Sipho News

Greetings everyone! Happy past holidays and new year! Now that the festive distractions are gone we can go back to improving Sipho.
One thing that has been bothering us for a while, was how hard the game is when your Sipho is little. It is hard to balance the game to play well when your creature colony is small, made out of few movers and a weapon, and large, having dozens of buffed-up(tm) weapons, efficient energy regeneration... and skills cost the same fixed amount. So we have finally gathered our courage to attempt at balancing that through skill cost. Now, most of the skills have a lower base cost and grow their cost with each zooid:

As you can see, new skill costs match old ones are around 4-5 zooids. We hope that this skill cost rebalance will feel more realistic and allow better difficulty scaling for different Sipho sizes. We will monitor experience and adjust these skills costs accordingly - let us know how they feel!

• Correctly decrease poison duration by 30% for each stack
  
• Balance sum skill costs around 4-5 zooids rather than 2-3. Generally makes skills cheaper
  
• Heads by default have 0 melee damage, but can deal damage if buffed.
  
• Set poison duration to 3 for real this time
  
• Fix some environment objects remaining collidable after level ends forcefully
  
• Fix environment some objects not fading out correctly
  

• Add Fixed set class for future use
  
• Muck and Poison clouds are now colliding with environment
  
• Remove Rock component from Environment Spike
  
• Fix Swarmer minion animations lagging behind. Movement Force stat no longer affects Swamer Minion speed
  
• Tweak Saenus boss 2 arena to make it unescapable
  
• Add Important setting on spawners and mark obstacle spawners as important. Do not spawn enemies inside chunks of important spawners that have not been loaded yet. Fixes rock-squished enemies
  
• Fix error when kill point receiver tries to unsubscribe from nonexisting Siphonophore
  
• Swarmer minions now crawl on top of obstacles
  
• Add timer based melee damage to all heads
  
• Kill point receivers (Soul Eater and Swarmer) kill dead Zooids on collision
  
• Pusher Penetration stat allows pushing more objects at full force by 30% per stat
  
• Improve whirlpool particles
  
• Zooid description shows Penetration stat as relevant if Ranged stat is non-zero
  
• Twister Penetration stat increases Swirl lifetime by 30%
  
• Poison debuff now has a duration of 3 (was 1) and scales duration down by 70% with each stack.
  
• Allow buffs and debuffs scale duration depending on stack count
  
• Enemy Spawner bases spawns on current wealth rather than Recent Wealth. Fixes Aquarium spawners not adapting quickly enough
  
• Add world position scale parameter to Scrolling Texture shader and use it for Muck clouds
  
• Muck doesn't affect its owner anymore. Increase Muck cloud duration to 5 (from 3.5) and radius per range to 0.3 (from 0.25)
  
• Dash now costs 20 Energy + 5 per zooid
  
• Added tooltip translations
  
• Show skill cooldown difference in tooltips. Tell players how to rebind skills
  
• Move GameKey beatifying code to String Beautifier
  
• Round energy capacity bonus instead of flooring it down. The effect is most noticeable with Energy powerup
  
• Change how extra cooldown is displayed - show delta in tooltips
  
• Cooldown translations renamed
  
• Rebalance skill costs so they scale with the count of zooids with that skill
  
• Proportionally increase skill cooldown if it is more costly than max Sipho energy. Display skill cost energy breakdown in tooltips
  
• Gray out energy regeneration buff if it's irrelevant
  
• Fix growth points improperly registering themselves at manager
  
• Improve skill tooltip to show skill energy costs
  
• Reduce flak shoot audio latency
  
• Update Burst and Collections packages
  
• More speedy Growth Point generation
  
• Forcefully end level if player doesn't clear it in 5 minutes
  
• Change object layer to Ignore Raycast when sinking to avoid unnecessary raycast hits
  
• Stagger sinkable sinking
  
• Serialize Zooid connection angle masks
  
• Remove duplicate standalone input module
  
• Set Growth Point parent to be the same as zooid button parent
  
• Do not despawn growth points that are going to be used - improves growth performance
  
• Fix incorrectly caching zooid button children
  
• Use growth manager to store growth points instead of searching globally
  
• Use lazy initialization for Zooid Buttons when Sipho structure gets changed
  
• Use Burst to calculate growth point positions
  
• Use Burst compiled MatrixUtility outputs as out rather than ref so they can be inlined
  
• Also store zooid connection angles as bitmask
  
• Do not throw errors when no Area is loaded
  
• Remove unused trail renderers from movers
  
• Remove pushing capability from Saenus Jet. Change dash multiplier from 2 to 3, reduce drag from 0.25 to 0.2, increase health to 11, do not penalize turning force - set it to 1
  
• Parametrize Dash multiplier
  
• More robust way of instantiating System Callbacks singleton
  
• Do not regenerate Drifter health when zooid is dead
  
• Update one of builtin Saenus layouts to be more menacing
  
• Reserialize sprite atlases
  
• Better utilities for Layout editing and refactor of layout selection logic for Campaign levels
  
• Only apply buff if base stats are relevant rather than current
  
• Update project to Unity 2019.4.17f1
  
• Tweak Spike and Santa hat to behave more controllably
  
• Serialize zooid component references in prefabs. Serialize zooid radius instead of calculating it from collider
  
• Update two Cra'Than layouts
  

Hey y'all, small weekly update is here! It features a new Buginis level 1 boss and has few gameplay tweaks/experiments to make fighting a little bit more pleasant. The update, as usual per 0.7.x is currently available only in [staging] beta branch: Here's how to get it:

[h2]Version 0.7.2 f3[/h2]

• For timestamp of last input device use return minimum value when input device is unknown instead of zero - might fix controls sometimes locking up
  
• Plant boss 1 - Patroller
  
• Disable default collider on Tree_1
  
• Optimize initial spawner spawn to not sync physics objects when it's not necessary
  
• Delay forceful whirlpools by 5 seconds
  
• Experiment with quick heal distribution
  
• Prevent Layout corruption at rare cases when zooid repositioning happens very fast
  
• Reserialize all Environment Objects to ensure correct data
  
• More strict serialization validation of Environment Object to catch out-of-sync serialized values
  
• Grid spawner improvements
  
• Buginis boss setup and WIP arena
  
• Make Queen area use new sprites
  

As weather is getting colder in our Northern hemisphere, water starts solidifying into ice and so does our update!

We had a bunch of sneaky updates since our last update post. Most notable changes are:

• You now keep all adapted Zooids throughout runs. It means that with every replay extra Zooid selection list grows with new zooids. We thought that previous behaviour was just unpleasant for inexperienced players and nothing of value for experienced ones.
  
• There are new Powerups - Damage Increase and Cooldown Efficiency Increase
  
• And exactly this update features new sprites for Buginis environments.
  

Meanwhile movers have received some additional interesting mechanics:

• Advena movers regenerate energy on hit - we hope that this will play well with Advena's aggressive idea
  
• Saenus movers have a little pushing effect as their pusher - even better defensive Saenus capabilities, we'll see how this goes
  
• Buginis movers decrease cooldowns of neighboring zooids by 10% - plays well with Buginis skill
• oriented breed. Since skills are not separated for each zooid and connections can be more intricate, mean value for cooldowns is used. For example if you have a Flak with 110% Cooldown Recovery and another with 120% CR, skill cooldown will be reduced by 15%.
  
• Cra'Than movers have additional connection points - crazy, we know, let's see how this works!
  
• Vagorian movers regenerate health - destined to bump into spiky things, Vagorians have evolved to regenerate their wounds,
  

Our near future plans involve implementing new Buginis bosses, improving their environments and rebalancing skills, so they are more useful while your Sipho is still young. We will talk more about these once we actually do the work!

Known issues:
- Game performance drops drastically while levels are collapsing. We are investigating how could we fix this while also evicting players from levels more gracefully

Changelog megalist:

• Add experimental Bouncer script
  
• Always create new campaign state if it's not present after loading
  
• Do not flip current spawners in Plant 2 area
  
• More plant objects renamed
  
• Tidy Plant Obstacles. Now all Plant objects are Obstacles
  
• Do not error out when there are no zooids in inventory
  
• Branch leaves fade with depth correctly
  
• More user friendly spawner depth settings
  
• Linear campaign level size scaling rather than exponential
  
• Plant 1 area using new sprites
  
• Add WIP sine wave spawn function
  
• Various noise textures and import setting tweaks
  
• Allow scaling spawner tiles to rectangular shapes
  
• Add a bunch of patterns for noise
  
• Correct collider references
  
• Tweaks to leaves
  
• Make branch leaves a nested prefab and set it up
  
• Add leaves to plant branches
  
• Tidy up skill names
  

• Always allow selecting all adapted zooids ever
  
• Revert "Decompose Zooid instantly if it gets overkilled"
  
• Show sonar in Freeroam
  
• Decompose Zooid instantly if it gets overkilled
  
• Fix some non-damaging debuffs having damage over time set to non-zero
  
• Don't unlock pop zooids that have been disconnected from Sipho
  
• Fadeout environment objects render above player
  
• Fixed rare occasion of Head Selection throwing error when enabling UI before Head Selection was initialized
  
• Correctly fully fade-out decorations when close to them
  
• Update rotation in deformable when adding first zooid
  
• Hard limit Spike distance to 2x of normal distance
  
• Missing verlet meta
  
• Add experimental Verlet Constraint based soft body simulation
  

• Fix input not working when hovering objects in game
  

• Do not display multiples of same skill in tooltips
  
• Show tooltips for world objects - specifically zooid unlock drops
  
• Add ReadOnlyInspector attribute
  
• Report when game fails to load Input Manager
  
• Add reference to the names
  
• Add community event participant names
  
• Attempt to fix breaking input after update
  

• Change buginis mover bonus show up as percent
  
• Increase buff duration to 20 seconds (was 10 seconds)
  
• Fix Siphos not starting rotated correctly
  
• Remove greaser buff effect from other effects
  
• Add test to check for zooid prefab reference validity
  
• Rename Buginis mover buff asset to conform to new buff naming pattern
  
• Do not allow kill point receivers (Soul Eaters and Swarmers) have negative charge
  
• Attempt to fix errors on level leave
  
• Fix Whirlpools popping into existence
  
• Fix missing reference to Cra'Than boss zooid
  
• Cooldown recovery is now 1 for all relevant zooids
  
• Make some buffs only become applied if stats are relevant
  
• Allow skipping applying buffs if buffed stats are irrelevant
  
• Cleanup buff code
  
• Organize buffs and debuffs
  
• Make Advena Boss 1 cage openings more varied
  
• Make tutorial toggle On for new players by default
  
• Advena Lava 3 obstacles were missing rigidbodies and caused lag
  
• Make Spike feel better - increase launch force to 200 (was 150), make launch direction based on Zooid direction rather than tip direction
  
• Fix default dash button to be Left Mouse
  
• Return default skill cooldown if there is no skill group (for example if zooid is dead)
  
• Advena mover regenerates energy when damaged
  
• Update mover descriptions
  
• Vagorian mover regenerates health over time
  
• Add Pusher functionality to Sea mover when it dashes
  
• Put Cra'Than mover connection point inwards so it looks good from any connecting angle
  
• Add additional connection points to Cra'Than mover
  
• Add skill cooldown reduction buffing to Buginis mover
  

• Return default skill cooldown if there is no skill group (for example if zooid is dead)
  
• MegaDebug buff buffs all stats
  
• Fix Despawner breaking due to referencing deleted food prefab and not respawning anything when it's empty
  
• Tidy consumables
  
• Tweak Cooldown Reduction and Damage powerups
  
• Make Cra'Than Boss 3 spawner zooid regrowable
  
• When rebinding keyboard, ignore special controls as anyKey and imeSelected
  
• Add Cooldown and Damage powerups. Spawn them everywhere
  
• Add Health Regenerator script
  
• Remove accidentally added component
  
• Pusher tweaks to allow it being put on anything
  
• Serialize reference to Zooid in Zood component
  
• Support arbitrary connection angles for zooids
  
• Add Cooldown Reduction Powerup to destructible food containers
  
• Support cooldown scaling with most of the zooids
  
• Add cooldown reduction stat
  
• Make renderer cloner more silent
  
• Make Seanus boss 2 asymmetric
  
• Place Growth Point UIs in Zooid local position. Obstacles block new zooid growth
  
• Remove buffs before dead zooid is destroyed
  

After lots of judging and criteria-quantization we have decided upon winners of the Sipho Boss Design Contest!
Judging was not easy. To reach the decision we have tried to imagine how your creations will work in various game scenarios. Less violent boss fights, based on boss behaviour and its "decision making" were evaluated more highly. Some entries even felt like they have been mind-read out of our design ideas list and that gave a lot of confidence in both ideas and entries. We also looked at additional mechanics we would have to implement for some of entries to work and how well we could re-use them in the rest of the game. More re-usable game mechanics were rated more highly. Let's get to the business.
First place winner is:

You are in a maze with 4 - 6 boss Siphos. Each one aimlessly wander around until you are in their line of sight, where the one that sees you would chase after you. You have to maneuver the maze and not be seen by them, they can only see from their front side. You can safely attack them from the sides and easily kill them that way, but doing so will make all others seek to where the kill was, so you have to be careful.
When you wither it down to around 3 or 2 left, the rest will flee into a whirl pool and you win the fight.
You should not attack form the front side of them.

This kind of boss behaviour which is also arena-layout dependant should encourage players to take more cautious fights. Sneaking up on the boss and hiding from other bosses after a kill should make a nice pace-changing challenge. Congratulations!
The runner-ups are:

Twin boss idea was something that we kept in our backlog and this entry illustrates it very nicely. It also encourages us to expand Sipho screech vocabulary with "your turn" and "maybe I'll take a little break".

A boss slithering through small cracks and acting as a whack-a-mole, but the mole is pretty dangerous and lays exploding eggs is something we haven't thought of! It would be as if fighting an invisible enemy that can only be seen with "sonar" indicator. Very creative entry and hopefully won't be as hard to implement as it sounds.

Many small enemies instead of big boss? Yes please! Implementing boids-like behaviour which would flock the player or even try to open their own whirlpool? This should be fun.

Another award-worthy entry by z0mbiesrock. Potentially technically challenging, but absolutely awesome big boss idea of inter-connected Cra'Thancipede

Winners listed above will be getting Steam keys for each winning entry! We will contact you personally.
[h2]Thanks to all participants for your support![/h2]
skipydog, Popcorn dust, z0mbiesrock, TIC, Salreix Von Otsuu, Max77, Camille, DrakonyxX, your entries have been great and inspiring in many ways. We hope to use this inspiration to push Sipho further than it has been before. Stay tuned for new content and let us know what you thought of this contest!

It features enabled Development mode which will report issues more visibly - both to you and for us automatically. If you find yourself looking a red text at the bottom-left corner of the game, please report it and tell us what you were doing! We hope to catch issues faster this way and stabilise faster.

[h2]Changelog:[/h2]

• Graphics settings after build
  
• Preload Input Settings
  
• Track Burst compilation settings
  
• Allow Renderer Cloner be destroyed when scene is being unloaded
  
• Change linux build target to x64 - which is now only Linux architecture supported by Unity
  
• Upgrade project to Unity 2019.4.13f1 (518737b1de84) - this might cause various unexpected issues
  
• Grappling hook is now affected by Penetration stat
  
• Update zooid graphics when outline color changes
  
• Re-gather Environment Objects for spawning and automatically gather them on build. Fixes missing objects after save load
  
• Fix Side Popup double translating
  
• Play sounds when zooids are picked up, grown and placed
  
• Remove obsolete deformable synchronisations - we don't rely on world positions that much anymore