Milestone 5 Update

🚀 M5 – Major Systems, UI, and Polish Pass (v0.9.0)

Update 5 was a large milestone release focused on stabilizing core systems, improving presentation, and moving the game closer to a release-ready state. This update touched nearly every major area of the game, from UI and input to combat, audio, and achievements.

🎮 UI & Menus

• Complete UI overhaul

  • New UI assets imported

  • Settings Window prefab rebuilt from the ground up

  • Menu layouts and visuals refined across the board

• Added Credits scene

• Multiple fixes to settings menu, scoreboard levels, and pause mechanics

• Fixes to ground plane and map layer placements

🕹 Input & Controls

• Continued work resolving issues with the new Input System

• Improved input detection and device switching logic

• Fixed navigation inconsistencies in menus

🧠 Gameplay Systems

• Added a system for the GUI to track ammo counts on upgraded weapons

• Implemented a slowdown effect UI

• Enemy weapon logic moved to FixedUpdate for improved consistency

• Enemy movement converted to physics-based behavior

• Refined enemy spawn timings, speeds, and live-build inconsistencies

🔊 Audio Improvements

• Major cleanup of player and enemy shooting audio

• Refactored weapon logic to better support audio playback

• Adjusted and rebalanced multiple audio files

• Added a new music track for the Legal page

💥 Combat & Visual Effects

• Explosion color, intensity, and impact improvements

• New Player Shader with improved normals

• Adjusted post-processing across multiple levels

🤖 Drone System

• Began full Drone feature implementation

• Added movement to drone projectiles

🏆 Achievements & Steam Integration

• Refactored achievement events to remove legacy dependencies

• Implemented achievement impulse channel for Steam updates

• Hardened achievement manager configuration

• First round of achievement testing completed

🧹 Cleanup & Stability

• Multiple cleanup passes to reduce technical debt

• Fixed spawning issues present only in live builds

• Resolved a lighting rotation bug in Neon City

• Package updates and dependency cleanup

• Numerous small fixes discovered during extended debugging sessions

📦 Version

• Version updated to 0.9.0