Overview

Welcome to the second part of the movement update! In this update, I have introduced some cool features such as a new movement calculation system, recoil, knockback, as well as a ton of quality of life improvements! This update is also 100% compatible with updates greater than v2.6, so you will not have to start over completely by downloading this new update!

Acceleration and Speed

In the first movement update, your acceleration was partly based on your island shape. In this update, your maximum horizontal and vertical speeds have been replaced with a single terminal velocity speed. This speed is dependent on your island shape, and your thrust. The acceleration is now no longer based on your island shape, but now based on your thrust and your mass. In short, your thrust now plays a much larger part in determining the speed of your island. 

Because of the changes to maximum speed, your terminal velocity is actually a whole lot bigger than it was in previous updates. So you should feel faster and differences in speeds of enemies should also feel greatly magnified.

Zipping around.

Recoil and Knockback

Weapons now have recoil and knockback! Recoil is added to the island shooting and knockback is added to islands getting shot. Simple as that. Different weapons have different recoil and knockback values. These can be helpful to give you a little boost or can knock you around to the danger zones.

Pew pew.

Relative Velocity

You might have also noticed that the bullet in the gif above didn't travel horizontally like when it was aimed. That is due to relative velocity. Simply put, if your island is moving to the right and you fire your weapon downwards, the projectile created will not only move downwards, but will also have the added velocity of moving to the right from your island. 

See how the bullet is actually travelling down and to the right?

This can make for some interesting plays, especially with mortars since you will now have more control over the arc that they are fired in.

Pause and Lives

Need a break while in battle? Has your mom suddenly asked you to do your chores but you can't since you are mid battle? Well now, you can!

pixelated pixel background

Now, you might be thinking, "Hmmm, time to abuse quitting the match before I lose." Well, not anymore. I guess this is gonna be one of the less popular changes, but it was needed especially with the pause menu. 

Basically, once you start a battle, the game automatically deducts a life in the background. Once the battle is complete, you will be refunded the life back. However, if the game is quit before the battle is over, you simply don't get your life back, meaning you just lost a life. 

Cursor and Crosshair

Introducing cursors and crosshairs! The cursor is probably what you will be seeing most of the game. The crosshair is basically your cursor, just only used in its place during battle. Different styles are available in the settings.

just pretend the mouse is invisible. my screen capture messed up

Quality of Life

Lots and lots of quality of life improvements to make the game feel a whole lot better.

Auto-selected weapon groups

Weapon groups that do not contain floatrons or drifters are now automatically selected when you start a battle.

Removed auto-fire

Auto-firing weapons was masking the potential of the laser trigger. In the future, I would like to implement more trigger techs, so as of now, there is no way to toggle the group auto-fire.

Laser trigger

Now that the laser trigger is viable, I fully fixed the raycast so that it actually will shoot when enemies are there. It also has a nice aiming laser so you can see what direction it faces.

Shift +Keybind

This used to toggle autofire, but since that is removed, it will now toggle the selection of a group.

Lose Condition

You can no longer be defeated by simply having too little vertical thrust. All floatrons must be destroyed in order to achieve a victory or defeat.

Advanced Drifter Tweak

Advanced drifters now have more than double the thrust of a basic drifter, making it a viable forging option.

New Camera

The camera now tries to keep both you and the nearest enemy on the screen at the same time. If it cannot do that, it will still try to keep you on the screen.

Enemy indicator

If the camera cannot keep the enemy in view, an indicator will appear so you know where the enemy will be coming from.

Auto-screenshot

Ever wanted to get those action packed screenshots but couldn't take them fast enough? Enable the auto-screenshot setting and the game will try and take the most action packed screenshots and save them to game's local directory located in your %appdata% or your ~/Library/ApplicationSupport based on Windows and Mac respectively.

Game size

The game's size is a whole lot smaller thanks to a feedback that the audio files should probably be compressed. This means that the audio will take a bit longer to load but the game download will be really speedy.

Homing missiles

Yeah, seems OP. Pls nerf.

Screenshake

When you get hit, you will know you got hit. Ramming and getting rammed feels like you are getting rammed, and it is AWESOME.

Damage numbers

100 damage should not be the same size as 1 damage. So now, you will know if that critical megacannon shot hit. It also looks and feels really satisfying.

Function Keys

F11 and F12 toggle fullscreen and fps display respectively. Sadly these do not work on macOS.

Additions

    Darkstone (mythic)

    Molten Rock (mythic)

    Arcnite (mythic)

    Magmium (glitched)

Missile Barrage (legendary)

    Missile Annihilator (mythic)

Balance Changes

• Enemies have less range and are smaller
• Forging is now around 17% cheaper
• Mass of trees decreased from 30/40/50 to 15/20/25 to make them more useful
• Increased range of all weapons
• Hid a secret code in a gif this devlog
• Tweaked artillery weapons firing arc
• Increased compressed dirt mass from 15 to 18 tons and health increased by 1
• Aerogel changed to glitched rarity for backwards compatibility. Will be removed in a future update
• Enemies now factor in rarity when choosing blocks for their island

Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug where....

• forge would sometimes give you worse items
• forging top tier items would hang the game
• you could place more tech than you actually had
• an mortar description that said "launches an shell vertically"
• spykes said that they both were absorbed by shields and pierced shields
• tech could be duplicated
• the tech selector would go out of bounds and crash the game
• tech modifiers would be empty and not show up
• you could craft glitched blocks

Final Remarks

Hopefully this update will add a little more movement, action, and strategy to the game with better movement and knockback! This is only the second part of who knows how many movement updates. The next update is coming very soon!