Sipho

December 2018 (Week 3)

+ Nerf Spike part - less damage, more velocity required to deal full damage, less frequent touch damage.
+ Fix a nasty bug that would cause game to quit to main menu unexpectedly. This was caused by having invisible quit button in the scene and navigating to it through keyboard. Game doesn't rely on UI keyboard navigation so it lived for a long time unnoticed.
+ Aquarium branch: Make it possible to launch, save and load different game modes.
+ More work on Aquarium UI

December 2018 (Week 2)

+ Added game mode selection to Main Menu. Each game mode has its own breed selection
+ Breed selection also contains "Load Game" entry which displays your current playthrough's Sipho and loads game instead of starting new one
+ Breed selection entries can have different area props which show in what kind of area player is going to load/start to
+ Aquarium mode now has a separate UI which can be used to manipulate game, for example spawn some food
+ Fixed a bug that sometimes caused last boss to stay brainded and keep instantly regrowing
- Breed selection was hell to refactor and still has a lot of shit code. If we ever add more game modes, each one will require to change code in 3+ places
- Tried to stream refactor and streaming impairs thinking ability. Hope to get used to that for extra marketing points

December 2018 (Week 1)

+ Tweaked Tank movement type as it would overshoot even more with movement tweaks. Now it's borderline usable. Interesting that some "spinning" builds can benefit from it.
+ Added an achievement for completing a level without killing anything.
+ Released an update 0.2.0 with changes mentioned up to this recap line.
+ Started adding support for different game modes - to support promised Aquarium and start experimenting with others

November 2018 (Week 5)

+ Increase potency of movement zooids and nerf single-head movement. Make start of the game a little bit easier and less painful.
+ Track zooids that player has acquired through the game and call them Adapted
+ For new run allow selecting extra zooid that was adapted in last run. Adds some strategy
+ Fix Sizzler zooid not considering enough zooids for stunning. Also randomize targets properly

November 2018 (Week 4)

+ Last week released to Steam Early Access and itch.io
+ Fixed some nasty game-breaking bugs since release
- Game needs more replayability and reviews/comments reflect that
- Run and spray poison strategy is OP right now

September 2018 (Week 4)

+ Add new Plant sprites and tweak spawner settings. Really like how second plant level came out
+ Disable version disclaimer. Add build preprocessor to add build revision number and build date to a label in options menu. We're at revision 2915
+ Various bugfixes and polish
+ Disabled auto-sync-transforms in Physics2D settings. Apparently this is a new thing and improves performance quite a bit. Suspicious that it might have caused some overlaps in spawning
- That's it

September 2018 (Week 3)

+ Improve poison application logic - poison will now be applied to Zooids "on collision" and after some time if any Zooid swims into previous poison cloud position
+ Start reworking last boss - going to feed onto its minions was too complex to pull off. This time it will be X shaped, where each end is of different breed combination and player will have to choose which side to fight first
+ Fix Pusher Zooid pushing whole Sipho forward. It now distributes force to pushed objects
+ Make grown zooid moving in groups less painful.
+ Add Q key as "pipette" tool for grown Zooids, which selects hovered Zooid for growing. Like Factorio Q key.

September 2018 (Week 2)

+ Add the rest of graphics for new Zooids
+ Set up second camera which renders and blurs depths. Separates deeper layers surprisingly well
+ Add some war drum music for bossfights
+ Act on DD22 feedback: Make UI more usable. Remove unnecessary pauses in level transitions While at it, scale volume dB <=> percent properly and allow going up to 200%.
+ Fix horrible bug when growing Zooids in a straight line would mess up soft body solver and make your Sipho explode
+ Fix another nasty bug where after transitioning level pressing pressing Space would issue another transition and possibly mess up your save
+ Improve level LUTs by artist's vision
+ Lots of visual improvements for environments

September 2018 (Week 1)

+ Add new graphics for Grappler
+ Add new Bone area graphics
+ Working on adding more achivements
+ Publish special build for DD22 as separate game
+ When doing level spawns, do circle overlap checks instead of point. Fixes some objects getting spawned into walls
+ Feedback from DD22: Check for available space when spawning enemies. Underwater boss pushes away poison too

August 2018 (Week 4)

+ Don't rot environment before player has reached expected wealth. Otherwise players would spend 80% time in shit looking environment. Stop spawning food and enemies after reaching that wealth.
+ Whirlpools only become forced after player has collected remaining enemies and food
+ Made wicked sick scrolling flame shader which is used for our main menu pastebin.com/dRNj0EBQ pic related
+ Working on 4th boss, Advena

August 2018 (Week 3)

+ Fixed Options menu not fitting into screen
+ Added food spawners to first boss to prevent stalemates. They spawn moving food things when player doesn't have enough food for a single weapon
+ Added "Cinematics" controller which disables input and UI when cinematic things are happening, like boss spawning
+ Add environment rot effect when player progresses through level
- It's too subtle to make player aware of imminent eviction
+ Achievement system implemented to track achievements as well as report them to Steam

August 2018 (Week 2)

+ Update Sea levels with new sprites and fancy corals
+ Rework how Muck Zooid works. It now spits a ball of goo which explodes on contact, leaving a puddle of slowing goop
+ Add "Cinematic" mode for various transitions, which disables input and UI
+ Give +5 HP to player's head
- Everybody hates forced level end with whirlpools. We're exploring ideas how to fix this. First thing that we totally need is to properly tell the player that level is being progressed through changing how environment looks, from colourful to desaturated and rotten.
- Boss design is hard

August 2018 (Week 1)

+ Player progression tweaks to make it stay longer in levels
+ Updated Zooid and breed descriptions
+ Add Advena breed boss which only grows weapons which face the player and ungrows ones that do not
+ New Advena environment looks and environment shader which lights up when player is nearby
+ Updated boss spawn effect and added sound to it

June 2018 (Week 3)

+ Lots of UI Improvements
+ Uploaded game to Kongregate as well for more reach.
- So far itch.io feels more comfy. It seems that there's no auto promotion for new games on Kongregate, so you need to get 50 ratings by yourself. However, site offers monthly cash rewards for most popular games.
- Summer

June 2018 (Week 2)

+ Menu UI update in progress. Main Menu is done, Head Selection and Options remain
+ Various fixes based on feedback in preparation for demo update
+ Return 50% of lost nutrition during boss battles

June 2018 (Week 1)

+ Added new Sniper Zooid and Grappler Zooid to be included only in full version
+ Made that ungrowing Zooids returns full value. Completely restructuring yourself is now consequence-free, which will encourage creativity
- Summer is negatively affecting dev-weekends

May 2018 (Week 5)

+ Whirlpool world destruction optimizations
+ Fix leech graphics appearing on top of everything
+ Fix reordering skills messing up zooid highlights
+ Mines can poison their own zooids if owner dies
+ Main Menu UI mockup, pic related
+ Held a team meeting. Decided on more concrete release plan and what the final version needs to contain.
- Release will be later than we wanted it to be, but will happen this year

May 2018 (Week 4)

+ Various bugfixes
+ Update to be GDPR compliant because we track at which level players die, how much food they gather etc.
+ Whirlpools mess up level even more, causing things to sink (properly)
- Enemies don't sink down yet

May 2018 (Week 3)

+ Whirlpools now destroy environment so player feels like it has done its job destroying local ecosystem. Still need to make effects nicer and despawn things inside whirlpools
+ Pool solid rocks and parallax rocks
+ Fix camera being always slightly offset, upsetting some sensitive players
+ Make AI spread out. Also make them more aggressive between breeds
+ Fix automatically regrown zooids being slightly off-positioned
+ Experiment with increase Zooid cost per how much of that Zooid you have instead of your whole size
- Plant boss sucks and Bone boss is too big
- Rendering many Zooids cause high loads on CPU. One solution could be use intancing

May 2018 (Week 2)

+ Finally upgraded to Unity 2017.4.2
+ Performance fixes and new C# backend for even less GC allocs
+ Claw weapons now kill projectiles for extra MLGness. Considering Leech too.
+ Consolidated feedback from conference and DD. Surprisingly people like the lack of soundtrack in the game
- Second boss is too big and boring. Will need to re-design it with some design constraints
- Bad enemy behavior still breaks immersion. Realized that they are not trying to get closer to the player, leaving long gameplay pauses

May 2018 (Week 1)

+ Added options menu with audio and UI scaling options
+ Made Bone boss spawn its minions and mess player up real bad
+ Polish for fantasy conference we've been at and DD20 submission
- We need to figure out how to encourage different builds

April 2018 (Week 4)

+ Started working on Bone area boss. It grows procedurally and BIG
+ Optimized some code that was related to BIG Siphos and removed some random allocations
+ Added forceful whirlpools which suck player up at the end of the level. We had to force player down somehow, this adds a little bit of lore of player destroying whole ecosystem so it physically collapses
+ Made all Structure Zooids lighter which will encourage players to grow larger and give more opportunities to optimally experiment
+ Tweaked AI pathfinding and wandering so they are not so immersion breaking
+ Added new UI, pic related. Tweaks will have to be made
- We are still seeing that some parts are less favored than others. Structures without skills are not interesting enough to be used and differences between Mover directions are too subtle.

April 2018 (Week 3)

+ Added Healing and Energy powerups
+ Enemies and food containers now drop powerups
+ Added ability to progress through levels without eating food. Some people want to play being small, let them
+ Added Bug breed boss and made arena for fighting it
+ Limit how many stunning part can stun parts and make shield skill protect from stuns
+ Add UI indication of how mover will move when growing it
+ Start integrating new Diablo-style UI art