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[DarthBenedict]

An autocannon with explosive rounds will push enemies back almost as well as the plasma, plasma just temporarily disables their weapons on top of that.

Will bump up the collision resistance on bigger dozers (kind of like seeing the little ones get overconfident with a big asteroid).

After playtesting the fixed rocket artillery, they're definitely more dangerous but it didn't end up making the wave they're on much harder - turns out trying to hit a small, fast moving target in the middle of your own army with an artillery barrage isn't the best strategy.

[DarthBenedict]

Preview of a new enemy type:


It runs away while sniping at you with a singularity railgun (which will pull nearby objects into anything it hits). They also blink out of the way when you aim at them.

Have also been fixing up some multiplayer related bugs recently.

[DarthBenedict]

A new map is coming pretty soon, here's a gif from the first wave. The stage hazards are asteroids with crystals which implode when shot, and the enemies have a lot of physics manipulating abilities. Also, the sniper enemies now have laser pointers on their bullets to warn the player about offscreen attacks.

Edit: Also put some trajectory indicators on mortars.

Another gfy.

[DarthBenedict]

The build with the new map is up. It still needs some more balancing, but I'd prefer to get it to players quickly. Here's the full changelog:
New map
3 new enemies
2 new bosses
New stage hazard – gravity crystals which implode when shot
Trajectory indicators on enemy heavy weapons
Fixed some netcode problems
Player is faster
AI has better aim
The AI is better at flanking players who try to kite them
Improved some shaders
Balance tweaks
Dodge moves faster (but not further)
Player launched homing missiles now have cooler looking flight paths (and hit more often).



And as a bonus, here's a gallery of .webm videos. Hopefully it'll be possible to embed these in tig posts at some point, they're much better than gifs.

[Christian]

Awesome, can't wait to try it out later

Random aside: what's .webm? I saw someone mention it in NeoGAF as well, never heard of it before

[DarthBenedict]

It's easily embedded html5 video.

Works really nicely as a gif replacement, a similar quality animation from most games will be about 10% of the filesize. You can also have the same size but 10x as long etc.

The ones in the gallery are at 60fps, whereas with gifs I generally had to go with 15 or 20.

[Christian]

It's easily embedded html5 video.

Works really nicely as a gif replacement, a similar quality animation from most games will be about 10% of the filesize. You can also have the same size but 10x as long etc.

The ones in the gallery are at 60fps, whereas with gifs I generally had to go with 15 or 20.

Interesting. I kind of like the short length of GIFs, it's like the devs have to choose the best part of the footage that best represents game in that short clip

I'm curious. Since this will likely be Greenlit in the next batch, what's your plan? Get XenoRaptor onto Steam and/or Early Access as soon as possible once Greenlit or wait and add more content first, or just finish the game and do a full release?

Oh, and I've been keeping NeoGAF updated on XenoRaptor

[Christian]

Did you spruce up the visuals in this build? Everything just seems...more vivid, bolder maybe? Like one example, the Megatank's projectiles seem bigger, more fiery. idk, not sure how to exactly describe it. Maybe it's just me

Also, my mouse wheel binding for special weapon isn't saving again. I'll set it, exit out, start the game again, and special weapon will be "none".

[DarthBenedict]

Yeah, have done a fair bit of graphical work recently, here's a quick list:
-Howitzers and Flak Cannons (both for the player and enemies) have smoke + spark trails.
-Planets now have an improved atmosphere effect (the glow round the edge nearest to the sun).
-Camera has had it's fov tweaked + tilts a little towards where you're moving, giving a greater sense of speed and distance.
-Stars have a new shader with a whole lot of vertex and uv wobbling to get that boiling sunspot look.
-The glow and eyeballs on the xenoraptor have a new shader which pulsates and shifts around a little.
-A few explosion types have improved particles.
-Blaster bolts have new particle textures and more sparks.
-Plasma thruster dodge has higher starting velocity but faster boost falloff. This doesn't really make much gameplay difference but makes it feel more responsive so I'm counting it as graphical.
-Enemy guns have now have recoil and knockback, making them look a lot more powerful without changing the damage.

I like using webms as 60fps gifs rather than as full videos, been trying to keep them under 10 seconds (except for a few longer ones I made while testing out what the format could do). Thanks for making that gaf thread, just made an account there but it says awaiting activation.



Also, got a new hotfix up for a problem a few people emailed me about after I got featured on RockPaperShotgun. Unfortunately I saw it after your post about the mousewheel bindings breaking, so that isn't fixed but I'll get that sorted out asap. Some other tweaks it includes are artillery warnings now fade in as the shell gets closer, singularity chaingun ammo for pulling things towards you,this boss now has an automatic railgun and I smoothed out the difficulty of waves on the new map a little.

[Christian]

Nice, yeah the improved visuals are really noticeable. Big improvement.

One thing I'd like to see is an enemy counter, so we can know how many enemies are left to kill to finish the wave. Would be pretty satisfying to see the numbers dropping as you blow everything away.

[Christian]

Two more suggestions:
- A menu option to return to the Hangar from the Target Practice map. As far as I can tell, you can't just exit to the Hangar; you have to go to the main menu and then to Hangar.

- More detailed weapon descriptions.
For example, I wouldn't have known plasma rounds stop enemies from firing their weapons if you hadn't mentioned that in the thread here. Or the photon modifier says it's really fast laser bullets, but how does that affect missiles or railgun? (Speed boost or faster rate of fire going by gameplay, but that's not really clear from the text)

[DarthBenedict]

Will do those next build. Mousewheel input is fixed now, but I found out how to fix some long term mac/linux controller input problems and want to get that done too before uploading.

Photon ammo is faster moving projectiles, it doesn't make much difference on a railgun but I didn't see a reason not to let players do it.


Also, some changes to missiles/mines/bombs: swarm ammo now comes in a 20 round magazine instead of 8. It’s powerful but empties your ammo very quickly. This also lets you build space forts with the minelayer:

[Christian]

Saw the new UI work on the Tumbr, looks great. It seems like these menus have been confined to the multiplayer UI, will these changes bleed over to the single player campaign menus?

[DarthBenedict]

Saw the new UI work on the Tumbr, looks great. It seems like these menus have been confined to the multiplayer UI, will these changes bleed over to the single player campaign menus?

The new fonts etc. are in use throughout the game, here's how the hangar looks now:


Here's the current progress on the host game screen, for anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about:


There's three more maps (not entirely new, just got coop working on some existing ones) on there too.

Last up, some improvements to missile physics:

[Christian]

The new UI looks really slick. In another context, the stark whitish font might seem bland, but against the vibrant backgrounds, the text stand out nicely.

About the weapon descriptions, I like that you added more specific details, but the previous descriptions had more personality IMO. If you could blend the important details (plasma disables weapons, etc.) with the style of the previous descriptions, that could be cool

Oh, and not trying to be a broken record, but I'm curious about your future plans

Since this will likely be Greenlit in the next batch, what's your plan? Get XenoRaptor onto Steam Early Access as soon as possible once Greenlit or wait and add more content first, or just finish the game and do a full release?

[DarthBenedict]

Uploaded a build with the new UI so people can try it out, it's still not quite finished but I figured early feedback would be a good idea. Other changes:

You can now calibrate controller axes
Co-op support added to 3 new maps
Better looking projectiles
Made several enemies + bosses faster&more aggressive
Player is more resistant to knockback and slightly faster
Player is a little better at ramming things
Trajectory indicators now fade in, giving you a better indication of how far away the shell is
Fixed a few netcode problems

Since this will likely be Greenlit in the next batch, what's your plan? Get XenoRaptor onto Steam Early Access as soon as possible once Greenlit or wait and add more content first, or just finish the game and do a full release?

I'll probably make it available on early access ASAP because I don't really like the buy page I've got on the site and want to get rid of it. Also, I'm planning on doing a kickstarter soon, so early access would be after that to make sure all the purchases go through kickstarter while it's on.

[Christian]

Oh, a Kickstarter? Do you have an estimate for a date or month yet? I'm maintaining the 2014 Kickstarter thread on NeoGAF.

[DarthBenedict]

Oh, a Kickstarter? Do you have an estimate for a date or month yet? I'm maintaining the 2014 Kickstarter thread on NeoGAF.

Should be this month, but since I've never run one before I have no idea how long it'll take to set up.

[Christian]

Oh, a Kickstarter? Do you have an estimate for a date or month yet? I'm maintaining the 2014 Kickstarter thread on NeoGAF.

Should be this month, but since I've never run one before I have no idea how long it'll take to set up.

Awesome. Time to start spreading the word

This might be a helpful read
http://www.crowdcrux.com/kickstarter-post-mortems-to-read-before-launching-a-crowdfunding-campaign/

One aspect I find most important that I've seen some devs aren't aware of is the pre-approval process. This can take several days. Here are a few excerpts

Stasis

When you’re planning your Kickstarter campaign, it’s very easy to be caught up in the excitement and forget a few fundamentals when dealing with Kickstarter. One of the main points to remember is that Kickstarter has to verify your campaign before you’re able to hit that big green launch button.

This can throw a spanner in the works of any ‘preKickstarter’ marketing campaign you’re planning, as this is a manual process and could take a little longer than expected. You are completely at the behest of Kickstarter’s all-too-human managers who have to manually sift through your campaign – amongst others – to ensure that you have met all of their requirements.

Scraps

Once I’d made that decision, it was already getting worryingly close to Christmas. Who was going to want to donate to a project right before Christmas, or worse, right after Christmas? So I powered through making the project video and Kickstarter page content. Then I waited three days for Kickstarter to approve my ID. Then I waited two more days for the Kickstarter page to be approved.

Make sure you allow for that stuff! Once your Kickstarter is approved, you can still edit it, so write up something decent, get it approved, then tell everyone when you’re going to launch and then make any final changes and launch on the decided day. Don’t tell everyone you’re going to launch on X day and then get stuck waiting for Kickstarter to approve your project.

Maybe you could ask some of the developers here who have had successful Kickstarters for some advice. Nition (Scraps), JLJac/jamesprimate (Rain World), Juan Raigada (Heart & Slash) are the ones I'm aware of and follow. They're all really friendly and I'm sure they'll provide some tips and advice

[Christian]

Damn, was hoping Xeno got Greenlit in the latest batch. Guess it'll be in the next one. What ranking is the game at now?