Ever wanted to ask for help but didn’t have time to press six keys? Interested in telling folks that you found the Best Dropship? Wanted to just tell your fellow bird what a great day it is and how fine you look today, indeed! Very common thoughts, we’re certain. So we added four quick chat shortcuts. It’s a work in progress, and what we’ve got right now is ready for testing. They are:
- W: “Help!” You need help, for whatever reason — maybe your IKEA bookshelf isn’t fitting together — you press that W key.
- E: “Good Skies!” From one dashing bird to another, it’s a greeting and a farewell! Asmade famous by The Hobbit.
- R: “At <landmark>” If there’s a mission enemy or portal onscreen, it’ll name it for you. This is the ultimate in automation, I expect Elon Musk to acquire it for Tesla any day now. Unlike the other quick chats, this one also appears in the chat boxes of everyone on the server, so they can join you no matter how far.
- T: “Whee!” Recommended for use after defeating a boss. Or for one of those RT/fav twitter polls before Twitter added actual polls and renamed favorites to “likes”. Those were the days!
We’re really curious how you folks will use this. Got ideas on what you’d like to say with a single button press? Hit us. We know that folks want to be able to quickly talk about items they’ve picked up, we have slightly different plans for that.
The Doctor is in! For blood. Your blood, specifically. You’ll find the Doctor practicing medicine in the highlands, bringing more variety to an area that’s lacked it a bit.
Player planes now belch smoke when injured, and flames when near death. This adds yet another easy-to-see signal that you’re in over your head and should maybe go back for a spot of tea. Your fellow birds also show the effects, if you are a medic and see a smoky trail, you can help! Or pretend you’re out of steam, your call. We’ve been looking forward to this for a while, because it hearkens back to the original turn-based Steambirds, where smoke color was the main health indicator. It’s the age of internal combustion, and the cleanliness of your mix is the surest sign of your heartiness!
Speaking of new player plane art, check out this new bash art! Is this not crazy strong? I want to bash and never stop!
“Tadpole Clipper” Changelog
- Art!
- Mecha Angel
- Dr Octo
- Dr Notra
- Volume of droning hover sound reduced by 80%.
- Planes are able to dock while safe –this makes it so you (again) can’t get stuck on the wrong side of the storage building.
- Show numbers after the decimal point on the stats screen. You wanted numbers, you got em.
- Fixed a few pilot skills that weren’t being leveled up right.
- Fix Big Dog’s weak explosion.
- Plane progress bar is full in stats screen, instead of empty. You are maxed!
- Player planes belch smoke and flames when they are damaged. Kicks in at 66% and 33% of max health.
- Tweaks to shutdown effect, mentioned before. It is a blue explosion that happens when a unit self-destructs.
- Some enemies have a spawn animation that looks a bit like the shutdown effect. Things don’t just appear out of thin air in this game!
- Add “new item” effect what makes it a little easier to see just-dropped loot.
- Bee hexes have bigger holes in them. Don’t fly into the bullets! Bullets == bad.
- Skulls self-destruct instead of running away indefinitely
- Raijin health lowered, cycles tightened up.
- Balance untiereds for triple, wasp, and laser. Added variations to make each gun more unique.
- Added new untiered Colombo repeater.
- At some point Hog’s shield got all smol. Now back to normal size.
- New setpiece boss, Dr Notra!
- Quick chat. Press WERT to say stuff real quick, but not all the keys at once.
- New bash FX! This is how things look when there’s a real artist involved.
- The walls and trails on the ground that border subterrains now are continuous!
- Reduced the number of individual bullets that would kill the player in one or two hits.
As always, you are in our hearts. Keep sending in bug reports, we’ll get to the bugs sooner or later, and we’ll feel loved in the meantime.
Thanks to Andrew for handling the Steam build and deploy this time!