Ok, this time we actually have integral mouse support!

Volcanic Giraffe is still alive and we are still making games. There have been some dead ends, unfinished prototypes and life struggles, but right now we are going for almost a year of stable development of Hexworld:

Hexworld is an autobattler grow-your-kingdom strategy, and it has little sword-wielding golems falling from the cliffs. And also an accountant cat.

The game comes to Early Access this spring, we really want to share it, we are eager for feedback! And of course, it will be improved, filled with content and polished before 1.0 release sometime later this year. It would mean a world to us if you wishlist the game and spread the news!

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2166020/Hexworld

This is a minor patch with the following game crash fixes:

• Level 'Convoy' blocker - Uncaught TypeError: Cannot use 'in' operator to search for 'spawn-rate-percent' in 5 (thanks to juan ignacio)
  
• Custom levels with no builder units - Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'onMatterChange' of undefined
  
• Rare Experiments bug - Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'wavesGrp' of null (kudos to Kubla Khan)
  
• Rare Level Editor issue - Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'properties' of null

We also added some annoying help tips in Level Editor.

Hello everyone!

Level Editor for Protolife is out now. It is available in-game so there is no need to run any external applications.

It allows you to sketch your ideas, playtest some crazy situations, spawn a swarm of tumors against your custom towers and just be creative. A lot of things are tweakable already, and we are planning to expose even more parameters soon.


The most natural thing you can do with custom levels is to let other players to play them. Steam Workshop integration provides an ability to share your levels with the community and download new hand-made levels for yourself.

To start this challenge — there are 8 new built-in custom levels and more are available within the Workshop.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1856092478
General:

• New: Level Editor
  
• New: Steam Workshop integration (levels only)
  
• New: Custom Levels list (+ 8 custom levels)
  
• In-game menu and result panel now show the progress of experiment.

Custom towers balance:

• Damage block: reload time +15% (was +50%), burst delay +30% (was +50%)
  
• Damage M2 block: reload time +15% (was +30%), burst delay still +30%
  
• Burst mod: reload time +25% (was +50%), burst delay -15% (was -10%)
  
• Burst M2 mod: reload time +25% (was +30%)
  
• Buckshot mod: reload time +60% (was +100%)
  
• Pierce block: pierce value 3 (was 1), reload time +50% (was +100%)
  
• Plasma gunpoint: base damage reverted to 1 (was 2).
  
• Mortar gunpoint now prioritises targets according to armor penetration (mainly structures) and randomly chooses from a set of 10 closer targets otherwise.

Dev comment: Overall this is a huge buff. We want to make custom towers more reliable for red-risk experiments. Rate of fire was the main bottleneck for a consistent dps growth. 'Diminishing return' is still a thing so we are trying to avoid 100+ dps towers in regular games, while 100 dmg one-shot projectile is still reachable. You might expect some improvements for flamethrower and discharger gunpoints in the third iteration of these changes.


(mortar gunpoint targeting)

Fixes:

• Crash Report: Cannot read property 'toString' of undefined at KeyBindingButton.refreshKeyLabel
  
• Game crash after finishing experiments caused by shader on some gpu’s
  
• Crash Report: Cannot read property 'toLowerCase' of undefined at AnyKey.redraw (big thanks to CrackParrot)
  
• Crash Report: Cannot read property 'setBoosted' of undefined (kudos to hiromi_teija)
  
• Crash Report: Cannot read property '1' of undefined at BigGrid.getBigCell (thanks to Přemysl)
  
• Crash Report: Cannot read property 'onComplete' of undefined. Caused by InfectionBuilder (multiple reports)
  
• Fix for 'destroy buildings mission continues even if your base is destroyed' (thanks to Discord squad and Starkweather)
  
• Now you can remap W to Z (sorry, laestril!)
  
• Now Corruptors won’t trigger 'if it works' achievement
  
• Now Corruptors can’t place infection while death animation is active
  
• Fixed NG+ levels resetting NG progress issue (cheers to dragonboy212)
  
• Win screen stuck animation fixed
  
• Tumor boss now can’t trigger both 'level win' and 'level lose' conditions simultaneously.
  
• No more sliding on the ground mortar projectiles, affected by pierce boosters.

Share your ideas. Ask questions. Have fun!

https://discord.gg/RdhbkBn

Hello there, fellow tower builders! We finally brought you some news.
First and foremost, Protolife turns 1 year today!

It was an incredibly happy and productive year, and we wanted to thank everyone who supported us during this time.
Thanks to you, we were able to improve the game far beyond its release state and get an incredible feedback we never hoped to achieve.


Now, obviously, we couldn't possibly leave you without a present! It's not quite ready yet, and we'll make a proper announcement with a detailed breakdown once we are happy with all the features working as intended — for now I'm just going to drop some pictures here. Enjoy! :protoblockC:

This patch mainly addresses Tower Editor balance issues and game crashes reported via Steam, Discord and email.


Corruptor

• hp: 5, average speed
  
• Uses alternative paths to breach the defense and spread the infection. Stay alert!
  
• Can be found at yellow and red risk experiments.

Elemental Worms

• Pretty tough. Armored: 10 hp and 3 armor, Magmatic: 14hp and fire resist, Electric 12hp and electric resist.
  
• Appear only at red risk experiments.

Unidentified Behemoth

• ???

Now you can go back to original campaign even if NG+ is in progress (if you want to replay some levels, complete achievements, etc.). There is an option to erase all progress including NG+ as well.


Tower summary panel now shows percentage values instead of multipliers. For instance, you will see '+20%' instead of 'x1.2' and '-10%' instead of 'x0.9'.

Some tower properties are now capped to prevent performance and gameplay issues.This means some blocks in a custom tower will have no further positive effect when this cap is reached. This is also true for towers buffed by multiple link boosters.

Tower properties limits:

• Range - max: 30
  
• Salvos - max: 30
  
• Bullets per salvo - max: 30
  
• Reload time - min: 0.1 seconds
  
• Burst delay - min: 0.01 seconds
  
• Armor Penetration - max: 3
  
• Splash - max: 5
  
• Projectile Speed - max: 30

You will see ‘(min)’ or ‘(max)’ tooltip next to a property when its limit is reached on the UI.


The second major change for this update are the tower block balance changes. Most of them have been nerfed because they used to break the game completely with some extreme configurations.
At the same time we buffed the starting stats for all gunpoints. Therefore now you can build custom towers and see the improvements even when you don't yet have access to advanced blocks. Our goal also was to make small custom towers more viable while keep the extreme configurations balanced. As all things should be.

Here is the full list of changes:

Range Booster

• Angle -5 deg. (was -20%)
  
• Speed +1 (was +3)

Range Booster M2

• Range +2 (was +3)
  
• Angle -5 deg. (was -25%)
  
• Speed +2 (was +6)

Sector Booster

• Angle +15 deg. (was +60)
  
• Speed change removed (was -1)

Sector Booster M2

• Angle +20 deg. (was +90)
  
• Spread change removed (was +1)
  
• Speed -1 (new)

Damage Booster

• Reload time +30% (new)
  
• Burst delay +30% (new)

Damage Booster M2

• Reload time +50% (new)
  
• Burst delay +50% (new)

Firerate Booster

• Reload time -10% (was -20%)
  
• Burst delay -10% (was -20%)

Firerate Booster M2

• Reload time -20% (was -40%)
  
• Burst delay -20% (was -40%)

Splash Booster

• Reload time +30% (was +10%)
  
• Speed -1 (new)
  
• Burst delay +30% (was +10%)

Pierce Booster

• Speed +2 (new)
  
• Pierce +1 (was +2 when <10)
  
• Burst delay +100% (new)

Burst Mod

• Energy -2 (was -1)
  
• Salvos +1 (was +2)
  
• Burst delay -10% (was -20%)

Burst Mod M2

• Spread +2 (was +1)
  
• Salvos +2 (was +4)
  
• Burst delay -20% (was -30%)

Buckshot Mod

• Speed +2 (was +5)
  
• Range -2 (was -20%)
  
• Bullets per salvo +2 (was +5)
  
• Burst delay +30%

Plasma Gun

• Reload time 1.2 sec. (was 1.5)
  
• Damage 2 (was 1)
  
• Burst delay 0.75 sec. (was 0.5)

Discharger

• Angle 180 deg. (was 360)
  
• Reload time 1.4 sec. (was 1.6)
  
• Burst delay 1.2 sec. (was 0.5)
  
• Now prioritizes Magnetos and bioartillery shots (same as TX1, TX2, TX3).
  
• Proper sector color.

Mortar

• Burst delay 1.2 sec. (was 0.5)
  
• Proper sector color.

Flamethrower

• No changes

Resource harvester

• No changes

Boost linker

• Energy -6 (was -4)
  
• Now has a constant range and angle (can’t be changed via blocks)
  
• Now has an efficiency factor which decreases all boosting parameters
  
• Range 8
  
• Angle 180 deg.
  
• Efficiency 75%

Also we introduced a couple of new blocks:

BF cannon

• 20 damage on impact, slow reload, slow projectile speed, electrocutes everything on its way.

Boost linker M2

• Energy -8
  
• Range 10
  
• Angle 180 deg.
  
• Efficiency 50%

Patterns

• WALL now has 10 hp (was 8).
  
• Burst delay specified for all towers so they are properly buffed via linkboosters.

Experiments

• All missions: No more Tunnel Spawners, ZAPPERs, Repulsors, Infection Cannons at green risk levels.
  
• All missions: New late-game enemies for yellow and red risks levels.
  
• Survivals: No more Orange Centipedes and Magnetos at green risk levels.
  
• Survivals: Overall waves difficulty reduced by 20%.
  
• Max evolution level limit for all enemy structures: green risk = 3, yellow = 5, red = 10.

Enemy structures

• ZAPPER can appear as a random spawn structure now. Experiments and New Game+ only.
  
• Tunnel Spawners (big ones) now have an additional evolution stage with a lower enemies spawn rate (20 worms, 0 behemoths).
  
• Levels 'Hollow', 'Focus', 'The Core' — the first grow phase will be easier due to the Tunnel Spawners change.

Fixes

• Crash Report: Cannot read property 'counter' of undefined at BigGrid.hasSome (multiple reports)
  
• Crash Report: Cannot read property 'X' of undefined at BigGrid.getBigCell (reported by A Pound of Life)
  
• Infection Cannon projectile size fixed. (reported by coeja73)
  
• Fixed infinite ricochet for a custom flame projectile (reported by Ghin)
  
• TX3 projectiles destroyed outside of the map (reported by Dmitry)
  
• Crash Report: SelectedTowerPanel2.show. Tower help and symmetrical patterns related issue (reported by Dmitry)
  
• TX2/TX3 proper boost/deboost of salvos count.
  
• Boost Linker multiple gunpoins does not work.
  
• Boost Linker can’t boost towers in its range.
  
• Range booster does not boost custom resource harvesters.
  
• Boost/Deboost and pattern lock structure issues.
  
• Jumping custom mortar projectile
  
• Fixed all outdated descriptions in level briefings.
  
• Fixed some localization strings.

Happy Holidays!

This patch addresses multiple issues reported via Steam, Discord and email.

Experiments game mode

• Resource spawners and colony base won’t block any major paths on randomly generated levels. (thanks to Kezzbo, vervedan and Ernest)
  
• Resource spawners for survival type missions are closer to the base now
  
• Orange Centipede spawn chance is significantly lower for low risk experiments

(resource spawners location, 'before' and 'after')

All existed experiments could have significant changes due to these improvements. The amount of enemies and spawn locations may vary, but the layout of each level will be the same.

Please note that we are still working on Tower Editor balance issues. Thank you for all the feedback provided about this feature.

Fixes

• Crash Report: _this5.substate.closeDialog is not a function (thanks to Austinlb90)
  
• Crash Report: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined at new Watcher (thanks to Jseah)
  
• Crash Report: Cannot read property 'bringToTop' of undefined (kudos to Sam Quan)
  
• Crash Report: Cannot read property 'a' of undefined (thanks to⎝Dr. Danger!⎠and Austinlb90)
  
• Crash Report: Renaming a tower to a name you already have freezes the game
  
• Shader error for experiments reward dialog (thanks to do335)
  
• TMSL boost breaks its projectile trajectory (thanks to vervedan)

• New game mode: Experiments
  
• New game mode: New Game+
  
• New game feature: Tower Editor
  
• New game feature: Unlockable Tower Blocks
  
• New enemy structure: Pattern Shutdown — disables random tower pattern until the structure destroyed (health: 5, armor: 1)
  
• New enemy mob: Orange Centipede — drops orange slimes
  
• New tower patterns: TY1/TY2 — short range shotguns, low ap, high dps, high spread
  
• New booster pattern: RBST — boosts reload for all towers in range by x0.85, stackable
  
• New UI feature: survival wave preview — shows the amount of enemies in each wave
  
• Some performance optimizations

Levels tweaks

• 28 - Squid Ravine: now has 2 TX3 on start
  
• 33 - Cluster: now does not spawn Magnetos (while still have two repulsor structures)
  
• All survival levels now use wave spawners (cocoons) instead of spawn-from-the-air approach

Balance tweaks

• TX3 rework — now guards will return to the orbit upon target’s death, more sustainable
  
• TMSL1 — projectile follows the enemy
  
• TMSL2 — now fires 3 projectiles with 5 dmg each instead of 1x20dmg, projectiles follow the enemy
  
• WBUILDER (wall printer) — build time rate reduced to 0.5 seconds (was 2.0 seconds)
  
• Every tower now have a x0.5 time delay for the first reload (more convenient in a rush situation)
  
• Behemoths won’t spawn from L0 buds
  
• Enemy ZAPPER reload time decreased to 0.5 sec (was 0.7 sec) due to TMSL2 rework
  
• Wave spawners health increased from 1 to 10 to avoid unintentional agro

Fixes

• Crash Report: Cannot read property 'invincible' of undefined at TiledLevel.checkDefenceIntersection (multiple reports)
  
• A lot of minor UI tweaks and fixes

Misc

• Robot now makes one step side if reaches an obstacle on its way
  
• New secret robot ability to lock towers configuration (default key ‘L’) — allows to nail down any tower so it will ignore any other possible transformations

Cheers!

Hello everyone!

After a long wait we are glad to announce that Protolife Lab institution is finally complete and now hiring new researchers.

You are required to participate in experiments* conducted in the safe** controlled environment.

* fights
** if you take all necessary precautions, see chapter 2 (Try Not To Die), p67 of the manual.

• Every experiment is a unique experience on the randomly generated maps with a different challenge level.
  
• Once completed, the experiment will provide research data necessary for discovering new technologies.
  
• You are in control of setting up experiment conditions. Take a low risk, or go for a high reward.
  
• If your experiment is proven to be too tough, you can always return to it later, when you obtain some new weapons.

• You can design a custom tower pattern and use it in your fights.
  
• Balance the energy and stats to construct the super-weapons of your choice.
  
• Use the experiments data to unlock new gunpoints, stat boosters and behavior modificators.

• New Game+ is now available for everyone who finished the game
  
• Manually redesigned levels, including new harder versions of bosses. If you, like me, thought that the original campaign was a bit on the easy side, you will like NG+.
  
• All towers available from the start — and as you play, you will unlock a couple of new ones exclusive to the NG+ mode.

We also updated the game with the Steam Trading Cards (finally)! And full patch notes are coming a bit later.

If you want to follow / contact us, you can do it here:
https://twitter.com/VolcanicGiraffe
https://discord.gg/RdhbkBn

XOXO,
Volcanic Giraffe

Hello, everyone! Is it September already? Wow, time sure flies by.

A short status update to all Protolife defense squads: Update 1.1 is coming along well!

Although this picture will probably better reflect the harsh reality:

Despite the problems, we still continue our journey! Most of the new content revolves around 3 big features.

NG+ levels are almost complete! I took the idea of each map and turned it into absurd levels. To deal with that, you'll have the full tower arsenal for your disposal, plus 2 of the all-new tower class patterns. Meet boosters:

Almost all basic blocks and gunpoints for the tower editor have been completed. Here's the sneak peek of the mortar gunpoint, that will replace old and trusty missile launchers for the customizable long range support.

You will have access to standard stat improving blocks, as well as to some mods which will drastically change the way tower fires.

Keep it up, spread the news, and buy the game if you still haven't! We won't be charging any extras for content updates, so every small bit helps us to develop a better game.

The work on update proceeds as planned. Here are some progress notes.


Levels are being updated and reworked by hand to make them interesting to seasoned player armed with a full range of towers from the start. Don't expect that NG+ will be a breeze through a known route.
Of course, we also heard your feedback on difficult levels of the original story mode. This time we'll try to make new levels difficult, but fair. Well, except maybe 2 or 3 special ones…


Random campaign is in highly technical stage right now, so not much we can say about the actual gameplay principles. Don't treat anything as a promise here.
As far as our current vision goes, random campaigns will take place independently from the story mode. Each one will contain several random-generated levels complete with the boss fight. After beating the campaign you will receive reward in some form of credits. We'll probably also limit the amount of patterns that player can use throughout the single campaign.


All of those rng campaign limits and rewards are justified by the fact that it's designed to work together with the third big feature of the update — the tower editor. I won't be telling much about that one, just watch the gifs and see for yourself.