Roboquest News

The playtest is now OPEN!

You can experience the playtest 0.8.0 to discover the incoming changes and help us improve it until the official release.

Like usual, if you want to participate in the playtest, just right-click Roboquest in your library, head over to the “Beta” tab and opt-in the beta branch “Playtest”. This will download the playtest version (progress is saved in a different save file than the regular branch, so this will not erase or continue your progress of the regular branch).

Please use the appropriate ‘Playtest’ channels on Steam and Discord to post your feedback about it!

Here are the highlights of the incoming 0.8.0 version:


[h2]Sir Catercoaster[/h2]
A new boss has come into play in the Act 2 (in the ‘Energy Center’).
Sir Catercoaster is making its comeback into the game in a brand new arena and attack patterns. We hope you’ll like it and if not, please make sure to tell us how you think we should improve it.

[h2]Aqua & Energy Center Update[/h2]
The ‘Aqua Station’ has been fully reworked (visually and design-wise) and The ‘Energy Center’ has received a visual polish touch as well as a few level design changes.
‘Aqua Station’ has always been a level we were looking to improve as it felt a bit empty and lacked a strong visual identity aside from just being ‘watery’. This update was the right timing for us and we proceeded. We will be following your feedback on that side since it can be considered like a brand new addition to the game.
The visual changes of ‘Energy Center’ are mainly aimed at making it feel more different than other levels in the Act 2 and the level design changes are aimed at making the pacing and flow more pleasing. Nothing too big on that side, though we hope you’ll like and notice the changes nonetheless.


[h2]Perk Updates[/h2]
We’ve updated a lot of names and certain perk (and upgrade) values.
They should be better balanced but more importantly more builds should feel viable over the course of the game (and the different difficulty settings).
Perks and their upgrades are something we will continuously be monitoring and updating according to your feedback and our data. The balance part of it is especially hard to accomplish considering all the new combinations the 0.7.0 brought to the game.

[h2]New Weapons[/h2]
Three new weapons have been added to the game, and we hope you’re going to have a blast with them!

That’s it for the highlights, now here is the detailed list of changes:


[h2]Gameplay[/h2]
• Movement speed while on rails has been increased from 1475 to 1650 and from 2000 to 2200 while sprinting
• Cryo effect has been reworked, it now progressively slows enemies up to a maximum at which point enemies are considered fully ‘Frozen’. While Frozen, enemies automatically take critical damage from all sources
• The range at which you can reboot your brobot has been greatly increased
• The Craft machine can only be used once but spawns 3 weapons instead of 1, its cost has been reduced from 2 Wrenches per weapon to 4 Wrenches for all three weapons.

Developer's Note: This is simply a quality of life change since almost everyone was always spawning all three weapons anyway.

[h2]Classes[/h2]
• The primary and secondary abilities damage scaling per level has been increased from 24% to 25% per level
[h3]Guardian[/h3]
• ‘Energy Shield’ base shield provided increased from 10 to 15 and regeneration from cells has been increased

[h2]Weapons[/h2]
• New weapon: ‘Flak Cannon’ - Demolition
• New weapon: ‘Tommy Gun’ - Assault
• New weapon: ‘Light Machine Gun’ - Assault
• Removed the ‘Shock Rifle’ alternate fire and added it a pool of 6 random mods. to spawn with
• Added a new ‘weapon tier’ with 4 rare affixes and 2 commons
[h3]Mods[/h3]
• New weapon mod.: ‘Hoverball’ - fires a slow moving orb which can be expanded by shooting it with your primary fire (it previously was the ‘Shock Rifle’ alternate fire)
• New weapon mod.: ‘Barrier’ - deploys a protective barrier in front of you blocking enemy projectiles
• New weapon mod.: ‘Trigger Tap’ - rapidly fires several primary shots in a quick succession
• Weapon modules damage scaling per level has been increased from 10% to 20% per weapon level
• Added the ‘Can-Opener’ mod. to three new weapons (Riflecrossbow, Elite Crossbow and Long Rifle)
[h3]Affixes[/h3]
• The 'Artificer’ affix has been removed from the game

Developer's Note: This was the affix adding sparks to weapons. We found out that adding Sparks from different sources could be a source of misunderstanding for the players when it came to granting bonus to sparks. For instance, upgrades granting bonuses to sparks could be interpreted as granting bonuses to all sparks (those coming from both the perks and the affix). We therefore decided to remove that affix as we didn’t feel like it was a big loss in counterpart for the better clarity of that specific mechanic.

[h2]Perks[/h2]
• Damage scaling of perk effects has been increased from 28% to 30% per character level
• Many perks and upgrades have received value changes

Developer's Note: We’re sorry we don’t have all the information on that side. We will develop a tool that allows us to automatically detect and report those changes so we can be as thorough as possible when publishing these patch notes. Thanks for your understanding.

[h3]Upgrades[/h3]
• Increased the amount of upgrades tied to each class from 4 to 7
• Added a new upgrade to all classes: ‘Size Matters’ - Increases ammo in clip and cooling gauge
• Renamed the class upgrade ‘Cell Addiction’ to ‘Cell Gluttony’
• Added the ‘Cell Gluttony’ class upgrade to Engineer and Guardian class upgrades
• Added a new upgrade to the Engineer and Guardian classes: ‘Meteorology’ - Increases elemental lucky critical chance
Commando
• Renamed the ‘Robzerker’ upgrade ‘Pyro Maniac’ to ‘Sapper’
• Moved ‘Sapper’ from the ‘Robzerker’ upgrades to the class upgrades
• Renamed the ‘Rocket Mag.’ upgrade ‘Extra Rocket’ to ‘Extra Load’
• Renamed the ‘Rocket Barrage’ upgrade ‘Hard Headed’ to ‘Mini-Nuke’
• Renamed the ‘Rocket Barrage’ upgrade ‘New Friends’ to ‘More Rockets’
• Renamed the ‘Hot Sauce’ perk to ‘Combustion’
• Renamed the ‘Combustion’ upgrade ‘Pili-Pili’ to ‘Hot Sauce’
• Renamed the ‘Combustion’ upgrade ‘Ignite’ to ‘Scorch’
• Renamed the ‘Shorty Scanner’ upgrade ‘Extra Sauce’ to ‘Extra Guest’
• Renamed the ‘Angry Barrel’ perk to ‘Unstable Barrel’
• Moved ‘Smooth Cannon’ upgrade from ‘Unstable Barrel’ to the class upgrades
• Renamed the ‘Unstable Barrel’ upgrade ‘Angry-splosion’ to ‘Unstable Fury’
• Added a new upgrade to ‘Unstable Barrel’: ‘Surprise Load’ - Grants a chance to instantly recover Shorty cooldown after using it
• Renamed the ‘Point Blank’ upgrade ‘Shorty in the Nose’ to ‘Shorty-Nose’
• Renamed the ‘Point Blank’ upgrade ‘Tête Brûlée’ to ‘Burning Bonk’
• Moved the ‘Y.O.L.O.’ upgrade from ‘Favorite Weapon’ to the ‘Robzerker’ upgrades
• Removed the ‘Frenzy’ upgrade ‘Thrill of the Fight’
• Removed the ‘Frenzy’ upgrade ‘Alternative Path’
• Removed the ‘Frenzy’ upgrade ‘Deep Pocket’
• Added a new upgrade to ‘Frenzy’: ‘Outburst’ - Increases explosion damage and radius
• Added a new upgrade to ‘Frenzy’: ‘Battle Fever’ - Increases lucky critical chance for each fury point
• Renamed the ‘Fortifying Wrath’ upgrade ‘Skin Flower’ to ‘Fighting Pulse’
• Moved the ‘Fighting Pulse’ upgrade from ‘Fortifying Wrath’ to the ‘Frenzy’ perk upgrades
• Renamed the ‘Fortifying Wrath’ upgrade ‘Furious Healing’ to ‘Repair-o-Fury’
• Renamed the ‘Fortifying Wrath’ upgrade ‘Mind of Steel’ to ‘Concrete Chipset’
• Added a new upgrade to ‘Fortifying Wrath’: ‘Mind of Steel’ - Increases your damage when fury is at its maximum
• Added ‘Robo-Coffee’ from the Recon’s ‘Favorite Weapon’ upgrades to the Commando’s ‘Favorite Weapon’ upgrades
• Renamed the ‘Crème Brûlée’ perk to ‘Ignite’
• Renamed the ‘Ignite’ upgrade ‘Torch’ to ‘Blowtorch’
• Renamed the ‘Ignite’ upgrade ‘Extra Brown Sugar’ to ‘Chemistry’
• Renamed the ‘Ignite’ upgrade ‘Explosion of Flavor’ to ‘Red Powder’
• Renamed the ‘Quick Firefly’ perk to ‘Light Sparks’
• Renamed the ‘Light Spark’ upgrade ‘Fire Sparks’ to ‘Pyro Spark’
• Renamed the ‘Light Spark’ upgrade ‘Explosive Sparks’ to ‘Boom Spark’
Engineer
• Added a new upgrade to the Engineer class: ‘Scraplosion’ - Takedowns grant a chance to trigger an explosion
• Added a new upgrade to the Engineer class: ‘Black Powder’ - Increases explosion damage and radius
• Reworked the elemental choice upgrade for all ‘Chroma’ upgrades with a ‘Chroma Specialty’ upgrade
• Added a new upgrade to ‘Chroma Blaster’: ‘Vivid Colors’ - Increases elemental damage bonus and duration
• Removed the ‘Chroma Blaster’ upgrade ‘Unstable Blaster’
• Renamed the ‘Triple Blaster’ perk to ‘Triple Bombs’
• Modified ‘Triple Bombs’ perk - Handblaster now shoots three explosive balls
• Renamed the ‘Triple Bombs’ upgrade ‘Rabid Blaster’ to ‘Oiled Blaster’
• Removed the ‘Drone Bazooka’ upgrade ‘Black Powder’
• Added a new upgrade to ‘Drone Bazooka’: ‘Triple Zooka’ - Triggering ‘Love Bond’ makes your drone shoots multiple rockets for a short duration
• Renamed the ‘Drone Bazooka’ and ‘Drone Swarm’ upgrade ‘Oiled Barrel’ to ‘Oiled Cannon’
• Renamed the ‘Drone Bazooka’ upgrade ‘Headseeker’ to ‘Headseeker Rocket’
• Renamed the ‘Drone Swarm’ upgrade ‘Recycled Drone’ to ‘Eco-Drone’
• Renamed the ‘Chroma Bullets’ perk to ‘Chroma Weapon’
• Renamed the ‘Chroma Bullets’ upgrade ‘Pyro Bullets’ to ‘Pyro Weapons’
• Renamed the ‘Chroma Bullets’ upgrade ‘Cryo Bullets’ to ‘Cryo Weapons’
• Renamed the ‘Chroma Bullets’ upgrade ‘Electro Bullets’ to ‘Electro Weapons’
• Renamed the ‘Chroma Bullets’ upgrade ‘Hyperactive Weapon’ to ‘Carbon Grip’
• Renamed the ‘Love Spreading’ perk to ‘Elemental Split’
• Renamed the ‘Love Spreading’ upgrade ‘Long Arm’ to ‘Chroma Aberration’
• Modified the ‘Chroma Drone’ perk effects, it now only grants a random elemental to your drones and no longer reduces their health
• Renamed the ‘Chroma Drone’ upgrade ‘Drone Retaliation’ to ‘Drone Revenge’
• Renamed the ‘Quick Firefly' perk to ‘Light Spark’
• Renamed the ‘Light Spark’ upgrade ‘Recycled Spark’ to ‘Eco-Spark’
• Renamed the ‘Future’s Cooler’ perk to ‘Quick Cooling’
• Renamed the ‘Luxury Suit’ perk to ‘Body Armor’
Recon
• Modified the ‘Sharpened Wits’ effects, it now only increases Critical Damage instead of both Critical Damage and Dagger Lucky Critical Chance
• Modified the ‘Laser Cutlass’ upgrade ‘Lucky Star’, now it only increases lucky critical chance and no longer make Laser Dagger critical
• Added a new class upgrade: ‘Secret Trick’ - Laser Dagger is always critical
• Added a new class upgrade: ‘Eco Decoy’ - Increases decoy duration and efficiency
• Modified the ‘Shadowstrike’ upgrade ‘Shadow Madness’, it now only grants its bonus while the Shadowstrike bonus is active
• Renamed the ‘Shadowstep’ perk to ‘Night Shroud’
• Renamed the ‘Tactical Critical’ perk to ‘Tactical Scan’
• Modified the ‘Tactical Scan’ perk, it now triggers a marking explosion around the closest enemy in sight and taking down a marked enemy spreads the mark to another one
• Removed the ‘Tactical Scan’ upgrade ‘Deep Analysis’
• Added a new ‘Tactical Scan’ upgrade: ‘Double Spread’ - Taking down an enemy spreads the mark to more enemies
• Renamed the ‘Critical Split’ upgrade ‘Shareholders’ to ‘Chain Reaction’
• Renamed the ‘Critical Split’ upgrade ‘Fat Stacks’ to ‘Simple Geometry’
• Removed the ‘Locked and Loaded’ upgrade ‘Cunning Load’
• Removed the ‘Locked and Loaded’ upgrade ‘Gunslinger’
• Added a new ‘Locked and Loaded’ upgrade ‘Electro Mag.’ - Non-elemental weapons deal more damage when ‘Locked and Loaded’ is active
• Added a new ‘Locked and Loaded’ upgrade ‘Gun Diet.’ - Increases firerate depending on missing ammo in clip
• Renamed the ‘Locked and Loaded’ upgrade ‘Reliable Hand’ to ‘Quick Hand’
• Renamed the ‘Blue Screen Protocol’ perk to ‘Blue-Screen’
• Modified the ‘Blue Screen’ upgrade ‘Shutdown’, it now grants your first hit against an enemy a tiny chance to execute enemies
Guardian
• Added the ‘Low Rider’ class upgrade from the Recon to the Guardian class upgrades

[h2]Items[/h2]
• Most corrupted items debuffs reduced by around 50%

Developer's Note: Like we said in our previous developer news, we have specific goals for corrupted items but we’re still working on the overall design and the implementation details. In the meantime we’re trying to make these items a bit more interesting to play with and we’re reducing the debuffs they apply. We’ll keep looking at your feedback about them and we’ll keep you in touch about what we think will be a better iteration of them.

• Gasoline explosion radius bonus increased from 12% to 16% and from 8% to 12% (when mitigated)
• Reactor (Commando’s class item) now increases weapon damage instead of rocket damage

Developer's Note: The Commando’s class item was a too strong competition for the neutral item ‘Gasoline’ and was kind of overlapping in terms of build. We’re trying to separate them more so they can be relevant to different types of builds or be mixed up with each other without feeling like ‘Gasoline’ is a lower-tier pick.

• Holopad (Guardian’s class item) shield bonus increased from 12% to 25% and from 7% to 15% (when mitigated)

Developer's Note: The actual values provided by ‘Holopad’ were pretty, pretty low so we’re buffing those a bit.

[h2]Basecamp[/h2]
• Added a basecamp upgrade: ‘Fantastic Weapon’ - Grants a tiny chance to spawn a weapon with more than the maximum amount of bonuses
• Added a new basecamp upgrade: ‘Starting Upgrade’ - You start the run with a class upgrade choice
• Removed the basecamp upgrade: ‘Level Console’

Developer's Note: That console was reducing the amount of times you would switch weapons during your runs considering you could stick with the same one. This specific issue was amplified by the new ‘Fantastic Weapon’ upgrade if you would find such a weapon at the very beginning of the run. In the future, we’ll be adding another and more healthy way to bring a weapon with you along the way as we consider it to be interesting, but we don’t want it to be mandatory or too incentivized by the game mechanics.

• Each repair-o-bot upgrade health restoration increased from 3% to 5%

[h2]Enemies[/h2]
• Enemies’ impact resistance scaling by difficulty level has been reduced
• Enemies’ health scaling per level increased from 28% to 30%
• Reduced enemy density by approximately 5%-10%

Developer's Note: This change is mainly aimed at giving a little more air to breathe in between encounters and reducing the number of times you ‘accidentally’ aggro enemies from other encounters (or trigger trailbots). We consequently reduced the required XP values to level-up to account for this change.

• Enemies’ damage scaling per level in multiplayer reduced from 25% to 20%
• Reworked the hitbox detection of enemies’ melee attacks
• Increased the warmup duration of enemies’ melee attacks
• The Gunpawn no longer shoots two blasts in a row, instead he shoots more often
• The Guardbot’s projectile spread has been reduced, making it a less dangerous threat at mid to long range
• Shockwave FX has been reworked to better highlight where it starts and ends
• Updated the Mine Pod visuals
• The mortar attack pattern of the Goliath has been replaced by homing missiles
[h3]Bosses[/h3]
• In multiplayer, the Bosses’ health scaling per level has been reworked to be different from Act to Act

Developer's Note: We previously had a linear (across the levels) multiplayer Boss’ health scaling. We’re modifying these so that Bosses don’t have too much health at the beginning of the game and too few at the end. Earlier bosses should feel less like meat-tanks and later ones should feel more challenging in multiplayer.

• We added a new “Speed” value for Bosses in order to make them easier in lower difficulties (Easy and Discovery), we also increased this value in Heroes+5 and Heroes+6 for testing purposes
Beetle Royal
• Renamed ‘Beetle Royal’ to ‘Lady Bug’
Judgeball
• Judgeball fires one less sky-rocket during its artillery pattern (‘cause he apparently wasn’t nerfed enough already)
Billy Boom
• Added a visual effect to better indicate the needed interaction with the lever
• Updated the Billy Boom ‘warning’ text to better indicate the need to take action before finishing him off

[h2]Levels[/h2]
• ‘Aqua Station’ has been fully reworked
• ‘Energy Center’ level designs have been updated (more high grounds, better movement flow)
• ‘Energy Center’ visuals have been updated (models and color scheme)
• Further reduced the enemy density in ‘Haven City’ by approximately 15%
• Further reduced the enemy density in ‘Haven City - Corrupted’ by approximately 10%
• Modified the line-up of enemies in ‘Canyons’

Developer's Note: We’re currently trying to diversify the enemy encounters in different levels. The ‘Canyons’ is the first level we’re trying this out and we’ll be closely watching your feedback on that side.

[h3]Challenge Rooms[/h3]
• All challenge rooms in Act 2 and Act 3 are now mixed up (meaning you can find challenge rooms which were previously exclusive to Act 2 in Act 3 and vice versa)
• Added a new challenge room for Act 2 and Act 3
• Removed acid walls in all of the challenge rooms

[h2]Interface[/h2]
• Added a visual ‘pause’ indicator when the game timer is paused
• Added a pop-up message when playing or switching to a language which is not yet fully translated
• Added elemental critical floating damage texts
• Added a time rank and cell rank gauge below the minimap

[h2]Visual Effects[/h2]
• Reworked the cells visuals
• Shock elemental is now purple

[h2]Audio[/h2]
• Fixed some issues preventing certain feedback and interface sounds from playing when other sounds of the same category would play
• Modified the way your brobot sounds are spatialized to make them less overwhelming when being really close to your brobot

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]
[h3]Scratch Rifle[/h3]
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 8.5 to 9.0

[h3]Arquebus[/h3]
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 34.0 to 40.0
• Firerate decreased from 2.85/s to 2.63/s
• Heat per shot decreased from 16.0 to 15.0

[h3]Longbow[/h3]
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 58.0 to 68.0
• Impact force increased from 56.0 to 70.0

[h3]Shock Rifle[/h3]
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 13.0 to 20.0
• Alternate fire removed

Developer's Note: The alternate fire has been transformed into a mod. which can randomly appear on different weapons. We’re likely to continue this process over the updates for other weapons which seem to have an ‘arbitrary’ alternate fire which is not necessarily part of the weapon’s fantasy and / or for weapons which would benefit from accessing other mods.

[h3]Power Gloves[/h3]
Alternative Fire
• Impact force increased from 76.0 to 80.0

[h3]Blast Rifle[/h3]
Primary Fire
• Heat per shot decreased from 3.0 to 2.5

[h3]Assault Pistol[/h3]
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 36.0 to 38.0

[h3]Ball Cannon[/h3]
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 100.0 to 115.0
• Impact force increased from 70.0 to 80.0

[h3]Engineer[/h3]
Scrap Blaster
• Damage increased from 60.0 to 65.0
• Cooldown decreased from 4.5 to 4.0

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]
• Fixed an issue with weapon Mods. recoil pattern not properly being applied
• Speculative fix: you should no longer find yourself in a position where you can no longer jump

Howdy hey!

With December just kicking in, it’s time for another developer news!

We’ll be talking about a few of the incoming changes as well as other more long-term objectives we have. Let’s dive right in!

[h2]Localization[/h2]
It’s becoming a habit, we can’t do our developer news without talking about localization, which is still being worked on.
Almost all languages are still incomplete, so we decided to mark them as “unavailable” on the Steam page for the time being. We’ll turn them back on once they are complete. We apologize to all players who purchased the game thinking their language would be available. We didn’t think it would take that much time.
That being said, if you wish to help us localize the game in your language, we’d be really happy to welcome you aboard the localization crew. If you happen to be interested in helping us, please join the Discord server and tell us.
The current languages needing help include: German, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish and Portuguese-Brazilian.

[h2]Corrupted Items[/h2]
We hear your feedback and we agree about Corrupted items: they aren’t the most compelling part of the player progression system. More infuriating, they are kinda hindering your runs by competing with regular items in loot chests.
So right now, they’re kind of a failed experiment. Though they provided us tons of information through our data and your feedback.
And this is definitely something we’re working on. Here are our goals for corrupted items:

• Make them funnier
  
• Make them not compete with other regular items in term of loot position
  
• Make them more diverse
  
• Make them viable
  
• Make them build-inducing (in both ways: picking up one can open up a build possibility or picking up one can complement your build)

This is not something that will be included in 0.8.0 since we still need to find the proper implementation for them. This is more of a “long-term” system that we’re looking to refine.
In the meantime, we tried to ‘hotfix’ some of the issues by reducing the stat debuffs they give. We know it’s not the most ideal solution but it’s the best we can do right now without reworking the system.

[h2]Data-Logs[/h2]
Data-Logs are ingame loot you’ll be able to find in the levels in 0.8.0.
They are (relatively) hidden in different spots of the levels and they provide Wrenches. Once found, they can’t be picked up again (and won’t appear anymore).
Right now, Data-Logs do nothing else than providing Wrenches. In the future, they’ll contain story bits which you’ll be able to read and review. Placing them in the levels and making them useful to the basecamp progression is the first step we’re taking towards their full integration in the game. This makes us able to collect data and analyze players’ behavior with them as well as see if they’re in the right spots or if we need to think of a different approach.
There is a fixed amount of Data-Logs in each level and you can see how many you already found over the maximum you can find in each level.

[h2]Gameplay Readability[/h2]
We’re currently reworking FXs and other visual effects to improve gameplay readability by clearly differentiating the colors and shapes of the different game elements (like enemy and player projectiles, perk effects and other looting pick-ups such as powercells and repair-o-cells).
In the 0.8.0 you will already be able to have a glimpse of that through the powercells, the sparks and the elemental effects. Though most of it is still a work-in-progress and we’ll continue to work to improve those.

[h2]Sir Catercoaster[/h2]
The mighty, the great, the famous… Sir Catercoaster is making its comeback.
For those of you who don’t know him, he was a boss we decided to remove in the earlier updates of Roboquest. He wasn’t working as well as intended and was creating a bit of frustration for the players.
We made another attempt at bringing him back and you’ll be able to try it out in 0.8.0. Like usual with bosses and like we said in the previous developer news, he might not be in a perfect spot (in terms of balance, fairness and frustration). But we had a blast trying him out internally and we hope you’ll like it as well. If not... well... we’ll be iterating again on this rollercoaster of a boss.

[h2]Playtest[/h2]
The playtest 0.8.0 is just around the corner. It will be a public test branch like usual and anyone will be able to tune in to try out the new update. We expect the playtest to release in less than one week and the 0.8.0 in about two weeks. You can head over to the bottom of the previous developer update (https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/692890/view/3079894017737054099) for a more detailed breakdown of the incoming changes. We’ll also publish the full patch-note when the playtest lands.

That concludes our developer news and we’ll soon be back with the playtest...

In the meantime, happy robot smashing!

Hey everyone!

We just released another hotfix for the Autumn Update.

As usual, you can see the quick change notes below:

[h2]Hotfix 0.7.2[/h2]
[h3]Localization[/h3]
• Added approximately 50% of translations for Russian, Dutch and Spanish
• Fixed errors in English, French and Japanese texts

[h3]Bugfix[/h3]
• Fixed a multiplayer crash occurring when your brobot selects a perk
• Speculative Fix: Reduced occurrences of infinite loading issues in multiplayer
• Finishing the game in 'Discovery' difficulty will no longer unlock all other difficulties

Hello everyone!

We’re back for our new developer news!

Today, we’re going to talk about the Autumn update, our current work for the incoming update and a few other things.

Once more, we’re still figuring out the right format for these updates, so don’t hesitate to let us know what you think about them. That being said, let’s dive right in!

[h2]The Autumn Update[/h2]
The first thing we learned about the Autumn update is that… There was too much time between this one and the previous. Many of you were wondering where the heck we’ve been. And the answer is simple, we took a break after the Summer update and then we worked hard on bringing the Autumn update, which was one of our meatiest updates (at least on our side) so far.
In the absence of communication on our side, we understand that you might have this kind of question. But rest assured that we won’t be ‘leaving’ anytime soon, we’re hard at work on the game for several years now and we’ll keep on going.
Another thing we learned is that system reworks such as the Core rework and the Perk rework can be a bit scary, both for us and you players. It might feel as if we’re ‘removing’ a part of what people consider “fun” about the game. When doing such reworks, we always try to keep what was composing the ‘fun’ of the systems and to re-inject it into the reworked system. We received a vast majority of positive feedback regarding both the perks and the items and that’s a relief.
Some of you are wondering if we know what we’re doing with our game, and the truth is we are to some extent. To some others, there are many things that require tinkering and figuring out the right amount of Roguelite, Fast FPS, replayability, random, progression and such to inject. And that’s why we’re often modifying or reworking the systems linked to those subjects. Though in reality, the backbone of the game does not differ that much, regardless of our reworks. We have a clear direction in mind and we’re looking at ways to make it as good and fun as we can. Even if that means breaking things to recreate them afterwards.
But we feel like we’re reaching a point where the different parts of the game are starting to piece together. Of course, the game’s still in Early Access and we’ll be closely monitoring our data and following your feedback to continue to improve the game.

[h2]Billy Boom[/h2]
While this section could totally be contained within the previous, we thought it would be a good idea to highlight it a bit more.
We received numerous feedback regarding Billy Boom and its… explosion mechanic, and we wanted to talk a bit about it and bosses in general.
First off, regarding Billy Boom, we’re working towards giving its unique mechanic more feedback so that players can get a hint, understand and react to it in advance. Though, we think it will still be something that surprises players at least the first time they encounter it.

Now, regarding Bosses in general, we often start and finish the development of a single boss in the lifespan of a single update. This means they are far from being perfect at the moment we release them, especially when they contain some weird or unique mechanics. Brainstorming and developing bosses is a huge piece of work and we definitely need to see them in action with you to improve them. They are like risky gambles, we don’t really know in advance how you’ll be reacting to them (even if we obviously try hard to predict and give them as much feedback as possible).
In that sense, we’re sorry that you may feel like our new bosses are sometimes a bit weird or frustrating, but we’re continuously trying to improve them as we receive your feedback. We have good hopes that Billy Boom (and other new Bosses) will find their place in the game as legitimate ‘good’ Bosses after a few iterations.
Thank you for your patience!

[h2]Localization Issues[/h2]
All languages are missing their translation in this update.
As you might know, the translation of Roboquest is made by kind members of our community willing to help us. They usually have 2+ weeks to translate the incoming update and we’re testing the translation during playtest.
This time around, they only had one week, we reworked 70% of the texts of the game and nobody had the chance to try out the translation during playtest. This was all our fault, but since there was so much delay in between the Summer and the Autumn update, we didn’t want to delay the Autumn update as many of you were already waiting.
There was clearly an organization issue on our side, we overlooked that aspect and we’re sorry for all players who are not playing in English. Translators are working hard right now to localize the new update and we’ll be injecting those as soon as they’re ready.
Once again, we’re sorry for the inconvenience!

[h2]Technical Issues[/h2]
Among the many reports and feedback we’ve had, numerous were about the issues we’re going to discuss here. And these seem to be recurring problems we have to deal with.
[h3]Crashing[/h3]
Obviously, the game still has many bugs and crashes. This is something we need to work on continuously as new bugs and crashes appear as we develop the game and add things to it. To help us fix those issues, please remember to always send a F10 feedback when you’re facing a bug in the game, this will send us the logs of the game and make us able to track what happened which lead to the situation you’re in. When it comes to crashes, we need a little more from you to be able to fix them. As mentioned in the ‘how to report a bug’ section, we need your ‘crash dump’. There are two places you can send them to us: on Steam and on Discord. In both cases, it’s the fastest way for us to fix these issues so we thank you in advance for spending a little time helping us.
[h3]Mouse Inputs[/h3]
Considering ‘gamefeel’ is one of our primary priorities, we’re pretty concerned about that issue (mouse inputs failing to register). We know there are two main sources to that issue, the first one being the game not being in “Fullscreen” but instead in “Borderless”, leading to mouse inputs registering outside of the game screen. The second source is closely related to the Unreal Engine and we have yet to find out how to solve that in our game. We also have a lead about this issue being especially occurring for players on laptops, but we’re unsure if this is real data or just a coincidence.
[h3]Multiplayer Issues[/h3]
Whether that’d be failing to connect to your brobot or rubber banding in multiplayer. This is something we’re continuously trying to improve by reducing the amount of data travelling between the two players (among other things). To reduce that issue, you must preferably play with people of the same region and with a good connection. Though, even in the best of circumstances, you will likely still experience these issues.
[h3]PC Temperatures[/h3]
We received several reports about hardware heating more when playing our game than other games. This is partly coming from the fact that the game is not yet optimized but also mainly because setting the game in high graphic quality or playing with unlimited FPS will tell your computer to use every resource available to it. If that happens to you, consider reducing the graphics quality or the FPS cap.

These three latest technical issues are pretty advanced and hard to fix. We’re a small studio and we’re working hard to solve them. But we can’t invest all of our work-time in those, or else we’d be delaying the entirety of the game. So we’re slowly making progress, but it’s not something we can fix ‘right away’. We’re really sorry if that takes (too much) time, but we’re doing our best considering our situation and workforce. If you want to help on that side, please consider sharing your exact spec when communicating about these kinds of issues.

[h2]The Next Update[/h2]
Is planned to be released around mid-December.
We’re working hard on it and it will feature a new Boss, new enemies, new weapons, new mods, a little visual update of ‘Energy Center’ level and a fully reworked ‘Aqua Station’ level. On top of that, we’ll rework, improve and add a bunch of new perk upgrades following your feedback and our data.
We’ll probably be back around mid-November or end of November to give you more information on that side. The Roadmap on Discord and Steam will also be updated accordingly.
As usual, we’ll launch a public playtest version a few days / a week before the update for you to try out the new version and help us fix the issues it contains.

And that’s it for this dev update!

We hope you appreciated it and we wish you a happy robot smashing!

Hey there!

We're glad to hear your feedback about the 0.7.0 update and we're hard at work to fix the issues you've been spotting as well as implementing new and fancy things into the game.

In the meantime, we're deploying a small hotfix for the current version.

Here are the (pretty quick and straightforward) list of changes:

[h2]0.7.1 Changelist[/h2]
• Fixed a multiplayer crash occurring when your brobot equips a gadget which you haven't unlocked yet
• Fixed multiple text errors
• Updated several perk and affixes description to more accurately describe their effect