Happy October everyone! This is quite fitting update for the month as it features improved boss fights for third Saenus Beefuorus encounter and various improvements for other bosses.
Third Saenus boss concept is a Warden of The Depths - it is a literal boss of a prison guarding various aggressive outlawed Siphonophores. It launches shockwaves which destroy parts of arena letting captive enemies out. This destructible obstacle feature was something we wanted to experiment for a long time and may be used elsewhere in the future.
Check out the full list of changes below:

• Add last two missing layouts to Saenus Boss fight 3
  
• Priotize breed in saved Beefuorus Boss 3 Layouts
  
• Add three more Layouts to Beefuorus Boss fight 3

• Add several supervillainous enemies to Beefuorus Boss fight 3
  
• Buginis Boss 3 fight obstacle break does big screenshake
  
• Reduce flail drag to 1
  
• Aggro Cra'Than Boss 2 when player passes through them
  
• Sink Advena Boss 1 and 2 center arena rocks after fight
  
• Players start with 16 nutrition and Cra'Than start with Leech

• Saenus Boss 3 stops sending shockwaves after all obstacles are broken
  
• Properly clear automatically gathered Boid skills
  
• Check if sinking destroyed sinkables
  
• Higher Saenus Boss 3 sweep damage

• Third Saenus Beefuorus boss is now called Warden Of The Depths and has more things going for it
  
• Hide Pusher debug draws behind debug option
  
• Damageable Sweeper now has falloff damage value for nicer sweeps
  
• Collection Utility acceps IReadOnlyList instead of IList where applicable
  
• Destrucitble Obstacles are now stored in static list for easy access
  
• Boid AI now dynamically gathers skills, avoid distance checking obstacles further away than their target is
  
• Add Old Bronze Rock destructible variants
  
• Add GetClosestZooid to EnemyUtilities
  
• Do not do special Poolable enable when new object is spawned so it doesn't call OnEnable twice
  
• Add ISiphonophoreAI interface to time boss AI when fights start
  
• Damageable sweeper now handles objects with multiple child IDamageable components correctly and damages them only once
  
• Add destructible Old Bronze Water rocks
  
• Allow Rock Damaged and Destroyed effects to be created off-screen
  
• Add experimental conductive object feature which conducts Sizzler attacks
  
• Sort zooids by name so they are displayed in order in Head Selection menu, debug menus
  
• Obstacle Base prefab does not override Outline object's layer to Default
  
• Powerups now also restore one Regeneration Point as do Snacks
  
• Allow toggling Currents
  
• Support world position as UV for dissolve map in Environment Object shader
  
• Damageable Child returns own collider if parent doesn't have
  
• Twister twists do not pass through obstacles
  
• Add segments of walls in Buginis third boss fight which open up when enemies are killed for the segment
  
• Increase zooid reward spawn distance with each additional reward
  
• Spawn boss kill particles from last killed boss sipho if available
  
• Buginis Boss 3 siphonophores move slower if there are no threats around
  
• Destroy Buginis Boss 3 eggs on touch
  
• Reduce Buginis Boss 3 DNA drops to 1 each
  
• Initialize Head Selection Controller upon activation
  
• Cache growth-dependant values in Growth Point UI. Fixes rare exceptions
  
• Check if cached raycast results were destroyed when checking for UI pointer overlaps

• Prioritize child of already shown tooltip when selecting which object to show tooltip for
  
• Growth Sidebar is not a UI raycast target - fixes structure tooltips appearing when hovering sidebar
  
• Make BuffUI scale correctly and fit perfectly above skills

Greetings! It's been a while since last update - summer has taken toll on development time with its social life occasions. Finally, the Autumn is here and we can finally sit back at our screens and deliver the Sipho content everyone awaits.

Speaking of updates, previous one has introduced a new kind of powerup which stacks and its effectiveness heavily relies on how many stacks it has. We already have more than 5 different powerups which need an easier way of tracking - telling which ones and when will fade away. Powerups are designed to be something that impact moment-to-moment decisions of fighting or fleeing so the information has to be readable at glance. Thus buff UI was added:
Hovering it also highlights affected zooids and what stats it provides - it should be especially clearer for new players what buffs do. In the future, more interesting effects can be shown in this space.

Most of the zooids were designed with simple ways of connecting them in mind. By experimenting, we have noticed that having more diverse zooid connections makes more interesting Sipho Layouts. Combined this experience with feedback that starting breed weapon Spike should be placeable at an angle we found that it can be a very (inefficiently) fun zooid!

Spike can now not only be placed at an angle, but also allows other zooids connect to it. The gif above shows new Spike placement taken to extreme. To place Spikes, or other multi-connection-point zooids at a different angle, rotate them with default key R.

As always, the nitty-gritty details can be found below:

• Fix inconsistent race condition when initializing ZooidPlacementGhosts

• Display damage in debuff description
  
• Show basic tooltip information upon hovering enemies in growth or aquarium mode
  
• Tweak zooid connection point UI. Do not show for zooids with standard connections

• Move buff UI above skill bar
  
• Respect UI scaling when calculating tooltip pivots
  
• Use bigger brain way of showing zooid placement ghosts

• Show connection points when growing new zooids
  
• Shift + Rotate rotates zooids in other direction
  
• Automatically detect anchors for tooltips - improves positions of many different tooltips
  
• Make Buff UI selectable with controller
  
• Add experimental option of increasing MaxWealth when picking up nutrition while being under MaxWealth. Needs game rebalance to work
  
• - Rename Zooid prefab files to reflect prefab type, zooid type and name so they are more easy to search in Editor
  
• None of Food Spawners are scalable so they are not important and don't block enemy spawning. Also fixes having too many food spawns in later levels
  
• Fix Freeroam not spawning enemies
  
• Add Buff UI which shows currently active buffs, debuffs and powerups
  
• Allow highlighting zooids outside Growth mode
  
• Tooltips can now also be dynamic and be updated each frame
  
• Handle sprite renderer copies without sprite
  
• Copy zooid shader properties when cloning materials - makes greaser, muck, agonizer buffs to display dissolve amount
  
• Display number of buffed neighbor zooids in tooltips
  
• Use sprite icon pivot to correctly display Spike position when growing
  
• Fix zooid selection saying "poop" the first time it's shown and there are no zooids adapted
  
• Fix error throwing when initializing Extra Zooid UI before Head Selection Controller
  
• Make a copy of zooid list when doing new game animation
  
• Spike has additional connection points
  
• But be 99% strict when checking for Sipho self-overlaps - still needs to be fixed on Layout level of logic
  
• Be only 75% strict when checking for overlaps when repositioning zooids - Growth Points already ensure correct positions
  
• Fix gathering more neighbors than a zooid should connect to - short-connected zooids will no longer created invalid distant connections
  
• Fix Leech bottom graphics being offset
  
• Fix Advena boss 3 throwing errors while trying to ungrow poisoned zooids
  
• Post-build updated assets

The closer we get to feature-completeness of the non-linear levels the more wacky mechanics we can experiment with and reach our design goals.
One of them is introduction of The Essence of The Elders buff exclusive to Cra'Than evironments. Even though it was designed to make Cra'Thanos boss fight quicker and easier, it can be found in The Twisted Betrothal and Cra'Than environments as well, spawned by Holes. It has a very short 5 second duration, 90% shorter for each stack, but it stacks +50% buff to damage, movement speed and range. It also temporary reduces all zooid health by 50% with each stack turning your (enemy) sipho into a glass cannon. We have already seen players stacking it to ludicrous stacks and having fun with that.
Following Holes spawning a new buff, Tentacles have received a bit of brain and will react to things touching them. We hope that these environmental gimmicks bring more to the table and makes visiting Cra'Than areas play out differently than usual.

• Zooid unlock pickup is now a trigger and is possible to pass-through
  
• Zooids also try eating consumables with Trigger colliders
  
• Zooid pickup needs to be charged-up to pick-up instead of being instant pick-up
  
• Twisters now only check for pushable layer - doesn't affect decorations

• Tweak Cra'Than boss 2 arena
  
• More robust save upgrade process for very old saves. Save game version in saves
  
• Hide Tentacle debug text behind debug option
  
• Tweak Cra'Than Boss 2 arena
  
• Make Tentacles react to things touching them
  
• Essence of the Elders buff has stronger but shorter effect. It also decreases max health
  
• Color zooid max health in tooltips according to positive/negative change
  
• Fix buff descriptions showing +- for negative effects
  
• Zooids with lower max HP than normal will decay as if they were damaged at their normal HP
  
• Cap minimum value of zooid health at 1
  
• Rename Energy Regenerated Per Second to Energy Regeneration
  
• Make Sniper projectile 50% faster
  
• Cra'Than Holes now only spawn The Essence of The Elders and Snacks
  
• Tweak Cra'Than first boss fight arena to allow fitting 3 zooid wide Siphos on sides
  
• Add The Essence of Elders powerup
  
• Fix Spike trying to update pooled graphics connectors
  
• Replace whitespace with underscores in itchio upload version tags
  
• Fix enemy flee direction - fixes enemies clumping up at (0,0) coordinates
  
• Handle rotated camera in growth mode UI correctly
  
• Hide sonar in growth mode
  
• Reward more nutrition for killing larger enemies
  
• Only pull consumables which can be consumed
  
• Allow eating consumable if it provides no nutrition while Sipho is full
  
• Include tag to version of builds uploaded to itch

Starting a game for new players is now fixed. Update also includes little sneaky gift of ading synergy between Sizzler and Muck and buffing Chiting structure zooid!

• Fix starting in tutorial

• Sizzler now deals damage to mucked targets
  
• Really gather all environment object rigidbodies for disabling when pooling
  
• Chitins now grow shells on zooids further away
  
• Disable all rigidbodies attached to the environment object when pooling

Keeping up to our plans we have improved Whirlpools - you will now be able to choose which Environment to dive to, one out of two. This will add a little bit of strategy of choosing which breeds to encounter early and what bosses to fight. This improvement also allows us sneaking in surprise destinations.
Third Advena boss fight has also been improved thanks to our community feedback on Discord Server. We will continue improving and polishing the rest of the boss fights - hop and and share your ideas!
And the changelist:

• Tweak third advena boss arena
  
• Remove logspam
  
• Fix first frame of teleport having old center of mass which break distance calculation for siphos
  
• Don't add number strings to translation dictionary
  
• Change camera angle quantization to be enum
  
• Improve EnumUI - add generics support, allow having enums with values which don't match their index
  
• Fix missing final boss scene reference in Campaign scenes. Refactor how areas are handled
  
• Add Growth camera rotation snapping and setting for it
  
• Refactor how Areas are handled in Campaign. Allow selecting one out of two areas to dive to
  
• Saves store a seed value
  
• Adapting zooid now also gives nutrition amount of the zooid cost
  
• Automatically gather layouts build. Add several builtin layouts
  
• Enemies forget about food that was despawned immediatelly
  
• Do not ungrow zooids when cancelling new zooid placement with right mouse click
  
• Automatically determine which spawner is "important" and blocks enemy spawning while not has spawned itself
  
• Third Advena boss ungrows and regrows poisoned zooids
  
• Allow automatically uploading Steam builds

Greetings, travellers of the depths! We are getting closer to finishing Sipho 0.7 branching level update cycle with new Cra'Than environments. Before moving on to exciting new things we have planned, we will also be improving some of bosses, to bring them up to a similar quality bar.

• Third Advena boss bounces around
  
• More aggressive regular enemies
  
• Tweak Cra'Than level 1
  
• Add Ragdoll layer as Solid layer
  
• Scale tentacle motor speed with scale
  
• Brains are slippery
  
• Fix old plant obstacle having colliders set up in a way which could make zooids stuck
  
• Cra'Than Environment uses new sprites
  
• More spawner-parent interaction modes for grid spawner
  
• Add Cra'Than Red Tentacle environment object formation
  
• Cra'Than Second Area uses new sprites
  
• Grid spawner can now add value of parent spawner. Null spawn objects are also supported for having holes in spawns
  
• Utility script for blurring images
  
• Reset Environment Rot shader variable when exiting
  
• Attempt to fix scale not being reset correctly for non-disable-overridden consumables
  
• Add several utility scripts used for testing
  
• Update Unity packages

Hey everyone, small hotfix update while working on finishing new Cra'Than levels and experimenting new physics. Stay tuned!

• Update Unity to 2020.3.9f1
  
• Fix level scaling for Tutorial. Fixes black screen

Greetings!
This in-between large updates update addresses some of recent feedback points. Enemy threat evaluation has been re-written to be more easily controllable. This will help us to monitor and tweak enemy behaviour to become more predictable and feel fair to fight against.

Enemies now spawn at distance depending on level instead of fixed range - this fixed emergent difficulty rise which made enemies spawn more relatively densely in later levels. Players would end up fighting more enemies than intended at once which would negate any strategy. Now enemy spawn range scales with their size and environment.

Such scaling allowed us to make visible area around the player dynamic - later levels will now have more things spawned around and consequently add more view range. This should feel less claustrophobic and more rewarding for growing big. Things out of distance will be shrouded with blackness.

Energy Leech now attaches to environment bodies such as Spike Balls and holds them at distance! It then can be used as a makeshift Flail or as a shield against projectiles. We hope to have more physical objects in the future which could be exploited by this physical interaction.

Check out the changelog:

• Separate Enemy threat passiveness for defending and attacking. Tweak values for first levels
  
• Replenish lost nutrition when adding nutrition as well. Nutrition pickups restore double if player has lost nutrition
  
• Reset nutrition delta display timer earlier so it doesn't stack amounts that have almost faded out

• Add work-in-progress Mutation code
  
• Add Math2D Utilities - AngleSafe and RotateByVector
  
• Add Debug Utility to draw Arrows
  
• Do not attach leeches to pooled consumables
  
• Increase Energy leech pull force by 25%
  
• Do not attach Energy Leech to zooid-owned non-damageable rigidbodies - fixes grabbing your own Spikes and Flails

• More responsive view change in Growth and Aquarium Edit modes
  
• Spawn Simple Effect if there are no CameraFollows available anyway
  
• Increase view distance in Aquarium

• Tweak enemy self-confidence
  
• Head selection Siphos should not chase after invisible food
  
• Do not set velocities on static rigidbodies
  
• Serialize Camera in CameraFollow component
  
• Refactor how Enemy threats are calculated
  
• Another fix for error messages
  
• Attempt to fix growth point UI error messages
  
• Melee Power affects leech pull force. Leeches do not pulse if their target is not damageable
  
• Detach leech from disabled objects
  
• Reduce drag and mass of environment spike
  
• Energy leech now attaches to dynamic rigidbodies and holds them at distance
  
• Remove unused serialized stat data
  
• Prioritise healing zooids with lowest health
  
• Scale enemy spawners, max visible distance, level obstacle spawn distance with level
  
• Use custom zoom for growth mode
  
• Add black circle around visible camera area
  
• Fix not registering Five Second Rule achievement
  
• Fix game incorrectly counting pooled instances counts after playing one session. Fixes levels sometimes never ending
  
• Fix leech having a limit on targets. Fixes sometimes not leeching on a potential target
  
• Allow zooming out more and add black circle around visible range
  
• Delay Destructible Egg death consumable time by 0.1s and make consumables inherit velocity so they feel and work better with Grabbers
  
• Add Slippery environment object mechanic - Projectiles, Mines, Spikes and Grabbers slide-off slippery objects
  
• Hide mouse cursor when Gamepad is used

Hey all!
Big bugfixing update is now available for everyone.

Sipho's performance is very important - even small stutters can ruin your experience. The FPS needs to be smooth. Therefore we have put our attention to how disabled objects are handled as they were causing stutters. Now, instead of disabling whole hierarchies of Obstacles, Consumables, Decorations - everything that is constantly spawned and despawned in played level, we disable only parts that are visible or cause interactions. This has cut the time CPU has to process level spawning by almost a half - noticeably improving performance in denser areas and level-ends. Let us know if you notice a difference!

Full list of changes below:

• Add test to catch offset graphics
  
• Fix Polyp graphics position too
  
• Fix Energy Leech graphics object being offset and consequently making connectors render incorrectly
  
• Fix Consumables being added to the instance list twice - fixes ghost Consumables shown in Sonar
  
• Fix outlines still rendering for pooled objects
  
• Fix Zooid pickups not getting disabled

• Tweak Buginis boss 3 behavior and arena
  
• Add Health Regeneration stat and use it for Vagorian mover
  
• Soul Eater projectiles die faster when they're flying fast
  
• Do not allow camera movement after death in campaign
  
• Fix Steamworks app ID location
  
• Debug things
  
• Explicitly control what gets disabled when poolables are pooled - improves spawn/despawn performance by ~50%
  
• Update Mover dash stat multipler
  
• Update Steamworks.NET to Release 15.0.0
  
• Stat values are now stored as 1000 times larger integers to avoid rounding errors over time
  
• Make consumables without owned edible immediately
  
• Tweak Sizzler effects
  
• Update steamworks