Blast Waves & Armor
With the boss ships rebuilt, I had a great foundation on which to build better ship components. So I overhauled power cores and armored up weapon turrets.
Blast waves that emanate from boss power cores are now properly synchronized and also warn the player with a spin up routine that you can both see and hear.
Boss ships now have much tougher defenses. Panels of super armor now cover their various weapon turrets and only open up when they wish to attack. You will require good timing and aim to deal effective damage to these components.
I’ve attempted to balance the value of ammo pickups in your favor so that these hard shelled baddies don’t drain you of resources too frequently.
Bigger, Badder Bosses… Again!
Three of the bosses got extra attention and the Destroyer and Slayer were actually rebuilt yet again, this time with more care shown to their layouts.
The Destroyer is now bigger to make room for chunky armored weapons and larger power cores, plus another pair of mine droppers.
The Slayer was made significantly bigger, given more power cores, all of which are also much larger than before.
Even the Saucer boss got a special repair and now has a surprise for you. Take a look at the REVO Change Log for more detail, unless you like surprises.
Less Embarrassing Edition
On top of all that, I also fixed those two, slightly embarrassing, recent bugs:
The stray turret bug was a result of a simple oversight with the Slayer rebuild. I hadn’t fully implemented all the changes for the new workflow, but now those floating turrets should no longer appear in the air (space?) after you defeat it.
Stray weapon fire should also be gone, thanks to a change in the way enemy weapon states are managed as you destroy an enemy. Took some doing, but I think I got it under control.
Weekly is Working!
Thus we happily conclude the first month of weekly updates!
For those new to this project, I used to release an update to REVO once a month. That eventually stretched out into the occasional update once every six months or so. Serving up weekly playable builds is a massive change and I’ve really enjoyed both the process and the results.
In the past month, REVO got an overall difficulty rebalance, all enemy ships and most enemy weapons were rebuilt and enhanced (part 1, part 2), and lots of bugs were fixed. In general, the combat experience, especially boss battles, has seen improvement and the game is ever so slightly closer to a shippable state.
I’ve already got a few more weeks of work scheduled for the game (see tentative list in image above), so July should feature roughly the same new update pace, minus a week of personal family time off. Expect the next update by around July 15th with weekly updates to follow after.
Get More REVO
Two other ways to keep in the loop on REVO progress:
This week’s release is accompanied by an issue of the email newsletter which features VIP access to download and play REVO yourself. The newsletter goes out once a month as a digest of all the weekly news found here so you don’t miss anything.
For monthly news and download access:
Get More Chatter
Of course, if you want to dive in even deeper, get a daily greeting from me, and regular live stream announcements, join the Cosmic Misfit Orbital chat community on Discord. It’s friendly, it’s free, and it’s fun for chatters and lurkers alike.