- Bug fixes cont.: vampier mosquito removal - 22 August 2021
Mosquitos no longer vampire to prevent the dreaded fatal vampire game crash
- Hotfix for crashes - 20 August 2021
There has been a surge of crashes in the game recently. I believe they have to do with the new features of vampire, which also occurs during the chi attack, and so vampire has been removed from the game for now. This bug is elusive... it only occurs during release builds. That's why I didn't catch it before when developing it. And there's no crash report at all for it. I'm still working on figuring out why it's happening. A fix should be easy once I figure it out. I've also removed drag upgrades, as shot drag was recently removed from the game as well to increase performance. This might still be temporary. If you still experience crashes, please let me know when and how it happens. You can either post in the discussion forums on Steam, reply to this message, or let me know on the Dualism Discord channel. (Pst, that's the best way to contact me) https://discord.gg/768waPBAAw Apologies fo…
- Upgrade Stats: Screw Slow(ly) - 6 August 2021
New Upgrade Doors' Stats Complete Screw Slow (only Blast is left) Slow changes Slow resistance gets you out of webs sooner Change slow math due to bad math before, like Poison Slow lasts longer now, 10 seconds, up from 5
- Special Shots and Poison - 31 July 2021
Upgrade Stats Progress Special Shots and Poison doors have been completed. This includes: Penetrating shots Homing shots Wave shots Poison shots Poison on physical hits Poison resistance In addition, Wave shots are random always gives 1/2 wave shots upgrade now Poison exponent math was backwards. That's been fixed and poison has been rebalanced Poison duration reduced from 10 seconds to 6 seconds Whoops, sorry this update came out late. I made the build yesterday afternoon and then did some work outside with the intention of making a let's-play video afterwards and then pushing the update. Instead I totally forgot about my responsibilities! All that's left for upgrade stats now are slow, screw, and blast.
- Special Shots and Poison - 31 July 2021
Upgrade Stats Progress Special Shots and Poison doors have been completed. This includes: Penetrating shots Homing shots Wave shots Poison shots Poison on physical hits Poison resistance In addition, Wave shots are random always gives 1/2 wave shots upgrade now Poison exponent math was backwards. That's been fixed and poison has been rebalanced Poison duration reduced from 10 seconds to 6 seconds Whoops, sorry this update came out late. I made the build yesterday afternoon and then did some work outside with the intention of making a let's-play video afterwards and then pushing the update. Instead I totally forgot about my responsibilities! All that's left for upgrade stats now are slow, screw, and blast.
- BALLS and AERO upgrade stats, and VAMPIRE overhaul! - 23 July 2021
How's the upgrade stats progress going? It's going, but never as fast as I want it to. This week saw all of Balls done. Aero just needed Faster Acceleration and that was done. Started on Special Shots and ended up completing and overhauling vampire. What's left are: the rest of special shots, poison, slow, blast, and screw. Getting close! Vampire was overhauled Everything is better about it Balanced a little better Keeps chaining within lightning and blasts now Prevent overhealing Big and little mosquitos have it A little green ball shoots toward the thing getting the health now Friendlies can heal you instead of them Balanced shots now that there's no drag I continued on the no shot drag idea and balanced most of the shots in the game. If there's any that seem off, let me know! (There's a lot of places shots are made in the code!) What else is new? Balanced shot damage from all special…
- Back from sickness - Dualism is Dragless! - 17 July 2021
Every once in a while I like to try crazy experiments and change up the gameplay a lot. This time, I took away air drag for shots. I had previously thought the slight exponential change in speed for shots was cool and more natural, but I think this linear, constant speed is better for gaming, and it will likely result in better performance. So, let me know what you think! I may keep it this way and polish up all the shots speeds for next update. This update, the lack of drag had resulted in changes in speeds for all shots. I have not yet fine tuned these. It's rough. Happy re-exploring! Something different for a while. It's been like three weeks, what happened to you?! I'm not sure. I had an ear infection that turned into a really bad fever for a few days, I think. It was the worst I've felt in years. But when it finally went away, it still took me a while to feel 100% normal. In fact,…
- Upgrade Stats: Diplomacy and Body Doors Complete! - 24 June 2021
Hey all! I'm back from my two week vacation/staycation where I could get a bunch of things done so I could work on this game more! I'm still doing some of those things, but I'm back to pushing out weekly updates. What's new? This update is mostly about continuing the process of giving tons of detail about the upgrades. This week, the Diplomacy and Body doors were completed. There are 8 doors left... and I can move on to more exciting things! What's this about a Steam Sale? It's true! It's the Steam Summer Sale! The game is 2/3 off during this time. If you liked the game, please tell your friends! I suck marketing, so do my job for me! (Jk, but not really...) Stay true to your beliefs. Have fun confronting your dark side. Take on the challenge. Enjoy~
- Performance down, stability up - 7 June 2021
Don't upgrade if you want maximum performance at the risk of crashing. Instance pooling turned off I think instance pooling, a technique for optimizing framerate when there's a TON of shots on the screen, was slightly instable, and causing weird behavior and crashes sometimes. I removed this optimization for this build. So there will be about a 10% decrease in performance. For example, with instance pooling, and 2500 shots on the screen, 65 fps. Without instance pooling, and same 2500 shots on the screen, 57 fps. If you still experience any crashes (especially ones without an error report) LET ME KNOW! Shots upgrade Also, by request, increased the maximum number of times you can get the "Shots do more damage" upgrade Week off I have been struggling with the game updates for the last couple of weeks. I think I need to take a week off, let my creative energy refill, and, probably more imp…
- Meta, Time, Body door stats - 4 June 2021
META, TIME Door Upgrade Stats All the upgrade stats/info for these doors have been coded Also Absorb More, and Max HP of the BODY door What else is new? Fixed diplomat Aware that severe lightning can cause severe slowdown All shot count upgrades have been rejiggered (lower) for better performance later Absorb removes status effects slower now but it's upgradeable now too XP Gained/lost due to time upgrades increased Personal Note Sorry guys it seems like progress has been slow lately. I've had a lot of other stuff going on, and finishing these upgrade stats has been much more work and a drag than I thought it would be. I'll wrap it up and get moving on to more fun unique game upgrades soon. With the new updates, the game is slightly harder. Or, at least, increased shot count upgrades are weaker. What do you guys think of the difficulty? Too much?
- CONTROL YOUR DESTINY, more optimizations, new tracking, absorb differences - 29 May 2021
Control your Destiny! Er, what? Use those rerolls! Oh! You mean when I'm offered doors or upgrades, I can opt to have new ones offered? Yes Ok thank you. I should be able to Control your Destiny! Yes... 6 rerolls per game are in. Use them on doors or upgrades 1 additional choice per upgrade Moar performance increases Oh yeah more particle optimizations and we rewrote tracking like we wanted to for a long time huh. Aren't we supposed to be finishing the upgrade information stats? Yes but no slowdown is also important One last important thing before the rest. Ehem. ENEMIES ABSORB 2X WHAT THEY USED TO So shooting enemies with the wrong color used to heal them a little. Now it heals them a lot. But it's the same for you. You get to switch colors, they can't! And you evolve. Quit complaining! It was: both you and enemies absorb 61.8% of shot damage as health. Now: same for player, but enemie…
- Upgrade Stats, part 4: Lightning,. and more Optimization - 21 May 2021
"Ahhh motherland!" This week was focused on getting more upgrade stats done, and I got sidetracked with more optimizations. Good thing though, I think there were some interesting ones made that I hadn't thought of before. Getting closer to fully optimized. Someone want to test me on that? I believe this version is about 20% more performant than last week's game. What's are this week's Upgrade Stats? Lightning There were a concerning amount of bugs in the lightning code. For example, it wouldn't even work when there was just two bugs. Now it does, it should chain a lot more, and everything, including those blasted blast sizes, will reduce after each chain. It's optimized as well. Everything is getting a nice coat of optimization now. What the heck is going on with these particles? Yeah, they were changed. I was given advice on a different method to do them, and at first, I implemented th…
- Midweek update: fixes and optimizes - 18 May 2021
Yoooo Another week, another mid-week update. (doh!) Fix There were some crashes happening due to all the sprites I deleted in the last update. This should be fixed now. Optimize I included some optimizations I have been working on. Something called "instance pooling", so certain engine procedures are skipped when creating and destroying thousands of projectiles per second. And it was a success! I'm seeing anywhere from 5-20% framerate boosts from it. Reworking Particles have also changed. I am trying something else to optimize them. A bug in the code caused the particles to look the way they do, and... I kind of like it. So I'm keeping it this way for now. Let me know what you think. Cleaner might be better, when the game is already super-chaotic. Be aware Poison, slow, etc, currently don't show in shot particles. Particles are a work in progress, and I wanted to push this update out qu…
- Upgrade Stats: Part 3! and more Optimized! - 14 May 2021
This week Dualism was in the Game Development World Championship, and so I took some time this week to attempt to market the game. It worked, a little. But unfortunately this update isn't as filled to the brim as it usually is. (by the way, go vote if you haven't: GDWC) What are the new upgrades stats? Well, there's just one this week. Too much going on in marketing and outside of game development this week. This week it's just Shatter. There may be a small bug or two with the numbers displayed, but they're more cosmetic actually. The underlying code should be fine. Shatter had some adjustments to make it not so strong. Shatter also had some optimizations so there should be less framerate chugging when things shatter. Queen bee had some shatter given back to her fine shatter attack Queen bee got a new shatter attack that plays with the number 3 What else was optimzied? Several experimen…
- Optional quick fix - 10 May 2021
I realized I left the first option of the doors locked to spikes, balls, and screw attack from when I was testing something. Unlocked so the first option is random again. Sorry!
- 2-day patch: Getting it ready for competition - 10 May 2021
What, another update a couple days after your Friday update? Yeah! There were a few more things I wanted to button up for this week. Several of these were mentioned by other players, so I knew it was important. Tutorial overhauled again The tutorial is actually starting to get where I want it. It fades most of the screen out on the Upgrade parts and explains things much better, I think. Get some basic information about upgrades! All the upgrades have "specific" upgrade info, even if they don't have the exact stat changes yet. OK give me the rest in a list Fixed broken menus if you clicked a pixel above the top option Vampire, wave, tracking, and penetration each effect shot damage like they should Spider boss no longer gives millions of xp Chi attack starts smaller and gets bigger slower Removed "enemies take physical hits more often" as it pretty much doesn't make sense Ball mass incre…
- Upgrade Stats: Part 2! and Optimized! - 7 May 2021
Heyo! Vote for best indie game of all time - ever Dualism is honored to be a part of the GDWC vote next week! Check it out and vote for your favorite game, starting Monday! https://thegdwc.com/ Upgrade Stats - Part 2! (of 3 or 4) Included this week are the stats rewrite and visibility for the upgrade screen for: Bombs Shot mods Spikes I wish there were more, but it's a lot of work in each one! Many things have been reworked completely, including 3 new upgrades! Drop all bombs when touched Bombs' proximity radius to explode way bigger (when you just want the blast to hit stuff) Bombs' proximity radius to explode way smaller (when you want to embed your enemy with tons of fragments) Removed bigger, blastier bombs. Replaced with 3 new variants: Bigger bombs, Stronger bombs, and Bombs have more fragments Bombs last longer has been made a 1-time upgrade Spikes life standardized across all gu…
- Hotfix - Broken "More shot damage" and tutorial fixed - 3 May 2021
Fixed a game-breakingly powerful upgrade Hope you liked the last version of the game. It was very short lived. You could increase you shot damage from, say, 1,067 to 32,274 with just one "More shot damage" upgrade. Well that's no more. Fixed tutorial Also, the tutorial was fatally broken. It's been fixed. It's also been buttoned up. There (hopefully) shouldn't be any more issues with the tutorial. More updates coming Friday...
- Upgrade Stats: Part 1! - 30 April 2021
Finally! Some of the mystery of the upgrades is revealed! When you're upgrading, you'll see a lot of new information. It's part of a multi-week effort to rewrite upgrades so you know what they do, they're more consistent and balanced, mathematical, and we can do de-upgrades (later- haha!) I hope this information makes it better for you. I kill myself doing it. It takes a lot more effort to rewrite this than it probably looks! I also hope I didn't introduce any new bugs. I was patching them all the way up to release, so... fingers crossed. If you find a bug, let me know. What else? fixed a bug with vampire on elite difficulty titan boss has less health spider does more damage, but shoots much less often propelled bomb speeds standardized across all gun types charge bigger works faster charge status effects work faster (hopefully not OP) doubled the grace period to flee after being stuck…
- Screenshots! F12 - 24 April 2021
By overwhelming popular demand and extreme force, I put in the long hours and painful sacrifice to implement steam screenshots. Just kidding. There was one guy who was like, "Hey, can you put in screenshots? I was surprised there was nothing in there and I want to put some stuff in there!" Well, I actually had never used the screenshot feature of steam before. Somehow, days later (today) after I've already pushed this week's update and couldn't relax and started thinking about the next, this person's message rang again in my head. Well ok let's see how hard it is- I've already blocked out the whole next week for upgrade stat info so maybe I can squeeze this in. An hour later and... ~voila. What a cool feature! It's like a combination of twitter and 4chan for gaming. Go nuts! I look forward to seeing your unique chaos
