Starward Rogue BETA 1.502 (Plus upcoming kickstarter expansion!)

[Logorouge]

Drat! I feared that we hadn't fully dealt with the problem. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's anything more we can do about this. It seems to be way too deep in the engine (or Unity) for us to be able to fix.

Drat indeed. That is one sneaky issue. In other news, I just realized you guys changed spikes to be considered hazard. That's amazing! Thank you so much for that.

[x4000]

Can you post the output.log from a run where that happens?  Directly after the crash, I mean -- that's in StarwardRogue_Data, and gets reset every time you start the game.  Additionally, the logs from the RuntimeData folder would be helpful (those persist across runs).

[Logorouge]

Can you post the output.log from a run where that happens?  Directly after the crash, I mean -- that's in StarwardRogue_Data, and gets reset every time you start the game.  Additionally, the logs from the RuntimeData folder would be helpful (those persist across runs).

The output.log from my previous post on page 1 is from a run where it happened, along with a few other files.
I remembered some of the logs would reset if I ran the game again so I grabbed everything right after the crash.

[z99-_]

Probably not the best time to announce a kickstarter, regardless of whether or not anyone on AI War 2 would be working on it.

It's absolutely the time to announce it -- waiting until after the fact to mention it is much much worse.  Given we have full intent of this (though it won't even be under Arcen's account on kickstarter -- this is separate folks working on it, etc), it's much better if we let people have all the information now.

I imagine that your argument is probably that people may avoid backing one of them for fear we're doing something shady?  There might be other reasons, but that's my top one, anyway.  In those cases, I'd rather have people not back us based on having info in advance instead of back us and find out an unpleasant (to them) surprise.

I've talked about this a fair bit on the later updates of the first AI War 2 kickstarter -- and while I'm not intending to make it some sort of in-your-face "look at this other thing!" issue, I do want to be clear in terms of "hey, full disclosure, here's what's up and why it's not what some other dirtbag developers have done."

That's the rationale, anyway. 

My problem is, my income doesn't scale with the number of kickstarters I want to fund (I think that benefit is just for salaried people, but I'll check with HR to be sure ). I don't know the time frame of this, but if it's going to be this year, the money I would put forward for a SR kickstarter would come out of the money I would put forward for the AIWII kickstarter. As Arcenites (is that the correct term?) make up a significant proportion of the SR playerbase as well as the AIWII superbackers, an SR kickstarter could really cannibalize AIWII's funds.

Of course, that's all assuming that you were planning on doing the SR kickstarter in the very near future, which you haven't said. But without info to contradict that thought either, the mind always goes to the worst case scenario.

[x4000]

@Logorouge:

Okay, this just got incredibly strange.  It's giving the error "Trying to reload asset from disk that is not stored on disk"

Googling around for that, the primary thing I find is this: https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/trying-to-reload-asset-from-disk-that-is-not-stored-on-disk.49298/

Which has been an ongoing discussion with folks at unity since 2010, evidently.  We've never run into it previously, so I'm not sure what is up now.  I will have to investigate more, but it will need to be later into the week or early next because of the kickstarter launch timing requirements -- sorry about that. :/

[x4000]

My problem is, my income doesn't scale with the number of kickstarters I want to fund (I think that benefit is just for salaried people, but I'll check with HR to be sure ). I don't know the time frame of this, but if it's going to be this year, the money I would put forward for a SR kickstarter would come out of the money I would put forward for the AIWII kickstarter. As Arcenites (is that the correct term?) make up a significant proportion of the SR playerbase as well as the AIWII superbackers, an SR kickstarter could really cannibalize AIWII's funds.

Of course, that's all assuming that you were planning on doing the SR kickstarter in the very near future, which you haven't said. But without info to contradict that thought either, the mind always goes to the worst case scenario.

Right, this makes good sense.  My main reasoning here has been:

1. Most people who just want to "support Arcen" in a generalized sense will probably pick sides, which should be fine.

2. I have no intention of launching this prior to the AI War 2 KS hitting its goal, because that's more important.

3. Overall I figure that for people who actually want whichever game for the sake of itself (versus just "supporting Arcen"), there is not a huge amount of overlap between who wants which thing.  There are two fairly distinct audiences that we have: the action vs the strategy folks.

4. Overall there's also a lot of support that comes out of the kickstarter site itself, between 15% and 25%, and those folks are pretty company-agnostic and just back ideas based on their specific merits.

That said, in terms of what you're saying, I can't argue with that at all.  In an ideal world I wouldn't even consider this.  So I just don't know.  Aiming for January might be the best in terms of timing of the SR kickstarter.

[TheVampire100]

About the upcoming Expansion and the Kickstarter. I want to remind you that you said soem time ago that the story will be implemented in the game evntually, most likely with an expansion. Since you NOW do this, NOW is the perfect chance to put the story into the game.
I'm still not very fond of the idea to buy a dlc to get the full experience (story) of a game but anyway, if you want to do it ever, do it now. This may be your last chance to do it.

[Draco18s]

Funding the story via expansion is fine, because that content can still show up in the base game without someone having to buy the expansion.  Arcen does this sort of thing all the time; that is: new content that gets added to the base game that is related to the expansion.  Youngling Fireflies, I believe, show up in the AI's arsenel despite not owning Children of the Neinzul, etc.

[TheVampire100]

It doesn't matter for me if it is in the expansion or in the base game, what I want that it IS there. I will buy the expansion anyway (when it comes out, not on Kickstarter) but I really want this story.

[Logorouge]

Took me a while, but I finally did a steamroll run under the new update. It was quite the unusual setup for me: Redshift, using the Frag Cannon and no shield from beginning to end. But somewhere along the way, Redshift turned into an immortal crit king.

For some reason, I never noticed before how each spike of the Frag Cannon's attack can cause a critical hit. However, once the game gave me 30% crit chance on one floor, you can bet I noticed and went back running to get that Overcrit sac item I spotted on that very same floor. Since my firepower was pretty good, I started stacking resistance effects (Deftness) up to a borderline abusive 45%. Who needs shields when you can just dodge or resist everything?

Another thing I never noticed before: resist/deftness effects apply to your little orbiting friends. Doesn't matter for most of your drones, but does a tremendous difference if you have an Orbiting Battle-station in addition to a set of Scrap Shield. It was the equivalent of walking around with a bunch of Shield Drones (with limited health per room). Still had some of them, floors later, when I finally faced Terminus.

Speaking of which, Terminus still managed to give me a run for my money despite the circumstances. His helpers alone absorbed what I can only estimate as several thousands points of damage (no idea how, but they did), giving plenty of time for Terminus to really do his thing. I had to use the time manipulation to the best of my abilities to dodge increasingly threatening patterns as my orbiting protectors started dying, one after the other. It was alone that I fought the boss final form, using my few remaining missiles to escape the claws of his last deadly attacks. Victory

Needless to say, I had lots of fun. No suggestion or question from me this time around, I just wanted to share what was a very strange yet satisfying run. Thanks for reading!

[Draco18s]

Wow, nice.

[TheVampire100]

Any news when the update will finally be released?

[Misery]

Took me a while, but I finally did a steamroll run under the new update. It was quite the unusual setup for me: Redshift, using the Frag Cannon and no shield from beginning to end. But somewhere along the way, Redshift turned into an immortal crit king.

For some reason, I never noticed before how each spike of the Frag Cannon's attack can cause a critical hit. However, once the game gave me 30% crit chance on one floor, you can bet I noticed and went back running to get that Overcrit sac item I spotted on that very same floor. Since my firepower was pretty good, I started stacking resistance effects (Deftness) up to a borderline abusive 45%. Who needs shields when you can just dodge or resist everything?

Another thing I never noticed before: resist/deftness effects apply to your little orbiting friends. Doesn't matter for most of your drones, but does a tremendous difference if you have an Orbiting Battle-station in addition to a set of Scrap Shield. It was the equivalent of walking around with a bunch of Shield Drones (with limited health per room). Still had some of them, floors later, when I finally faced Terminus.

Speaking of which, Terminus still managed to give me a run for my money despite the circumstances. His helpers alone absorbed what I can only estimate as several thousands points of damage (no idea how, but they did), giving plenty of time for Terminus to really do his thing. I had to use the time manipulation to the best of my abilities to dodge increasingly threatening patterns as my orbiting protectors started dying, one after the other. It was alone that I fought the boss final form, using my few remaining missiles to escape the claws of his last deadly attacks. Victory

Needless to say, I had lots of fun. No suggestion or question from me this time around, I just wanted to share what was a very strange yet satisfying run. Thanks for reading!

Hmm, Fragment Cannon sounds like it might be a bit broken... don't think it's supposed to work like that.  If I recall correctly only hitting with the main projectile is supposed to do big damage.

For the Terminus minions, yes, they're meant to be a bit tanky.  The smaller minions have around the level of HP as a Fearsome for each phase.  Sentinel and Palisade, the big guys, have about 3000 HP base.    Terminus itself though is the big one, with 5700 for it's 6th phase and 7600 for the final one.  If you have a good energy weapon it's a good idea to hold it until those last two phases.   The Terminus battle overall is almost a series of bosses rather than a single one; appropriate for a final battle, I think.

Any news when the update will finally be released?

No clue.   Things have been a bit slow for a couple of days here.   There's a few things I'd like to have a look at, too, before this goes out officially.  I'll probably do that tonight.  I haven't played normal mode in ages but it's about time I did a couple of proper runs at it to check for problems.

It'd also be nice if we can get in the change to the boss locator thing as well as possible defensive shop alterations before sending out this update.   I don't think those will actually take all that long.


For those that have been playing this update already:  Have you met up with a boss named Valor yet?   It's a floor 6 boss though, so if you're having trouble getting there, then probably not...  but that's okay.

[Logorouge]

Hmm, Fragment Cannon sounds like it might be a bit broken... don't think it's supposed to work like that.  If I recall correctly only hitting with the main projectile is supposed to do big damage.

Don't worry, that's pretty much how it went. With a direct hit, I got pretty big damages (with a bunch of crit notices) but an indirect hit only did minor damages (still useful thanks to overcrit).

For those that have been playing this update already:  Have you met up with a boss named Valor yet?   It's a floor 6 boss though, so if you're having trouble getting there, then probably not...  but that's okay.

Now that you mention it, I didn't encounter the new bosses in any of my runs. But I think there's quite a few 6th floor only bosses at this point, so it's not all that surprising.

Edit: Curiosity killed the cat but I just had to check out Valor. Very different style of boss, but three seconds in I knew what I had to do (which is good imo). The first phase pace was a bit more intense than the second phase, surprisingly. Reminded me of that old Dragon Smog (spelling?) game I used to play when I was a kid. Just that you're not the dragon but the dot he wants to eat instead. Pretty fun boss overall, I like it. Still took me a 2nd try on Normal to beat it in the practice room though.

[Draco18s]

Hmm, Fragment Cannon sounds like it might be a bit broken... don't think it's supposed to work like that.  If I recall correctly only hitting with the main projectile is supposed to do big damage.

Is that the one that shoots out a projectile that then pops into a radial burst?  There isn't actually a "main" projectile. Its actually just all the sub projectiles stacked up together.