Hello Sipho society, we have an update!

Bounce Mutation

Ever since the Mutation Creation Contest I've had this urge to implement a Bouncy Mutation. Many shoot-em-up games have this because bounciness is chaos and chaos is fun. You can land trick shots over corners, get surprised by enemy fire that bounces off or even create some Rube Goldberg machines. These are the ultimate goal of Sipho - a collection of mechanics that complement each other and allow creating complex systems for you to have fun with and beat the game.


A new Bounce Stat was added and a Mutation to go along with it

Thus the Bounce Stat has been added - as of now, only used by Projectile weapons - Flak, Sniper, Soul Eater and Sprayer. In the future other Zooids might support Bounce stat too, however, it can be trickier to balance as bounce can sometimes be non-beneficial.

One of benefits of having some Bounce is to guarantee your shots in tight areas. Now what do I use to reach that food?

For Projectiles Bounce works by keeping an internal counter of "remaining bounces". When a projectile hits a solid, non damageable object it checks if it has bounces left and bounces off if it does. If it doesn't - it dies as usual. This works with Obstacles and even with Spikes and Flails - projectiles can bounce off them!

Aquarium Obstacle Menu Overhaul

One of the silent and huge updates we had some time ago was updating Aquarium content. This was motivated by the need to tidy-up obstacle names for future game translations and update the old content in general. As a result we now have a pretty nifty spawnable object categorization with previews:


Notice the pleasing column/row ratio😩👌

It is now also possible to change at which depth objects are spawned - on, below or above playable surfaces. In future, Decorations and Obstacles should become one category - as spawning Obstacles at non-collidable layers makes them Decorations and some Decorations can be interesting to collide with or even have some gameplay function.

Tooling, like changing depth or moving already spawned obstacles is also something I keep in mind.

Shady Business

One of graphical improvements that I really wanted to do for a long time were shadows.

Fancy name for a simple thing - blurry black outlines that get thicker if an object covers another object from higher distance.

Sipho action happens in deep waters and I really want to emphasize the atmosphere of this depth. While 2D by definition does not have depth we can do some tricks. One of which is parallax to add depth to lower layers - the deeper things are, the less they "move" when camera moves. This trick only works for deeper than playable layer. Playable layer can't have parallax as it would creation confusion around collisions. Higher layer in theory could have parallax, but it felt too distracting. So to add some depth emphasis on all layers at once I added Ambient Occlusion effect. It can be tweaked in Graphics Options for your liking!

There is some good stuff hidden in the patch notes - movement improvements, performance optimisations for late game, secret features.

Version 0.9.5f1

• Add Tier 3 Projectile weapon bounce mutation
  
• Use Factions to determine what Mutations UI represents
  
• Remove separate debuff drag logic and use stat-baed logic for Muck - fixes spazzing out
  
• Modify third Buginis Boss arena walls to have less sharp corners that Siphos can get stuck on
  
• Add Bounce stat, icons, description
  
• Skill use also gets queried in Fixed Update - fixes skipping input for fast skills when framerate is low
  
• Cache Shell Grower results which greatly improves performance for Siphos with large amount of far-reaching Chitins
  
• Add GetAllNeighborZooids variant with HashSet which has optimized search for Contains()
  
• Destructible objects can be indestructible
  

Version 0.9.4f8

• Experimental symmetrical building by holding Alt button
  
• Handle single zooid sipho velocities better when trying to move
  
• Update angular velocity after zooid rotations were updated - fixes incorrect velocities at frame-after-frame level
  
• Add ZooidDeep layer and use it for Deep zooid. Deep is no longer affected by Pushers and Twisters. Deep collides with large obstacles
  
• Mines no longer explode on contact with Consumables
  

Version 0.9.4f7

• Puffer spike thicker
  
• Fix Auto Grow messing things up
  
• Detached/Reattached zooids can get callback
  
• Tweak Tank movement to work with new movement logic
  
• Fix Moss glitching out in certain positions
  
• Fix deformed built-in Buginis Layout "Rapacious Buginis Pig"
  
• Use simpler logic to remove detached Zooid connections when repositioning zooids - fixes moving pistons erroring out
  
• Fix incorrect angular velocity calculation of Siphos when passing through 360 degrees - fixes stutter when turning in Tank movement
  
• Add Consumption flag to skills and make enemies use them to reach food quicker
  
• Enemies use skills if their skill zooid is in range to the target
  
• Grid spawner debug
  
• Remove Whirlpool spawners from Aquarium areas
  
• Experimental PID movement - F11 toggles
  
• Detach Polyp when teleporting Sipho
  
• Fix audio sliders being 99% by default, not 100%
  
• Update Megalocyst description
  
• Rename zooid files to contain Zooid_ prefix
  

Version 0.9.4f6

• Update Graphics Connector position when initializing - fixes Graphics Connectors appearing in wrong positions for the first frame
  
• Handle Layout generation positioning when main sipho is at zero position
  
• Polyps do not damage dead damageables - fixes an error spam
  
• Align Polyp mover icon with base
  
• Do not attempt growing new zooid again when ending growth - fixes growing new zooids twice at once
  

Version 0.9.4f5

• Fix Head zooids costing nutrition when they shouldn't
  
• Display Health Regeneration stat value correctly
  
• Tweak Decoration Coral 3 vertex animation
  
• Fix two custom spawning related bugs - Aquarium spawns and desspawns should now persist
  
• Select Layout preview generator position even more robustly
  
• Initialize Zooids with correct indexes - fixes Piston incorrectly expanding/contracting when spawned
  
• Override main Piston connection with thicker looking connection and non-main with thinner
  
• Zooids can have Graphics Connector overrides for directions
  

Version 0.9.4f4

• Brighten up Main Menu postprocessing effect
  
• Use campaign spawners for Aquarium areas
  
• Fix whilpool pop when Area Clears
  
• Separate Ancient Rock bottom objects from Rocks
  
• Make deep connections stiffer and correct outline depth
  
• Alien Rock Bottom desaturates with depth
  
• Wacky workaround for not spawning extra empty spaces for Spawnable box
  
• Better Aquarium spawn groups and their UI panels
  
• Cell fitter now supports max cell count constraint
  
• Tweak Obstacle names
  
• Tweak Cooldown Recovery powerup icon
  
• Move Environment Object Variant info onto the same component
  
• Set Aquarium background grid depth to spawnable depth
  

Version 0.9.4f3

• Alien rock bottom is an obstacle now
  
• Projectile starting health is determined by Penetration
  
• Get unseen position for Sipho preview generator
  
• Cancel snapshot generation when leaving death screen
  
• Holes always spawn things at zero depth
  
• Fix Alien Rock Bottoms overlapping other objects
  
• Rocky spikeball won't spawn in regular levels yet
  
• Tweak boss battle spawn positions
  
• Environment Object shader again has option not to write to depth - fixes some effects overwriting depth
  
• Use RectMask in Aquarium menu instead of per-pixel mask
  
• Fix powerup effects and add missing icons
  
• Display depth tooltip when selecting depth in aquarium
  
• Reorder some spawnables in Aquarium UI
  
• Don't localize intermediate env object names
  
• Don't spam instanceID reimports
  
• Fixup Leech NaNs?
  
• Add Spike ball
  
• Do not localize instances of prefabs as they can have random names
  
• Flower decorations
  
• Report when new localization keys are added
  
• Correct Deeper Rock depths
  
• Reset currents scale when scaling parent object - preserves correct Z
  
• Fix Currents visuals
  
• Alien rock bottom decoration tweaks
  
• Translations
  
• Prepend to filename tool
  
• Add more decorations to spawn in Aquarium
  
• Cleanup decorations
  
• Lava Rock tops correctly inherit from prefab
  
• Add capitalize function to asset renaming window
  
• Do not localize environment object names directly
  
• Aquarium spawning groups up objects with the same name into expandable categories
  
• More obstacle cleanup
  
• More obstacle cleaning up
  
• Aquarium spawn effect has correct depth and group up spawnables
  
• Bump year in Main Menu
  
• New year - reimport all prefabs
  
• Intestines tweak
  
• Correct Piston skill icon
  
• Minion siphos are very angry
  
• Do not include backgrounds to Cra'Than sprite atlas
  
• Add Cra'Than and Buginis environment sprites to atlases
  
• Fix incorrect environment object world position calculation
  
• Aquarium spawns at Mid depth (Z=0) by default
  
• Fix energy regen pickup effect clouds rotating and clipping
  
• Reenable Deep outline
  
• Skin flowers are nasty again
  
• Fix flower 2 visuals
  
• Always output top facing normals for particle sprites
  
• Vertex anim support for environment object shader (shouldn't be used though)
  
• More names fix
  
• Correct Aquarium depth slider values
  
• Revert translations
  
• Obstacles now have variants in their names
  
• Dither fix again
  
• Add Toggle UI button - default bind F12
  
• Advena rocks use correct depth-supported material
  
• Add depth spawning assets
  
• Add recorder that works
  
• Polyp Zooid descriptions and visual tweaks
  
• Ripple particles have no size limit - they were incorrectly clamped before
  

Version 0.9.4f2

• Same
  
• Identifyable database uses assset postprocessor to setup references
  
• Fix Decoration dithering
  
• Disable double buffered positions - rotation constraint needs to be fixed first to be sure this has no additional drawbacks
  
• Don't overtiffen rotation constraint when entering growth mode - currently it has incorrect values, so overtstiffing it breaks physics
  
• Revert to more stable soft body constraint calculation
  
• Allow changing depth when spawning in Aquarium
  
• Leech uses interpolated Zooid transform position for graphics
  
• Make sure renderer clones are removed
  
• Revert translations
  
• Add Debug dump all mutations
  
• Gather identifyables when building
  

Version 0.9.4f1

• Tweak depth layers
  
• Ripples do not sample from things that have higher depth
  
• Add alpha/depth dithering
  
• Make Advena head selection bottom rocks stay at the bottom
  
• Use environment shader functions in depth normals shader to get correctly aligned depth values
  
• Fix Buginis Boss first boss fight particles not being spawned when the fight ends
  
• Reset projectile health when initializing launched projectiles
  
• Move skillbind permutations away from localized strings
  
• Translation cleanup
  
• Use all caps font in Dive button
  
• Add Recorder package
  
• Constraint tester v2
  
• Extract distance constraint function
  
• Use custom shader for rendering depth
  
• Tweak AO default settings
  
• Add Ambient Occlusion setting
  
• Render Ripples at Low depth - fixes ripples overallping collidable objects
  
• Environment Objects and Ripples write into depth
  
• Enable Ambient Occlusion in Postprocessing Profiles
  
• Correct offset falloff and handle inverse orientation
  
• Better constraint tester
  
• Add perpendicular function
  
• Use interpolated Zooid transform positions instead of physics positions when positioning Zooid Growth buttons and Growth Point indicators - fixes them being offset when Sipho is edited in high motion
  
• Fix some nested particle effects getting incorrectly scaled
  
• Support more debug vectors
  
• Extract Rotation constraint calculation method for easier debugging
  
• Apparently I could save one normalization in rotation constraint - more Soft Body Physics performance!
  
• Soften up sentence for The Condemned One and allow it to be included in builds
  
• Apply position and rotation offsets after constraints are calculated - fixes symmetrical builds with contracting muscle zooids spinning out of control