Change of Plans!

Hiatus of Multiplayer

Hey everyone! This is an occasional dev update to prevent radio silence, but I have a somewhat upsetting announcement. I unfortunately have to break my promise of v1.1.9 being The Multiplayer Update. Turns out, making a by-design singleplayer game multiplayer is extremely difficult, and requires a lot of time and effort that I can't put in without taking forever and end up not meeting a lot of self-made deadlines for updates. So, for now, multiplayer is pushed onto the back burner while I try to slowly rewrite some parts of the game to better support multiplayer. Current issues that I had with the first attempt were:

1. The input system was redesigned to only allow one type of input (keyboard or controller) at a time; with controller being auto-selected when controllers are enabled. The code is correct, but UI is still unusable with controllers, like it's not switching the input mode even though it knows there are controllers.

2. The input system also doesn't automatically create new Players in gameplay, also like controllers aren't connected.

3. To continue #2; All controllers will still end up only controlling the same main player ship when in gameplay.

I've done some debugging yet still couldn't yield results. So, instead of making update progress go to a halt while I tirelessly work to make multiplayer work, I'm going to put it fairly low on my priorities, while still working on it between updates so that no progress is made.

The Endless Mode 2.0 Update

So, instead of v1.1.9's main focus being the Multiplayer Update. I'm going to instead highlight it being the Endless Mode 2.0 update! This was going to be with the multiplayer update anyway, but this is now the main highlight of the update. The Endless Mode update will:

• Overhaul Score; making gameplay actually score-based and not just time-based.

• Add Minibosses to drop special buffs and grant a bunch of score.

• Add a lot more Endless Mode rewards and even an exclusive Endless Mode shop/upgrades (since technically some Ship stats are actually different in Endless Mode.)

• and some more things that I currently can't think of but will probably throw in when I do.

So hang tight, I've still got something cooking up.

Heads up about v2.0.0

Sorry to leave some important information at the bottom, but before talking about v2.0.0, I want to inform all the people that don't yet own Pellet Dodge that PD's price will increase to USD$7.99 when v2.0.0 releases. This is because v2.0.0 is going to be a huge content update that will increase the value of the game. It'll include the second part of the Base Game, first part Base Game story improvements, gameplay modifiers (to shake things up), replayability features (something sorta like New Game+,) and a lot more Ship customization options, as well as some other stuff I may come up with on the spot! After v2.0.0, I'm going to take a hiatus from PD as a whole to start new projects and get better at making games. That doesn't exactly mean PD won't get any new updates after v2.0.0, since there's still some stuff that needs to be improved ahem, Custom Levels and Multiplayer WILL eventually be added.

I'm tired of typing now

Anyways, thanks for reading this (sorry for the wall of text) and for playing PD! Your feedback is extremely valuable to me and I am very willing to look for any of it to improve the experience for everyone. In the meantime, keep saving the Universe, infinite clones of Ship #274; we've still got a lot to do.