I rather give it away in the title... and on twitter and probably other places as well, but yes - we have a new public build. Build 0.8.5.1 is available via the Isomer launcher as of now and includes a big change to the way resources are stored and a number of more subtle additions like enhanced notifications of combat, a map (!) and more enemy facilities to find and explore.
Here's the run down ..
Change 1 - Resource storage
As of this version, you will need to build storage silos in order to store resources for each type. Each storage silo gives 150 storage space for the resource type it is designed for (plus the dropship gives you 50 free storage too) and will show how much it is storing by how full it is! Once you run out of storage for a particular resource you will not gain any more until you build additional silos.
Be careful, if enemies manage to destroy a storage silo you may lose the resources stored within!
Change 2 - Cartography
Another new structure is the Sensor Platform and, as with the storage silos, this must be built on top of a mini power core. Building this will give you access to a minimap in the corner of the screen and a toggle-able fullscreen map mode! These are really useful for seeing where the nearby resource veins are as well as giving you a wider view over the world.
Change 3 - Better notifications when units are under fire or in combat
Adding to the notifications at the bottom of the screen are arrows allowing you to scroll to and easily find where your troops are engaging the enemy.
There are also new notifications when the combat is happening above or below the current view.
It feels like a small change, but after testing the build for a while prior to release I can't imagine playing the game without these new notifications!
Change 4 - Newly fancified dropship
The starting dropship has been completely rebuilt and is now much larger to accommodate the resource storage silos. It comes with one free silo for each resource type.
Minor changes
The cost of blocks like the mini powercore has been drastically reduced (it is about a third of what it used to be) as it is required for more structures. There have been a handful of economy tweaks making structures like healing totems and transporter pads cheaper to build also.
A number of new enemy buildings have been added and some existing designs tweaked to make them more interesting or challenging.
Workers and other assorted underling types are now 'smarter'! When being shot at when they are mid building or mining, they will no longer wait until they finish the task before trying to engage the enemy shooting at them.
There have also been a number of bugfixes.
Development log video
I made a short Let's Play (although it turned into more of a devlog) video to explain some of the changes I've described above. Be kind to me, it was my first proper Youtube video
A complete change list is below.
- New: Added new dropship to game.
- New: Added alien sensor platform which enables access to the minimap and full screen map view.
- New: Added better under fire alerts.
- New: Added three new cosmetic control bank sprites.
- New: Added three new buildings.
- New: Added display of resource storage capacities to HUD.
- Improvement: Reworked how resources are stored and handled internally. All resources are now stored in silos which must be constructed by the player.
- Improvement: Reduced cost of small powercore.
- Improvement: Refactored and improved entity combat logic, entities will not stop building and mining tasks to return fire if being attacked by the enemy.
- Improvement: Greatly improved building.pfb and smallfueldump.pfb
- Improvement: Make blocking jungle sprites no longer block vision.
- Improvement: Fixed bugs in prefabs causing friendly units to spawn in different parts of the world.
- Improvement: Refactored EntityPos to improve checking of validity without relying on heap allocations.
- Bugfix: Fixed bug causing healing totems to heal all units in the game, including enemies in vicinity.
- Bugfix: Disabled blocking building on top of existing sprites (reverted former bugfix which caused different problems).
- Bugfix: Fixed view centering on dropship bug.
As with before, the new build can be updated from inside the Isomer launcher supplied with the Isomer Alpha.