Update 11
Bugfixes
- Fixed infested and AI marine shaders (on some video cards)
- Updated credits
- Fixed structures remaining in limbo is their builder is despawned
- Fixed green hive blood spray in the last mission
Update 10
Major
- Added final campaign mission
- Added endgame slideshow epilogue
- Changed Virulence mutation to send clone strike teams; renamed to “Hunters”
- Mutation icons are now different for each mutation
- Took out shield bullet reflection and ai hesitation to shoot at shields
- Added Terminus mode to custom skirmish
- Added malicious mutations mode to custom skirmish settings
Minor
- Necrophage mutation now only works on player marines
- Gave fusion shotguns a knockback
- Reworked the way knockback works slightly
- Made special attacks be cancelled if the mutation is disabled
- Made marines in protect mode counter-attack when hurt
- Made it harder to kill bunkers in mission 8 with scouts
- Added script short-circuiting to weapons tutorial
- Added another way to recycle (through weapon menu) to weapons tutorial
- Combat tutorial now has a “how to spawn marines” section
- Made the marine tab ui expandable
- Added item cost to its title on build menu
- Added exit button to main menu
- Added auto-login for last used profile
- Added fire puffs to burning human buildings
- Restored damage effects to prop structures
- Added blood puff impact to bullets
- Added blood puff velocity to create better aoe death animation
- Added swirling to most fire puffs
Bug Fixes
- Fixed “getting stuck in walls” issue
- Fixed recycle script bug in structures tutorial
- Fixed human path aborting if bumped into something (was breaking clone strike)
- Fixed some high resolution fullscreen ui issues
- Reworked entity shaders to use latest OpenGL standards
- Fixed issues if window size is different than the game asked for
- Made the directional formation move less sensitive
Miscellaneous
- Revised hive boss god mode
- Added ability to load extra lua scripts; now used for hunters mutation
- Updated ui text for virulence mutation to new hunters text
- Updated ui text for minigun and reinforcements tech
- Made weapon crate give more detailed info notice
- Changed title of shotgun class from “FUSION” to “SHOTGUN”
- Added “marine cost” note to that ui element
- Made mouse grab sensitive to window focus
- Added 4 more mutation spaces to the UI
- Made text fields in main and profile menus clear when first key is pressed
- Added username back to main menu and made the game title slide in
- Disabled profiler in release mode
Update 9
New Mission – Periapsis
The campaign is almost complete and here is the next-to-last mission in it. In this one, you get to face off against someone you’ve seen before.For this mission, I was inspired to ask what a MOBA would look like in Infested Planet. Both you and the aliens have 3 bunkers that are pumping out squads of marines and you have to tip the balance in your favour.The result is a mission that feels quite different from the other ones. You’re not as worried about protecting territory, because the marines can do a decent job of it themselves.
New Random Difficulty – Terminus
Some of you have asked for modes more difficult than The Abyss. I think that’s rather insane, but who am I to argue?I’ve been working on some AI for the final mission of the campaign. Normally the mutations are picked randomly. Well, I wrote something to have the aliens look at your build and pick the most evil mutations that exist for that build.It’s horrible, scary and unfair. When I plugged this mode into Abyss mode, I was able to complete half the map before the aliens stomped me. Yup, it’s hard.For those of you who think Abyss is a walk in the park, try the new Terminus difficulty. It’s available after finishing Abyss or in the skirmish mode browser.
Minigunner Buff
Most of the time I hear you talk about minigunners, you say that they’re underpowered. I had a bit of think and I think that they could use a buff.The first buff is that their shield allows them to survive even longer now – up to 75 seconds from 40.The other change is that I changed the “BLAST” damage type to go through shields. This includes minigun bullets, the second part of the helicoper salvo and rockets.This means that all of the things above can punch through the reflective shields. No more minigunners and clone minigunners standing there for half a minute shooting each other. This also means that you can nuke the clone minigunners with rockets if you have to.
Other Changes
- Lowered alien mine radius
- Added temporary shield to marines heli-dropped by “Reinforcements” tech
- Expanded mutation UI to handle more mutations
- Fixed objective typo in convoy mission
- Changed ammo belts not to be dropped or picked up by AI marines
- Made blast damage (rockets, minigun and helistrike) pierce shields
- Upped the resilience of minigun shields
- Fixed some human navigation bugs
- Reworked scripted marine god mode to be more reliable
- Blocked all tech effects for AI marines
- Changed marine assault mode behaviour (optimization)
- Changed prop building damage resistance (since it can be a target now)
- Fixed audio issue with lots of barriers being killed
Update 8
New Mission – Tension
Remember how I said the last mission was the most scripting I ever did for Infested Planet? Well, Tension blows that out of the water.This mission involves you and the aliens fighting over a pile of crates (remember the convoy mission?). I spent a lot of time programming the alien strike teams so that they would know what to do with the crates. They have to react to unexpected events, like you stealing a crate that the aliens were aiming for. I also added a new AI mode to marines that allow them to escort crate carriers.The result is a tug of war between you and the alien team. You have to stop them from stealing your crates and tow your crates back to the base at the same time. Try the new mission out and see how you like it.
Other Changes
Since we are getting close to the end of the campaign, I went through the mission rewards and added some of the later technologies to the campaign missions. Previously, the only way to get them was to play the random missions, but now you’ll unlock them if you finish the scripted missions as well.
Update 7
A new mission is out for Infested Planet in the second September update.
New Mission – Anabasis
After the dramatic events of Memento Mori, you get to see both the Sarge and the Doctor on the battlefield in this mission.Both of them have teams present on the map, doing their own thing. It’s up to you to make sure that the aliens don’t eat the characters.This mission has been possibly the hardest to script so far, with a lot of custom code to get the AI teams to behave. Try it out and let me know what you think.
Other Changes
- New Icon for “Reinforcements” tech
- A bunch of work on another mission that wasn’t finished enough to put in the patch
Update 6
The first patch of September is here, bringing a new mission with it.
New Mission – Memento Mori
I’m very pleased with the newest addition to the campaign – the “Memento Mori” mission. How long can you hold out against the alien advance? Play this mission and find out.A lot of players have asked for a survival-style mission. This mission adds something close to it, in scripted form. The experience from making and balancing it will help me to create a random survival mode, if I ever get to it.A big thing has been finding a balance between the aliens steamrolling the player, and the marines getting a chance to counterattack. I’m pretty happy with the way it works in the new mission – dead hives drop BP crates!
Other Changes
I took a week to spend with people I love, so a lot of time was spent on looking adorable and silly. Still, I managed to squeeze some small, extra fixes into this patch.
- “Foundations” mission will ask you to recycle marines now. People were getting stuck on that, since the script didn’t know about the new marine spawning
- Radial bars now fade to show gradations of progress and HP
Update 6
Infested Planet Update 0.74
New Mission – The Return
The campaign has been extended with a new mission – “The Return” – where you face off against an old enemy. You have some help from your army buddies, but you’ll have to rescue them first.This mission steps up the difficulty a bit, by introducing the Guardian mutations to the scripted campaign. You’re going to have to figure out how to deal with them.Fortunately, there’s a new technology to help you out.
New Technology – Heli-Drops
In the last update the “Reinforcements” tech was made obsolete by the ability to spawn as many marines as you like. In this update, Reinforcements has been completely reworked.When you build the tech station, helicopters will ferry your respawning marines to the front lines. Instead of having to walk from your territory, they’ll be dropped right into battle. This can be incredibly useful if your team is being killed quickly and needs fast reinforcements. You can keep up the pressure on the guardian hives and stop them from regenerating.The price for this useful tech is 5 BP and an ammo cost every time a helicoper drops off marines. This means that you can’t fight a rolling battle forever – eventually you’ll run out of resources.
Update 5
Infested Planet Update 0.73
MAJOR
- Added campaign payment dialog and failed mission payments
- Added unlimited marine spawning and UI for it
- Added raid mode to custom maps
- Added presets to custom game mode
- Increased maximum build points to 999
- Added a new hive tower layout, radially clumped instead of mixed
- Made engineering reduce damage by 4x to buildings (and increase shield projector duration by 2)
- Made guardians less likely to flee with more regeneration trips
- Removed guardian scout-detecting ability
- Made guardians more vulnerable to sap damage
- Made guardians more vulnerable to blast damage
- Changed Calcification mutation to spawn barriers along swarm paths
- Added Reflection mutation that makes barriers reflect bullets
- Changed brutes to spawn barriers on death instead of bullet reflect
MINOR
- Tweaked respawning to prefer proximity to main team
- Made double-click attack move an option
- Fixed crash with custom mode if there are initial mutations with an empty queue
- Removed Wild Mutation
- Fixed crash with Abyss raid missions
- Fixed typo for Crow’s Neck mission
- Fixed skirmish and custom mode UI reaction to video mode switches
- Fixed text entry on non QWERTY keyboards
- Fixed bug with Burrowing Hive in Raid missions
- Fixed music switching in custom mode menu
- Made GL 2.1 an optional requirement
- Fixed email address validation
TECHNICAL
- Disabled window icon, since it stopped working with SDL2
- Fixed inplace button response to mouse in/out events when disabled
- Deleted SDLMain.m – not needed in SDL2
- Did some research into multiplayer prospects (it’s still hard)
- Added ability to specify mutation pre-requisites
- Fixed lua CallFunction issue
- Added ability to drop shadow on text
- Added shadow to some UI text
- Added CSV exporter to metrics
- Changed event sort order for sharing server report
- Reduced the number of indexes for event table
- Added remote_api access point to sharing server (for bulk loader)
- Switched to SDL2 for OSX
- OSX compile fixes
Infested Planet Patch 0.72.1
The other big (but invisible) thing is that the game now keeps track of how long it takes you to finish each level. I’m hoping that I can use this info to build some community features in future updates. For example, I can make a system that detectes people’s favourite random maps. This will also allow me to see which levels and mutations are too hard – I can get data when people fail a level.
What about privacy? I think that the system works fairly reasonably. The game does send data online, but it’s only “Level Started” and “Level Ended” messages. No personal data is ever sent – everything is anonymous.
Major
- Custom game mode – Tweak everything (in Skirmish menu)
- Added foundation for possible future online map sharing
- Resolution changes are now instant
Minor
- Added update timer and notification signup
- Made announcements speed up if there are a lot of them
- Increased marine radius
- Made mines vulnerable to SAP damage, but also resistant
- Added mouse-wheel scrolling to options and campaign
- Added mouse grabbing option
- Fixed out-of-bounds bug in pathing, if the path is trivial
- Overhauled campaign research descriptions
- Fixed centering bug with research widget
Technical
- Added update timer and notification signup
- Switched to SDL2
- Updated entity arranger to filter infested structure placement more flexibly
- Added fatal error message boxes
- Added more error messages on init failure
- Added init checks for OpenGL version 3.0
- Reworked mutation system to randomize on level start, to tie mutations to level seed
- Added ability to load debug constants
- Added player UUIDs
- Added Metrics
- Changed double-tap group focus to use global timer, not world timer
- Added guard code to Hive Spawner Effect (to prevent spawns outside of the map)
Infested Planet Patch 0.71
The two big things for this patch are the new missions. There’s one more mission in the campaign – a convoy escort job. I’ve also added a new random game mode type. It’s timed and you have to race against the clock to kill as much stuff as possible. The more you kill, the more bonus cash you get. The trick is that when you kill hives, they’re replaced with bunkers. If you let them be destroyed, you lose cash. So choose – do you want to push farther into the aliens and risk your money going down the drain?
Another biggish thing that has changed is the pathfinding code. The old one had a bunch of problems, so I replaced it. The catch is that it’s not entirely finished yet – there will probably be new bugs, so report strange pathfinding when you see it.
Major
- Finished first pass on “Preparations” mission (NEW CAMPAIGN MISSION)
- Added new random game mode: Raids
- Replaced pathfinding code (expect some new bugs); this will allow large entities to move around the game map, if I ever make them
Minor
- Double-tapping group # centers view on the group
- Added failsafes in video mode initialization; fall back on windowed mode if can’t init
- Centered game window in desktop
- Prevented damage to boss hive before the script expects it
- Fixed snipers doing damage to shielded entities
- Tweaked description for sniper
- Fixed path colour for chained marine orders
- Fixed graphical glithch (that looks like picture-in-picture)
- Hopefully fixed a common crash dealing with entity handles
- Hopefully fixed issues with old Catalyst drivers
- Tweaked hive’s IMMUNE message again (to only appear when laser has no effect)
- Changed “Command Cancelled” to be a white message
- Added info message for group binding
- Tweaked human path termination (when colliding with objects) to only work for buildings
- Fixed toggle button border eating clicks
Technical
- Replaced polygon boolean ops code
- Updated debug missions to new map init format
- Added prop building blueprint graphic
- Tweaked guardian tower replacement so it works even when towers don’t respawn
- Changed all random levels to LUA
- Refactored VectorMap out of GameWorld header
- Added private impl to CGameWorld
- Added more safety buffer for path short-circuiting for humans
- Added Framebuffer object for future use
- Switched pathfinding to delunay-triangulation based paths
- Reworked all drawArray calls into shader draw calls
- Added RC file for windows version info
The game will auto-update on Steam. If you’re playing the Mac OS or the DRM-free PC version, just use the download links that you got originally.
Update 2
Patch 0.705 Update
- A new campaign mission, focusing on convoys
- A new random map gameplay mode (Either timed attack or horde mode)
- Switch graphics from OpenGL to DirectX, hopefully increasing stability
- Double-tapping a # key centers view on team
- More? The DirectX switch might be very hard to do, so I’m holding off on promises until I know how much work it is
Infested Planet is on Steam!
Update 1
And a Monster Patch
I’ve just updated the game version on BMT, so if you use your download links, you can get version 0.703. There are really too many things to list in it. Here are some highlights:
- New type of research in the campaign - single-mission buffs (like a free minigun)
- New couple of missions for the campaign
- A new map type – jungle
- Evil new mutation types on Abyss difficulty
- Spiffy new main menu
- The ability to turn your marine formation with RMB+drag
- Keyboard shortcut tooltips
