This update is about some experimental changes and systems. The biggest change is the hardest to see, because it’s a workflow change under the hood. Other changes are obvious, because they are visual and some affect gameplay a bit.

Bigger Targets

I’ve increased the size of some things to improve the chance that you will pay attention to them and also land your attacks against them.

• Light Fighters and Enemy Mines are now both larger, especially mines, because as undersized threats amid the chaos, they tend to blend into the noise of either intense battle or the dark backdrop of space.
• The power core on the Saucer boss is now 2x larger, filling the entire middle section of the ship. I’ve noticed that players don’t always understand that the power cores are your main targets during boss battles. After this change, it’s now hard to miss. All bosses will likely be modified in the same way.

Animated Threats

You may notice some new animation on a few gun turrets. I’ve begun to test and integrate a cosmetic motion, like panels that expand around a turret as it charges up. I’ll try to tune the timing of these new animations so they telegraph a warning to players that the enemy is about to attack. It also just looks nicer than an unmoving object.

Development Challenges

I have begun to rebuild all enemy ships in the game. This is motivated by the need to streamline the game for performance, prepare for future improvements such as graphical redesigns, and to implement a new object creation and maintenance workflow.

When REVO was started, the game engine technology allowed me to reuse objects like ships and gun turrets. This means I can swarm you with identical enemies, which is standard stuff. However, to place several identical gun turrets on a single boss ship meant I had to basically create copies and then manually edit each one whenever anything needed any change big or small.

New Ship Building Workflow

Fortunately, I was able to create a workaround that has served well for a long time, but it was awkward to preview ships as I made them. At least until the recent game engine upgrade. Now I can nest reusable objects within reusable objects (within reusable objects) and see exactly what the results will be in game as I build things! This changes everything for the better.

Unfortunately, I’m already aware of a new bug with stray turrets showing up in game, thanks to the partial success of this workflow transition. There is still more work to be done before this new approach is fully effective. Only the first boss, the big Saucer, is rebuilt this way, but after I resolve this stray turret issue, I will rebuild the rest of the boss ships. For now, only the Saucer and all the lesser enemies are rebuilt and they basically all work great.

You can check out a full list of changes and known bugs in the REVO Change Log.

Try it yourself

REVO v0.32.1 is available today. Give it a try and tell me what you think.