Changes in 0.7.1.7 We hope everyone had a great holiday season! Progress continues on the 3rd stage (our favorite yet!), and we hope to release it within a month! In the meantime, here is a patch with some new purchasable upgrades and changes/improvements/balance adjustments. [list] [*] Added a new upgrade for purchase: Cooldown reduction. Gives a 5% cooldown reduction to character special abilities per level purchased. Cap at 5, with a maximum of 25% cooldown reduction. –Dev Note: This is a fun upgrade we’d wanted to add for a while. Fairly simple, but hopefully opens up some build possibilities for players who want to better utilize their character’s special ability. [*] Added a new upgrade for purchase: Poison resist. Gives 15% resistance to poison per level purchased. Cap at level 6, with a maximum of 90% poison resistance. –Dev note: We like and want different damage types and effects like poison, but currently the only defensive option players have against poison is to avoid being hit. This upgrade will enable players to mitigate poison damage if they are struggling against it (which may come in handy in the future…). [*] Adjusted purchasable upgrade Experience Boost. Cap from 5 → 10. Amount of bonus experience reduced from 10% → 7.5% a level. –Dev Note: Experience Boost was often a first choice for an upgrade, and given its utility and cost, was outclassing other upgrade options. With this change, we hope to increase the possible bonus when maxed out, while bringing the individual level boosts down to a more competitive level with other upgrades. [*] Increased maximum cap of many purchasable upgrades in the upgrade menu: [list] [*] Damage cap from 5 → 10 (at max level, 50% weapon damage increase total) [*] Armor cap from 5 → 8 (at max level, 40% damage reduction total) [*] Effect size cap from 5 → 7 (at max level, 35% increased effect sizes of weapons) [*] HP and Repair cap from 5 → 10 (at max level, health increased by 350 and Health Repair increased to 10/second) [*] Shields from 5 → 10 (at max level, shields increased by 150) [*] Shield Recharge from 5 → 10 (at max level, shield recharge rate increased by 100) [/list] [*] –Dev Note: As we look to stage 3 and beyond, we want players to be able to continue to have meaningful ways to increase their power. Increasing the caps for upgrades allows players to continue making progress, and opens up design space for later levels to have even more unique and challenging enemies and scenarios. [*] Enemies with multiple drops will now drop them quickly in sequence instead of dropping them all instantly, and the drops follow the death animations more closely. –Dev note: Hopefully this makes bigger and tougher enemies feel more impactful and fun visually as loot pinatas. [*] Reworked the way the game processes knockback/stun/freeze. Ideally, these code changes function identically in terms of gameplay, but we’d appreciate bug reports if that’s not the case. –Dev note: These under-the-hood changes will hopefully allow us to more easily add unique enemy behaviors, especially with regard to movement. [*] Increased the active uptime of Chad’s invisibility special ability from 3 → 5 seconds, slightly lowered its speed, and increased the cooldown from 20 → 25 seconds. –Dev Note: Invisibility is an interesting utility for escaping and picking up xp orbs, but since it doesn’t prevent damage, we lowered the speed slightly but increased the uptime to avoid accidentally running into enemies. The cooldown was slightly increased to compensate for our new cooldown reduction passive, and to bring it more in line with its power. [*] Lowered Chad’s passive experience boost from 25 → 20%. –Dev Note: 25% was a little too strong and is great for every build, so we’ve reduced his bonus experience gain by 5%. [*] Increased the length of Crankshaft’s damage boost special ability from 5→ 8 seconds. –Dev note: This ability can be very impactful, but we feel its short timing window is currently too tricky to reliably take advantage of. With this increase in uptime, we feel Crankshaft’s special will both be slightly more powerful and be easier to use effectively. [*] Boosted base damage of the shotgun by 50%, but increased damage falloff at range. Slightly increased pellet spread and increased base pellets fired from 32 → 36. Level 2 damage upgrade decreased from 80% → 50% Decreased base range by 50%. –Dev Note: The shotgun is weaker than we’d like, and so we boosted its base damage. To remain true to its close range style, we decreased its range, added more spread, added more pellets to its base attack, and increased the falloff damage to make it less effective at medium/long ranges. Overall, this should be a substantial buff against close enemies, and roughly similar to before at longer ranges. [*] Changed upgrade name “Advanced Targeting” → “Advanced Weaponry”. –Dev Note: This upgrade increases the potential cap for weapon levels in-game, and the name adjustment hopefully makes this more clear/aligned with its function. [*] Added new character art for Automageddon. –Dev Note: Our artist wasn’t happy with Automageddon’s look, so we changed it! [*] Added a pixelated screen transition effect when starting or ending a game. [*] Added/reworked some sounds. [*] Added some new GUI elements to menus [*] Added new dynamic screen cracks when health is low. [*] Lots of little tiny improvements/tweaks that few if any will notice. [*] Added some easter eggs for eagle-eyed players. [/list] In addition to the 3rd stage, expect to see some new weapons/characters/upgrades in the next few months as we continue to work on the game, and thanks to all our players for their feedback and support! We’re a very small 4-person team of friends working on Robot Resistors outside of parenting/day jobs, so we appreciate any and all comments to help us refine and improve the game. Please feel free as always to ask questions, offer suggestions, and report bugs in our discord chat, we hope to hear from you all. Thanks again! –The Crablacksmith Team (James, Frank, Luke, and Adrian)