Sipho News

Greetings!

We are happy to bring you this update with features you have been asking for. Pushing "build" button feels like wrapping a Christmas present.

First one of happy things is that Aquarium will now be available from the start, without having to beat the second boss. It was designed to be a milestone in progressing in the game. Since introducing Aquarium we have added an additional breed and 4 zooids. That acts as progression counter and gives enough goals. Additionally one of Aquarium purposes is training to play with different zooids and learning game mechanics in safe environment. Having that locked behind killing moderately hard boss has cut-off many new players and required the to learn Sipho the hard way.

The second thing should be exciting for experienced players - bosses will now drop two zooid pickups one of which you will be able to choose by consuming. We feel like the zooid pool is large enough to provide a strategic choice without sacrificing replayability. This should allow guiding your zooid inventory towards more synergetic composition.

The third thing is a little festive surprise. Let us know how your wear it!

Controller and keyboard-only support is now considered to be fully functional, without need of using mouse. Happy couch gaming!

And here is the glorious change list:

• Festive things
  
• Push away zooids when zooid unlock is being spawned so it's harder to pick it up by accident
  
• Fix Layout Browser layout being broken in builds
  
• Fix ambient bubbles not respecting emit interval
  
• Add ambient bubble spawning based on obstacles
  
• Tweak down bubbles a bit
  
• Only reset adapted Zooids when starting Campaign game
  
• Do not show dialog upon killing Queen boss and unlocking Aquarium
  
• Improve Muck effects
  
• Buff muck slowing by 50% and decrease skill cost by 50%
  
• Add ability to spawn effect on when buffs
  
• Add default zooid sprite importer preset
  
• Soul Eater part sprites
  
• Fix Layout browser being not browsable
  
• Use RectMask2D and separate canvas to optimize layout browser layout and rendering with many entries
  
• Move save/import layout buttons to the left side of the Layout browser.
  
• Tweak layout browser image sizes
  
• Show nothing selected when no layout is selected in layout browser
  
• Fix aquarium game save leaking into campaign mode
  
• Make Layout Browser scale Layout entries to fit UI space
  
• Added a killpoint component and taught siphonophores to use it. SoulEaters now use it to collect points individually
  
• Fix zooid growth element not being selected from first entry when using zooid type hotkeys
  
• Improve Layout Browser layout to be more compatible with button-based UI navigation
  
• Only select zooid growth button when directional input was used instead of forcing it to be always selected
  
• Fix selecting zooids to grow through category hotkey when there is only a single zooid to grow in a category
  
• Integrate bubbles into a couple of in-game effects to get a better feeling of how it all looks
  
• Place zooid ghost at mouse position when mouse has recently been used
  
• Enter GrowZooid module whenever zooid growth UI element is used
  
• Update muck debuff asset
  
• Add a super basic SoulEater zooid prototype that scales range depending on regeneration points
  
• Muck applies debuff where possible
  
• Make bubbles a lot more subtle
  
• Improve game over ui controller friendliness
  
• Don't insta-beat the game lol whoops
  
• Improve game win dialog controller friendliness
  
• Game end/over UI buttons selected for controller
  
• Fix an issue where the growth hotkey would be shown as a keyboard shortcut instead of a gamepad one
  
• I guess more gameplay UI scene updates since I forgot to save last time
  
• Added a GameKeyImage that can make the text into the current gamekey binding
  
• Together with movement type report gamepad usage as well
  
• Add analytics of which zooid has been chosen and skipped in boss fight
  
• Do not require Queen boss achievement to play Aquarium
  
• Do a little dead-zooid-sweep when spawning zooid unlock consumable
  
• Spawn effect for zooid unlock consumable which was despawned
  
• Improve zooid unlock consumable spawn effect
  
• Make food eaten particles less affected by external forces
  
• Add zooid unlock spawn effect
  
• Controllers can now be rebound and their bindings are saved/loaded. The core of controller support is finally done #party #timeToFixAllDaBugs
  
• You can now see the primary and secondary bindings in the options menu
  
• Boss battles now give you a choice between two random zooids
  
• Fix ui events happening during rebind operations
  
• Simplify ui selection logic in MenuUI
  
• Fix rebinding not working correctly for non-first controllers
  
• Use controller-specific keys when reading their input and support multiple controllers for skills
  
• Controller input is now handled in a separate class
  
• Nutrition UI uses beautified button text instead of displaying the default ToString
  
• Make sure every game menu has a button selected, otherwise the controller will lose control
  
• RebindUI now constantly reset UI input while active and also has a single frame delay before reading any input for rebinding. This should prevent any instant rebinds to the "A" button
  
• Reset input axes after rebinding as well
  
• Add stricter deadzoning for RebindUI
  
• InputManager now uses the new APCButton for stuff
  
• Started work on APCButton which will handle all the deadzone and other fancy logic for us
  

Greetings!
It's time for another bi-weekly Sipho update!

We are experimenting with a major scoped improvement which is allowing to visit different breed zones in other than current order. Replaying the game should be much more enjoyable as you could start the game in Cra'than zones and finish the game just after fighting against beefier Seanus. In addition, if we give you ability to choose which zones to visit first, this would enable more strategic choices whether or not you would like to fight against weaker Buginis now or in later stages. We will keep you updated on our outcome of this experiment in our further updates!

While these experiments are happening in a separate branch some changes have slipped through the cracks to reach you:

• Add several cheap Cra'Than built-in layouts
  
• Add an unused rising bubbles effect
  
• Some improvements to the perspective shader
  
• Add a shader that's capable of doing perspective, sort of
  
• Update Utilitarian achievement to only start checking after first level
  
• Clamp minimum camera size to 0.1 so it doesn't crash everything
  
• Limit pusher effect sound count to 3
  
• Add Zooid Top sorting layer and fix Muck sprites being badly ordered
  
• Prevent head selection from attempting to load save with empty layout
  
• Do not lock cursor to hovered object when using aquarium eraser with relative input - fixes locking controller simulated pointer in place
  
• Hide all aquarium sub-menus when closing Aquarium - fixes possibility to enter bad UI state when opening Growth mode from Aquarium
  

Hello everyone!

The dust has settled after our participation and GameOn. We have wrapped up improvements we made for the expo in this update.

One of features of this update is an important one for all new-coming players. We need to have as good as possible first impression, so we have re-done the tutorial level. Tutorial steps have now been laid out in a less "conceptually challenging" order. It now starts with basic movement teachings which leads to growing a single zooid and using Dash skill. Then player is blocked by a rock which requires using combat skills and ends with telling how to modify your Sipho layout. Still, the tutorial is not ideal as we have seen with our eyes. Expo players have shown difficulty finding out how to grow their Sipho and some dialog-popups are still heavy with text. We will be continuing to improve it in future versions.

To ease post-tutorial playthroughs, we now also spawn your Sipho with pre-made layouts. Starting layouts are uniquely designed for each breed taking starting nutrition and how breed movement works into account. We hope this will help aligning new players with how we expect the game to be played - no more growing 5 structures in your first playthrough. Although that should still remain a possibility and would be fun to explore. Either way, as a consequence, this change will speed-up replays for veterans making zooids pre-grown.

In past few months we had reports of mysterious few second freezes of the game which would end with player Sipho being damaged. We believe we have found the culprit of said freezes and have attempted to fix the issue. It was a specific case of quadratic soft-body solver used only on player Sipho for extra detail. The detail was too subtle to risk numerical instability so we have improved general linear solution and now apply it on player Sipho as we do on any other Sipho. In addition to that, we have also added a bit more event logging of the game. If you ever encounter any kind of game mishap - please let us know in Bug Reports thread and upload your player log. We want you to have as much fun as possible!

And the ethereal changenotes, giving a glimpse into our development, are listed below:

• Report when siphos are created and killed
  
• Don't log achievement unlocked when it has been already unlocked
  
• Hide tutorial text when skipping tutorial
  
• Cleanup deformable and fix teleporting old position when last remaining zooid is removed
  
• Add TIC to credits for supporting our discord server
  
• Fix having multiple cursor controllers spawned when going in and out of gameplay
  
• Do not track player sipho with sonar
  
• Limit sonar indicator size to 2x canvas size.
  
• Make deformable more robust and decrease physics drag to compensate movement penalty
  
• Use only linear soft body matching for all siphos
  
• Fix zooids getting disconnected when repositioned in growth after game load
  
• Always use linear soft body solver instead of quadratic
  
• Do not allow NaN propagation in Deformable code
  
• Add more debug options to physics menu
  
• Add physics development menu
  
• Added some logging for player death related happenings
  
• Added a logging helper class for all kinds of logging
  
• Move meshes to mesh folder
  
• Fix one rock in tutorial
  
• Display controller-relevant tooltip when ungrowing zooids
  
• Color zooids red when in ungrow mode with controller
  
• Tweak xbox controller icon sizes
  
• Make tutorial blips show controller related help
  
• Add movement help dialog image
  
• Have camera zoomed out a bit more by default
  
• Make tutorial dialog text input agnostic
  
• Append all layout loading messages to a single message
  
• Simplify combat zooid task text
  
• Stop rotating the player if the right stick is released
  
• Increase skill binding text size
  
• Increase global TMP xbox image scale
  
• Don't glow growth ui elements if we're not growing
  
• Make tutorial prettier
  
• Fix sipho icons TMP asset not being properly set up
  
• Show correct dialogs and fix flow of tutorial
  
• Fix off-by-one error in growth
  
• Add callback to Interactive Area when it is entered
  
• Add right trigger to default gamepad skill binds
  
• Change Tutorial to require growing Movement zooid instead of structure
  
• Add currents to force player to grow a movement zooid in Tutorial
  
• Spice up the presentation power user
  
• Fix whirlpool help text color
  
• Ungrow any zooids when entering tutorial
  
• Directly return UIModule stack instance in BuildUIManager
  
• Use TextMeshPro to render tutorial blips
  
• Remove in-tutorial movement type change
  
• Start game with predefined layouts
  

Greetings!

We are bringing our latest controller support changes into the main game - Steam [controller-support] branch is no more! This means most of the game is now fully playable with controller - from start to finish.

Some controller-related things are still missing which we will add and improve current solutions in further updates. Known limitations are:

• No way to rebind controller keys
  
• No way to change your Sipho layout by moving grown zooids - you will have to ungrow and re-grow them
  
• Mouse-wheel camera zoom does not have a controller counterpart
  

Sit back on your couch and let us know how it feels to play with controller! ːlunar2019piginablanketː

We have mentioned that controller support was important to us because we might have had an opportunity to participate in a gaming conference. And we do! We will have a booth at Indie Town of GameOn on November 16-17th. We are very excited to see how people are going to play and we hope to hear your Sipho stories in person. Come chat with us!

And the long and awesome list that brought you this alternative way to play:

• Don't try to rebind the confirm button (not supported by us at the moment, since uGUI uses old input).
  
• Use text mesh pro for showing rebind option UI
  
• Fix freeze when leaving growth mode and also starting some growth-specific module action at the same time
  
• Fix zooid growth preview appearing over mouse instead of over the target growth points
  
• Fix up and clean up GrowZooid update logic
  
• Switch on Controller as primary instantly after receiving input instead of 10 seconds
  
• Auto select first enabled growth sidebar zooid UI element when current one gets disabled
  
• Don't camera shake camera and rumble controller when progressing - that was unnoticeable anyway
  
• Use layout indices for discarding invalid growth points
  
• Don't generate growth points around dead zooids
  
• Use Breed asset to define starting zooid inventories. Store Inventory on Siphonophore rather on Head zooid
  
• Reference breeds from Zooids and not other way around
  
• Add breed definition as separate asset
  
• Don't try to initialize from an empty/null inventory
  
• Add SiphoIcons TextMeshPro atlas for all icons Sipho. Usage example:
  
• Use native environment templates for each breed in head selection
  
• Don't re-randomize inventory when loading enemies from a game save
  
• Make it impossible to save Sipho layout with incorrect indexes
  
• Save inventory for every sipho, not just the player
  
• Better logic for selecting the next growth point
  
• Choose a nearby position for the next potential growth after growing a zooid instead of doing it at random
  
• Instead of trying to do some fancy growth logic in GrowZooid, use the existing growth logic inside BuildElementUI (this fixes sounds not playing when growing)
  
• Added big brutes for bug and bone levels as well
  
• Don't try to do screenshake in growth mode
  
• Show ungrow zooid key when selecting zooid
  
• Growth UI modules provide info on what they do
  
• You can now switch to skill editing/ungrowing from any UI module and you also get some helpful text that says what can you do
  
• Naming your sipho will no longer trigger every single hotkey
  
• Screenshake rumbles controllers
  
• Change the blood particle texture to something that has more texture
  
• Some more prefab updates
  
• Controller now vibrates when you tell it to
  
• Rebind UI uses text mesh pro
  
• Move out some of the beautification code into the StringBeautifier
  
• Save some reserialized prefabs
  
• Add SystemCallbacks that allows subscribing to Updates happening from unity
  
• Fix camera getting stuck in boss fight
  
• Increase skill UI key binding size
  
• Provide xbox images when returning a beautified string if possible
  
• Skill UI text uses text mesh pro
  
• Push some changed files
  
• Use menu toggle to cancel rebinding so that you could rebind some skill to the button 'b'. Also improve the input manager string beautifier a bit to return controller bindings when needed
  
• Offset controller images by a little
  
• Add a place for UIModule-specific controller help text
  
• Show the button for entering/leaving growth mode
  
• Swap keys for ungrowing and editing skills
  
• Show key for editing skills
  
• Update xbox controller sprites and integrate them into controller only text
  
• Add experimental text for editing skills
  
• Add xbox button images
  
• Added text mesh pro
  
• Add a ControllerOnlyUI script for showing... erm... controller only UI
  
• Add a method for checking if the gamepad is the primary control device
  
• Fix controls locking up when quickly mashing enter when rebinding
  
• 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
  
• 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
  
• Typo
  
• 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
  

A big thank you to all participants of the event!

It was really interesting to see what creations you are going to create in such short time. In total, we have received 10 submissions on Steam and our Discord server. For those who have missed the event - it was a drawing contest of Halloween themed Zooid. And the winner would get his or hers Zooid design re-drawn and brought to life in the game itself! We are happy to announce the first place of the contest:

Our team really loved the idea of using fallen enemies as ammo and the overall design fit Halloween theme perfectly.

Runners-up:

Beautiful renders in an impressive three-zooid entry of which we most liked Scythe design. It could invoke interesting Sipho design choices while keeping minimal melee distance in mind.

A nice render by Araylie, The Evolver species has a bold idea of storing surplus nutrition as passive buffs.


We will add "Soul-Spawner" to the game in the near future, so keep an eye for it. The match-up was close, thus we have decided to award runners-up with Sipho steam keys as well!

Thank you everyone who participated in our first, but not last, drawing contest!