Sipho News

Grab a pen or just open up MS Paint, sketch your crazy idea for a creature part, and then share it with us. Best idea will be remade by our artist and put inside our game Sipho.

You don't have to be a professional artist to participate in this event. A basic doodle on a napkin is 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.

Basic guidelines:

• Must fit inside a circle, but doesn't have to fill it all up
  
• Fitting to Sipho's world- organic elements that are influenced by real world.
  
• Shooting, moving, or mind control- write down what it does. Even better if you can draw it
  
• Halloween themed- spikes, fangs, exposed internal parts. Make it creepy
  
• 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
  
• Have fun!
  

Our team will pick the best one right after the end of this event.
Top three artists will also receive a Sipho Steam key!

The contest has ended.

Check out the winner here!

Greetings Siphonophore overlords!

While working on controller support we have fixed several issues and made some improvements to the game - both performance and visual. Each fix is listed in the changedlog of Version 0.5.2 below!

As development goes on, we want to bring an additional Sipho version - a special Controller-support enhanced build which includes more drastic changes to allow full utilisation of controllers. We are not ready to publish these changes to everyone who has not deliberately opted-in so we decided to publish that in a beta branch in steam. You can opt-in for controller-support build in Sipho properties in your Steam library:

Currently ungrowing and repositioning zooids is not possible using controller. We will be fixing that and improving usability in future updates. Let us know what you think about playing the game with a controller!

• Fix extra zooid selection throwing errors when navigated with input keys while there are no extra zooids
  
• Report when poolable is destroyed because due to not having an original
  
• Fix Spike Zooid background not being pooled properly
  
• Fix nutrition icon in Aquarium enemy spawn menu
  
• Add flashes to powerup pickup effects and fix their colors
  
• Properly re-select UI elements. Fixes Aquarium elements not being highlit when re-entering Aquarium mode
  
• Fix Aquarium sounds being paused in Aquarium
  
• Add sanity check for Greaser Renderer Cloner erroring out
  
• Handle loading more defined inputs than we know about
  
• Cache postprocessing values which otherwise allocate GC memory
  
• Improve performance in Aquarium - prevent UI from rebuilding itself each frame
  
• Do not recreate all Zooid buttons on every structure change
  
• Unparent zooid connectors when zooids are about to be destroyed. This prevents connectors from being destroyed
  
• Set icon of enemy size Aquarium option
  
• Fix camera jumping around when switching between Growth and Aquarium modes
  
• Do not update lost zooid ghosts while not in growth mode
  
• Only create/remove changed zooid overlays instead of all and on every structure change
  
• Only mutate enemy inventories if the queen has been defeated
  

• Forgot to add outline sprite
  
• Add selection outline to skill UI
  
• Reset navigation state when popping ZooidInfoAndUngrow
  
• Change and add new keys for doing growth things. You can now edit skills with keyboard/gamepad
  
• Fix extra zooid selection throwing errors when navigated with input keys while there are no extra zooids
  
• Report when poolable is destroyed because it didn't have an original
  
• Fix Spike Zooid background not being pooled properly
  
• Fix nutrition icon in Aquarium enemy spawn menu
  
• Add flashes to powerup pickup effects and fix their colors
  
• Properly re-select UI elements. Fixes Aquarium elements not being highlit when re-entering Aquarium mode
  
• Make gamepad twinstick less twitchy
  
• If you're using a gamepad, you will get gamepad bindings for skills
  
• There is no longer a dedicated button for switching movement on the gamepad. Use the settings menu instead
  
• InputManager GetAxis now takes into account the deadzone
  
• Legit twinstick support for gamepads
  
• Aquarium spawning with controller
  
• Do not constantly select deselected object
  
• Fix Layout browser not showing entries
  
• Stop trying to grow when you run out of nutrition for the selected zooid
  
• Update growth points if the target zooid changes
  
• This fixes the bug where the ghost would stay in the corner until you moved the mouse
  
• GrowZooid more directly controls when to override the mouse position for drawing ghosts
  
• Make Aquarium Spawn logic use UIModule stack
  
• Aquarium toggled with north button, menus navigated with shoulder buttons
  
• UIModule driven Aquarium activation
  
• Assert that we don't unpause game more times than we pause
  
• Close Layout Browser when pressing cancel button
  
• Tooltips follow their targets instead of attaching to a static position
  
• Don't use the singleton if we can help it
  
• Add IAddRemoveHandler interface and use if to indicate when a UI module is being pushed or popped instead of doing a weird bool
  
• Show player aquarium menu only when base growth module is active
  
• Deactivate module after popping
  
• Quit Growth module immidiately after growth is toggled - otherwise other modules get pushed to stack
  
• Make layout browser work with UI stack
  
• [Experimental] restore selected UI element after mouse click
  
• Fix null ref exception when exiting play mode with growth mode open
  
• Fix mouse tooltips also being toggled by the tooltip toggle key
  
• Fix menu opening after leaving growth mode with Esc
  
• Reuse Aquarium UI module for layout browser
  
• Add name property to generic Aquarium UI module
  
• Make tooltip appearance abstract and automatic on selection
  
• Hacky way to exit growth mode after popping the selectZooidToGrow module
  
• UI Module stack deals with Cancel key input instead of all the modules
  
• Growth no longer super aborted if you press escape
  
• Remove/replace a few old inputs with the new input manager
  
• Add tooltips for SelectZooidToGrow (or maybe we could just do it in the UIModuleStack ?)
  
• Fix tooltips not toggling correctly
  
• ZooidInfoAndUngrow now correctly handles UIButton changes after a zooid is ungrown
  
• Fix an issue where left-clicking a zooid would ungrow it
  
• UIModuleStack remembers and restores the previously selected UI element when pushing/popping modules
  
• Added comments about when each UIModule method gets called
  
• Don't toggle tooltips in non-growth mode
  
• Keyboard/gamepad overriden tooltips can be toggled on/off with a special key
  
• Show tooltips of the selected zooid
  
• Push the required new GameKey, whoops!
  
• You can now enter zooid info and ungrowth mode while in the growth menu by pressing 't' or the north dpad button (subject to change)
  
• Abort zooid info and ungrow module if the mouse moved
  
• Rename UngrowZooid to a more broad ZooidInfoAndUngrow
  
• Slightly rework tooltip instance to have better API
  
• Zooid ungrowing emulates PointerEnter/Exit events on ZooidButtonUI
  
• Use polymorphism in BuildUIManager because we can
  
• Simplify Aquarium Menu UI module
  
• Add Debug Menu entry for UI module stack
  
• Fix null reference exception in GrowZooid
  
• Do not open aquarium menu when player controls are disabled (for example game menu is open)
  
• Aquarium UI module WIP
  
• Added a very barebones ability to ungrow zooids with the controller
  
• Re-activate the older module after the popping the newer module
  
• GrowZooid ui module pops itself if there is no active ui element or if the cancel button is pressed
  
• BuildUIManager pops zooid selection module when leaving growth mode
  
• SelectZooidToGrow module now uses GrowZooid module if a zooid becomes selected
  
• BuildUIManager uses SelectZooidToGrow when enabled
  
• Use InputManager for determining when to use the mouse or keyboard/gamepad for growing
  
• GrowZooid now uses the zooid ghost for previewing build locations
  
• Add a UIModuleStack to gameplayUI
  
• You can now grow zooids by using the keyboard/gamepad
  
• Use the GrowthUtility CircleColliderRadius where needed in GrowZooid
  
• Make FindNeighbors a GrowthUtils function instead of being a part of BuildElementUI
  
• Growth points can now be iterated via the automatic UI navigation
  
• GrowZooid updates growthPointUI elements as the structure changes
  
• GrowthPointUI is now poolable
  
• Growth points are stored in a list once again + angle bugfix
  

Greetings!

The dust has settled after 0.5.0 release and we are so far happy with reception of it. We had players stream their progress in our Discord server, chat about their Zooid hunting experience. This was a heartwarming experience. Let us know what you think of the new zooids!

As our Zooid roster grows more luck is required to get a part drop you wish. We are thinking of ways fixing that and for now, we implemented one simple thing that was suggested by a community member. It is that Frakir will now prioritise dropping parts that you have not yet discovered. This will work as an encouragement to beat the game for more experienced players and will not affect the flow of the rest of the game as it is the end boss. This will guarantee that after beating game finite number of times you will discover all available parts.

We have an opportunity to participate in local gaming conference for which we need to do some preparations. To get a good playtesting feedback from attendees we need to have a solid new-player-experience, otherwise new player will be stuck on issues we already know and won't be able to provide deeper insight of the game. That means we will be reworking tutorial level and finishing full controller support. These goals align well with our development plans as both tutorial and controller support are needed for a full game. We will share more details about participating in the conference once we really know we have been accepted to showcase Sipho.

We have already started on controller support improvements in a separate branch, which means that some of the work won't be visible in the changelog until it gets to the main development branch:

• Award undiscovered zooid after killing Frakir
  
• Fix Frakir becoming invincible again after growing back a zooid
  
• Fix game not being unmuted when going back to main menu
  
• Make scrolling textures blend options use unity enums instead of hardcoded values
  
• Update material assets to include used shader keywords
  
• Add debug option to teleport things to center of the screen
  
• Make claws appear below zooids so they look better when oversized
  
• Update preloaded shader variants to include zooid dissolve shader keyword
  
• If the longterm progress can't be parsed from json, assume that it's corrupted and start over
  
• If game save can't parse the file from json, assume there is no game save instead of throwing out an exception
  
• Make game save, progression and game file reading and parsing a bit more robust.
  
• Update the swarmer shake sound to loop better
  

Greetings!

The long awaited 4 new zooids are here:

• The slimy thought-provoking Greaser which buffs neighbouring zooids with range and movement power. It creates an interesting choice between having one, but powerful zooid or many of the same zooid.
  
• The shaky concept-bending Swarmer which spawns little critters that attack their foes and damage everything in their way. It challenges the regular approach to combat by allowing to keep a long distance from enemies but at less direct control of damage.
  
• The swingy motion-dependent Flail which damages everything it touches with its spiky ball loosely connected to the colony. Flail use highly depends on your movement skills as it needs to be flung around at great speeds. It also acts as a good shield.
  
• The hasty projectile-emitting Sprayer which spews out little projectiles and can hurt by touch as well. Sprayer requires high energy efficiency of the colony and good aim.
  

We are happy to bring these crazy ideas as breedless zooids. You will be able to adapt them from bosses the same way as Ancient ones (Grappler, Sniper, Muck and Energy Leech). We are looking into ways of making that less random. This wasn't a problem when we had less zooids, but now that we have more, we will look into making obtaining zooids more of a choice rather than a lottery.

And the final changes that brought us here are listed below:

• Fix Steam loading in built player
  
• Increase Swarmer max critter count to 3 and nutrition cost to 6
  
• Make swarmer icon power-of-two size to not be stretched in UI
  
• Tweak greaser effect
  
• Add angular drag to the tip of Flail to limit it's spinning after getting into twister
  
• Clean up Zooid shader Properties and make Dissolve optional
  
• Move the 4 new zooids out of development and into the game!
  
• Swarmer is now a combat zooid
  
• Tweak greaser effect to resemble a coat of blue jelly
  
• Expose edge detection power parameter and Zooid shader blend parameters
  
• Add environment spikes to Frakir boss arena
  
• Add environment spikes to Cra'than boss arena
  
• Make checkboxes have a checkmark when checked
  
• Make swarmer minions spread out when skill is activated without a target
  
• Kill swarmer minions if they are 2x further than range
  
• Expose Zooid Graphics Transform and make connectors follow it
  
• Shake Swarmer on skill use
  
• Add some maracas for the swarmer
  
• Update the descriptions of the new zooids and skills and change some of their placement sounds
  
• Fix Steam related things
  
• Add a very rough GrowZooid UI module (still needs a lot of work, pooling, caching and all the good stuff)
  
• Add a placeholder GrowthPointUI
  
• Cleaned up some UI GameParameters. Added a possibleGrowthLocationMarkerUI GameParam
  
• GrowthPoint positions are offset according to the target radius (no longer on the edge of the zooid)
  
• Blueprint no longer exposes key/value dictionary for possible growth points. Instead use GetPossibleGrowthPoints(Zooid targetZooid)
  
• Don't destroy on load Steam Loader
  
• Swarmer tweaks
  
• Swarmer spawn effect
  
• Flail tweaks and smaller slot graphics
  
• Different swarmer spawn effect
  
• Use Flail base sprite
  
• Change color of swarmer top instead of scaling it
  
• New sprite metas
  
• Flail base and hive alpha sprites
  

Greetings!

Another Sipho update is upon you! We are inches away from having new zooids ready for 0.5.0 update. One of the new zooids is Swarmer, with never-seen-before mechanics:

It spawns small critters which circle the Swarmer and spread out to attack common enemies on-command. These critters can be defended against with other weapons and take little time to respawn. We can't wait to see what combinations you are going to put them in!

As per request of one of our Discord server members we have implemented "multi-growth" mode in growth menu. By holding multi-spawn key, which default is left shift, growth will not end after placing single zooid, which helps quickly place multiple zooids with a single mouse click.

Some of changes below mention "growth points". We are preparing to have better UX in Growth mode which is displaying potential points at which zooids can be grown. Currently, we find those potential points by constantly "asking world" if there are any positions nearby mouse cursor for growing a new zooid. Changes we made allow us to find all positions ahead of time which we will be able to display when selecting to grow a certain zooid. That should be especially convenient when playing with controller - all you will have to do is jump through positions you wish to grow at instead of potentially having a "fake mouse pointer".

The rest of changes, balancing of new zooids are below:

• Use multi spawn key for growing zooids as well
  
• Fix one of built-in Layouts which had first zooid as non-head and add validation check for future layouts
  
• Add a null check and early exit if we encounter a weird zooid id when generating growth points
  
• Growth points are now stored in a dictionary according to their sizes
  
• Use the sizes of all growable zooids when determining growth points
  
• Make growth point generation completely lazy
  
• Fix outline scaling error when ungrowing greaser
  
• Fix deformable using incorrect rotation when spawning from rotated Sipho. This fixes Cra'than boss and possibly other things spawning at incorrect angle
  
• Fix a bug where growth points were discarded due to the radius and the distance being equal
  
• Fix errors when trying to check if a blueprint is valid when it has invalid zooids (caused by growth point regeneration)
  
• Add basic melee damage to Sprayer
  
• Fix incorrect growth spot blocking calculation
  
• Regenerate growth points when growing, ungrowing or updating the blueprint. Allow external access of the growth points
  
• Increase swarmer range from 7 to 12 (originally was 15)
  
• Resave animation and controller
  
• Add a swarmer minion animation
  
• Swarmer uses range stat
  
• Slow down swarmMinions when they are resupplied, not attacking and near the swarmer zooid
  
• Use new sprites for Swarmer and use better names for scripts
  
• Make growth background arrow not overlap outlines
  
• Use thinner sprite for Flail connection to have better looking bends
  
• Use new graphics for Sprayer
  
• Add code for generating a list of possible growth points
  
• BlueprintEntry can now cache and return the Zooid value based on the id
  
• Use new Flail graphics
  
• Zooid Outline setup dirties prefabs properly
  
• Make Flail head not collide with connections
  
• Use new Greaser graphics
  
• Forgot to check-in IgnoreListenerPause script
  
• New sprite import settings
  
• Parasite sprites
  
• Add a UIModule for handling skill rebinding
  
• Pause in-world audio sources and allow playing UI audio when game is paused
  
• Fix Vagorian Mover and Structure zooid connector offsets