Greetings! Here we are, May the 19th. This has become a regular day of the year when I release significant changes I made to Second Legacy. And we sure have a lot of them this time around! Please bear with me as I go over a few of them for details, otherwise you may skip to the end of the article for the full release notes.

Background system improvements

Players who already know the game will notice soon enough that backgrounds are now fuller. I've added rock assets, and rewrote part of the background system to be able to spawn assets according to the regions the player is flying through. I've also added layers of distance fog, in an attempt to give more depth to the scene.

But all in all this is still a cheap way to add variety to visuals in the game.

Multiple stages support and landing spots

Although we still have only one stage per-se, the game can now feature multiple stages, each one leading to another (like in other games, duh). With that and the optional routes mechanic I added in a previous update, I'd like to make the game not completely linear if possible.

To test this, I've chained the hidden route to a second run of the stage. So after beating the hidden boss, you will start the game once more. But this time taking advantage of the mod the hidden boss drops if you want. Something powerful but risky, see the paragraph about new mods further down.

As a reminder, to access the hidden route, the player must demonstrate they are able to fill completely their EX energy gauge before destroying the first bullet-cancelling enemy in the stage (it comes up pretty early). Depending on the chosen ark model, it may be easier or harder because of energy tank size differences. After that, the player must survive until they defeat the midboss. When the hidden route opens, the background starts shifting sideways, many more enemies come up, and the area distance fog increases.

Of course, after beating the hidden boss, you can still return to the hidden route in your second run of the stage, making the game an endless shooter in the process. Ridiculous scores may be achieved that way, but being stuck in a loop like this could have interesting implications story-wise, so I want to keep the possibility to set that up at hand.

About landing spots: sometimes in the middle of a stage, a prompt may require the player to use the "Action" command (it's a new input by the way, make sure to map it if you already have some control mappings down) to opt for a different route, or to land somewhere. Landing spots are barebone for now, but they will be useful for storytelling and to change equipment between stages. For now, a single landing spot exists, and to go there, you'll have to pass the hidden boss. I'm definitely overusing this hidden route to test new stuff, huh.

New mods: shield layer, repair system, and high-risk permanent EX mode

In case you don't already know, Second Legacy now features a gameplay customization mechanism via equipment mods that you can select before launching your ark. Some of them were already in the game, but locked until discovered. As no enemy actually dropped any of them, I unlocked all mods that were locked before, except "Abnormal Core" that can now be discovered in-game. "Abnormal Core" is supposed to be an endgame type mod that yields permanent EX mode at the expense of being able to retry after the ark explodes. To unlock it you will have to defeat the hidden boss.

Anyway now players have plenty of options to customize their ark. And I've added 2 new mods that may be interesting for any players who'd rather favor defense over offense:

• Barrier Core provides an additional layer of protection to the ark. It's possible to equip more than one such mod, as long as equipment slots are available and the player has more instances of this mod within their inventory.
  
• Repair Core allows the player repairing their damaged ark when EX energy tanks are full. This mod is incompatible with the Resonance Core one though, so picking this mod means no EX mode. If you'd rather survive longer than make big scores, this could be for you.

Check out the new in-game manual entries for more information about mods.

Overheating enemies

Since version 0.48.0a, I've been rather happy with how EX is implemented. I do need to balance it further, but it was time to work a bit on bosses, as they are more glorified normal enemies right now. The main problem I had to solve is that against a tough boss like the hidden route one, starting out with no upgrades was very hard and above all stupidly long, as you had to dodge fire for an eternity, hardly landing any hits and barely hurting the boss.

The direction I took was to reward the pilot for dodging for a while by making the boss yield more energy during the battle, and introducing an overheating mechanic. This is still a bit experimental, and need to be balanced further, but to overheat an enemy you have to use normal fire against it (it is risky within dense bullet patterns) or use shield-bombs. When the boss reaches critical heat, it stops moving and firing for a short while to cool down, and all bullets on screen are cancelled. And that's when the player can rush in and hit it the hardest, at point blank range, before retreating when the boss starts firing again.

Also I have yet to implement a true design separation between normal enemies and bosses, so multiple phases bosses are kind of a hack right now. But I'll work on that later.

Image training

I've added a new mode to the game, that has helped me during development to test combat against bosses without having to do a full stage on each attempt. I figured it would be helpful for players who need to train against tough opponents. To integrate this mode into the game's lore, I've called it "Image Training". It refers to how ark pilots are able to reflect on air battles within their mind.

In Image Training, the pause menu allows you spawning an enemy or changing the scenery according to what you have already encountered.

Visions

Another experimental thing I've added is a new feature allowing bosses to show images to the player once they have beaten them, during the explosion flash if there is one. It will be useful for storytelling only. And once again... I've set that up using the hidden boss.

RELEASE NOTES - 0.49.0a

New features

• Added a mechanic allowing to overheat some enemies
• Added image training mode, with unlockable enemy and background memories
• Added unlockable manual entries about mods
• Added new mods: EX barrier and EX repair
• Added items that unlock undiscovered mods when collected
• Added landing spot game state allowing players to reconfigure ark equipment
• Added support of stage destination and stage turn path phase target
• Added support of distance fog level control in stages for scene-setting
• Added basic multiple stages support and optional stage change opportunities
• Added support of "vision" images display during boss explosions, to be used for story-telling
• New action command used to select optional stage opportunities when they appear

General Changes

• Now the hidden boss drops a powerful but risky mod as a reward
• Swapped tank capacity between green and blue arks
• Balanced shieldbomb and EX-beam damage levels
• Improved procedural background system
• Subtle background music improvements
• Moved to Opus audio compression to significantly reduce data size without compromising too much on the audio quality (some clicking can still be heard on SFX after decompression though, I will have to fix those soon)

Logic fixes

• Now it is possible to set up mods when joining another player in-game as well
• Fixed a bug allowing checkpoints to be duplicated when retrying from the very start of the stage

Presentation changes & fixes

• Upgraded title screen presentation with an explosion effect
• Now validating a flag or label picker menu entry (like the fullscreen or viewport rotation options) changes their value to avoid confusion about how to use them
• New background graphics assets
• Now mod incompatibilities are shown in a more complete way
• Changed ship selection screen fonts to dark for better readability
• Fixed a bug causing the boss health gauge to be displayed at the same time as full combo hits gauge, causing UI element overlaps
• Minor fixes to game state transitions

Thank you so much for your interest in Second Legacy. I will be focusing on adding more variety to enemies and bullet patterns now, and perhaps also starting to implement another stage for good measure. See you next update!