MAJOR Crystal Comet update for 28 February 2024

Crystal Comet 1.0:

FUN STUFF:

• Added new music for the wyvern / dragon level. Wink wink.
• Added new priorities to the allied AI for where they should move & when.
• Updated Challenger ship's special effect to now only affect enemies within a radius of the ship but now also does damage per second & causes knockback.
• Buffed hover ship's special ability. Boom.
• Buffed speed demon ship's special ability - Ride the wave.
• Added a rumble to the previous special abilities on activation (for both) and added rumble duration for Amber's.
• Added rumble on activation for alien's special ability (rumble can be turned off via the menu).

MAJOR BUG FIX:

• Fixed an issue where the allied AI can continue playing without you in true last boss mode if you died...
• Fixed a bug where eyeball boss steam achievement was not being unlocked.

MINOR BUG FIXES:

• Fixed level director not ambushing you when it is supposed to.. Again..
• Fixed an animation issue where small enemy books where not displaying their flying animation sometimes.
• Made some general minor optimisations.
• Fixed sound effect still playing from power up wand shot after bullet has hit a target or gone off-screen etc.
• Fixed bug where background was not scrolling during the "Bone boss".
• Fixed issue where music was cutting out too abruptly during TLB battle. It now fades between transitions.

MINOR CHANGES:

• Added animation to 'machines' level projectiles.
• Added animation to "orange" enemy projectiles during stealth level. Reference intended.
• Reduced the amount of invincibility frames a player/AI team mates receives when being hit in certain situations.
• Nerfed the allied AI's accuracy a little to make them more 'human'. Sounds minor but actually broke the entire game and took a while to fix. Dev life.
• Made some adjustments to how the allied AI move during dialogue scenes.
• Made some changes to the allied AI priority systems. Such as collecting things like health, powerups etc.
• Reduced a lot of particle effects that were causing some confusion.
• Changed the sprite for the shield power up before it is collected. Looked a bit too transformer like before.
• Updated a sprite for a certain enemy attack that shall remain nameless.. Reading this back now I don't even remember which one.
• Reduced some special FX for Amber's and XC69's special abilities as these were causing visibility issues.
• Reduced time to charge a 'charged shot' from 2 seconds to 1.5. Please refer to your instruction manual pilots.
• Changed an award on score screen from "Dead collector" to "Gem collector" - This was originally from when "Comet fragments" used to be "Kill tokens" - check previous patch notes for more on this.
• Reduced the speed demon's ship's special ability duration to compensate for the buff to the ability.
• Increased the speed of certain player bullets & power up bullets.
• Re-adjusted ship amount costs to unlock in random mode as players can get much more crystals or gems now.
• Alien ship's special ability now does poison burst damage at the end of the effect rather than damage over time now.
• Alien's slow time special ability now signals when the effect is over.

MAJOR CHANGE:

• Removed the following power ups from the true last boss mode: Decoy, freeze shot (or ray) & wand shot. They may be added back in at some point - Will see after testing & tweaking. They just don't feel 'fun' in that mode.

MINOR SCREW UPS:

• Fixed a missing quotation mark during the start of the dragon level during a dialogue.

NEXT WEEK ON I THINK IT'S KINDA DONE:

• Welp. I need to get to actually promoting this thing properly. I'll probably support the game after launch for ~1 month-ish. Unless it does really really well then I'd do a lot more with it: like localisation, console ports & additional enemies as well as bosses for random mode (which would mean a lot more other updates knowing me) - but we shall see what happens!

• I'm pretty happy with how the game has turned out, It has 3 modes separated by difficulty: story, random & the TLB (mode) without using difficulty sliders. It's almost like 3 games in one. Lots of characters to play as. Lots of replayability. Excellent music. Tense action & comedy. Voice acting. AI team mates. Branching paths. Multiple endings. etc. etc. etc.

• It's pretty much the game I wanted to exist that didn't until now. I think I've done enough to make a unique game for the players. It's sad it's coming to an end (for now) but it's been a long 3+ years: I have learned a lot more than I bargained for! Also, there's lots of other things I would love to make so stay tuned! - Plus a sequel one day would be nice.. ;).

• Special thanks to all the beta testers: You "rock".