Approaching Infinity News

I just released the "Die Faster" update over the weekend, but it's time for another Beta Branch upgrade. This will hit the main branch this coming Friday, barring any major bumps.

I listen to what you're saying here on steam, and in the Approaching Infinity channel of the Roguelikes Discord. Much of this update relates directly to player feedback. Here's what's new now:



Now, when your ship can have an extra weapon or shield, or if you haven't fully equipped your away team, you'll get visual feedback about it. It says "Empty Slot", and tells you what should go there.

This should especially help new players understand their ships and load-outs, but will also be useful when bringing in new features, like the recent addition of grenades and swap-weapon slots.





Now when an entity melee-attacks, there's a very quick "move towards your target then back" animation. It helps to visually communicate what's going on. And don't worry, those are "killer bunnies", not the lovable, fluffy, pet-able kind.





Improving tool-tips is a constant work-in-progress. Now when using the look command, or tool-tip everything, you see the hit points and damage of monsters, as well as whether or not they resist any of the types of damage you can do with your current equipment. If not, it will clearly say "no resistances".







From now on, all melee weapons you find, buy, or craft will use the game's damage types. Knives do piercing damage, swords cause slashing damage, hammers do crushing damage, and eviscerators cause hybrid damage, which is just about irresistible.

The system is designed to make sense wherever possible: slashing damage is great against plants and zombies, but is easily deflected by hard silicoid creatures. Smashing damage works well for bugs and rats, but bounces off of spongy blobs. Let me know if there's one I've overlooked.



These skills and devices were about the only way to heal your away team in the past. But now that you can rest to heal, they've changed.

Field medic/SSS now heals you more often, while medical bay/SS makes it harder for your crew to die in the first place. These skills will definitely undergo further changes, but they are intended to still be useful.



There was an error in the grenade tool-tips that was listing a stat called "Recharge". That is fixed. Your grenades definitely do not "recharge". Once they're gone, you'll need to install new ones in the shuttle.



Launchers are great, right? Well, they're kind of *too* great. So now launchers have a cool-down. With their long range, high damage, and blast area, they're still very useful. But you'll also need a swap weapon. It's great fun at first, blasting your enemies with wild abandon, but after a while, it starts to feel too easy... Roguelike players need a challenge, right?!



It has been said that maybe weapon swapping should not count as a turn. Sometimes, by the time your swap is complete, the tactical situation has changed. Well, let's try it a different way, and see what happens!

Weapon swapping is now instantaneous. Enjoy it, and please let me know whether you think it's a good change.



That's it for now, see you Friday!

For years, you never knew how many crew were going to die on an away mission until you made it back to the shuttle. It was determined by your health at the moment you returned to your ship.

No more!





Now, whenever your landing party's health drops below a certain percentage, one of your redshirts will die!

This will put your away team's health back up to about 80% (it was mostly one badly injured person bringing everybody else down, and they just died). It also *reduces* your maximum HP because, well, one less person...

And then,

Once combat is over,

The away team will start to heal. That's right. Now you can



Once you're out of combat for a few turns, your away team will start to heal, no field medic needed, and you don't have to feel like you're cheating the system anymore.


I'll be interested to hear whether you feel like this makes the game easier or harder. Remember, this is only in the Beta branch for now, but anyone is free to join.


Happy weekend!

[h3]You know about daily codes right?[/h3]

8-digit codes you enter from the options menu to give you money, items, or even a quick heal. Sometimes I give them out, but you can find them in the game yourself, if you look hard enough.


Oh, and you can only use one code per day per character, so if you happen to have several, choose wisely...


Well, with the introduction of grenades, I wanted to make sure that codes worked for them, and sure enough, they didn't, so you get another update :D


Welcome to 1.6c4 which includes a few fixes for whitespace, automatic "reddening" of text for effects you already know during artifact identification, and the necessary grenade code handling.

So here they are,

[h3]The 31 Grenades of December:[/h3]

• 12/2 : D^CjUyB8
  
• 12/3 : RmDj2yE#
  
• 12/4 : wZJj2pX3
  
• 12/5 : EoF4DWBD
  
• 12/6 : SoKFUyBi
  
• 12/7 : wmhj2WLx
  
• 12/8 : 8oejDBS7
  
• 12/9 : 3maFDHfp
  
• 12/10 : #^EFUfX8
  
• 12/11 : aZAjUfXW
  
• 12/12 : wopFUAff
  
• 12/13 : zZ8JUBA6
  
• 12/14 : J^MF2uSx
  
• 12/15 : d^YFU6p5
  
• 12/16 : 5o7j2AgE
  
• 12/17 : gmZ42pXg
  
• 12/18 : ^owF2HMb
  
• 12/19 : 7oBjDuAu
  
• 12/20 : HmjFDfKN
  
• 12/21 : b^QjUWu9
  
• 12/22 : 6^SjDBSb
  
• 12/23 : 3ZqJDBS8
  
• 12/24 : MZoFDuAj
  
• 12/25 : RobJUHqW
  
• 12/26 : Bmz42OQw
  
• 12/27 : 5myF2fxi
  
• 12/28 : Xor42AgU
  
• 12/29 : TZsJD6qo
  
• 12/30 : #odjDyLc
  
• 12/31 : wmnJ2OQh
  
• 1/1/2021 : Dg94UyBo
  

And did you know...
If you copy a code into your clipboard, you can use control-v to paste it into the code entry box. No more typing required :)


Back to work!


I have to introduce the new away team death method by Friday, and that's not even the "secret feature" :O

Thanks to everyone who nominated Approaching Infinity, and welcome new players!

I've been busy the last few days... Here's what happened:

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]

• Added some pretty new space backgrounds.
  
• Tried to remove invisible monsters that were killing people in star temples.
  
• Fixed the spawning of black hole data for the Tentaculon quest.
  
• Fixed a bug where players always start at 1,1.
  
• Grenades now spawn as loot.
  
• Improved geode caverns with gemstones and glow-cubes.
  
• Limited oxygen warnings when you have >60 oxygen.
  
• "Chainsaw" skill now hurts Allikudzu monster, since it's a plant.
  
• When you die in a non-perma-death game, you will no longer see all the information screens that you get when you actually lose your character (or win the game).
  
• The printing speed of scans and hails has been increased.
  

I also made some preparations for a secret new feature that I think will kinda blow your minds a little...


[h3]Changed Monster Threat Display[/h3]
There is no "threat" percentage readout anymore. You see the monster's HP and damage when you target it. Compare that to your own numbers and decide for yourself how threatened you feel.


[h3]Area Level-Locking[/h3]
From now on, the first time you visit an area (sector, planet, wreck, etc.) its difficulty level is saved. This should make backtracking easier: if it's too hard now, it will be easier later, with better equipment. That has always been the *intention*, but this method should ensure it.

The game will also give you warnings about particularly dangerous (or easy) areas when you enter them.


[h3]Tac-Nuke Launcher[/h3]
Many of you have found tac-nuke grenades, and I've heard complaints about the fact that they explode in such a large area that there's no way to use them safely. And that makes sense. It's a weapon of last resort. And I'll tell you now: one probably won't kill you.

There's only one other possible tac-nuke weapon (right now), and that's a launcher. I found one of these in my game, and when it just exploded like anything else, well, I had to make some changes.

So nukes are even worse now. They set fires and create swaths of radiation. And the tac-nuke launcher will definitely get you with proximity damage, and induce painful status effects. But with a range of 5 or 6, you should be able to avoid it.

Oh yeah, and using a tac-nuke weapon increases your infamy.

Every. Single. Time.


[h3]Reputation Advice[/h3]
When you dock at an alien embassy and go to their "quests" section, if they don't have any quests available, and if your reputation with them is too low...

They'll give you advice on how to get on their good side. Often, having a high "fame" is desirable, but that can take a while. Another good bet is to attack that race's enemies. But the specifics are now in the game, for all to see.





[h3]Modified Planet Scan Output[/h3]
Planet scanning is great, but it does have its limits. And thanks to player feedback, it's being improved. Now, once you've picked up the source of the "alien signal", it's not reported anymore. And if you kill all the monsters on the surface, the read-out changes to "no life signs". Progress!

But even better, the most important data from the scan is now added directly to the planet's tool-tip, so there's no need to re-scan all the time.

This will cause some text overflows for now! But I think it's worth it to have all that information easily at hand.

You can toggle "tool-tip everything" in the settings menu or click the middle mouse button any time. You can also hold [SHIFT] to get selective tooltips, or you can use the "look" function. Enjoy!


[h3]Thousand, Million, Billion[/h3]
I've changed the readout of long numbers in equipment to use K,M,B notation, meaning "183,472" is now displayed as 183K (*IF* you can find a weapon that powerful!)



[h3]What's next?[/h3]

The rest of this week will be spent working on the roll-out of the secret feature, and preparing for the officer skill remodel.

Let's start with the the part where I'm not asking for anything, I'm *giving* you something:


What?





If that's what you've been waiting for, now is the time.


Now let me ask something of all you space explorers out there:


[h3]Please nominate "Approaching Infinity" for the 2020 Steam "Labor of Love" award. [/h3]


As you may know, AI is an enormous project that could continue for years. The goal of EA is to get to version 2.0, and that will be an amazing transformation. In 3 months on Steam, we've already seen the addition of many game-changing new features: planet scanning, hailing alien ships, throwing grenades, burning forests, and a lot more.


Today someone on Discord said,

"dwarf fortress is a simulation of a fantasy world
my hope is that Approaching Infinity becomes a simulation of a sci-fi world
doesn't need to be as crazy and over the top as DF
just you know, pretty good with lots to do, lots of freedom"

I need your help to get there. The community has already been hugely supportive and it's really motivating to read what people write. Let's keep the momentum going!

You can nominate 1 game in each category, so I'm asking you to consider Approaching Infinity for the "Labor of Love" award.


Thank you!


Oh yeah, and a mid-week hot-fix:

• I fixed a fatal crash when the Sil demanded an artifact
  
• I fixed an error where nano-machines were being tool-tipped as gemstones.
  
• I removed some debug text that was being printed to the screen.
  
• I fixed an error where nano-swarms would arise out of toxic gas. This part is a bug. Things can still rise out of nano-swarms. They look like bugs. And they will kill you.
  
• I Fixed an error where historical relics were being accidentally spawned on barren planets.
  
• I fixed an errer where you could hail a ship for help in defeating... itself!
  
• Sonic and corrosive grenades now have an effect on walls, boulders, and rubble.
  
• I Added a readout in tool-tips about monsters' resistances and weaknesses to your equipped weapons.
  
• I took out, fixed, and put back in, a function designed to ensure quest items would be found.
  
• I addressed an input problem where some people where moving multiple times from a single key-press.
  
• I basically did a week's worth of work in 3 days, and made big progress on a secret new feature...