Bionic Dues:Alpha Release Notes

Alpha 0.904

(Not yet released; we're still working on it!)

• In the store, exo customization, and inventory windows the message log now disappears after a little while of showing like it used to (it does not hide outright since that's also where MP text chat goes).
  • Thanks to Histidine for reporting.

• The visuals of your sidebar abilities are now not disabled-looking all the time.

• Fixed a number of oddities with large objects.
  • Note that this fix will not apply to existing missions you are already in, but will affect new missions in existing savegames.
  • Fixed them not completely disappearing when destroyed.
  • Fixed them looking like they were in sensors still when they were partially in line of sight.

• Fixed a bug where shooting explosive runes was costing you extra ammo for each further rune that got triggered from it.
  • Thanks to orzelek for reporting.

• The part picker has been heavily redesigned.
  • Rather than showing partly over the exo customization screen itself, it now hides that and shows as its own thing. While the other was great, there's just no way to show all the info that needs to be shown when space is restricted that way.
  • There is now a "Return to Customization" button that lets you easily get back to the other window.
  • The tooltips on the individual items are gone again, and instead the description texts at the bottom of the screen now include all that information in much larger spaces set aside for them. The font of the stuff at the bottom has also been shifted to a more compact one so that it can actually all fit.
  • Thanks to Aeson and Tridus for various suggestions that helped lead to these changes.

• Fixed a couple of typos.
  • Thanks to Aeson, mrhanman and Histidine for reporting.

• Some of the parts that increase "all shield stats" now say "all shield-system stats" to be more clear.
  • Thanks to Tridus for inspiring this change.

• All references to "health" have been instead changed to "shields." This should make things a lot clearer.
  • Thanks to Aeson, Gemzo, Tridus, and orzelek for suggesting.

• Added another group of 8 cover object graphics.

• AmmoBot is now fully lit and animated.

• ThiefBot is now fully lit and animated.

• MantaBot is now fully lit and animated.

• RazorBot is now fully lit and animated.

• The "hover here for more stats" thing on the left side of the customization window has been replaced with a scrolling text area that gives you way more information without hovering.

• When you are viewing the exo customization screen, all of the stats for the bot as a whole now show you descriptions of what they are. So you can find out just what the heck regen and regen window are this way, etc.
  • Thanks to mrhanman and Misery for suggesting.

• The exos and city and character portraits all now have labels on them with their names.
  • Thanks to Coppermantis and Histidine for suggesting.

• Fixed a bug in the last version where the handcrafted bots were actually not even showing up in the first missions!
  • Thanks to orzelek and nas1m for reporting.

• The stats scaling for the enemies toward later days had drifted into the land of insanity, and have now been brought back down.
  • This is definitely fine for bosses, or at least more in the realm of fine. But if it seems too low for regular enemies in practice, do let us know and we can split those out.
  • Thanks to Histidine for reporting.

• The TethysBot special ability has been altered so that it only happens for at most the first 5 shots that hit her, and sometimes fewer.
  • Thanks to Histidine for inspiring this change.

• Robots should no longer shoot at player mines.
  • Thanks to mrhanman for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where new images being loaded would cause the startup screen to flash.
  • Thanks to mrhanman for reporting.

Alpha 0.903

(Released September 18th, 2013)

• Changed how mines/tripwires/etc do their "on stepped on" logic so they no longer fire when an entity is being put on a tile during game-load or because an exo is switching in to that tile.
  • This prevents the situation where you step on a mine with a weakened exo and the mines kill it, then immediately damage the next exo. In fact, if that resulted in the second exo's death sometimes this caused an immediate mission loss despite having more exos to switch in (not sure why).

• Baseline part stats have been bumped up four rows on the table.
  • Thanks to Misery for inspiring this change.

• The "Blockade" object type has been renamed to "False Wall" as it was confusing with the Blockade missions previously (the two have nothing to do with one another).
  • Thanks to Breach for inspiring this change.

• The default message log in the upper right corner now stays around forever, like most roguelikes.
  • Thanks to Breach for suggesting.

• The tooltips for objects and units have all been made so they appear immediately, rather than requiring you to hold left-click.
  • They have also been greatly condensed vertically so that this is no longer an issue. The information shown is the same, as is the font size, though.
  • Thanks to Misery, Tridus, and others for suggesting.

• Blockade missions now have half as many enemies as before, as they are supposed to be exceptionally easy.
  • Thanks to Breach for inspiring this change.

• The amount of buffer zone between yourself and enemies at the start of the game has been increased from 6 tiles to 10. This should prevent all cases where enemies immediately have firing lines on you right at the start of a mission.
  • Thanks to Breach for inspiring this change.

• Several part stats now have non-scaling bases to bump up their initial values. So +attack now starts at 12% instead of 2%, but the scaling up for higher-level items is only applied to the original 2%, etc.
  • Thanks to Misery for inspiring this change.

• Mines can now be blown up by players shooting them, but the mines also now have more health so that you can't just one-shot them with your pistol or something.
  • Thanks to orzelek for reminding us that this was not working properly.

• The way that the attack overlays show over top of multi-tile objects is now much better, working like you would expect now.

• Grenade launcher base damage is now 400 instead of 300.
  • Thanks to madcow and Coppermantis for suggesting.

• Stealth is no longer hard-locked into the first ability slot on your ability bar (which was making it look broken if you took it off).
  • Thanks to Breach for reporting.

Alpha 0.902

(Released September 8th, 2013)

• Fixed a display bug where the amount of power generated by an auxiliary reactor or whatever would display as 4000 instead of 40, etc. FWIW it was counting correctly in the stats.
  • Thanks to Misery for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where the part effect that gave a +% to attack power of all your exos weapons was... well, giving you a whole lot more than it said it would.
  • Thanks to Misery for the report.

• Fixed a bug where your using the Minelayer would actually deploy a... well, a computer terminal. There was an accident involving testing code. And then an accident involving the programmer.
  • Thanks to mrhanman for the report.

• Improved the sentry turret placement tooltip to say:
  • Left-click to place a sentry turret in front of you. If you don't like what direction you are facing, you can use the arrow keys to change your facing without actually moving.
  • Also updated the description for mines and virus similarly.
  • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.

• Toggling stealth is now an inherently stealth action, meaning that enemies don't get to fire on your when you go into or come out of stealth.
  • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.

• The range on the laser rifle of the players has been reduced from 10 to 6.
  • Thanks to Misery for inspiring this change.

• Sniper Balance:
  • The range on the sniper's gamma ray laser has moved from 50 to 12, and ammo has dropped from 70 to 20. Still very powerful as an effect.
  • The sniper's sight range has moved from 50 to 12 (as opposed to the usual 8 per exo).
  • Thanks to Histidine for inspiring these changes.

• Updated the tooltip for the human cryo pods to make it clear that they just have to survive to the end of the mission for you to get the loot.
  • Thanks to Misery for reporting.

• The basic tooltip at the bottom of the screen now mentions that you can hold shift to attack the ground.
  • Thanks to Tridus and Histidine for reporting.

• When you are in the store window, the exo customization window, or the inventory window, your outer screen will no longer pan invisibly behind there.
  • Thanks to Misery for reporting.

• The part picker in the exo customization view now shows the full tooltip when you hover over anything there.
  • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.

• The function of the mouse clicks in the store are now consistent with what the instructional text tells you.
  • Thanks to Histidine for reporting.

• The "click a mission to start" tooltip no longer shows into the store or the exo customization screens.
  • Thanks to Tridus for reporting.

Better Difficulty Level Balance

• The health of exos now varies by difficulty:
  • 10x higher on easy.
  • 4x higher on normal
  • Same on hard as it was before.
  • 0.75x on expert.
  • Thanks to Tridus for inspiring this change.

• The first X missions now have hand-designed mixes of bots that should provide a more natural progression. It then becomes purely-random after these missions are done.
  • Easy: 10 days
  • Normal: 5 days
  • Hard: 3 days
  • Expert: 0 days
  • Thanks to Tridus for inspiring this change.

• The first X days no longer include the "special bots" like sentry bots, razorbots, etc, instead letting you get your bearings (and your parts in order) first:
  • Easy: 20 days
  • Normal: 12 days
  • Hard: 8 days
  • Expert: 0 days
  • Thanks to Tridus for inspiring this change.

Alpha 0.901

(Released September 8th, 2013)

• Fixed a couple of typos in the stealth tooltips.

• Possibly fixed that null reference exception in the GetEffectiveIsOnAlert logic. Do let us know if you see it again.

• The way that the edges of the walls look has gone back to how we did it earlier (in earlier screenshots and the PAX build), to make it more clear where the lines are between that and the unexplored areas are.

• When in the fog of war (in sensor range), objects now show up mostly as outlines, particularly the cover objects.

• When hovering over many objects (in sight range), they now show up with an outline under them hinting at their function.

• The radarbot now just makes you miss on a tile adjacent to it, not in a wildly different direction. This was the original design intent.

• Fixed a bug where entities missing a shot could never miss to the left.

• Fixed a bug where temporary system damage from EMPs was not wearing off.