There's some great new stuff in this release. Notably I've reworked the entire spawning mechanism for game objects and fixed up some issues that were causing significant lag.
Cool-stuff wise, there's a new "Ice ball" which is a huge ice asteroid. When it explodes, a number of crystals are released in proportion to its size. This brings the guns back into play, as does the new mechanism of asteroids continuing a chain if destroyed by gunfire.
The biggest news is likely the imminent iOs release currently under review. I had issues getting the banners working, so I've dropped ads from the iOs and apple players will instead be able to pay about a dollar to play.
Blow by blow updates:
- Added ice 'stroids. They have a crystal center.
- Huge performance improvements. Totally rewrote spawning to remove late-game lag.
- Fixed issues with fonts impacting performance.
- Fixed up scoring for individual ships, no longer a fudge-job.
- Added "Scoring Efficiency" leaderboard, which shows a ratio of your total score divided by the total seconds lived, essentially your average "points per second"
- Ice radar for cruiser and mycos
- A number of small bugfixes along the way.
Future ideas:
- Antigravity field that pushes things away.
- Tractor beams that attract certain items.
- Different types of weapons - beams / missiles, etc.
- More ships
- Ship upgrades
As always, any and all feedback (good and bad) is taken on and gratefully accepted.
If you do want to chat about something strafer-related, I mostly hang out at reddit.com/r/spacestrafer.
Happy strafing :)