Hey, everyone!
If you enjoy Steam Marines please do head over to Steam Greenlight and vote for it!
It's been a month since the last build and stuff has been cooking. The big ticket changes are New Game Plus, Hard Difficulty, the new Revenant boss, and a bunch of art!
New Game Plus
New Game Plus allows you to start the game over with your current marines, all of their experience, ranks, talents and equipped gear, your inventory, and your score. Infinite NGP means your potential high game score has no limit.
Bah! Steam Marines is too easy!
Okay, smarty pants - I got you covered, too :) Have you been rofflestomping Brutes and Flamejacks? Do the antics of Thopters and Amputators merely make you laugh? Hard difficulty is here to make you shake a leg. How much harder is it? Well the Hard difficulty modifies your score by 125%. Which is probably very unfair. Speaking of unfair...
Ohai
The Revenant is back, and he's more of a jerk this time around. He has buddies. He spawns buddies. He's faster. He hates elevators that work. The aliens with energy weapons aren't too friendly, either.
Art, you say?
Oh yeah. Art. For squad creation, for victory, for defeat. Fight and die in style.
That's not all. Build v0.7.9a is huge. As usual you can download the game directly from IndieDB, the official website, or the official forums. Thanks for reading and happy robot (and alien) hunting!
The changelog follows:
v0.7.9a
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New/Changed Features
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- "Hard" difficulty mode added.
- New Game Plus implemented. Reaching the elevator on the fifth level of the Medical Deck wins the game demo/alpha. This allows you to start the game over from the beginning with your current squad, all gear, talents, stats, et cetera. Score is not entered on the high score table until you actually lose the game!
- High Score table now records the game difficulty and game version of that run.
- Completion of the alpha is the first three decks; Command, Engineering, and Medical. Each New Game Plus adds 1000 points to that run.
- Difficulty now affects score. Easy has a multiplier of 0.75, Normal of 1.0, and Hard of 1.25. Bonuses and penalties are scaled separately then aggregated because scores can be negative.
- A New Game Plus counter was added to the high scores screen next to the final deck/level.
- New Game Plus counter appears on the center/middle of the main menu screen while a game is in-progress or for a save state preview.
- You cannot adjust game difficulty in New Game Plus.
- On Normal difficulty subsequent New Game Plus runs are harder due to enemy stat gains.
- The Revenant is now the boss of the Engineering Deck. Health, armor, and action points were increased and base melee damage decreased.
- Revenions can spawn on any adjacent tile from Revenants. On Normal difficulty and up they can also spawn from Revenions.
- Easy difficulty monster stats buffed across the board.
- All weapons now have a flat 1 AP cost to fire.
- When Guard Mode is triggered all available AP is placed in a separate AP pool used for Guard Mode shots. No more infinite enemy turn shooting!
- Base trap damage reduced to 4.
- Traps are now really easy to see. I will feel zero sympathy if you step on them!
- Added new art backgrounds.
- The New Game Button now clears any old save file and prompts you whenever there is a save file detected or a game is currently in progress.
- Enemy spawn chance from grating tiles has been toned down to 10%.
- The escape key now skips the introductory text sequence.
- Dispensers potentially give more ammunition.
- Increased dispenser spawn chance on open levels. Cramped levels have less chance to spawn dispensers.
- Significantly decreased starting ammo for all classes.
- Added steam vent animation to grating tiles.
- Added wall pipes for environment aesthetics.
- Added portholes which allow sight through the wall tiles they reside on.
- Reduced firing delay for marines.
- Increased the number of traps that can spawn per level.
- You may hear tapping noises...
- The Medical Deck gets a new ranged enemy unit. Beware!
- Enemies are a lot more aggressive when searching out marines on Normal difficulty.
- Amputators and Ripsaws are now more aggressive.
- Amputators and Ripsaws are more watchful of marines on the player's turn.
- Removed primary and secondary mission objectives on deck levels.
- Added context sensitive button for using an elevator.
- Added more armor variants/names that affect random stats.
- Added more context sensitive marine dialogue and banter.
- Fixed Grenadier class weapon "Howler" sprite and inventory icon bitmaps.
- Escape exits the New Game Button prompt from the main menu when there is a game in progress.
- Implemented a credits screen at the end of the game.
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Bug Fixes
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- Dispensers again spawn in proper positions next to horizontal walls.
- Fixed some walls being able to be seen through.
- Fixed mouse cursor sometimes not appearing on the death screen.
- Fixed trap positions on lifted tiles.
- Fixed fog of war not always covering to the very edge of the map.
- Fixed not being able to click on a marine's talent buttons on the bottom of the icon.
- Adjusted potential long armor names and shifted swap/keep buttons to avoid text overlap on the armor swap screen.
- The weapon swap screen can be cleared (current weapon kept) with the escape key.
- Marine health overlay updates properly after environmental damage.
- Fixed main menu scrolling starfield from freezing if escape key is pressed after game loss.
- Centered and aligned certain UI elements on stat and end level screens.
- Fixed squad creation screen not always properly synchronizing class portraits.
- Fixed spelling errors.
- Mouse move/face actions now properly short-circuit unit auto-switching.
- Fixed being able to fire with non-fire keys with fire control toggled on.
- Fixed close sync issue with layered GUI menus.
- Fixed some enemy units spawning with mismatched current and maximum health.
- Centered "I.S.S. Orion" on the main menu after game loss.
- Fixed random key pressing sometimes breaking menu order (e.g. on the end level screen).
