Sipho News

Sipho is a pretty spooky game as is and boss fights make it even scarier. From weaksauce first boss, which looks daunting at first, but falls easily, to nerve-wracking (sorry!) stronger, gimmicky bosses - we are looking for your ideas to implement. We had suggestions for boss fights in the past and this is a great time to officially add them to the game and reward idea authors!

Boss fights are all about an isolated challenge and means to overcome it - boss arenas are separate levels which can have various gimmicks which help defeating larger and superior boss Siphos. With that in mind - get creative in Aquarium or just open up MS Paint, sketch your crazy idea for boss layout, arena and tell us how the fight is supposed to go. There can also be various unususal objects in the boss lair that affect the fight - maybe there are unstable currents moving everything around or breakable rocks that allow player getting in better position to strike the boss. Creative freedom is yours! After your are ready to share the idea, post it in our Discord or on Steam's Artwork page. Most unique and technically achievable ideas will be remade in the game!

You don't have to be a professional designer to participate in this event. A basic doodle on a napkin and a description of a fight are enough for us to make it into a proper game asset. Anyone can participate. Although if you haven't played Sipho before, be sure to check videos or screenshots to get familiar with its world and creatures.

[h2]Basic guidelines:[/h2]

• A picture or a sketch of the boss Sipho and its minions, if present
  
• A picture or a sketch of the arena with starting player and boss positions marked
  
• Let us know how the boss fight goes - what does the boss do, how does the boss and player interact with environment
  
• If there are special environment features - let us know about them!
  
• Boss designs and environments should be using existing Sipho assets. Slight variations of these assets - size, colour, mashups of several assets are allowed. Minor unique features like particle effects and sounds are also allowed
  
• More unique and technically achievable fights will be better judged. For example we can't technically achieve a multiplayer boss fight. Cleverly using existing game mechanics are much more welcome
  
• Post it on Sipho's Artwork section. If you can't post it there, leave a comment with a link here or post it on our Discord

[h2]Have fun![/h2]

Our team will pick one or more winning designs right after the end of this event.
Winners will be awarded with Sipho Steam keys and their name in the credits.

The event ends at November 10th, 00:00 UTC

Hi everyone!
We have been silently working on this update for a while now and we're getting comfortable of sharing part of it with you. This is going to be a largest update so far, overhauling how levels work and adding much more replayability and polish to the game. Our Discord Server members had a little heads-up about this.

And you can try it right now in Steam's [staging] branch:

The current state of 0.7.0 alpha contains and will contain:

• New and re-designed environments for Advena and Saenus Beefuorus breeds. That includes area layout tweaks, new obstacle and decoration sprites and bosses. Layouts and boss fights are subject to change. In fututre versions Cra'Than and Buginis environments, along with their bosses will get this treatment as well. Currently, new bosses act as placeholders for missing bosses for these environments.
• Random order of environments - you no longer start in the same Sea environment and end with Advena. Environments are shuffled for every playthrough and are scaled for level accordingly. In future versions Large Enemies will also be correctly scaled and offer different kind of challenge comparted to regular ones.
• Zooid unlock drop options increase with each level - first boss drops two zooids to choose from, second one drops three and so forth - we hope this gives more freedom and incentive to continue playing in further levels.
  
• New type of Siphonophore enemy - Polyp, which are stationary, turret-like Siphos. They don't think much and certainly don't move. Currently they can be found in single boss fight and spawned in Aquarium. In future versions we might use them as enemies in regular areas as well as in different boss fights.
• Polish and bugfixes And more to come - we love making the game feel good and play right. Growth Mode improvements, graphical improvements, more existing zooid interactions, more stats and powerups are coming.
• Localization - we have been working hard to convert existing code to support localized strings. The work is done and what remains are translations themselves. In the future we hope to ask you, our community members, to help us translating the game. More news on that later.

We hope this brings some light into our development and will help us accelerate testing and development of Sipho so we can bring these changes to [default] Steam branch as well.
We can't stress enough how our Discord Server members have helped us and participated in various occasions. So if you use Discord, come say us hi!

Another great Layout competition is over with 115 new designs added to the game!

Breed distribution ended up being quite uniform, which is great for filling up all levels. Saenus was least submitted with 21 entries and most loved one were Buginis - 26 entries! 100 Designs featured breedless zooid aiding their colony in things whatever Alpha creatures do. We've seen more intricate zooid combos which we hope AI will be able to handle and not be too hard to deal with when encountered! Note that these designs will be standouts in lower-size areas which will shake things up a bit causing you to retreat or have an epic fight against.

Together with adding new Layouts to the game, we tackled some of community reported issues and added a tiny juicy feature which will make Claw feel more physical. Enjoy, while we are working on largest Sipho update so far!

• Never select larger enemies when scaling with player's wealth
  
• Apply Aquarium enemy settings after load
  
• Add July event layouts
  
• Tweak Grinder sparkles
  
• Add new zooids to inventory silently when assigning head, so there's no "green" effect shown
  
• Move invalid layouts away from importing them every time game launches
  
• Do not load empty Layouts
  
• Fix deleting Layouts messing up other layout UI
  
• Remove duplicate built-in Layouts
  
• Make ZooidButtons appear below Growth Sidebar UI so they don't obscure Growth Zooid selection
  
• Fix input deadzones at the top and bottom of the screen
  
• Adapt Advena zooids from the start
  
• Add Chip effect to Claw
  
• Fix incorrectly shaped builtin layouts
  
• Fix exceptions and various other issues when pressing F while dragging a zooid in growth mode
  

Dear Whirlpool Surfers and Aquarium Caretakers,
Sipho team would like to invite you take another opportunity to design Sipho NPCs and have them immortalized in the game!

Previous design contest was aimed at smaller and pure-breed creatures to fill in their future habitats. And it has been a wonderful success with many different designs:


This time we are looking for beefy "alphas" that are found swimming along smaller ones. They are big and menacing, but have an exploitable weakness that makes them vulnerable to your attacks even though they are more than twice the size of your Sipho. Maybe one of their sides lacks any kind of defence or their movement is weak and they can be outmanoeuvred. And since these alphas are so old and powerful, they can also have adapted one of non-breed Zooids. These breedless zooids are: Agonizer, Energy Leech, Flail, Grappling Hook, Greaser, Grinder, Muck, Sniper, Soul Eater, Sprayer, Swarmer - any of zooids that do not belong to any of the starting breeds.
Take a look at this example:

It is a buginis Sipho with a not-of-its breed Greaser, which increases range and effectiveness of connected Zooids. It does not have many weapons nor its sides are very protected from attacks. This is just an example, so go wild!

We will be accepting entries as Layout text. Layouts are data structures we use in Sipho to define what Zooids have been grown where. When you grow a new Spike or a Claw, your Layout is modified to resemble what you have grown. Something like a recipe to grow your Sipho. We can save and use Layouts to define enemies that you encounter in different areas or restore your Sipho when loading the game. Manual Layout management is possible through Aquarium game mode and that's where we ask you to create your event entries.

• Using latest version of Sipho and Aquarium mode take a screenshot of Layout you would like to submit. Feel free to modify the environment keeping Layout clearly distinguishable
  
• Upload the screenshot to our Discord server's #event-entries channel with following formatting:

  **Name:** Name of the layout
  **Author:** Optional author name. Leave it out if you want to remain anonymous 
  **Value:** Layout value - shown at the top of Growth mode
  **Description:** Optional Layout description
  **Layout data:** || layout data ||
  

• In Aquarium, export the Layout text data as shown in picture below and paste it on layout data. Please keep data between double || marks so it remains spoilered. If Layout data is too long, submit the entry without it and upload layout data as a text file in following message.

Congratulations, you have submitted your Layout! We are looking for as many Layout designs as possible, however we keep our rights to reject some by our judgement or incompatible requirements:
[h2]Layout requirements:[/h2]

• Layout should not mix breeds and can contain a breedless Zooid. For example: Advena Layout can contain Spikes Zenoplates and Swarmers (breedless), but not Claws (mixing breeds) or additional Greasers (another breedless zooid).
  
• Layout value should be between 150-300 nutrition. You can see current Layout nutrition value at the top of Growth screen, under the Sipho name.
  
• Layout should be created using Growth mode of latest available version and should contain valid positions and rotations
  
• Layout should be created by you or the author rights have been passed to you by the original author
  
• Layout should not be already in game or already be a valid submission prior to yours
  

Once the event ends we will go through all submissions. Submissions that pass the requirement criteria will be added to the game. And we will also credit you, the author, in the game!

And update arrives with small bugfixes and Quality of Marine Life improvements. Sipho version 0.6.x phase is coming to a long end - from now on we will be delivering small bug fixes and minor improvements suggested by community. This doesn't mean development stops at all, it's the opposite - major features and reworks are being developed in a separate version control branch with higher velocity.

One thing that will be coming with new levels are new Graphics for those environments. Take a look at this snappy in his new habitat:


We plan to have several variations of Obstacles per each environment. In this case rocks are "fresh" and sharp, rounded or old and corroded. Rocks also have several different color variations. Together with those features we are experimenting with "depth" value of Obstacles and Decorations. Depth controls layering of objects and their color saturation. You can see in the animation that some rocks are above corals while other rocks are below Snappy Sipho and are desaturated. We feel that all these layering features will tie environment objects together into believable underwater environment.

• Thicken every 3rd gridline in growth mode
  
• Cleanup builtin layout Sea Creature 5
  
• Add option to turn off Layout autosaving
  
• Use Steam name as base name for player and as Layout author
  
• Rename GlobalSettings to PlayerProfile and store Player's name in it
  
• Handle missing saved head zooid gracefully
  
• Rename April event layouts by Author's request
  
• Update Zooid Graphics on the first frame the zooid is grown