Hey everyone!

We're excited to finally be able to provide a new version to the public! ːhealthyhearthlingː

Some of you may believe that progress has come to a halt, however this is far from the case.
If you're a member of our Discord server, you're presumably already aware of this.

We continued to publish almost weekly updates, but only to our supporter branch.
This was due to the fact that there were a lot of unstable changes that needed to be properly evaluated.

There has been a longer gap between updates due to this and a few additional factors that we'd like to share with you:

• For the boss 5 update, we conducted a closed test phase, which revealed that it required further development before it can be released to the general public.
  We want Boss 5 to be exceptional because it is meant to be the game's finale. Dont worry, we have some post-endgame stuff planned as well.
  
• During the Christmas/New Year period, we were on vacation for a few days.
  
• We've upgraded our Unity version and switched from collab to plastic scm for source control.
  This change took a significant amount of effort to ensure that everything was in good state.
  

In the upcoming Dev Diary, we'll go through this in further detail, as well as our plans for the future.

Arcade revamp

It's finally done. The Arcade has been completely revamped.
There will be some minor changes and more content, but in general the building is fully functional.

The new Arcade has three minigames (Lucky Wheel, Jumble, and Adventure) with similar yet distinct gameplay. All of the games require the use of Arcade resources and provide various rewards.
The amount you wager has an influence on the quantity of resources/gems you may win, but it also affects your luck factor.
In all three games, the luck factor is crucial since it influences your chances of receiving better rewards.
If you wish to unlock additional modules, artifacts, or skillpoints, you should strive for the highest potential luck factor.

You may also win cards from a specific set in each minigame. There are presently nine sets of five cards each. In addition, each card comes in a variety of rarities.

A set's completion unlocks additional skillpoints based on the set's maximum rarity, for a total of 32 skillpoints per set.

The Arcade provides you with a total of 1488 skillpoints, which can come in useful at any stage of the game.

Hardmode Challenges

Once you reach a certain point in the game, the few challenges that exist are no longer difficult.
As a consequence, we've added a hardmode for challenges. The Town's Tower boosts aren't applied in hardmode, and waves are doubled. It all boils down to finding the best blueprint for the challenge.
Let us know what you come up with!

AI alterations

AI scripts can now be organized into packages that can be exported and imported.
Some bugs and annoyances have been addressed (see changelog below)

Changelog

New Stuff

• added hard mode challenges
  
• added audio sync setup to Boss 3 in Statue of Cubos
  
• added option 'Size (UI)'
  
• added experimental option 'Dynamic Rendering' to disable rendering when the game is not focused
  
• added AI function 'UI: Size'
  
• added Power Plant Boost for Arcade
  
• added Power Plant Boost for Trading Post
  
• added tooltips to all military requirements
  
• added tooltips to crafter scan requirements
  
• added tutorial to Headquarters
  
• added tutorial to Arcade
  
• added trading cards to Arcade
  
• added worker for Arcade
  
• added AI functions for Arcade
  
• added skill 'Synergy' to the Workshop
  
• added skill 'Foretelling' to Arcade
  
• added skill 'Gamblers Luck' to Arcade
  
• added skill 'High Stakes' to Arcade
  
• added skill 'Fate Forging' to Arcade
  
• added skill 'Extended Possibilities' to Arcade
  
• added skill 'Determination' to Arcade
  
• added exotic skill 'Metallic Tokens' to Arcade
  
• added exotic skill 'Spiked Tokens' to Arcade
  
• added exotic skill 'Charged Tokens' to Arcade
  
• added neutral damage infinity perk
  
• added Arcade boost infinity perk
  
• added artifact 'Heart of the Cards'
  
• added module 'Refined Armor'
  
• added module 'Neutral Response'
  
• added module 'Fracture'
  
• added module 'Reboot'
  
• added module 'Power of the Cat'
  
• added module 'Void'
  

Changes

• revamped the Arcade building
  
• replaced 'favor conversion' Town Perk with 'coin rewards'
  
• changed base conversion rate of Arcade from 100000 to 25000
  
• downgrading modules inside the Workshop does not require a skill anymore
  
• changed Workshop skill 'Reforge'
  
• changed icon of Workshop skill 'engineering'
  
• changed Headquarters UI to match the new style
  
• modifier UI in town now properly refreshes upon reopening
  
• AI scripts can now be put into packages
  
• converting an invalid double to an int via the AI does not throw an exception anymore
  
• using a negative length for the AI substring function now returns an empty string
  
• optimized Tower customization duplicate vertex check
  
• conversion menu now features a parser for engineering and named formatting
  
• hidden strings (displayed as ???) now exclude formatting tag characters
  
• lowered base scanning price for items in the crafter
  
• asteroid clusters do not create Factory item rewards anymore that are currently uncraftable or unobtainable in the Factory
  
• asteroid item reward tiers are now linked to your current military tier
  
• increased contrast of building buttons in the building skills menu
  
• background of skills and military perk UI is now slightly darker in favor of higher contrast
  
• background of skills now gets a slight tint based on selected building color
  
• removed debug message from Fabricator
  
• removed slight transparency from Trading Post
  

Fixes

• fixed bulwark module tag
  
• fixed color dialog transparency issue
  
• fixed annihilist contract internally searching for #neutral tagged modules instead of #univeral
  
• fixed infinity splash applying damage modifiers twice to itself
  
• fixed bug that allowed items to be cloned in the Factory
  
• fixed bug in gems experiment that could produce a non-gem with 100% gem chance
  
• fixed typo in water experiment
  
• fixed negative input for Fabrication queue
  
• fixed buff display sometimes showing invalid buff entries
  
• fixed buff display sometimes producing errors in the log files
  
• fixed AI throwing an exception when using substrings with a negative length
  
• fixed dialog headers sometimes wrapping
  

Technical

• refactored options
  
• refactored attribute modifier system
  

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