Hey, everyone.
A few words on Greenlight
I just wanted to say a few words about Steam Greenlight. The vast majority of the responses have been positive, and the negative commentary came with constructive feedback. All in all it's been a good experience and Steam Marines even managed to reach 2% of the "necessary positive votes" this week!
I put "necessary positive votes" in quotes because as some of you may know 10 games were accepted onto Steam from Greenlight this past week, none of which were even close to 100%; the closest was Black Mesa which I believe was at around 50% when Greenlit. Congratulations to everyone who made it!
So perhaps Steam Marines only has 12% more to go? :D
What's been going on?
Version 0.6.1a is finally out. This is mostly a bugfix/gameplay smoothing build. I got lots of feedback since the launch of Greenlight on the Steam Marines page back in August. A lot of the changes in this build are based on that feedback!
Here's the changelog:
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New Features
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Added mouse movement and facing controls (LMB to move, RMB to face).
Added a “Safe Zone” around the squad when entering a new area.
Made left panels clickable to select squad members.
Set default zoom level to 2x size.
Added barrels back into the game, except they're now called crates.
Added pressure plate booby traps/land mines.
Added left side squad member plate highlighting.
Added a powered state to elevators; can't use elevators that are powered off.
Added an arrow animation to indicate a working elevator.
Added “Use Elevator” keybind to Tutorial Overlay.
Made monsters susceptible to neutral booby traps.
Make elevator tile not destructible.
Improved custom keybinding code to allow for key modifiers for all actions.
Increased monster spawn rate at later levels.
Increased monster cap to a maximum of 64.
Added a 15% chance for crates to have loot.
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Bug Fixes
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Refactored squad member swap code. Should be faster now.
Refactored function that enforced squad positions.
Fixed bug with showing/hiding fog of war tiles when moving rapidly.
Fixed key modifiers messing up facing keybinds.
Fixed squad members not always auto-switching when killed by environmental effects such as getting knocked into space or booby traps.
Fixed squad members being able to fire after entering Guard Mode.
Fixed crash when environmental damage kills the last squad member.
Fixed mouse movement/facing inaccuracy and desynchronization issues.
Fixed bug with squad member health not updating after taking landmine damage.
What's cooking next?
I intend on reassessing Guard and Follow modes for the next build. Follow Mode is good for moving the squad through areas quickly but it suffers from some odd behavior when initially getting into the mode. Guard Mode is a somewhat strange mechanic for Steam Marines because firing is typically only along cardinal lines. I'll be thinking hard about whether to keep it as auto-spread fire or revamping it in some way.
I'll also be implementing objective based gameplay such as triggering levers and switches to accomplish mini-tasks or to power the elevators. More stuff to do rather than just get from point A to point B, and not all of these tasks will be mandatory. I'd like the ability to hack terminals or engage console buttons to seal doors, shut off enemy AI, or even power security cameras and turrets! In other words, look out for more options coming soon.
Detocroix is also working on environmental art; pipes, vents (which monsters may or may not burst from), corpses, PDAs, and the aforementioned levers/terminals/cameras.
Thank you for reading and please feel free to leave comments or to hop on the official Steam Marines forums and say hi!
