Phobos Down 0.0.6 alpha released
Next Phobos Down alpha update is here!
This update brings many improvements to visuals and audio. First of all, there is now music playing in the menu and during the place-holder intro sequence. During the gameplay, depending on the landing site's wind conditions, a wind sound is playing in background.
Only bit of actual game content added this time is the orbital strike device that lets you order a missile strike from the support ship in orbit.
Splatter and other particles effects have been fine-tuned to be more consistent. Most noticeable change is the splitting of previous fragment cubes emitted from explosions into two separate types: Metallic fragments and fleshy gibs. Both now vary in size and play sounds on contact with the ground. Gibs also leave a blood trail while flying through the air.
One problem that nearly all new player face with the weapon management UI has been accidentally destroying modifiers. Another problem that has been bothering even more experienced players is accidental weapon changes while interacting with devices. I previously made destroying modifiers require two button presses but that was just confusing. I now made a bigger change in the weapon menu interaction: A weapon is selected by a button press and installing or destroying modifiers requires holding the button down. This seems to be much more intuitive and also prevents the accidental weapon changes.
Here is the full change log since version 0.0.5:
- Added muzzle flashes to sentry guns.
- Added proper controller specific and localized control guides.
- Fixed menu sounds not playing in high scores page.
- Accurately align weapon mesh to player aiming direction.
- Dim auto-aim reticle while light of sight to target is blocked.
- Added orbital strike device drop pod.
- Added language selection in settings menu.
- Added title music in menu.
- Added ambient wind sound.
- Added collision sounds to containers.
- Added menu back navigation using ESC/back button.
- Added varying wind effects to different sites.
- Added a custom splash screen.
- Strip leading zeros from week numbers challenge names.
- Show high "loading" text while high scores are being loaded instead of an empty table.
- Lots of minor particle effect tweaks.
- Fixed some particles flashing at full brightness for one frame after being emitted.
- Separated metal fragments and gibs to their own systems with different properties.
- Added particle trails to fast moving gibs.
- Added sounds on gibs and fragments hitting ground.
- Added random variation to enemy gib count and size.
- Improvements to the splatter sounds.
- Added simple slide animation to switching between menu pages.
- Show total time in game completion screen.
- Changed weapon selection to require shoot button press.
- Changed weapon modifier installing and destroying to require holding shoot button down.
- Improved interaction sounds in weapon UI.
- Added "cleared" text in site information to indicate already cleared sites.
- Halved "fast crawler" melee attack damage.
Note: From this update on, I will be building Godot engine myself instead of relying on the pre-built binaries. This has the downside that Microsoft Defender will likely warn you about an "unrecognized app" when launching the game executable. This is because you're one of the first people to ever run the executable, so Defender knows nothing about it. You can either click "more info" from the dialog and then "run anyway" to let it run despite the warning or install the game through Itch.io application. Please let me know if you are having problems with this or you are seeing some unexpected warnings related to the game binary.
You can contact me through the contact form here or leave a comment on Itch.io page.
Downloads are available on Itch.io:
Posted on 2024-02-26