This update might not seem like a big one from the first glance - not so many content additions, mostly tweaks and bugfixes. But there is one major tweak that will change how Sipho is played - Snacks now restore Nutrition if you have fallen below your recorded maximum!
That's right - if you lose half of your colony, you can still get it back by consuming much more abundant Snacks. This helps to keep achieved progress and avoids soft-locks where one is unable to re-grow parts without killing whole Siphos. This change has been suggested in many forms by you, players, and we had to figure out how to make it work intuitively. Nutrition Orb now displays missing nutrition as a red bar above your current nutrition, as well as indicates how much nutrition you lose or gain by doing actions: Notice how picking up additional Snacks don't provide nutrition beyond the red zone. We hope that these changes will remedy some of unfortunate moments due to volatile nature of Zooids.
Cra'Than Sizzler zooid has received a facelift - it has received a better visual effect to show what has been affected by the shock. Affected zooids are no longer random - now closest zooids and their neighbors are shocked. Additionally, Sizzler stun duration is now affected by Ranged Power stat, which increases stun duration by 1 second for each stat point.
Changelog in detail:
Version 0.7.9f2
Show nutrition delta on Nutrition orb
Add utility to find neighboring zooids up to zooid count
Sizzler is now affected by Penetration - how many zooids it affects and Ranged Power - stun duration
Add Development-only Penetration powerup
Shell now protects from Sizzler stun on application rather than in update step. This allows adding additional stuns on the same frame
Add tooltip explaining lost wealth to Nutrition orb
Search for tooltip instances in parent game objects too. Tweak some UI objects to not provide unrelated tooltips
Return ungrowth nutrition immediately when ungrowing zooids
Fix plant leaves looking weird when rotten
Food should not block growing new zooids
Reset player's MaxWealth when growing from layout or toggling unlimited nutrition in Aquarium
Version 0.7.9f1
Add cooldown and energy cost to skill description shown in zooid tooltip
Increase base energy regeneration to 25 (up from 20)
Chitin shell is removed when it protects from Sizzler attack
Apply poison to nearby targets on initial poison spawn. Makes using Mines up close easier
Do not twin-stick turn Sipho while game is in Growth mode transition
Prewarm poison pill so it instantly appears as intended
Sipho Death events now carry information about killer. Prevent other Siphos picking up consumables which they don't own for 1 second
Make damage powerup triangles two-sided so they don't disappear when consumable is flipped
Cra'Than hole spawn progress decreases instead of being reset when something covers it
Increase Event System Drag Threshold to 15 (from 5)
Rearrange development menu spawn items
Interactive area is deactivated if main sipho dies
Death cancels whirlpool diving
Better debug for Graphics Connector and Swarm Minion to catch reported exceptions
Break down Head Selection intialization code for debugging
Fix null key paths after starting new game
Fix Vagorians not being spawned
Nutrition orb shows mising wealth
Update UI default shader
Pushers won't try pushing Decorations
Update engine to 2020.3.2f1
ignore Debug folder
Bring back Nerverfiber heal to 2. Do not restore nutrition through heals
Last bugfix and quality updates for 0.7.8 are here! Next update is going to be about addressing surfacing common feedback - enemy behavior and nutrition drops, stay tuned.
Version 0.7.8f8
- Use optional debugging menu for debugging some game systems that were previously just drawing their own debug things and cluttered whole screen - Fix Buginis environment leaves for some reason being 2x smaller than intended - Heads no longer deal damage on touch. Tweak head graphics to appear above connections - Spike fixaroo 5: Electric boogaloo - reduced launch force and drag for spike tip to make it match expected distance and be more stable - Do not change Rigidbody type and disable them entirely when sinking. Should improve performance on Area Clear - Fix error throw if growing through Growth point failed - Clip transparent Zooid pixels - Fix Zooid growth growing on different growth point than it previews - Fix growth point search for peapods - Update Sipho structure data when growing from Layout - Make Cra'Than areas scale as the rest of the areas
Version 0.7.8f7
- Make zooid repositioning work with relevant zooid search - Improve Growth Point UI search by taking their relevant direction into account - Improve zooid highlights by highlighting "main" connection zooid - Remove duplicate Layout and update original "Genial Advena Nosher" - Clamp healing to max health to prevent overhealing - Fix old builtin layout Advena Slicerness - Update Sipho structure data on demand - Only upgrade layouts if their version is lower, rather than not equal to current - Update total Siphonophore movement power every frame instead of on structure change
This update addresses some requests for better control binding - you can now bind default keys for skills. Dive action keybind has been also separated from Confirm button - so it will be possible to bind <Space> to another key for gameplay and still use it for confirming UI navigation.
Big refactor has been performed on how Layout data stores zooid angles - we had an issue where growing a perfect circle with 22.5 degree turns was impossible - it would get rounded up or down. We had to update how Layout data is stored which means it will no longer be backwards compatible with previous versions once new version is loaded up.
Version 0.7.8f6
Buginis Boss 1 attacks back
Add option to limit total spawns of an Enemy Spawner. Limit Alpha spawns to 1 per level
Angle-clamp zooid angles in layouts to 1440 degrees
Increase exported Layout position precision to 3 fraction digits (up from 2)
Optimize boss skill range checks by exiting early if skill is unavailable. Should improve Buginis Boss 3 performance
Fix zooid angle rounding error by internally storing zooid angles 4 times higher, to support up to 32 rotations as integers
Fix spacing in UI Elements by adding minimum height as font size
Add missing sprites for Controller key binds. Allow setting default keybinds for skills in Options menu
We can finally say that the latest version 0.7.8 is a direct improvement over previously available Sipho version 0.6.9 and time has come to make it available for everyone! There are loads of new content and tweaks in this update:
New and higher resolution graphics for all environments. Deeper objects are now affected by parallax effect. Some of new objects have special properties - Bones spawned in Advena areas are breakable, Cra'Than Holes spawn food if they are unblocked. And all of these environments are no longer visited in fixed order - this improves replayability and allows us present more varied enemies. Previously, Saenus Beefuorus were only seen in first levels and they barely fought back. Now, you might encounter them in later giving a much better fighting chance for that breed. Sea creature in its comfy coral-decorated environment waiting to snip you
9 new bosses were added for each difficulty tier, adding up to a total of 13. Some of boss designs were based on the winners of community boss design competition. Boss fight arenas also use new environment features to spice up the strategy. We will be further polishing these fights - we want to these fights to encourage varied strategies and break pace from regular open-area battles. Boss fights are also great for experimenting with different mechanics in isolated area which we might bring later to the rest of the game. One of new Advena breed bosses found in Level 3 "Secondary Crater"
Extended connections for structure parts was a small change which unlocked exponentially more possibilities of designing your SIpho. It was once a cursed growth technique of experienced players, which required placing and removing structure Zooids in a specific way to create farther connections than usually possible. Thanks to our community, it has been implemented to work out of the box: Here you can see Advena structures placed further apart to allow Spikes sliding through
Special properties for movement Zooids were added to differentiate movement zooids further. They have the following effects:
Advena movers regenerate energy on hit - we hope that this will play well with Advena's aggressive idea
Saenus movers have much stronger Dash skill effect - acting like real-life squid jets
Buginis movers decrease cooldowns of neighboring zooids by 10% - plays well with Buginis skill oriented breed. Since skills are not separated for each zooid and connections can be more intricate, mean value for cooldowns is used. For example if you have a Flak with 110% Cooldown Recovery and another with 120% CR, skill cooldown will be reduced by 15%.
Cra'Than movers have additional connection points - crazy, we know, let's see how this works!
Vagorian movers regenerate health - destined to bump into spiky things, Vagorians have evolved to regenerate their wounds,
Added new Cooldown Recovery stat which improves your Skill cooldown duration
New type of Siphonophore enemy - Polyp, which are stationary, turret-like Siphos. They don't think much and certainly don't move. Currently they can be found in single boss fight and spawned in Aquarium. In future versions we might use them as enemies in regular areas as well as in different boss fights.
Zooid unlock drop options increase with each level - first boss drops two zooids to choose from, second one drops three and so forth - we hope this gives more freedom and incentive to continue playing in further levels.
You now keep all adapted Zooids throughout runs. It means that with every replay extra Zooid selection list grows with new zooids. We thought that previous behaviour was just unpleasant for inexperienced players and nothing of value for experienced ones.
New powerups - Melee and Ranged Damage, Cooldown Recovery and Range
Known issue:
With increased amount of environment objects performance can get worse once Area is Cleared. We are looking into how to improve both performance and experience of being told that the level has ended.
The most recent changes that haven't been mentioned in previous updates:
Version 0.7.8f4
Spawn Cra'Than boss 3 whirlpool in the middle of arena
Fix save updating to new version
Support child colliders in Object Eraser
Version 0.7.8f3
Reduce crazy amounts of nutrition in Advena areas
Serialize Zooid rigidbodies so they're always available
Deactivate Zooid Reposition UI Stack if we are coming back to it dragging nothing
Add optional debugging to UIModuleStack
Remove duplicate event system from Aquarium menu
Serialize Canvas reference in Growth Manager so it can have Growth Point UI recreated early
Fix Spike throwing skill errors when becoming dead
Bump year label
Version 0.7.8f2
Update obsolete Bone Ball Obstacle references in scenes
Refactor achievements to support nonlinear levels
Add environment type analytics
Stop spike damage once it has exceeded pierce count and is still not retracted to simulate previous behavior
Spike weapon improvement - track damage time per damaged collider rather than per-spike
Debug improvements: add optional logging, allow turning off AI in debug enemy spawn menu, instantly spawn them
Spikes pierce all colliders when retracting. Tweak spike forces
Fix author of Crabs
All of changes made since 0.6.9 can be found here.
As we are getting closer to 0.7.x release to wide masses we are focusing on doing last touches of polishing roughest edges. Remakes of Cra'Than areas and boss polish will be coming after we release this update to the default branch - they are good enough to not lower the quality bar compared to widely available version 0.6.9.
This version can be played after updating to Steam's beta branch called [staging]. Find it at: Library -> [Right Click] on Sipho -> Properties -> Betas
Version 0.7.8f1
Enemies now remember who damaged them and treat them more cautiously
Fix Zooids instantly exploding on death in previous commit
Refactor Zooid health change events
Add Siphonophore debug info to Development UI
Destroy blocking rocks and other environment features once Seanus Boss Fight 3 ends
Destroyed Sinkable Environment Objects handle being sunk
Tweak gamepad/camera code
Tweak Twister Narrows area - wider gaps, less food spawns, nicer bone spawns
Dirty Project Settings
Support controller with Camera Follow
Remove Input workarounds for controller inversion. Use built-in Input System UI Input Module
Use more generic IsPointerOverUI calculation code
Put tentacle sprite pivot at the tentacle base. Adjust all prefabs and placements of tentacles
Fix dead zooids throwing errors on whirlpool sink
Alphas should spawn without extra nutrition
Reimport all prefabs to populate serialized data
Cra'Than boss battle arena layout tweaked
Environment spikes remember damage time per-object - should feel much more consistent. Tweak damage values - damage more often, but require more velocity for full damage
If ungrowing a Zooid would leave some Zooids detached, ungrow them too
Fix glitch that allowed stacking zooids
Remove silly Saenus layout from built-in
Add powerups and Bone Balls to Aquarium UI
Update object database
Allow skipping objects from inclusion to the database
Create new Bone Ball prefabs with new prefab workflow
Decorate Cra'Than first Boss arena
Ignore .vsconfig
Upgrade Unity engine to 2020.3.0f1
Version 0.7.7f2
Make Advena Boss 2 rotate instead of constantly facing player
Skip a frame when registering for Sipho Inventory so that anything that sets up inventory doesn't trigger Zooid unlock popup
Rename Powerup Range to Range Powerup
Currents should not affect Ignore Raycast layer - fixes leeches being affected
Fix destructible object becoming almost invisible while damaged. Scale mass and hit damage with size
Set local scale to Poolable objects before spawning them
Do not lower clamp zooid decay to 0.01
Re-enable save compression
Version 0.7.7f1
Reduce spike launch and chip forces to accomodate for lower mass
Spread out enemy spawners a bit
Change Eating powerup to become Range powerup - it also increases zooid range. Make powerup IDs consistent, add save upgrade path.
Improve Cra'Than Boss 1 fights
Add proper save versioning and upgrade path
Change base time to spawn to 8 of Cra'Than Hole and scale it by their size - larger holes spawn more often
Scale Destructible Container drop amount and health by their size
Tweak Gemini boss, add its down aggro effect
Never scale zooid size below 0.01 - fixes rare cases of leech tips disappearing
Fix leech tips staying visually attached to pooled objects
Reduce camera change speed in growth mode
Print Siphonophore spawn log entry in Start instead of Awake - allows Enemy spawners to set Siphonophore name for better debugging
Refactor how Enemy Spawners gather their settings. Clean up lots of parameters. Add scaled Alpha Enemy spawning to all areas. Tweak enemy Layout value level ratios
Tweak spike
Tweak spike to be less wiggly
Fix Cra'Than mover "hands" being below their elbows
Fix connection visuals not syncing correctly while dragging introduced in previous commits. Do not discard valid position when ending drag very close to zooids of that position (makes placing a bit nicer)
Use absolute position values when moving child zooids through repositioning in growth mode
Obliterate Zooid.transform references in Zooid Button UI - use Zooid.Position/Rotation instead
Allow setting Zooid rotation through its property
Add missing Peapod audio clip
Fix skill bar being limited after certain width. Also stretch it down if it doesn't fit the screen
Another fight based on boss design contest has been added to the game! This time it's The Gemini, create by Popcorn Dust! The original design was solid - boss behaviour promotes interesting strategies fighting them. And there is a lot of potential for lore. We deviated a bit from original by making the second Gemini an invert of the original design: The fight might be fiendishly hard or cake-walk easy. We will be monitoring feedback and tweaking this boss in the future!
The arena features new Cra'Than environment objects which will be added to existing levels to spice up variety. We are very happy how Tentacles have turned out to be. If they prove to be stable enough for such physics-based action as Sipho has, we might add stronger interactions with them - some might get annoyed and push objects away. We have also added Holes which sometimes spit out useful powerups to aid you in your fights. Aquarium Layout Browser has gotten a little bit of love - it can now be searched and sorted by names or values of Layouts. More Aquarium functionality improvements are planned in the future.
Have a go at all changes we've made:
Version 0.7.6f1
Enable random motors on tentacles to make them move
Cra'Than boss battle 2
Set up Cra'Than holes which spawn food
Turn off batching on tentacle sprite skins to attempt fixing flying vertices
Conver "bulp" audio file to ogg and trim silence
Add minimum delay option to Audio Player
Support looping audio on following effect
Turn off always update on sprite skins of tentacles and holes
Spawn bonus nutrition where the boss was
Tweak tentacles
Set Ragdoll layer to not collide with Default layer
Set up Hole sprite bones
Add new environment objects to environment object collection
Polish tentacle physics
Improve Cra'Than Twin boss fight
Fix layout author search not being lowercased
Add sorting and filtering to Layout browser
Add joints to tentacle objects
Generate sprite bones for tentacles
Allow rocks to set different solids layer than Default
Add Ragdoll layer
Add random motor speed script for Tentacle use
Add music beat detector script
Add 2D skinning package
Do not use Growth Point UI while Sipho structure is dirty - fixes rare cases of entering bad UI state when quickly doing growth things
Add multiple boss support
Add Rect extension to incorporate Rect expansion
Tweak depth colors so that mid depth is not as desaturated and dark
Set up Cra'Than obstacle colliders
Add Cra'Than prefabs and gallery scene
Add new Cra'Than environment sprites
Fix camera having slower zoom change speed than intended
Initial release of so-called Swarm - Buginis third boss fight has shown several things it needs to be improved upon. Its AI was tweaked to have a goal inside the Boid-brain to attack its current target Siphonophore - you, the player. Previously it would override Boid flocking behavior to go straight to its target, if it is in vision, and it would cause clumping together with other agents. Clumping up should now happen much less often. Another interesting change was addition of Camera position and size overrides for boss fights. We can now increase zoom range in arenas without having to design environment outside of playable areas - the camera is simply pushed away from the edge, towards arena contents. This increases vision of important arena parts and allows us to tell the story using the environment more clearly.
Version 0.7.5f1
Beautify Buginis boss 3 arena
Add plant Nest formation
Add damaged effect to Sipho container
Fully zoom out when using custom views - makes boss fight zoom consistent
Make Buginis Swarm boss movement fully boid based with goal support
Sipho eggs spawn siphonophores using their own direction
Tweak Buginis Boss 2 arena camera limits
Add Camera Follow Overriders to boss arenas to limit vision only to relevant area and allow zooming out further
Tweak Buginis Swarm boss behavior to include player as goal in Boid simulation
Workaround Sipho size being very large after boss area load by skipping a frame
More Rect utility tests
Add Camera Follow Overrider to enable custom camera control for boss fights
After many tweaks, third Buginis boss fight is now in the game! It is based upon Murderswarm design by TIC. We have let ourselves experiment with it a bit and we feel that it is going to be yet another unique boss fight.
The boss fight implementation differs from original by being Buginis, rather than Vagorian breed. On paper, swarm-based AI might sound easy to do, but it required quite a bit of tweaking to get it somewhat right in the game. It turned out alright and we are pretty happy with the result - the Swarm behaves believably in confined arena and is a threat to the player.
While tweaking and improving Swarm's behavior we saw potential of using the same method of control for friendly Siphos in Aquarium. Smaller Siphos would follow larger ones, including player's Sipho, which would have some influence upon the rest of the Swam. That would turn into a herd-management minigame if you want to keep your own Swarm together and fight other Siphos. These Aquarium improvements would come after we finish with non-linear levels in 0.7 versions.
Version 0.7.4f1
Less error prone way of applying zoom to view margins
Reduce duration for camera animation if there is no spawn animation
Use boss battle zoomout for other bosses
Allow overriding zoom level for camera follow. Use zoom overrides for boss battle initial camera animation
Swarm AI and arena improvements
Add Buginis Boss 3 Swarm Layouts
Do not save game while boss fight has not ended yet. Deterministically select zooid unlock drops
More appropriate way of saving Boss Battle state
WIP Buginis swam boss - swap arena art to Buginis environment, boid movement improvements, spawn swam from destroted eggs
Add Destructible Sipho Container which spawns Siphos upon destruction
Add HUE shift property to environment shader
Add test for finding duplicate Environment Object IDs and fix them
Swarmer Boid AI is now Faction based - boids will follow anyone in their faction
Add Intended Rotation property to Siphonophore
Update Siphonophore physical radius each frame instead of on Structure change
We had a little hidden update with several improvements:
Version 0.7.3f3
Use automatic Graphics API for MacOS
Move LUTs to Textures directory out of PostProcessing
Show Builtin layouts first if there are no manually saved layouts in Layout Browser
Rename few particles options
Re-gather shader
WIP Buginis boss
Add some particle graphics options
Remove two unused texture lookups in whirlpool mist shader
Choose another enemy spawner layout if enemy spawner fails to spawn in 100 tries
Greetings everyone! Happy past holidays and new year! Now that the festive distractions are gone we can go back to improving Sipho. One thing that has been bothering us for a while, was how hard the game is when your Sipho is little. It is hard to balance the game to play well when your creature colony is small, made out of few movers and a weapon, and large, having dozens of buffed-up(tm) weapons, efficient energy regeneration... and skills cost the same fixed amount. So we have finally gathered our courage to attempt at balancing that through skill cost. Now, most of the skills have a lower base cost and grow their cost with each zooid:
Zooid
Old cost
Cost Base
Extra cost Per Zooid
Burstopod
35
20
3
Claw
30
16
3
Flail
20
6
3
Flak
55
20
8
Leech
7
5
1
Sniper
60
30
7
Soul Eater
50
20
7
Spike
50
22
7
Sprayer
10
5
1
Swarmer
15
6
2
Energy Leech
2
3
1
Grabber
25
20
1
Miner
45
30
4
Muck
25
15
3
Pusher
15
5
3
Sizzler
75
25
2
Squirter
25
10
4
Twister
35
15
4
As you can see, new skill costs match old ones are around 4-5 zooids. We hope that this skill cost rebalance will feel more realistic and allow better difficulty scaling for different Sipho sizes. We will monitor experience and adjust these skills costs accordingly - let us know how they feel!
Version 0.7.3f2
Correctly decrease poison duration by 30% for each stack
Balance sum skill costs around 4-5 zooids rather than 2-3. Generally makes skills cheaper
Heads by default have 0 melee damage, but can deal damage if buffed.
Set poison duration to 3 for real this time
Fix some environment objects remaining collidable after level ends forcefully
Fix environment some objects not fading out correctly
Version 0.7.3f1
Add Fixed set class for future use
Muck and Poison clouds are now colliding with environment
Remove Rock component from Environment Spike
Fix Swarmer minion animations lagging behind. Movement Force stat no longer affects Swamer Minion speed
Tweak Saenus boss 2 arena to make it unescapable
Add Important setting on spawners and mark obstacle spawners as important. Do not spawn enemies inside chunks of important spawners that have not been loaded yet. Fixes rock-squished enemies
Fix error when kill point receiver tries to unsubscribe from nonexisting Siphonophore
Swarmer minions now crawl on top of obstacles
Add timer based melee damage to all heads
Kill point receivers (Soul Eater and Swarmer) kill dead Zooids on collision
Pusher Penetration stat allows pushing more objects at full force by 30% per stat
Improve whirlpool particles
Zooid description shows Penetration stat as relevant if Ranged stat is non-zero
Twister Penetration stat increases Swirl lifetime by 30%
Poison debuff now has a duration of 3 (was 1) and scales duration down by 70% with each stack.
Allow buffs and debuffs scale duration depending on stack count
Enemy Spawner bases spawns on current wealth rather than Recent Wealth. Fixes Aquarium spawners not adapting quickly enough
Add world position scale parameter to Scrolling Texture shader and use it for Muck clouds
Muck doesn't affect its owner anymore. Increase Muck cloud duration to 5 (from 3.5) and radius per range to 0.3 (from 0.25)
Dash now costs 20 Energy + 5 per zooid
Added tooltip translations
Show skill cooldown difference in tooltips. Tell players how to rebind skills
Move GameKey beatifying code to String Beautifier
Round energy capacity bonus instead of flooring it down. The effect is most noticeable with Energy powerup
Change how extra cooldown is displayed - show delta in tooltips
Cooldown translations renamed
Rebalance skill costs so they scale with the count of zooids with that skill
Proportionally increase skill cooldown if it is more costly than max Sipho energy. Display skill cost energy breakdown in tooltips
Gray out energy regeneration buff if it's irrelevant
Fix growth points improperly registering themselves at manager
Improve skill tooltip to show skill energy costs
Reduce flak shoot audio latency
Update Burst and Collections packages
More speedy Growth Point generation
Forcefully end level if player doesn't clear it in 5 minutes
Change object layer to Ignore Raycast when sinking to avoid unnecessary raycast hits
Stagger sinkable sinking
Serialize Zooid connection angle masks
Remove duplicate standalone input module
Set Growth Point parent to be the same as zooid button parent
Do not despawn growth points that are going to be used - improves growth performance
Fix incorrectly caching zooid button children
Use growth manager to store growth points instead of searching globally
Use lazy initialization for Zooid Buttons when Sipho structure gets changed
Use Burst to calculate growth point positions
Use Burst compiled MatrixUtility outputs as out rather than ref so they can be inlined
Also store zooid connection angles as bitmask
Do not throw errors when no Area is loaded
Remove unused trail renderers from movers
Remove pushing capability from Saenus Jet. Change dash multiplier from 2 to 3, reduce drag from 0.25 to 0.2, increase health to 11, do not penalize turning force - set it to 1
Parametrize Dash multiplier
More robust way of instantiating System Callbacks singleton
Do not regenerate Drifter health when zooid is dead
Update one of builtin Saenus layouts to be more menacing
Reserialize sprite atlases
Better utilities for Layout editing and refactor of layout selection logic for Campaign levels
Only apply buff if base stats are relevant rather than current
Update project to Unity 2019.4.17f1
Tweak Spike and Santa hat to behave more controllably
Serialize zooid component references in prefabs. Serialize zooid radius instead of calculating it from collider