One of the primary areas I have been focusing on recently is around customization of the dialogue box appearance. I've been adding some new options and features to the UI Theme Editor that allow you to design unique dialogue box styles that best suit your game. It's still a work in progress, but check out a few of the many styles that you can create with the available options!



Using the new file dropping functionality, you can drop a TrueType font file into the application which can then be selected from the Properties panel while editing your theme. Previously, in regards to the dialogue box itself, you could only change the colors of the box. With the new image editor, you can now draw a custom image for the box as desired (including transparency).



Some of the currently available customization options include font, font size, and font color, window width, and vertical line spacing. As shown below, these tweaks can make a big difference in the overall appearance of the dialogue box.





I decided it would be beneficial to put some effort into features like this earlier on. I'd like to enable people to create more unique styles and to not be stuck with one default dialogue box style. My goal is to include a lot of flexibility and customization like this, while still providing built-in options for those who aren't interested in modifying aspects like the UI.

Here's a great example showing how simple it will be to change the dialogue box appearance to something quite different from the default style!



One other small update worth mentioning is the addition of a new scripting function, "Move Character". This function will move an NPC to a specific target tile as shown in the GIF below. This works similarly to the existing "Move Player" function, and should be useful for cutscenes where you would need NPCs, for example, to move to a different room or over to a particular object.



And lastly, just for fun, a voxel Sonic the Hedgehog that I created recently. :)

Thanks so much for reading and for the support!

One of the primary areas I have been focusing on recently is around customization of the dialogue box appearance. I've been adding some new options and features to the UI Theme Editor that allow you to design unique dialogue box styles that best suit your game. It's still a work in progress, but check out a few of the many styles that you can create with the available options!



Using the new file dropping functionality, you can drop a TrueType font file into the application which can then be selected from the Properties panel while editing your theme. Previously, in regards to the dialogue box itself, you could only change the colors of the box. With the new image editor, you can now draw a custom image for the box as desired (including transparency).



Some of the currently available customization options include font, font size, and font color, window width, and vertical line spacing. As shown below, these tweaks can make a big difference in the overall appearance of the dialogue box.





I decided it would be beneficial to put some effort into features like this earlier on. I'd like to enable people to create more unique styles and to not be stuck with one default dialogue box style. My goal is to include a lot of flexibility and customization like this, while still providing built-in options for those who aren't interested in modifying aspects like the UI.

Here's a great example showing how simple it will be to change the dialogue box appearance to something quite different from the default style!



One other small update worth mentioning is the addition of a new scripting function, "Move Character". This function will move an NPC to a specific target tile as shown in the GIF below. This works similarly to the existing "Move Player" function, and should be useful for cutscenes where you would need NPCs, for example, to move to a different room or over to a particular object.



And lastly, just for fun, a voxel Sonic the Hedgehog that I created recently. :)

Thanks so much for reading and for the support!

Hey everyone,

We’ve introduced new levels and new gameplay, including different paddle types, in-room obstacles, and new room layouts. We have 30 action-packed levels with 4 levels of difficulty. Play Casual with your kids or challenge yourself to finish all levels on Hardcore.

With so many new changes, we look forward to your feedback!

Best,
Brain Voyagers: Ricochet Team

Discussions Page

Hey everyone,

We’ve introduced new levels and new gameplay, including different paddle types, in-room obstacles, and new room layouts. We have 30 action-packed levels with 4 levels of difficulty. Play Casual with your kids or challenge yourself to finish all levels on Hardcore.

With so many new changes, we look forward to your feedback!

Best,
Brain Voyagers: Ricochet Team

Discussions Page

Locomancer is now on sale! ːsteamhappyː
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YSNMhoha08

Locomancer is now on sale! ːsteamhappyː
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YSNMhoha08

The latest release, in development for over a year, contains major user interface, gameplay, and graphical improvements:

• Benedict & Fiona: After Fiona is attacked and injured by Penitents, you'll help Benedict to uncover the mysterious reasons behind the attack. But the trail leads to a secret at the heart of the Sister of Domina, and shifting alliances threaten to leave you with no one left to turn to.
  
  
• Full support for maneuvering and firing with the mouse. We've also added a user interface for re-mapping keys and mouse buttons.
  
  
• Improved interfaces for stargate network, commodities exchange, and many others.
  
  
• Beautiful new weapon and explosion effects.
  
  
• Four new music tracks, including victory tracks for the Battle Arena Maximus.
  
  
• Workshop support!

Read more at the Multiverse and let me know what you think here.

The latest release, in development for over a year, contains major user interface, gameplay, and graphical improvements:

• Benedict & Fiona: After Fiona is attacked and injured by Penitents, you'll help Benedict to uncover the mysterious reasons behind the attack. But the trail leads to a secret at the heart of the Sister of Domina, and shifting alliances threaten to leave you with no one left to turn to.
  
  
• Full support for maneuvering and firing with the mouse. We've also added a user interface for re-mapping keys and mouse buttons.
  
  
• Improved interfaces for stargate network, commodities exchange, and many others.
  
  
• Beautiful new weapon and explosion effects.
  
  
• Four new music tracks, including victory tracks for the Battle Arena Maximus.
  
  
• Workshop support!

Read more at the Multiverse and let me know what you think here.

Patch 1.1.0 is out now!

Highlights
- Capacitors for railguns and coilguns.
- Railguns and coilguns conserve energy now.
- Lasers can be separated from their mounts.
- Laser optics can be sniped in combat.
- Turrets with 90+ degree attack arcs.
- Tapered radiators
- More tracers
- Combat AI is much better. In particular, they smartly use 'ignore range' now.
- Can shift burn nodes in orbital view.
- Mod import/export.
- And tons more!



Patch Notes
- Railguns/Coilguns
--- Capacitor banks can now be used with railguns and coilguns.
--- Equations have been updated to correct energy conservation issues.
--- Acceleration graph now shows exactly how the device propels the armature over time.
--- Barrel armor now correctly braces railguns and coilguns, reducing beam deflection stress and inaccuracy.
--- In-game railguns and coilguns have been heavily reworked, most stock ships are affected. Numerous new designs added.
--- Note: Designs using stock coilguns and railguns may see those stock weapons disappear or they may have poorer performance than before.
- Lasers
--- Laser turrets/mounts can be separated from the laser, allowing hundreds of disposable turrets to use a single laser.
--- Lasers can now suffer optical damage, lenses/mirrors are easily destroyed by enemy laserfire, gunfire, and nuclear flashes.
--- Armored lens caps are addable (and essential to protect the fragile optics when not firing).
--- Graphics updates.
- Turrets
--- Can make extrudable turrets, which extend out with 90+ degree attack arcs. Allows nose-facing weapon support, but mass more and are easier to hit.
--- Graphics updates.
- Radiators
--- Can make tapered radiators, allowing triangular or winglike shapes.
- Tracers
--- Added several more pyrotechnic tracers.
--- Tracers now burn hotter and with greater optical depth, yielding more colors, including blue and white.
- AI
--- Tactical AI "guts" are exposed for viewing in sandbox and for modding in AI.txt.
--- Aggressive AIs now use the ignore range mode in certain scenarios.
--- Weapons now use dodge prediction against accelerating targets. Since this can be spoofed by start-stopping, this can be optionally disabled.
--- Several minor AI combat tweaks.
--- Huge drone formations are staggered so they no longer commit fratricide.
- UI
--- In orbital view, can move burn nodes forward or backwards in time.
--- Can compare module and ship designs against their prior stats while editing.
--- Can select unorbited bodies as a Frame of Reference.
--- Selection lists no longer reset when exiting from a design.
--- User designs appear first in ship and module design.
--- Modded designs are imported as core modules/ships and are uneditable unless duplicating.
--- Ship design. Can optionally view stacked power graph. Can toggle condensed mass pie chart. Dry acceleration visible.
--- In ship and module design, most of the ui can now be flexibly resized, including error messages. Alleviates small screen issues.
--- A number of other minor UI tweaks.
- Design
--- Launcher modules can use fibers for armor.
--- Launcher reload times are now bounded by clearance time, preventing a launcher from crashing multiple items into each other by launching too fast.
--- Increased max armor layers to 10.
--- Nuclear payload 'delay trigger' now editable in module design.
--- Cargo modules are editable.
--- Added article on Missile Guidance, for help designing remote controls.
--- Several sample remote controls added.
--- Ammo bays can have more ammo and stacks. Smaller propellant tanks.
- Modding
--- Mod Loading order now occurs correctly and reads the materials folder hierarchy correctly.
--- Modules now save any modded materials/reactions/etc they use.
--- Allowed modding of Star Chart, Emission Spectra, and Refraction Indicies.
--- Export: New button exports a single design and all dependencies to its own file to .../Mods/Data/Exports.
--- Import: .../Mods/Data/Imports folder will read in all files within it as ship or module designs or as most any other kind of data.
--- Note: Anything in this folder is read in last.
--- Note: Overriding core data with mods data (mod data with the same name as core data) is not supported!
- Other
--- Numerous material/element/ref index corrections.
--- Bugs fixed: level 4 gold record impossible without exploits, ship cross section underestimated by 2x, delta-v miscalculated with vernier thrusters, phantom refueling with drop tanks, cadmium material issues, and many more.
--- Numerous crash fixes.
--- Various optimizations.

Patch 1.1.0 is out now!

Highlights
- Capacitors for railguns and coilguns.
- Railguns and coilguns conserve energy now.
- Lasers can be separated from their mounts.
- Laser optics can be sniped in combat.
- Turrets with 90+ degree attack arcs.
- Tapered radiators
- More tracers
- Combat AI is much better. In particular, they smartly use 'ignore range' now.
- Can shift burn nodes in orbital view.
- Mod import/export.
- And tons more!



Patch Notes
- Railguns/Coilguns
--- Capacitor banks can now be used with railguns and coilguns.
--- Equations have been updated to correct energy conservation issues.
--- Acceleration graph now shows exactly how the device propels the armature over time.
--- Barrel armor now correctly braces railguns and coilguns, reducing beam deflection stress and inaccuracy.
--- In-game railguns and coilguns have been heavily reworked, most stock ships are affected. Numerous new designs added.
--- Note: Designs using stock coilguns and railguns may see those stock weapons disappear or they may have poorer performance than before.
- Lasers
--- Laser turrets/mounts can be separated from the laser, allowing hundreds of disposable turrets to use a single laser.
--- Lasers can now suffer optical damage, lenses/mirrors are easily destroyed by enemy laserfire, gunfire, and nuclear flashes.
--- Armored lens caps are addable (and essential to protect the fragile optics when not firing).
--- Graphics updates.
- Turrets
--- Can make extrudable turrets, which extend out with 90+ degree attack arcs. Allows nose-facing weapon support, but mass more and are easier to hit.
--- Graphics updates.
- Radiators
--- Can make tapered radiators, allowing triangular or winglike shapes.
- Tracers
--- Added several more pyrotechnic tracers.
--- Tracers now burn hotter and with greater optical depth, yielding more colors, including blue and white.
- AI
--- Tactical AI "guts" are exposed for viewing in sandbox and for modding in AI.txt.
--- Aggressive AIs now use the ignore range mode in certain scenarios.
--- Weapons now use dodge prediction against accelerating targets. Since this can be spoofed by start-stopping, this can be optionally disabled.
--- Several minor AI combat tweaks.
--- Huge drone formations are staggered so they no longer commit fratricide.
- UI
--- In orbital view, can move burn nodes forward or backwards in time.
--- Can compare module and ship designs against their prior stats while editing.
--- Can select unorbited bodies as a Frame of Reference.
--- Selection lists no longer reset when exiting from a design.
--- User designs appear first in ship and module design.
--- Modded designs are imported as core modules/ships and are uneditable unless duplicating.
--- Ship design. Can optionally view stacked power graph. Can toggle condensed mass pie chart. Dry acceleration visible.
--- In ship and module design, most of the ui can now be flexibly resized, including error messages. Alleviates small screen issues.
--- A number of other minor UI tweaks.
- Design
--- Launcher modules can use fibers for armor.
--- Launcher reload times are now bounded by clearance time, preventing a launcher from crashing multiple items into each other by launching too fast.
--- Increased max armor layers to 10.
--- Nuclear payload 'delay trigger' now editable in module design.
--- Cargo modules are editable.
--- Added article on Missile Guidance, for help designing remote controls.
--- Several sample remote controls added.
--- Ammo bays can have more ammo and stacks. Smaller propellant tanks.
- Modding
--- Mod Loading order now occurs correctly and reads the materials folder hierarchy correctly.
--- Modules now save any modded materials/reactions/etc they use.
--- Allowed modding of Star Chart, Emission Spectra, and Refraction Indicies.
--- Export: New button exports a single design and all dependencies to its own file to .../Mods/Data/Exports.
--- Import: .../Mods/Data/Imports folder will read in all files within it as ship or module designs or as most any other kind of data.
--- Note: Anything in this folder is read in last.
--- Note: Overriding core data with mods data (mod data with the same name as core data) is not supported!
- Other
--- Numerous material/element/ref index corrections.
--- Bugs fixed: level 4 gold record impossible without exploits, ship cross section underestimated by 2x, delta-v miscalculated with vernier thrusters, phantom refueling with drop tanks, cadmium material issues, and many more.
--- Numerous crash fixes.
--- Various optimizations.