Starward Rogue:Post-1.5 Release Notes

Version 1.751 (upcoming)

• Adjusted the description for Spire Knowledge.

Version 1.750

(Released December 18th, 2017)

• Reverted back to Unity 2017.1.0p4, which apparently solves the crashing issue that is in the Unity 5.5 branches. Or at the very least makes it far less frequent. The super-legacy versions of OpenGL, which apply only to 8+ year old Linux machines (windows machines can use DirectX9) unfortunately get left behind, but it should be far less of an impact on very few customers. We really had to weigh pros and cons, and it was a tough call.

BETA Version 1.704

(Released December 17th, 2017)

• Fixed it so that Recovery Module gives a few seconds of Invincibility when it kicks in, this helps the new Penumbra mech not get killed straight away after reviving.

• Fixed a problem with Trap Master that meant it wasn't working correctly if you were to get fire rate reductions.

• Set Kunai to seed a bit later on and tweaked the damage.

• Added the final achievement art for the new mechs.

• Set Spire Knowledge to last for a whole run rather than just a floor.

• Reduced Kunai damage.

• Downgraded the version of unity to Patch 5.5.5p2, which is still new as of November 28th, 2017.
  • This is two major versions back, though (back from 2017.1 and 5.6 before that), which means that the system requirements increases from the newer versions (OpenGL 2.1 being dropped) no longer apply.
  • Nonetheless, this has a heck of a lot more patches on the 5.5 unity branch compared to the older 5.5.2p2 version that the game was previously running on in the last non-beta version.
  • Hopefully this works out to be the best middle-ground for everyone.

BETA Version 1.703

(Released December 15th, 2017)

• Fixed a few wrong letter case typos that were affecting Linux users.
  • Thanks to Whistler for reporting.

• Set OutToLunch perk to only be able to appear once, since getting that perk more than once -- which is possible in the case of the Roulette Alpha mech -- makes no sense since it can't stack.

• Added new Warp Pad art.

• More improvements to weapon particles and muzzle flashes.

• Fixed a bug with Holy Fire that meant it wasn't firing correctly.

• Added an tutorial failsafe for a rare occurrence.

• Fixed a Valor bug which meant it was being listed twice in the stats.

BETA Version 1.702

(Released December 10th, 2017)

• Sounds were incorrectly being normalized in the last two beta versions. Fixed.

• Added a new way to adjust the volume of various sounds via xml rather than by editing the sound file itself.
  • These are floating point numbers where 0 is silent, 0.5 is half volume, 1 is full volume, 2 is double volume, etc.
  • On bullet patterns: sound_volume_to_use_when_action_starts
  • On systems: sounds_on_shot_fired_volume, sounds_on_system_activated_volume, sounds_on_shot_detonate_volume, sounds_on_shot_does_damage_volume.

BETA Version 1.701

(Released December 8th, 2017)

• Fixed a bunch of problems with certain code being missing from the base game if there is no expansion installed.

• Fixed a problem with the new expansion achievements causing errors in the base game when no expansion is present.

• Visual polish. Added new visual effects for Decimating Power, adjusted Deflector Field emitter and added an extra SFX, updated the Blunderbuss to the new shotgun visual style, added a few extra particle effects to player weapons, mostly muzzle flashes and bullet death particles. Flipped some system images that were not orientated correctly.

BETA Version 1.700

(Released December 6th, 2017)

Note that in order to play this particular beta, you need to go into the Steam properties for the game, under the Betas tab, and choose "Beta" as the branch to play on. This will arrive on non-Steam versions once it exits beta, in January or so.

• DUE TO WEBSITE ISSUES THE WIKI WAS ROLLED BACK, SO SOME CHANGES HAVE TO BE RE-ADDED TO THE LOG AND SOME MAY HAVE BEEN MISSED.

• This version is also the first one on Steam to support the upcoming expansion AuGMENTED, although the beta for that is somewhat separate. If you're part of that beta, though, be sure to be in the beta branch on Steam so that it will work!

New Content

• Two new mechs created in collaboration with community member Logorouge. The Penumbra and Alpha mechs. Both have completely new weapons.
  • Thanks for creating these Logo!

• New tutorial added. Thanks to Draco for completing most of the work on this.

• Re-added a slightly improved Overkill perk. Out To Lunch also re-added with a 100% skip chance.

• Re-enabled Magnetic Personality as an Incredibility.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for suggesting.

• New Perk Extra Health Refiner

• Improved particle work for weapons (smoke effects, muzzle flashes, shot death particles)

• One new Condemned room, and one Condemned that wasn't seeding correctly now is

Balance

• Changed the way that the Disruptor works so that it can't completely freeze enemies for long periods anymore.
  • Thanks to MLG_Cynical-Norfeder for reporting.

• Tweaked Sniper Protocol, which was a bit too strong.

• Removed ability to destroy bombables from AllInTheWrist, which was too OP.

• Nerfed Contrishooter a bit.
  • Thanks to Whistler and others for suggesting.

• Added missing knockback resistance to one of Terminus' Core Blades.
  • Thanks to Whistler for reporting...again! :)

• Made Viper Strike not do friendly damage.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Upped the Autocannon Minibot range.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for the feedback.

• Reduced Lorentz Factor duration.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for the feedback.

• Made Harmony only last for a floor.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for the feedback.

• Increased Missile Salvager effect from 5% to 10%.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for the feedback.

• Reduced Paragon speed.

• Fixed Vigilant Hull and Medical Emergency Interaction.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Tweaked Autocannon Drone a bit.
  • Thanks to Zharmad for the feedback.

• Contrishooter nerfed a bit.
  • Thanks to Whistler for reporting.

• Altered CMP_GlassZoo(6) to help with certain enemy combinations.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Tweaks to Blade Module description and Signal Triangulator Icon.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Buffed Immolated Minibot, Relentlesss Interceptor Crossbow, and shop discount sacrifice items
  • Thanks to Logorouge for the feedback.

• Made Miniboss reward a minimum of 4 missiles rather than 2.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for suggesting.

• Now when Condemned rooms are completed, any caltrops in the room are destroyed. Now that bug when you step on any caltrops after failing the room should not be possible. Plus, it's a good nicety to not have to avoid any caltrops on your way out.
  • Thanks to SCarterE and others for reporting.

• Torpedo Cannon tweaks.

Minor Fixes

• Fixed a couple of typos.
  • Thanks to InkEyes' Let's Play for highlighting these.

• Reduced the Tactical EMP screen flash duration.
  • Thanks to InkEyes' Let's Play for highlighting this.

• Fixed a few typos.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Fixed a bug with AllInTheWrist that was making it disappear from the icons list.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Made the Rocket Man description clearer.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Fixed a problem with the damage numbers of Holy Fire.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Added some visual feedback when Recovery Module kicks in.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for the feedback.

• Fixed a bug with an interaction between Trap Master, Hardening Module and Defense Orbital.
  • Thanks to Chillblain and Eruanion for reporting.

• Reduced Cryofreeze module SFX volume. Reduced Frozen Orb SFX volume.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Fixed the last couple of remaining achievement bugs. Specifically the one for finishing the game with all mechs and the one for unlocking all Condemned room.
  • Thanks to B0rg, Logorouge, onehalfatsquared and others for reporting.

• Put in further protections against the rare after-secret-room crash.

Unity Engine Upgrades and Loading Speed Upgrades

• Improved the loading speed of the graphics process at the start of the game.

• Upgraded the game to use unity 5.5.2.p2 rather than 5.5.0p3 of Unity.

• The version of the unity engine the game runs on has been upgraded from 5.5.2p2 to 5.6.0p2.
  • We discovered that the reason the game was loading so much more slowly lately now also was causing an exception to be thrown in Unity 5.6.
  • This was a ton of sound files being preloaded from the disk in a too-slow format. These are now being stored in the internal Resources folder of the game project, which makes it so that they are loaded in bulk way faster, and without causing any underlying FMOD issues. Modded sound effects can still be placed in the Sounds folder, though, so that modding capabilities are not affected.

• The way that sound effects are loaded has been altered, and the way that they are stored has also been improved. They're now far less likely to bog down your system during gameplay, and are included in the resource asset bundle instead. They also load on background threads, and only come in as mono now (the sound itself really really doesn't need to be stereo, since it's already a stereo environmental and music setup and sounds on different panned bits to the speakers helps avoid overloading them.

• The unity version has been upgraded AGAIN, this time from 5.6.0p2 to 2017.1.0p4.
  • There are a variety of bugfixes in this upgrade relating to linux, osx, and just general performance and whatnot.

• Maaassive scrubbing out of old networking-related code that was never used in this game but which was brought forward from the Valley titles and was slowing this one down a bit.

• Used some of the new profiling and performance-tuning techniques that we've learned from AI War 2 in order to eliminate some performance hotspots that have cropped up, some of which were new during the development of this expansion and the free base game content that goes along with it (new features that added a substantial performance hit to drawing all shots, for instance).

• The initial loading screens actually properly block you now until all the images it needs to load are loaded, rather than letting you get past them too fast and then being really laggy.

Version 1.507 (Difficulty Smoothing)

(Released January 10th, 2017)

• Increased the amount you get from damage boosting power ups. These were nerfed a little too hard during the last patch, so have now been pushed back up somewhat.
  • Thanks to Kinix and others for reporting.

• Overall enemy HP has been reduced by 25%.

• Increased the the health pickup frequency as well as adding two more variations of health pickup that provide 2 and 3 health each. These can also appear in the cheap shop.

• Changed Harmony to give you its bonus once every floor, but also moved it to the Secret Room. Secret room items are allowed to be a little extra crazy, bordering on OP, and due to some of the powerful interactions this item can give you, it seems like the more appropriate place.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for suggesting making the bonus work every floor.

• Fixed a typo on the Deep Blue mech
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Made Time Machine only seed in secret room.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Made the Plasma Punisher shot transparent, so it doesn't block your visibility as much when it goes off.
  • Thanks to Frumple for reporting.

• Tweaked the timing of Fight or Flight so that the movement speed boost wears off a fair bit before the invincibility does.
  • Thanks to Frumple for reporting.

• Alterted the CondemenedHunter pattern to make it less pathetically easy on Normal.
  • Thanks to Frumple for reporting.

• A bunch of individual enemy HPs have been nerfed, and a lot of rooms have had their enemy density decreased.

• Improved the functioning of the Telekinetic Repulsor Module so that less craziness happens when it interacts with certain enemy bullets. It will now clear most of the shots it pushes.

• • Thanks to Frumple for reporting.

Version 1.506

(Released January 5th, 2017)

• The three achievement-related bugs all seem to be fixed now.

BETA 1.505

(Released January 3rd, 2017)

This is temporarily only available in a steam beta branch, since it may break things.

• Fixed a bug where it was possible in some cases to have more than 100% health, which led to visual health bar glitches as well as you actually having more health than you were supposed to.
  • Thanks to eruanion for reporting.

• Put in recovery code for cases in which previously the player hull could be set to null by you clicking around a lot during world generation; it now chooses a random hull when it hits such a case, rather than just dying. Actually fixing the root issue is of course next on the list, but there may be multiple ways to trigger this.

• Added tooltips to the icons on the bottom right of the file select screen.

• Fixed a longstanding but little-seen issue where mouse or key presses during the creation of a new run would corrupt the run in many cases.

• Fixed ConductiveHull stats.

• Reduced Cryofreeze Module volume a bit.

• Fixed a null reference exception that apparently could happen sometimes when either starting the tutorial for the first time or possibly related to exiting or entering certain rooms.

• Fixed yet another nullref exception that could happen, this time in minimap rendering right when changing states.

BETA 1.504

(Released January 2nd, 2017)

This is temporarily only available in a steam beta branch, since it may break things.

• Updating to Unity 5.5.0p3, which seems to fix the errors we were having in 5.5.0f1 when resizing or maximizing the screen.

BETA 1.503

(Released December 21st, 2016)

This is temporarily only available in a steam beta branch, since it may break things.

• Updating to Unity 5.5.0f1.

• Reduced Gravity Cannon player defense to 2 seconds from 4.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Reduced Arcoris x4 to 3 minions instead of 4, which was a mistake. So now there are actually 4 in total not 5.
  • Thanks to the person who reported this, sorry I forgot who it was (maybe Monkooky in Discord!).

• Made Spire Knowledge description more specific.
  • Thanks to Monkooky for reporting.

• Fixed Conductive Hull energy amount.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Removed the fire rate boost from Jack of All Trades. This needed a bit of a nerf.
  • Thanks to Z99-_ for the feedback.

• Adjusted the Interceptor drone description to be clearer.
  • Thanks to Z99-_ for the feedback.

• Reduced Loco HP a little.
  • Thanks to eruanion for the feedback.

• Adjusted the Cryofreeze module damage which was way too high.
  • Thanks to Z99-_ for reporting.

• Reduced the drop frequency of modules by half. They now also seed in weapon and defense shops.
  • Thanks to Monkooky and others for the feedback.

• Adjusted the Deep Blue mech energy multiplier to 1.5 from 2.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for the feedback.

• Removed some the floor revealing perks, but added new perks Resupply and Rally.

• All new/improved perk art added.

• Changed the SFX on the Mini-Swarm enemy.
  • Thanks to carldong for reporting.

BETA 1.502

(Released November 11th, 2016)

This is temporarily only available in a steam beta branch, since it may break things.

• TinyDamageBoost and TinyEnergyBoost now appear as powerups on the status screen
  • Thanks to Motai

• Interaction of range extension modifiers and Incineration and Cryofreeze modules is now more reasonable, but less awesome
  • Thanks to Logorouge

• Fixed reversal of DoorEvil and DoorBoss
  • Thanks to SJD

• Rocket Man now only last for a floor.
  • Thanks to Logorouge and others for reporting.

• Cluster Launcher no longer does friendly fire.
  • Thanks to DarkTwinge's stream for highlighting this.

• Revenge Module replaced with Plasma Punisher Module. Whenever you get hit, fires a burst of plasma that stuns enemies.

• Main minigun SFX beefed up a little, and particle trail added to the Torpedo Cannon shots.
  • Thanks to Goldenwolf for these changes.

• Simplified and nerfed Destruction module. It just does the damage boost now, and doesn't give extra shots(this is part of a general module refinement process).

• added suppress_aoe_destruction_of_shots flag to system

• Grenade Launcher and Cluster Launcher no longer destroy enemy shots (which was super OP).
  • Thanks to Monkooky and others for reporting.

• Boomerang Needler aesthetics have been made a bit more boomerang-y. It now uses an animated shot.
  • Thanks to Goldenwolf for these changes.

• Removed the friendly fire on Detonating Rose.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Clarified the Looter probation description.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Increased the size of Paragon's hitbox, which was way too small.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Added the Telekinetic Repulsor Module to replace the Reactive Shock Module.

• Tweaked the Combat Shield look and function. You can now push enemies back with it, too.

• Changed the Kunai SFX a bit, and the shot type.
  • Thanks to Goldenwolf for these changes.

• Kunai is now also in the energy weapon position. Before it was in the main gun position.

• Added SFX for Fragment enemy, Combat Shield, Battering Ram, and new Boss Intro SFX. New Javelineer thrust particle.
  • Thanks to Goldenwolf for these changes.

• Vastly improved the efficiency of the Zombot.
  • Thanks to WindlessZephyr's stream for highlighting this problem. Also thanks to eruanion for reporting.

• Made it so that you can't waste Alternate Deality when outside of a shop room.

• Gave the Green Envy innate revealing of Item and Secret rooms. Also buffed the passive bonuses a bit. Edit: changed this to innate ability to find higher tier loot earlier than the other mechs.

• Changed the Revenge Rams to be bigger and do more damage and greater AOE.

• Improved the GravityCannon and MiniatureBlackHole a bit. These are much less likely to cause you to take damage now.

• Improved TacticalEMP.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Cleared up the Serrated Spine Launcher description.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Reduced Conductive Hull to 60 energy gain.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• All the Condemned Room aesthetics overhauled. Shots, SFX, and particles. Plus some tweaks.
  • Thanks to Goldenwolf for these changes.

• Fixed a buggy interaction between Photoelectric and Big Leaky Battery.
  • Thanks to eruanion for reporting.

• The Perk Overhaul and Balance Update (plus other stuff)
  • For Misery's breakdown of the changes go here: https://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,19218.0.html
  • Lots of new general perks added such as Savings Interest, An Eye For an Eye, Bloody Rage, Big Game Hunter, and many more.
  • At least one unique perk for each mech such as Flame Master.
  • Many existing perks revamped such as Heavyweight, Resistance (was Deftness)
  • The perk level placements have been adjusted a lot, so that options need to be thought about a lot more. No more massive DPS no brainers.
  • Adjustments so that attrition is more of a thing, the main one being that health items now only restore 1HP. Gearing up and combatting attrition is now more of a challenge.
  • Enemy damage scaling has been removed. No longer do early floor enemies just get buffed on later floors, so you have to think a bit more strategically about what enemies in the current rooms are threats or not. Certain dangerous looking enemies will hit hard and need to be taken down quickly.
  • Floor size has been reduced significantly so that run length is reduced overall.
  • Upgrade damage boosts have been reduced a lot. The maximum single upgrades now are +40% and x33%, with most giving between +10% and +20% instead of numbers like +50% and +75%.
  • More XP bonus resources. There are now 3 versions of XP resource pickup. Sometimes you can find rare ones that will give you a big boost.
  • New enemies from Misery such as Disservers, Ramparts, and more.
  • A lot of small tweaks that we've probably forgotten about.
• Fixed AOE not waking enemies bug.
• Fixed Needler Probe respawn when buying new familiars bug.
  • Thanks to Windless Zephyr for highlighting this.
• Reduced Stomper volume.
  • Thanks to Logorouge for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where the "unlocked all items" achievement was erroneously given to players previously.

Version 1.501

(Released August 6th, 2016)

• Fixed a bug that was breaking some older savegames.

• Increased difficulty of Twin Suns.

• Tiny Energy Boost now grants 10 energy for 5 credits
• Dilithium Power Cell now grants 20 energy for 15 credits

• SurvivalPack readded

• Fixed Credit10 frequency in pools rate

• Adjusted the missile systems a bit.

• Acid Maw damage multiplier increased from 1.2 to 1.4
  • Thanks to logorouge for inspiring the change

Previous Release Notes

Starward Rogue:Post-1.0 Release Notes