[img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32712926/2cdb7be73fa74dce050091ea1e6a649965ecba5d.png[/img] Thank you to everyone that has supported the game so far. A lot of progress has been made bringing Exo TD up to higher standards, we still hope to deliver a dynamic and fun game that brings its own style of Tower Defense. [h3]What is the current state of the game?[/h3] The game is now very stable, with the release of 1.6 all available turrets and features should be completely functional and better than ever. We have a solid direction to build off of and look forward to sharing more with everyone as Exo TD improves and grows. Performance was a major goal this year, for several patch cycles our changes introduced a lot of instability in the core game as we ripped out old code and revised our systems to be easier to design on top of and work more efficiently. Exo TD should now perform as expected, when many units, turrets, and projectiles are on screen their may be some minor frame dips, overall these should be mostly unnoticeable and very consistently simulate at 60fps on more systems. [h3]What milestone patches have been released this year?[/h3] [b]1.1[/b] (April 2019) – New integrated Build/Upgrade UI, art updates, initial performance improvements, destructible units, more. [b]1.2[/b] (July 2019) – Power Patch: Power resource integration, power storage, turret power overcharging mechanic, active ship wave icons, ship tooltips, adjusted level balance, UI, more. [b]1.3[/b] (August 2019) – Balance Patch: Revised power scaling, scrap scaling, turret and ship balance, architecture preparation for performance patch. [b]1.4[/b] (September 2019) – Performance & Multithreading Patch: Visuals decoupled from data, Multithreading, Instancing, Targeting revisions, all around massive performance upgrades for CPU & GPU. Core UE4 Engine version upgraded. [b]1.5[/b] (October 2019) – New Planet: Rocky Lava testing, Beta Level: Act 1, Shader Outlines, re-balanced level design, Stable patch. [b]1.6[/b] (December 2019) - Turret Command & Control, Control groups, Hotkeys, Free Camera, Cursors, VFX, Turret replacements & new turrets. Disintegrate destruction, build & upgrades visuals & timers. New Lobby Menu. [h3]Where are the Patch notes from this years patches?[/h3] December 2019 Patch 1.6 notes are included below, we've also included more detailed notes below those for the previous patches summarized that did not have release notes. [h3]Why were Patch Notes releases stopped?[/h3] We wanted to wait until we were absolutely sure we had a stable patch after our performance changes, this took longer than anticipated. Moving forward there will be detailed notes accompanying each new patch and game stability should be solid. [h3]Where does Exo TD go from here?[/h3] After a year and 6 great patches we're now able to iterate and add content much quicker. * 4 new levels to the act sequence will be added between now and end of January 2020. * We're looking at having 7-9 planets in the game before release, likely introduced in the next few months. Each Planet will have some element of unique dynamic gameplay. 3 additional Planets are currently being worked on in the pipeline for release early 2020. * Endless mode was removed and will be back, hopefully in the January 2020 patch. * Some turrets are still missing Tier 2 and Tier 3 upgrade options, we're working on filling those out, likely in the Jan-Feb patch cycle. Later patches may introduce T4. * Satellites – Planned, will announce specifics after planets are finalized. * Ship UI is still unfinished after it was introduced, we intent to revisit and release this fully, no timeline. We will implement a way to effectively see what the ships are and what they can do. * Large Ships/Capitol Ships, New Bosses, Dynamic AI tactics improvements. No timeline, these are coming and actively being worked on. * New Units types coming. Stealth Fighters, Charge Bombers, Illusion, Warp, Missiles, Repair Bots, improved squads, and more. * Ship Unit attack types will be greatly expanded. [h3]And Then?[/h3] We're open to community feedback and involvement, let us know what you'd like to see! [b]Twitter:[/b] @Exo_TD [b]Email:[/b] exotddev@gmail.com [h3]1.6 Patch Notes:[/h3] [i]*These patch notes are not comprehensive of all changes.*[/i] [h3]1.6 Turret Command, Control, Hotkeys, Free Camera, Cursors, VFX, New Lobby Menu, Turret replacements & new. Disintegrate destruction, build & upgrades visuals & timers.[/h3] * New Lobby/Main Menu scene: Available planets Classic and Rocky Lava shown, others to be filled in as content is made available. * Turret Attack Commands reworked and fixed: Turrets actively selected can once again right click attack enemy ships. For units that have multiple attachments, shields, turrets, hit sockets, etc. Turrets will now have targeting preference for attachments over other units when manually attacking. Selected turrets can activate attack with hotkey T or by selecting the new UI button to the left of the build menu. * Turret Assist Command: Turrets actively selected can now assist other turrets. Assisting turrets will gain a targeting preference for the assisted turrets target. Turrets actively selected can activate assist with hotkey Y or by selecting the new UI button to the left of the build menu. * Turret Clear Target Command: Turrets actively selected can have their target manually cleared with hotkey H. * Control Groups: Turrets can now be placed in control group with CTRL 0-9. To switch to control group selection you must press Tab first. Tab controls switching to control group or build bar hotkeys. * Multi Select Added: Multiple turrets can now be selected at once with Shift and LMB. Multiple turrets selected and set to manual attack will fire on the same target if available. * Multi Build added: Active turret will stay in the build placement status if built while holding Shift key. Multi Upgrade NYI. * New Cursors: Added Default cursor. Added Turret Attack Cursor. Added Turret Assist Cursor. Added Turret Multi Cursor. Shift to activate multi-select or multi-build. Shift activates Multi Cursor. * Free Camera added!: Can now explore most of the map freely by unlocking camera with hotkey P or selecting the new UI button on the top right leftmost button. Added new controls for free camera. Level bounds restricted to a maximum distance. Space Bar camera up, C camera down, W forward, S back, etc. Mouse usable. [i]Please Note: building from some angles with free camera on may have unexpected results with placement. Recommended that camera is mostly centered facing planet while trying to place structure.[/i] * Hotkeys added, not yet changeable: Key numbers 1-0 are now default associated with each build slot and will activate building that turret when pressed. Shift 1-0 are now default associated with each build slow in row 2. Alt 1-3 are now default associated with each upgrade slot in row 1. 'T' - Turret Attack. 'Y' – Turret Assist. 'H' – Turret Clear Target. Ctrl 1-0 Assign Control Group. Tab controls switching to control group or build bar hotkeys. * Turrets broken by previous patches have been fixed or replaced. * New Turret Upgrade: Arc Discharge – An energized projectile is launched at nearest target and discharges an arc hitting nearby units up to 6 times. Persists until fully discharged. Initial target is overloaded and disabled for 5s. * Turret Changed: Rocket – now Photon Rockets I. New visual aligned ammo. New visual rocket trail. New explosion visual. New targeting effect. Upgrades renamed Photon Rockets II & III. Rocket II and upgrades disabled for redesign. * New Turret Upgrade: Laserized Plasma – Changed to fire a single charge powerful laser bolt. Slow fire rate, quick moving projectile. 1000 damage, 1200 range. All Flak AOE VFX changed. * Turret Upgrade Change: Flak II & III – Area of effect behavior changed, new Flak visual now drifts outwards in direction fired for 15s before dissipating. Now fires at nearest target. * Turret Upgrade Change: Flak Magnetic Shrapnel I & II – Area of effect behavior changes, new Flak visual now closes in on target location. * Turret Upgrade Change: Reactive Plasma – Now connects itself to a random nearby target within range, will continue to jump connections as long as targets available. Damage increases each jump. All Gauss Ricochet visual effects and bullets changed. All Gamma fixed. Arc Tether turret and upgrades removed. * New Space backgrounds added, more to come. * Destruction visuals now disintegrate away instead of disappearing from the field. * Turrets now have a build time of 5s, upgrades also take 5s: New Construction Visual - Building turrets now have a visual effect. New Deconstruct Visual – Upgrading turrets will simultaneously deconstruct themselves and reconstruct into the desired upgrades. * Shield Destruction visual: Shields that have an active visual associated with them now have a new shield broken visual instead of disappearing instantly. Includes Shield Generator I, II. * New Auto Recharge Shields added to Shield Generator I & II: Button can be toggled to automatically regenerate shield when scrap and power are available. General Changes: * Several turret tooltip corrections. * Menu style buttons visual changed. * Adjusted Plasma I, Concentrated Plasma I & II beam visual * Fixed several selection related issues. * Corrected minor power menu visual issues. * Fixed issue where units visual would appear at origin briefly. * Turret projectiles alignment fixes. * Destruction debris now correctly interacts with planets and shields. * Rocket projectile performance improvements, targeting updated, smoothed out flight. * Spawn Portal now animates while units are spawning as intended. * Lava planet brightness toned down. * Added system to check if units are out of bounds and remove them from the game to prevent end of game sequence from stalling. * Upgrading turrets now disables them while upgrading. * Arc bounce no longer can occasionally penetrate shields. * Fighter III now has blue laser projectile attack. * Control menu updated. * Ricochet performance improved. [h3]1.5 Patch Notes:[/h3] [i]*These patch notes are not comprehensive of all changes.*[/i] [b]1.5 Planet Lava testing, New Beta Level: Act 1, New Shader Outlines, Rebalanced level design, Stable Patch, some turrets broken.[/b] * New Planet - Rocky Lava: Planet is lava based with procedural rocks placed around as build area. Lava pools will frequently and semi-randomly appear at intervals around the planet. Turrets caught in lava pools will become Disabled. Lava pool duration, location, and interval are semi-random, frequency increases over time. Can be played with Act 1 or Classic levels for now. *Planet is undergoing testing and may or may not change completely in gameplay and visually in a future patch.* * New Level – Act 1 (Naming system WIP, may change): Features new balancing: Scrap drops at a considerably increased pace and quantity, enemy ships also will increase health, shields, and damage each wave. New levels will feature this style of balance. * Original Level and Planet renamed to Classic. * Revised Level Select UI slightly to accommodate new lava planet and Act 1 level. * New Feature: Turret Environmental Disable: Environmental effects can now trigger a turret to become disabled and lose ability to rotate and target. * New Post Processing Shader Outlines: Outlines improved the visual distinction and clarity of much of the gameplay visuals, decided to finally integrate new shader. * Color Post Processing Shader Tweaks: Additional color correction and lighting changes have been made for better stylized visuals and accommodation of new outline shader. * Turret Build Placement changes: Formula changed to more accurately place turrets and allow a greater degree of movement in placement. Placement now adjusts for height. Turret Build validation changes. Added system to better validate if area can be built on. Validation now adjusts for height. * Revised Socket system: Engine Socket system does not work with new instanced mesh system integrated in previous patch. Sockets and attachment points can now be accessed directly from each Unit and Ship Type. All existing sockets moved to new system, several sockets realigned to better reflect the attached visuals, etc. * Threaded AI Movement is now responsible for adjusting attachments location and rotation. Includes physical shields, health bars, hit locators, and all other attachments. * Power Status icon over turrets: Displays a color based power icon over turrets. 0 Power: Red, 50% Power: Orange, 200% Power: Yellow, 300% Power: Green Red icon will now display if turret is unpowered, environmental disabled, or other disabled effect. * Destructible effects now interact with Planets and Shields. General changes: * Scrap Collection Drone power cost corrected to 0. * Scrap Collection Drone Counter added to build UI. * All Carrier weapons now include plasma beams. Carriers are now armed with plasma weapons, prepare your shields. Carrier I: 2 Plasma I, Carrier II: 4 Plasma I, Carrier Boss: 4 Plasma II, 2 Plasma III. * Shield Satellite Cost added back to UI. * Some units had floating health bars, corrected. * Movement AI corrected for some types of units assigned to other units. * Shield Drones unit occasionally could crash the game fixed. * Shield Drones now have corrected movement after their assigned unit is destroyed. * Shield Generator II upgrade cost corrected. * Rocket projectile performance improved slightly. * Corrected Carrier Boss and Missile Boss health bars. * Tweaked Carrier I destructible debris VFX. * Corrected issue with Carriers spawning multiple destructibles. * Slight turret rotation look adjustments. * Satellite # UI performance issue corrected. * Corrected UI in several incidents with some text occasionally overlapping. * Interceptor I now correctly moves off ramp with new system. Unit now has destructible VFX. * Code tweaks to balance stability of previous performance patch. Game is now very stable, no further crashing issues identified. - Several turret upgrades were broken by this patch: Flak II & III, Gamma Irradiate, Split Proton Laser, Destabilized Plasma I & II, Reactive Plasma, Comm I & II, All Rockets, Gamma DoT, all Gauss Ricochet, all Arc Tether. T2 & T3 for all other turrets have been rebalanced and made generally more powerful. [h3]1.4 Patch Notes:[/h3] [i]*These patch notes are not comprehensive of all changes.*[/i] [b]Performance & Multithreading Patch 1.4:[/b] Feature Highlights: * Multithreading: The single largest usage of CPU was by AI movement, with refinements and relocating it to its own thread CPU performance is now excellent. * Unit Instancing: Units on screen previously required thousands of GPU draw calls each frame, each Unit Ship Type now acts as 1 draw call/frame. * Unit Health Bars are now screen aligned textures. Massive performance improvement with many on screen. * Overall Performance: Many design changes were incorporated that increased efficiency of existing algorithms on top of multithreading and instancing. Splitting calculations and visuals has improved performance drastically. * Many internal changes were made to the code base to allow easier use of tools to design and implement units, projectiles, turrets, etc. on a much quicker iteration timeline. * Unit Ship AI consolidated. * Multithreaded AI: movement and decision calculations have been adjusted for performance. AI is now decoupled from visuals, calculations are made and visuals are adjusted on screen to reflect status. AI uses one additional CPU thread, changes in the future could allow more if required, current benchmarks indicate one is enough to handle all calculations for now. * Unit Instancing: Ship Units are now instanced drastically reducing draw calls required. Movement system updated to reflect decoupled visuals. Units no longer use Static Meshes. Units with Skeletal Meshes and animations can now accurately hot swap with instancing. * Unit Damage interface streamlined to allow for a wider variety of gameplay affecting individual and groups of units. * Turret Targeting: Targeting has been made more efficient, changes to detect when enemies are near or if obstacles are in the way. Can now accurately determine if obstacle other than planet is in the way. Can now discard targets. * Projectile Targeting: Targeting has been made more efficient, changes to detect when enemies are near or if obstacles are in the way. * Area of Effect attacks now more accurately capture units in the area that should be effected. * Slow effects changed to be more reliable and work as intended. * Unit Health Bars are now screen aligned textures. - Turret right click attack targeting was broken by this patch. - a few crashing issues were introduced this patch. High performance, low stability. [i]This patch is Part 1 of 2 planned performance patches. Turrets AI and Projectile system will eventually be modified to work with instancing, multithreading, and several other performance changes made with the groundwork laid this patch.[/i] [h3]1.3 Patch Notes:[/h3] [i]*These patch notes are not comprehensive of all changes.*[/i] [b]Balance changes Patch 1.3:[/b] * Turret manual attack added Turrets can now right click enemy units to attack them. * Power Generation changes: Power Generator I: Generates 15 Power every 5s and increases maximum Power Storage by 75. Power Generator II: Generates 50 Power every 5s and increases maximum Power Storage by 250. Power Generator III: Generates 150 Power every 5s and increases maximum Power Storage by 750. New Upgrade: Power Generator IV: Generates 750 Power every 5s and increases maximum Power Storage by 4000. General Changes: * Destruction tweaked on many ships to have more visual impact. * Many turrets have had their damage and cooldown rates adjusted for overcharging. * Many turrets have received Power cost and consumption changes. * Changes in preparation of starting patch 1.4 performance architecture revisions. [i]Most of the Patch 1.3 Balance notes details were lost and have been reconstructed from what is available.[/i] [h3]1.2 Patch Notes:[/h3] [i]*These patch notes are not comprehensive of all changes.*[/i] [b]Power Patch 1.2:[/b] * New Resource - Power: Players start with a base rate of power available to them. Power is added to player Power Storage every 5s. Generate power through new structure: Power Generator and its upgrades. * New Mechanic - Power Storage: Players are provided with power storage from their base power rate, captures power overflow. Power Storage is increased through Power Generators. * New Mechanic - Turret Power Consumption: Turrets now require an amount of Power every 5s to continue to operate. If not enough power is stored turret will attempt to function on 50% power & 50% damage. If no power stored turrets will disable and consume power when it becomes available. * New Mechanic - Power Overcharging: Power Overcharge UI elements added Interactive power slider to adjust Power values. UI display added for multiplier of power for overcharging. UI display added for current Power value as Power Status. Can toggle UI element show/hidden as part of tooltip UI. * Modify turret power usage, can boost power to improve turret performance. 3x Power == 2x Damage 2x Power == 1.5x Damage Half Power added No Power added (Disabled) * Turrets that can't receive enough power to match manual settings will automatically switch to the base power rate or power down if not enough stored power is available. * New Mechanic - Unpowered Turrets: Turrets can be manually set to consume no power. Turrets will disable while power is not provided. Will automatically draw power if available unless manually set. * New UI Resource elements: New resource UI is displayed in Top Middle of screen to display current Scrap values, Power storage bar, Power Generation, Power Consumption, and Net Power income. Scrap UI is now located with overall Resource UI. Build UI now displays base Power consumption with Scrap cost. Color coded: Red – Consumption, Green – Generation. * New Buildings - Power Generator I, II, III: Power Generator I: Generates 10 Power every 5s and increases maximum Power Storage by 100. Power Generator II: Generates 20 Power every 5s and increases maximum Power Storage by 2000. Power Generator III: Generates 50 Power every 5s and increases maximum Power Storage by 5000. * New Feature: Active Ship Wave Icons UI: Ships now have an associated icon on the top left of the UI. Icon indicates the currently active count of ship type. [i]Please Note: This feature is incomplete and contains an unfinished draft UI and text elements[/i] * New Feature - Ship Tooltips: Hovering over an Active Ship Wave Icon now has a pop out UI associated with it providing a brief description of the ship type. * Ship Stats: WIP, can now see rough stat values for ship types. Health, Shield, Speed, Damage, Armor now display text values. Not always accurate, changes to system are being worked on. General changes: * Level: Classic Easy and Normal difficulties have had scrap values adjusted to integrate Power resource. * Artillery Explosive Feedback was causing latency and crashing issues – resolved and reworked. * Changes in how some ships calculated armor. Armor changes to be introduced in future patch. * Resolved health UI causing some performance issues. * Resolved build UI causing some performance issues. * Improved Scrap Collection Drone performance, especially with many drones on screen. * Resolved issues of Scrap causing some performance issues with many on screen. * Ion Turrets have received several fixes to allow them to perform as intended. * Internal structure changes to Ship Type classification. * Several internal code architecture changes were made to allow moving forward with code design changes and performance plan. [h3]That's the end of our backlog of notes, thanks for playing and more to come soon![/h3]