Hi!

I'm actually excited to release this one. Following after performance and graphical improvements  from the previous version I decided to move further into this direction. It might not look like a big update on the surface but the codebase changed quite a bit to accommodate for new improvements. I also spent some time actually playing the game and as I did some things didn't feel right. But let's not stall too much and get into it the actual changes:

Further performance improvements

This bit is a bit more technical but to mention it briefly. Before each new projectile, enemy or pickup were created from scratch which was a huge problem with so many things constantly coming in and out of existence. From this version onwards every object has a pool that it will store in memory to reuse later when needed, that will slightly increase RAM but will free up a bunch of CPU cycles and reduce or even completely remove random FPS drops. This change should be very much noticeable even on high-end hardware.

Following further into the FPS issues I came to the conclusion that there is no need for hundreds of shards to chill on the ground and eat frames. With that, the maximum number of shards that can physically drop on the ground was reduced to 400 which still runs perfectly fine, any excessive shard will automatically merge with a random already spawned shard. On top of that, shards are no longer guaranteed to drop from enemies, instead it's a 75% chance. It helps with lowering the amount of shards without really impacting progression.

Automatic shards merge have also been improved

Gameplay changes

After playing for a while I had the feeling that something wasn't right but I couldn't really put a finger on it, the only thing I came up with, was that the game was way too slow (if you have any other ideas, please let me know). So I started experimenting with cooldowns, damages and upgrades. 

With that, all weapon cooldowns have been reduced to allow faster gameplay from the very beginning, to offset that in the later stages, cooldown reduction provided by items and permanent upgrades have been lowered but so the price of it also went down. A few weapons and items got their numbers tweaked as well as a bunch of mismatches between description and actual effect have been adjusted

Each item got it's own chance of appearance on the level up screen, that will allow me to control flow of the game more precisely, with stronger weapons having lower chance of popping up.

While we are at the topic of leveling up, weapons and items always had a rarity to them (the colored border before picking them) that affected the stats, better rarity increased the base stats more (each rarity level increased stats by 10%) but on the screen players could only see the base unmodified value, that is no longer the case. Each upgrade will now display value AFTER being scaled, also scaling changed from 10%->5% for items and 10%->2.5% for weapons.

Following in the forementioned change, Armor stat is no longer flat, allowing it to scale properly with rarity (previously obtaining a few high rarity armor upgrades could cause you to become immortal)

Unlocking story tiles was also a chore, after doing some math I realized that you need to play 5 hours (!) in order to unlock the latest entry, that have been heavily reduced by giving players more points per each minute of gameplay from 1->3 and will be tweaked as needed in the future.

Another small change, the dissolve animation have been added on enemy death, because them just disappearing could look a little jarring

"Greed" item have got it's own unlock requirement being obtaining 100 pickups! Because if you want more stuff, you gotta earn it first~

"Duplicator" also got it's unlock requirement, just hold 6 weapons at the same time, easy

Amount of gold and gems obtained per game was also increased, allowing for a smoother, more rewarding experience once you are done with the grind!

New sound effects

To further enhance the experience, a few new sounds were added to the game. Now each time and enemy is damaged or exp is picked up, you will hear a sound, these are probably not final but I noticed it really helps with general feel when not everything is dead silent. Also birds chirping in the background is cool.

Similar treatment went into the menu, it got some background music and every button got it's click sound. It's much nicer now.

on the topic of main menu~

UI improvements

A few things were due to make, first of all, unlocking weapons and items is fun. So far it's not very complex but it's nice to know which achievement unlocked which weapon, right? Or what do you need to do to unlock that one thing you want? Worry no more, achievement window will now display icon of an item you can unlock by completing it

Pulling for new characters should be an engaging and thrilling experience but whenever you pressed the button, a white rectangle would appear that you just flip, very anticlimactic, I changed it a little bit, it's not final yet but it's getting there

Instead of white rectangle, you will see a shard shape colored with a result, so you already know ahead of time if it's a new character or a duplicate.

Story entries also were missing a very important piece. An indication whether the entry have ben read or not. From now on, game will try to remember which entries you already read and the ones you haven't will be marked with a "New" indicator

Bug fixes

- Healing achievement was unobtainable, meaning you could not unlock the regeneration item, that issue is now resolved

- Skip/Reroll buttons did not display remaining amount before being used at least once

- If you happened to level up and pick up a shard rift at the same time, two menus would display on top of eachother and closing one would unpause the game and hide your mouse cursor

Conculsion

There is one thing that need to be resolved ASAP but I didn't have time to get around to it, as I noticed it a bit late. The game gets hard past 13 minutes, in fact I tried to beat it and farthest I got was minute 17 with almost perfect build. So recent changes to weapons significantly lowered their impact. But! That opens an opportunity for me to explore more into character shards and possibly a skill tree. 

Character shards are obtained after obtaining a duplicate of each character and should be much more meaningful than a slight stat change here and there, perhaps a character with full shards unlocked could be broken. After all, it might be very difficult to collect them all.

Another feature that I had on my mind before I started implementing any character features but never left a drawing board were skill trees, each character would have thier own stats to improve. That idea was temporarily scrapped after gatcha and shards became a thing. Character levels were also supposed to unlock story entries that that idea also got scrapped in favor of any character being unlockable at any stage of the game (which is a much better idea). So why not reward players that spend time playing their favorite character with some additional power provided by skill trees and levels! Two unused features put together. Either way, that will take a little while to implement.

Feedback

I also set up a Github project so you can freely view progress and what's planned right here. 

As long as you have a github account, I would like to encourage you to report any bugs, provide feedback and your ideas via issues here. That will help greatly since I'm one person that can always let few bugs get past tests. And if you want to have a part in shaping the future of Requiem for the Lost World, that is the best way to do so!

Either way, that's it from me today, hope you enjoy this update as much as I did!