Greetings!

While playtesting new zooids I came up with a nice combo utilising upcoming Flail and Greaser zooids:

As it is with Flail, Greaser's graphics are still being made. We borrowed very old sprite that was used in very early versions of Sipho as a placeholder. Greaser is a passive Utility zooid which "greases up" nearby zooids and increases their range and movement power. In this case it means that buffed Grabber will have an increased distance. Same would be with any zooid that has concept of range - Spike, Claw, Flak, Leech and others. We think that this zooid should give more strategic choices in choosing between more of the same or less, but more potent. A total of four new zooids are coming in the next major 0.5.0 update.

Progressing in Sipho world means that the world changes together with you. Discovering new zooids will mean that future enemies might have them discovered too. Existing layouts for enemies now have a chance to mutate and grow discovered zooids instead of base breed ones. We think that make encounters more interesting and add slight flavour of variety.

More changes have been done in preparation for upcoming zooids. Check out full list below:

• Fix Sipho not being stiffened when entering growth mode with only head zooid
  
• Stub implementation for confirming a zooid to grow for SelectZooidToGrow
  
• Add a SelectZooidToGrow UI module which is responsible for enabling UI navigation for zooid UI elements
  
• Add UIModules which should be used for handling various UI-related tasks, one at a time
  
• Disable automatic UI navigation for sipho name field
  
• Make Cra'than boss spawn minion immidiatelly after being damaged
  
• Make environment spike lighter, but have more drag
  
• Don't undeform Sipho when it's being grown/modified
  
• Remove buffs from zooid when it's dying to prevent destroying nested effects
  
• Remove stats from poison debuff so they don't show up in tooltips
  
• Make Greaser have no energy upkeep
  
• Add and use Flail material
  
• Optimize growth mode UI layout
  
• Stiffen player Sipho when entering growth mode
  
• Do not lerp fixed delta time when pausing game
  
• Update growth transition time in Fixed Update as well as in Update
  
• Only mutate enemy inventories with adapted zooids, so the player would have a better idea of what to expect from them
  
• Ignore flail chain link collisions with flail zooid collider which helps links not getting stuck on launch
  
• Make flail chain link distance approximate to range as close as possible
  
• Add poolable joint link object to use for Flail joint chain
  
• Ping all breed unlock achievements when initializing the campaign achievements, in case some were unlocked without steam
  
• Enemies have a 20% chance to mutate one of their zooids in their inventory to some different zooid
  
• Don't try to mutate zooids that shouldn't be mutated
  
• If vagorian spawners lack layouts, just use random
  
• Attempt to fix zooid prefabs becoming dirty in project
  
• Disable connecting joints when flail is retracting and use another joint to retract it. Use LineRenderer to render connections
  
• Increase physics iteration count to make joints more stable
  
• Set up flail connection as a chain of joints

Hello everyone!

Another two weeks have passed in All Parts Connected Headquarters and we are happy with our progress on upcoming new zooids. One of them is physical Flail:

Graphics and name are prototypes and subject to change. This little bad zooid has a lot of weight in its not-the-smartest spikey end. It will require finesse to control and should be a fun zooid to play as offensively and defensively. If you would like to know more, come chat with us on Discord.

We have added two new achievements. One of them is for the hardcore players - beat the game without growing any weapon zooid. After implementing the achievement we noticed that we don't have many damaging utility zooids yet, only those which involve poison. Thus, The Grappler has been asked to change its department to Utility instead of Weapon. It already did little damage and was expected to be operated with accompanying zooid to make a greater combo. We buffed its skill usage and nerfed damage. Later changes will include beating bosses in more creative ways.

Other balance changes and notes about upcoming zooids can be found below, in the changenotes:

• Report if it's steam build in Options menu
  
• Fix initializing Steam
  
• Change time settings to proper values
  
• Fix offset layout previews
  
• Do not include Aquarium background in screenshots
  
• Buff greaser buff to 50%
  
• Store flail state as Sipho head buff. Tweak flail balance
  
• Tweak greaser effect
  
• Clamp edge detect shader output so it doesn't produce sparkles
  
• Add following effect remove callback and use it for Greaser effect to fix not deparenting renderer clones on time
  
• Fix dead zooids erroring out due to missing Sipho reference
  
• Make layout previews renderable in growth mode
  
• Fix screenshotter to not make flipped images
  
• Implement fast kill achievement unlock
  
• Buffs can now carry owner information and tell where the damage is coming from. This fixes the poison being counted as 'pacifist'
  
• Add a fast kill achievement for killing a full health head in 5 seconds
  
• Increase Burstopod damage by 1
  
• Scale critter minion movement speed based on spawner movement speed
  
• Critter minions scale from melee damage instead of ranged damage, as they do melee attacks
  
• Made critterminion poolable
  
• Make RendererClones always properly follow their targets
  
• Tweak zooid descriptions to include valuable information
  
• Make Flail extension toggleable
  
• Add code that can mutate the enemy inventory by swapping its native zooid with a random unowned zooid of the same type
  
• Tweak outlines of some zooids to fit better
  
• Increase the volume for swarm attack signal
  
• Add a sound effect for sprayer and slightly increase its projectile speed
  
• Critter minions can deal damage even when they do not have an attack command issued (but still require a resupply afterwards)
  
• Fix a bug where critter minion resupplying was calculated based on the sipho position and not the zooid position
  
• Make muck cloud have more angular drag
  
• Make Cra'than boss spawn minion skill more costly
  
• Fix Cra'than boss spawner zooids not being red
  
• Fix zooid graphics not taking different material and texture combo into account when assigning shared material
  
• Make poison cloud have ten times less mass, but more drag
  
• Make twister swirl initially appear larger and do not lose as much lifetime when pulling non-zooids.
  
• Convert Grabber to Utility zooid: Damage reduced from 3 to 2, cooldown reduced from 1.1 to 1 second, energy cost from 35 to 25 and added +3 energy regeneration.
  
• Enable utilitarian achievement
  
• Added a very basic attack signal effect for the swarmer
  
• Add a slight scale wobble when the swarmer is making a new minion
  
• Added a tiny minion death
  
• Reduce swarm attack energy drain a bit
  
• Added a tiny stab effect for minion attacks
  
• Critter minions are now part of the zooid effect layer as they should appear on top of other zooids
  
• Use Async GPU readback to read rendertexture without stalling render pipeline
  
• Move darken Sipho logic to Siphonophore script
  
• Add screenshotter script which makes screenshots and sipho previews
  
• Rename Math to SiphoMath
  
• Expose deep camera in Camera Follow

Greetings!

This update generally contains polishing improvements. One of those things is making sure any size Siphos can be heard as we want them to be heard. That is why we have a system to limit concurrent sounds effects played at once which helps not playing unnecessarily large amount of Flak shots or poison applications. Otherwise we hit concurrently played sound limit which basically mutes some other distinct sounds. We had this system in place for a while now and try to apply these limits to mostly zooid effects which are usually played on skill activations at once.

All obstacles are now made out of hand-traced circles instead of polygon colliders. That gives physics system some "direction" in which to resolve deeply overlapping obstacle collisions with zooids or nutrition. This means that zooids and food should no longer get permanently stuck in rocks. This also brings a little performance optimization to obstacles which are more rounded and can be made out of smaller amount of circles. Several circles are faster to calculate physics with than polygon shapes with many points.

One thing we have constantly seen new players do is to try ungrowing zooids in growth mode by dragging them away from their Sipho. This now is possible - we want to have as smooth first experience as possible. It works by checking distance to Sipho zooids and if it's further from closest zooid than X it enters "release to ungrow" mode. It also works by dragging zooids onto growth side-bar.

It is no secret that we are experimenting with new zooids. Some of you might have seen our Tweets or sneak-peek development images in our Discord server. For more hints, we have left-in changes to those zooid prototypes in the change-log. Check it out:

• Fix renderer clones not being cleaned up
  
• Add RendererCloner effect utility and use it for Greaser zooid
  
• Fix Buff Manager keeping reference of removed buff effect
  
• Add onCreated event to FollowingEffect
  
• SwarmSpawner critters no longer auto-attack, instead you have to command them with a skill.
  
• Reduce sprayer shot frequency slightly
  
• Update UI-Default shader to engine version 2018.4
  
• Range stat increases projectile lifetime instead of speed
  
• Move food consumption logic away from physics callbacks to custom fixed update to avoid GC allocs
  
• Add Fixed Update event to Siphonophore
  
• Avoid some NaNs in twister pull logic
  
• Add greaser zooid prototype which increases range of neighboring zooids
  
• Remove digits after percent comma and use bullet points to list buffs in Zooid Descriptions
  
• Separate Consumable pull stat from Range stat
  
• Add non-expiring flag to buffs. Improve buffed zooid tooltips with stats applied and buff duration
  
• Do not clear all buffs when reapplying stat buffing zooid - fixes too low amount of stacks for early applied buffs
  
• Allow using development zooids in built games if they are requested specifically by ID
  
• Move flashbang zooid to development folder, marking it as development zooid
  
• Remove collider-disabled rocks and leave only their lower rock parts in Underwater boss battle
  
• Ungrow zooids when they are dragged far away from connecting zooids or are dragged on growth sidebar
  
• Set zooid to not Alive when it's being ungrown
  
• Limit Advena poison spray concurrent sounds to 2
  
• Limit concurrent energy powerup audio players to 2
  
• Limit concurrent movement powerup audio players to 2
  
• Make shooting zooids play audio through AudioPlayer and limit their simultaenous count
  
• Allow playing AudioPlayer manually
  
• Move mine explosion audio player to mine explode effect and limit simultaneous count
  
• Add circle colliders to plant obstacle
  
• Disable new colliders for rocks in Underwater boss level
  
• Do not save decorations, deep rocks and whirlpools in any level
  
• Do not save decorations in underwater level and spawn more food
  
• Make eggs always drop something useful
  
• Don't save whirlpools spawned by level end whirlpool spawner
  
• Add flag that allows not saving grid spawner spawned objects
  
• Use multiple circle colliders instead of polygon colliders for all obstacles. Improves performance and overlapping collisions
  
• Fix non player zooids not getting damaged highlights

Greetings!

This update brings rendering performance optimisations to Sipho!

These improvements were long overdue. Sipho was started in Global Game Jam 2017 which required various "quick to do" fixes for the game to run, no matter how, just to be done in time. We have re-written many parts of it since then, but we did not re-write rendering because we did not know how we are going to render all those zooids. Since then game has solidified and we have become more confident in our workflow, knowing how things are made-up in the engine and what can be sacrificed for performance.

To not get too technical on this post, I am going to be writing up a separate post about current rendering in Sipho. Quick explanation is that we used to render sprites and their outlines one after another. That made CPU talk with GPU for every object on the screen at least twice, each frame.
- Render Spike base outline here - says CPU
- Okay - replies GPU
- Now render Spike base here
- Yeah - GPU
- Now render Spike tip outline there
- ːsteamfacepalmː
[...]
And all this conversation for 20 of your spikes.

CPU is usually slow at talking to GPU and one would want to make the CPU bother GPU as little as possible. One of techniques is batching sprite meshes to a single large mesh and rendering that. But our shaders rely on local vertex positions and many additional parameters like health or animation speed. That makes batching sprites in Unity engine hard.

Worry not, there is other rendering technique is called instancing. It takes one mesh and tells GPU do render it multiple times in a single "sentence":
- Render these 20 Spike outlines, here is a list of positions and parameters for each one - confidently says CPU
- You got it - replies GPU

This has improved Sipho rendering performance on CPU by about two times. If GPU does not support instancing, it will fall back to old system of having consecutive calls for each image. Worst case scenario for this type of rendering is many different sprites being rendered at once. Imagine Frakir with about 500 unique zooids just to get back to where we were with performance. We would love to have that many unique zooids!

Oh and we had a sneak update few weeks ago. It had hot-fixes for our input system changes. Check out our history of changes for these versions:

• Disable outlines for invisible rocks in Guardian boss lair
  
• Make mine poison a bit more visible
  
• Also fix energy leech and muck consumable pull
  
• Limit leech tip position lerp velocity which might fix AABB errors
  
• Fix eater food pull scaling - forgot to adjust some zooids and power to fit Range stat
  
• Fix grappling hook line being invisible
  
• Cleanup some UI
  
• Don't use placeholder icons that are nowhere else used to prevent them from being included in builds
  
• Fix claw top being rendered below blades
  
• Circular fade-in to growth mode for decorations
  
• Add ZWrite control to environment shader to fix bone ball lower pats hiding outlines
  
• Flower petal lower sprite sorting layer
  
• Fade-to-zooid-color zooid connectors in growth mode
  
• Make zooid outline hashes consistent
  
• Make deep objects render correctly
  
• Force render sort order for all environment objects
  
• Offset sprite animation according to world position
  
• Aquarium spawn ghosts now use tight meshes to display atlassed ghost sprites
  
• Make decorations work with instancing
  
• Use tight sprite mesh in UI buttons that might draw atlased sprites
  
• Support flipping in instanced zooid outline shader and fix Claw outline
  
• Make all outlines render explicitly before their original sprites
  
• Remove unusued trail material from pusher effect as it produced drawcalls
  
• Make projectiles work with Zooid shader instancing
  
• Remove unused _ColorBrightness from zooid shader and make mines compatible with instanced rendering
  
• Remove unnecessary transform.position call in graphics connector
  
• Set spike background connector sorting order to be unique so backgrounds get batched
  
• Fix animated materials not animating through overrides
  
• Use instancing for zooids and remove zooid sprites from atlases to preserve local UVs
  
• Create copies of Zooid material to allow instancing
  
• Use instancing for zooid shaders
  
• Rename Zooid shaders to better reflect their purpose
  
• Add an achievement prototype for beating the game without building a single weapon zooid
  
• Rename Zooid Highlight material to Zooid and use it instead of Zooid Nohighlight
  
• Don't error out if EnvironmentObject has no SpriteRenderer
  
• Add Zwrite control to Zooid shader
  
• Use non-legacy sprite atlases
  
• Improve gameSave to allow saving arbitrary struct/classes inside a dictionary. We no longer have to add any game save fields for anything
  
• Set packing tags for all zooid sprites
  
• Add base outlines to all zooids
  
• Inherit sorting order of zooids and improve outline
  
• Collect outlines at the base of graphics rather than from parent
  
• Use separate multiple outline objects to define outlines for zooids. Update some zooids to this system
  
• Game save now saves a Dictionary<string,bool> for generic serialization purposes
  
• Use non-legacy sprite packer settings
  
• Revert tight sprite packing as it breaks UI ghost rendering
  
• Set scale of obstacles in Start as well because OnEnable is too early for just spawned objects
  
• Make all obstacles batchable - group into atlases, use separate EnvironmentOutline object to render growth mode outlines
  
• Enable batching and remove outline passes from environment shaders
  
• Add outline shader for environment outlines
  
• Add Environment Alien Rocks and Outlines render sort layers
  
• Setup outline renderers for Alien Rocks
  
• Scale Rock outline object instead of setting property block of scale when available
  
• Disable Sorting Group for spike
  
• Put Alien rocks into atlas
  
• Enable batching for No Highlight shader
  
• Add renderer for Alien outlines
  
• Separate Outline pass from main highlight shader.

• Recreate globalSettings file in case we fail reading json
  
• Fix a bug where the in-game options menu would open and instantly close in the same frame when pressing Esc
  
• Allow closing the game menus with the cancel button
  
• Fix a bug where rebinding would instantly succeed with the key that initiated the rebinding process
  
• Added M4 and M5 buttons to the string beautifier

Greetings!

This update comes with one little feature that we think will help navigating level ends - a new sense, a bio sonar!

It will be shown where hunting down each victim matters the most - at level ends, in boss fights and also in Aquarium. It will display enemies as red bars and nutrition as green ones. Sonar should help to feel and see beyond borders of the screen.

Internally we have introduced a Range stat which controls range of all zooid abilities. In future, we will be adding zooids and/or powerups, abilities that change stats and enables having more varied playstyle. In this version, range can be seen in zooid tooltips.

Our Input System backend has been completely changed. That means we are going further to support controllers and any kind of input devices. That is now noticeable in main menu and ingame menus as we have added full keyboard/controller support in those cases. The bad news is that existing control binds in options menu will be reset and will have to be re-bound.

In future patches we will be tackling Growth mode and Aquarium mode inputs as well as adapting movement controls to new inputs. Currently Auto Turn and Tank movement types are playable, however we have not tweaked them up to quality we prefer. Ironically, Twinstick movement types will still be following mouse, thus will not work with controller input well. Default skill binds are still designed to for mouse + keyboard controls which we will have to fix as well for controller-only players. Let us know how you expect to control your creature colony and which buttons you would like to use for skills in comments below!

And a little distraction from our request above - full version changelist! We left some of internal changes in for the curious:

• Add movement type report to Death and LevelEnd analytics
  
• Allow selecting Zooid to keep with Up/Down input axes
  
• Display negative stats in Zooid descriptions too
  
• Fix buffs not applying when there is no zooid type filter
  
• Generalise filtering buff targets by ZooidType in Buff Manager
  
• Head selection keyboard/controller support. Growth button to toggle tutorial
  
• Stats should be immutable structs
  
• Remember last active UI elements and select them when opening menus. This allows keyboard/controller menu navigating
  
• Fix input errors when the globalSettings file doesn't exist and fix issues with overwriting default bindings
  
• Fix saveWasJustLoaded retaining an invalid state when restarting the game
  
• Tweak Main Menu labels and make buttons properly select
  
• Add helper script that draws distance lines
  
• Use circle colliders on Bone ball obstacles instead of polygon colliders
  
• Add support for multipler colliders on Environment Object
  
• Disable occlusion check for Sonar
  
• Fix some Zooid layers not being set to Zooid
  
• Chill down whirlpools with their particle pulling
  
• Make Object spawner skill zooids and poisonous zooids scale with Range
  
• SkillUI uses pretty key strings
  
• Fix errors when loading a game save with the old bindings
  
• Fix errors when loading globalSettings with the old binding data
  
• Make Leeches use Range stat
  
• Undo the zooid selection UI work for a better merging experience
  
• The new input system obviously needs to have physics, xr and vr. At least it's not in-app-purchasing.
  
• Correct gamepad start button path
  
• When rebinding, consume all input for one frame after succeeding/cancelling the rebinding (avoid accidental menu closing etc.)
  
• Added a menu toggle button that is intended to remain static and not be changed by the user
  
• Add an input locking mechanism that allows ignoring all GameKey inputs
  
• Rearrange InputManager for better sanity
  
• Add Zooid Range stat to description
  
• Make Pusher work with Range stat
  
• Volter uses Range
  
• Make Sniper, Flak and development weapons use Ranged stat
  
• Don't revert to defaults if you can't resolve a button, use the previous binding path and show it as best we can
  
• Added a method to tell if a gamepad is used instead of the mouse
  
• Halve claw range influence as Range is better understood as diameter rathern than radius of damage
  
• Scale claw with Range stat
  
• Make Grabber use Range stat
  
• Make Spike weapon use Range stat
  
• Rename Food Pull stat to Range
  
• Fix food sonar indicators remaining visible
  
• Add SonarController which controls when Sonar is visible - during end of Campaign levels, always in boss fights and Aquarium
  
• Scale Muck animation with animator speed
  
• Make Sipho sonar indicators fade in and out
  
• Some form of input key beautification started
  
• Fix incorrect defaults for selecting zooids to grow
  
• Fix a bug where resetting to default controls did not persist between playthroughs
  
• Skills now work with the new unity input system
  
• Start work towards moving skill bindings over to the new system
  
• Don't remove device name when serializing unless we can substitute it with something
  
• Keep track of binding paths all the time, not just when serializing - needed when the controller gets unplugged
  
• Load saved bindings
  
• Make sure to invert the needed keys every time you resolve a binding
  
• Invert left/right stick key down and left buttons, solve all the problems without editing any unity input stuff
  
• Create an input settings asset and make buttons less sensitive
  
• Hack in a fix for stick.down/left not working
  
• Override the unity input system and push it to version control
  
• Fix default binding arrays not being filled with stuff, whoops! Added functions to get default ButtonControl arrays
  
• Gamedev, now with 50% less garbage, go green!
  
• Serialize controls as generically as possible. Controller has default bindings and can sort of be used
  
• Start using strings to resolve default controls in order to avoid serializing a bunch of null controls instead of their actual expected bindings
  
• Work towards serializing bindings
  
• Work towards selecting a zooid to grow with the keyboard
  
• You can now cycle the zooid groups with menuNext/Prev buttons
  
• Work towards selecting the zooid to grow via gamepad
  
• Fix rebind UI exceptions because apparently Keyboard.current is null on the start of the game
  
• Hide the dialog UI in gameplayUI because it hides everything else
  
• Reworked input handling to not use the InputAction thingies, added default controller bindings, added some new bindings for menu navigation

Hi everyone,

We are releasing a hotfix build for growth issue that has been introduced in last patch.

It appears that scaling physics time is required for stable fade-in to growth mode. It wouldn't manifest as destructive explosion but actually leave the physics world in a different state than portrayed in game when having entered growth mode. This would result in weird Sipho deformations when ungrowing parts and inconsistent placement of new parts. This is now fixed.

We have reverted changes for this exact case while leaving kill-slowdowns deterministic. Best of both worlds it appears.

Some additional changes have sneaked in that would have been introduced in later patches. Reacting to your feedback, we have partially tweaked Vagorian breed. Check out full changelist for details:

• Fix bug in The Matrix 2
  
• Select Dialog button only when it's shown rather every frame
  
• Optimize Matrix2x2 accessors, speeding up deformable
  
• Still change fixedDeltaTime when pausing the game - deformable needs to fade-to target positions
  
• Disable Wind package
  
• Buff Peapod health to 6 and make it half as slowing as expected
  
• Killed bombs explode at half range with half damage
  
• Slow down Burstopod weapon animation so it is only visibly ready when actually ready and make it scale with skill speed
  
• Use Particle System Force Fields to move ambient particles instead of Wind Zones
  
• Disable many unused built-in packages - this time for real

Greetings!

Following a Vagorian release we took our chance to dive down to tech behind Sipho and upgrade our Unity engine version from 2017.4 to 2018.4. That means we are now able to use year's worth of improvements.

One of new engine features is the new Input system which we are going to use to implement controller support. We will first focus on basic support such as movement direction rebinds for controller. That should reach you in future updates. Then we will start improving experience with hotkey-based controls of our UI. Navigation hotkeys will have to be implemented for menus, growth mode and aquarium spawning. In the end, we would like to have game playable on any kind of input setup.

Content will not be forgotten - there will be more new zooids in the future. We have yet to decide if they will come as a new breed or as breedless zooids. New breed would mean a new area is required as there can only be one Wanderer. Breedless zooids would be added to the drop pool, possibly made available after completing a special challenge. Let us know what you prefer!

As for today's matters, we have improved stability of kill slow-downs which should not result in explosive physics simulation at a cost of loss of precision of real-time time as opposed to game-time. Game-time precision stays deterministic which possibly makes more sense as kill slowdowns is rather eye-candy or juice rather than gameplay-impacting mechanic.

Per one of our user's request we have added size control to Aquarium spawn system which will allow spawn solid objects and decorations in various sizes. For that extra unleashment of creativity!

• Disable many unused built-in packages
  
• Quick fix for ambient particles to have same behaviour as in 2017.4
  
• Do not change fixed delta time when changing time scale. This should fix explosive physics instabilities caused by time slowdowns
  
• Use icon instead of text to control spawned object size
  
• Fix flower prefab scaling
  
• Allow changing size of spawned objects in aquarium
  
• Upgrade to Unity 2018.4 version:
  
• Touch all prefabs
  
• Bump project settings
  
• Enable threaded physics
  
• Fix Spike error when ignoring dead targets
  
• New project settings files
  
• Update package manager manifest
  
• Image effect API update
  
• Bump project version
  
• Remove privacy plugin - it's now handled through Analytics package

Specimen of this mysterious breed have been sighted in all inhabited areas. We have called them Vagorians.


They have a utility zooid called Twister that creates small swirls which pull in and carry objects over distance. These swirls merge together in size and strength, becoming capable of moving significantly large objects or even Sipho colonies. We suspect this zooid might have been used as a long distance colony transport.


Vagorian colonies are held up with Peapod zooids which seem to be smaller than typical structure zooids. They allow more compact zooid growth and require less nutrition to sustain. Other colonies which adapt these zooids can become a real threat to all of living marine life.


Burstopod zooids are used for offence and defence. They release an enclosed shell filled with high-pressure unknown substance. The shell breaks with great force, damaging all creatures within small radius.


For local travel Vagorian colonies use Drifter zooids. They provide great colony turning force, but are less effective while strafing. They might have evolved to withstand or embrace great turning forces of swirls and whirlpools.

Our simulations for Aquarium have identified Vagorian environment as highly unstable. Their optimal environment is expected to be found somewhere between different areas where strong currents flow. It is littered with fragments of destroyed habitats brought in by strong currents flowing through.

• Make ambient particles get destroyed on all collisions except for obstacles
  
• Handle when there are no Layouts available for level wealth
  
• Fix incorrectly inverted ifs in Enemy Spawner
  
• Fix swirls not appearing over lower rocks
  
• Rename vagorian whirlpools to swirls
  
• Add Zooid ID upgrading
  
• Twister skill icon and name update
  
• Updated vagorian head ui icon
  
• Burstopod skill description updated
  
• Cheapie renamed to peapod
  
• Vagorian head description
  
• OneOfEach achievement now awarded for having zooids from 4 different breeds (including vagorian)
  
• Updated some vagorian descriptions and names
  
• Undo accidental Burstopod id change
  
• Added a Vagorian enemy sipho that drops 7 DNA on death
  
• Add a vagorian breed unlock achievement
  
• Vagorian Eater twister graphics
  
• Make Vagorian mover sprite larger
  
• Vagorians are now automatically spawned through all the levels
  
• Crafted a bunch more vagorians
  
• Don't allow using skills when in level transition
  
• Fix all layouts that use Vagorian structure
  
• Vagorians should not be forced to stay in the level after it ends
  
• Vagorian part balance
  
• Randomise rotation of explosion effects
  
• Make Vagorian structure 50% of normal size
  
• Enemies get annoyed by running away from dangerous things so they just attack
  
• Normalise vagorian mover size
  
• Added a simple vortex shader
  
• Remove vagorian mover energy bonus
  
• Proper stacking logic
  
• Add extra drops list for Sipho death
  
• Implement buff stacking
  
• Make Current poolable
  
• Add various Vagorian Layouts
  
• Prevent ear pain
  
• Change Burstopod sounds
  
• Add Vagorian support for Head selection
  
• Add a Burstopod explosion effect
  
• Correctly scale zooid regrowth ghosts
  
• Remove lingering prefab
  
• Change how currents look. Tone down Vagorian aquarium environment ambient particles to not clash with currents particles
  
• changed Vagorian color
  
• Make Alien aquarium use correct background prefab
  
• Add Vagorian Aquarium
  
• Forgot to push Vagorian mover
  
• Experiment with directionality - make Sea mover very bad at turning whole sipho and Vagorian good. Also tweak their movement powers
  
• Make Vagorian skills cost 30 energy
  
• Balance vagorian weapon and utility - effective, but expensive utility and many small bombs
  
• Make bombs have HP and set it to 2
  
• Fix bombs not registering kill statistics
  
• Added a zooid size setting, for scaling UI ghosts
  
• Vagorian head material
  
• Adjust ghost previews according to zooid scale
  
• Adjust Burstopod launch animation and skill icon
  
• Make vagorian movers and head animate
  
• Enable mipmaps for Vagorian sprites. Change structure scaling to fit collider. Adjust connector placement
  
• Vagorian breed uses new sprites
  
• Treat projectiles as an obstacle if far away from target. Always face target when in Attack state
  
• Treat all mines and bombs as Projectiles. Make projectiles collide. Why haven't we had mines as projectiles before?
  
• Report saved unknown zooid IDs to log
  
• Tweak twister. It now shrinks while having an object to pull and will gradually absorb smaller twisters instead of instantly
  
• Underwater level now spawns a single vagorian enemy with the new layout selection system
  
• Add the ability to select enemy layouts based on the level wealth
  
• Update disabled zooids to also contain buff managers
  
• Add an enum for layout selection when spawning enemies
  
• Push missing meta file
  
• Attempt to balance twister to synergise with bombs and projectiles
  
• Reduce time to live of projectiles to accomodate for lifetime per velocity increase
  
• Make twister swirl force omniclockwise - always increase velocity of objects inside
  
• Rotate projectiles according to their velocity. Add significantly more life when they're over top speed
  
• Move vagorians out of development
  
• Start tracking the progress of new breeds
  
• Add a new "Vagorian" breed. It should be the wanderer breed that has no homeland

Dear Parasite Designers,

We are happy to announce an updated of 0.3.5 version! This will hopefully be last minor update in 0.3 phase as we are working on the new breed in parallel. As you might have noticed, we are experimenting with two-week release cycle which keeps the updates flow. All of this means that the new breed is coming in two weeks!

One of the things we're seeing is that Queen boss seems to take a toll on many player's lives. Buginis breed is brittle, but deadly. That is why we have placed several powerups in the way to Queen itself to give a little encouragement for you to engage.

We have noticed that procedurally grown Siphos do not plan well enough their growth and get blocked by growing non-structures all around their perimeter. We have addressed this by allowing them to ungrow Zooids to enable themselves to grow further. Procedural growth is not what we have focused on in development, but if it proves to be interesting for you, let us know what would you expect from it.

Aquarium object multi-spawning should be more convenient and less ridiculous. We have limited rate at which multi-spawns happen over time. That fixes Multiple spawns at the same spot, but makes "drag fast to spawn many" break. To address that spawn rate is increased when mouse pointer is moving faster. So the first Aquarium experience of spawning many many many nutrients is still there.

• Add additional powerups to Queen area to guide players to a fight
  
• Make environment spikes less deadly
  
• Limit Aquarium multi-spawn by time, distance and size of spawned object. Also make frequency independent on framerate
  
• Fix non-highlight shaded zooids becoming dark when being color blended. Also remove unnecessary color brightness property and use HDR colors instead
  
• Ungrow zooids when procedural growth gets stuck
  
• Limit how many Heal and Stunned status effects play at the same time. Fixes game getting muted at large Sipho encounters
  
• Extend audio player to support limiting audio plays over time

Hello everyone!

We are happy to produce another update that improves quality of underwater life aspects.

You may wonder how do we decide to fix these random unrelated to each other things. We have a long backlog of changes that we want to do. This list has been gathered over time by just playtesting Sipho, by seeing someone else play live or through help of Youtubers and by reading your feedback. Some small things that require little attention shift are perfect for "getting into the development zone" before starting to work on larger things. Working on new features requires to have whole game source code "loaded up into the brain" which these small tasks help to achieve. Some of these tasks are also experimental implementations of new Zooids...

... which we are going to use to design a new breed! We currently have an exotic new breed in the works. It will feature four unique Zooids and will be available to learn about in all currently existing areas. We are tweaking new Zooid skills to be as versatile and synergetic as possible with other breeds without being too powerful.

• First level enemies won't dash and be annoying easy targets
  
• Dash skill now dashes forward even if the player is not already moving
  
• Make projectiles last longer if they're at their top speed
  
• Don't zoom the camera when mouse is over UI elements
  
• Fix Buginis ambience volume depending on player's position
  
• Re-enable faster Zooid growth by not recreating Layout with each zooid addition. Also fix lingering ghost issue after adding new zooids fast way
  
• Explicitly add BuffManager to each zooid prefab instead of adding the component in runtime. This slightly improves zooid growth performance