PLEASE, JOIN THE DISCORD AND LET ME KNOW. I really need some more people to show me what their run/build looks like (and answer some questions) for me to be able to solve this. Anyways though, did some other stuff:[/h3]


[h3]🆕CONTENT[/h3]

• Music: 2 new tracks from my friend "Dr. Face Doctor": Revenge of the Synth (wave 1-10) & Break and Return (menu).
  

[h3]🔄CHANGES[/h3]

• There's now a text bubble that appears in the SHOP telling you to try clicking on a weapon's name.
  
• The menu that appears when you click on a weapon name will return you to PAUSE if you opened it while paused.
  
• The background colour of that evolution menu has been changed so it's more clear that it's not just the ARSENAL menu.
  
• One of the ways I dynamically handle performance is by removing the oldest active projectiles based on your current framerate - this is often unsatisfying to players and I certainly wish I didn't have to do this, but I'm working with what I know. The change I'm making is that now it deletes every other oldest projectile, which will feel a lot better when it occurs. I can tell it's better because it took a very long time while testing this to even be able to notice it was working (for the build I was using at least).
  

[h3]🔨FIXES[/h3]

• If you've defeated The Abyss and haven't pushed to a wave further than that point, your highest wave in RECORDS will now be accurate.
• If you pick the Mucus Membrane mutation while using a turret that can move, you'll be moved to the center to prevent your turret from getting stuck inside Mucus Membrane.
  
• Stats in the WEAPON menu (where you pick your starting weapon) were being affected by Shmup Mode being selected.
  
• The old shop item icon fade style was still being used on shop items that were disabled because you've filled all slots of that item type (this is when shop item buttons have a faded red colour).
  
• Microbes can no longer be eliminated via Knockback by pulling them down (ie. with the Magnet perk) to the bottom of the screen rapidly in Shmup Mode.
  

[h3]I'm aware of a critical bug preventing players from add a mod to a slot that you clearly should be able to (which can lead to a softlock during Classic Mode). I haven't been able to solve this yet, so I figured I'd get this update out there in the meantime. Fixing this is my current top priority though!

After I handle that, I have even more cool QoL stuff coming your way too![/h3]

[h3]NEW STUFF:[/h3]

• ARSENAL: There are now filter buttons that let you toggle what weapons are shown in the Arsenal. The "1/2/3/4" buttons toggle weapons based on tier (DNA letter count, and the others should be self-explanatory. You can reset your filters with the grey button on the right.
  
• Click on a mounted weapon's name during a run (while the game is paused or the wave isn't actively occurring, so it's clickable while in the shop) to bring up a new evolution menu, which is essentially an abridged ARSENAL menu that shows you exactly which weapons it could potentially evolve into if you add more DNA letters. You can also use those ARSENAL filters on this menu! (NOTE: I needed to rush this update out to fix some critical bugs, so I didn't have time to add proper in-game explanation of this mechanic - that will be present in the next update. Honestly don't be surprised if there's bugs with this currently.)
• When you have a weapon DNA letter selected in the shop and hover it over a weapon with a slot, the weapon's name will temporarily change to indicate what the weapon would become if you add that DNA letter.
  

[h3]BALANCE:[/h3]

• (turret) Tower: Heat Max 10 → 25, Cooling Rate 10 → 25, and eliminating microbes now causes cooling to occur 1s sooner (so if there was 1.5s before it would trigger and you eliminated a microbe, it would then be 0.5s).
  

[h3]CHANGES:[/h3]

• The "MOD WILL DO NOTHING" warning now mentions that you can still click to add the mod anyways (you always could - there's just a short delay, depending on certain conditions such as Beginner Tips still being enabled).
  

[h3]FIXES:[/h3]

• "NEW!" could appear twice above Mirror in the PERKS menu.
  
• The count of perks unlocked on the CHECKLIST was using the value for turrets unlocked instead!
  
• (perk) Poison: It would stop reducing your Health once you reached half Health, letting you have indefinite double Firerate (which was not intended).
  
• Being defeated via running out of Health while in the shop (which seems to be a Jester-exclusive occurrence) will no longer cause the gameplay UI to linger after returning to SETUP (you'd have to restart your game for it to function properly again when this occurred).
  
• (turret) Maw: Can now trigger power-ups by consuming them.
  

🚨 I've checked myself as best I can, but if this update causes you to be unable to reach the main menu or some other major bug, please LET ME KNOW in the Discord and I will fix it ASAP! 🚨

EDIT 1: Perk menu fixed!

EDIT 2: I'm aware of a bug preventing players from adding weapon mods when they should be able to sometimes, as well as a bug that can freeze the game - I'll have these fixed as soon as I can!


[h3]I've been VERY hard at work setting things up for turret & perk variants, which I would say is "half ready". That required putting the game into a fairly broken state that I needed to "put back together" before I could do another update.

Also, I'm aware of some FPS-related issues (animations playing quicker than they should + FPS not being capped for some people). Working through people's reports best I can! Remember, I'm just one guy doin' his best (while trying to mentally process the recent explosion of the game's popularity).

My next big priorities are (not necessarily in order):

• Improving the early-game experience.
  
• Performance optimization (both during gameplay and getting rid of the delay when opening some menus).
  
• Various QoL improvements.
  
• Maybe getting some turret & perk variants actually ready for release.
  

For now, you can have:[/h3]

[h3]NEW STUFF:[/h3]

• 8 New Cosmetics:
• Research → Miscellaneous: "Reveal Unknown Unlock Conditions" (6000 Research) will show the unlock conditions for everything in the CHECKLIST that says "UNLOCK CONDITIONS UNKNOWN". Note that it stops saying that after you unlock that thing regardless, and don't be surprised if some of the game is spoiled to you when those hidden ones are revealed.
  

[h3]CHANGES:[/h3]

• You'll notice the layout has changed in Research → Miscellaneous - I've made room for future cursor / crosshair / heat style / barrel light additions.
  
• You'll now receive +500 Research when you obtain an Award (this applies retroactively, so if you've completed 10 Awards, you'll start the game after this update with +5000 Research).
  
• +5000 Research when you discover your true purpose (also applies retroactively).
• I plan on improving performance where I can a lot more in the future - currently I have it so that projectiles get deleted based on your current framerate. It's a sucky way of handling it that many thought was a bug, so I adjusted the threshold so that there will be more of a performance hit, but much less likelihood that you witness your shots vanishing.
  
• (new players only) It's now more clear that your first victory is simply completion of the introductory sequence, and it's stated clearly that the goal initially is just to reach wave 30.
  
• (turret) Demon: Can now use the Tire perk without instantly being destroyed.
  

[h3]FIXES:[/h3]

• If you only owned one of the new cosmetics, the Cosmetics button wouldn't appear in the TURRETS menu.
  
• Fixed another bug with the highest wave (survived) being incorrect in RECORDS (anyone that's never proceeded past the VICTORY screen would have only saw 29).
  
• Various achievement descriptions have been updated (unlock conditions for many things have changed since they were defined).
  
• Turret descriptions would be based on the heat type of your selected turret instead of the turret you're hovering over (for example, having the Surge turret selected would make the Scorch turret's description make reference to electricity).
  
• Victory stars weren't displaying on perks in the CHECKLIST menu for roughly half of the perks.
  
• (weapon) AGGT Stardust Mortar: Now has the Flak icon.
  
• If you were in a state that you could begin the story ending sequence but reached wave 100, there was a chance you got into a situation where microbes stopped spawning after that point.
  

[h3]FAN ART:[/h3]
More from @fisch in the Genome Guardian Discord: (note that the above pic is the greatest thing I've ever seen)