Yesterday, I implemented the final features that are intended for scope in the 2.0 release of Prepare For Warp. Now, Prepare For Warp enters an extended round of testing. Hopefully within a couple of days, I will find the game stable enough to release version 2.0.7 to the “bleedingedge” test branch for those intrepid enough to tolerate a few remaining bugs.
One big change for the coming 2.0.7 update is the addition of Timed and Infinite game modes, as well as some overhaul of how Challenge Mode works. Timed mode straps an explosive with a timer to your ship. Infinite mode disables warp drive, allowing you to go as far into a level as you can. For Challenge mode, the concept of Rank-plus-Iteration has been reduced to just an auto-increasing Rank each time the Challenge Mode level is beaten.
Achievements have been expanded, and with 2.0.7 there will now be Steam Achievements, which will be tied to the new “Legacy Achievement” feature. “Legacy Achievements” are achievements that are based on your overall Legacy across all Pilots, and therefore do not reset on Pilot Retirement. In addition to Achievements based on progress, there are several unique achievements tied to the Extras in the game in fun ways.
Statistics have also been expanded as a corollary to Achievements. There are now over 30 pages of statistics for you to peruse about your gameplay. With the improvements to stats tracking, some other things are now possible, such as more dynamic awarding of achievements during a level, which will help with the tendency for numerous achievement notifications to stack up at the end of a level.
Two new Ship Part types are being added. You will now have the ability to control Engine Glow, being able to deviate away from the standard Black Body Radiation glow model. You will also be able to add “Ground” FX to your ship.
Finally, three new joke Extras have been added (and one removed). “Eyes” will put large following eyeballs in each Black Hole. “Color Explosion”, which replaces “Burning Rich”, will make explosions much more colorful. Rounding out the additions, “Horns” will replace the sound that is played when something cannot be done with a random vehicle horn sound. As for “Burning Rich”, it just was not carrying its weight relative to the other joke Extras.
These are all of the exciting changes that are just around the corner for Prepare For Warp!
Mobile Moratorium
Now, the yang to the yin of the above announcement about Prepare For Warp being feature complete. Over the course of the development of this version of Prepare For Warp, it became clear to me that this game WANTS to be a PC game. With the direction it has taken, the game has pivoted firmly away from its mobile roots. Plus, I’ve heard loud and clear that barely anyone likes the tilt-based controls for both Prepare For Warp and its brother, Breaking Block. Between a lack of interest in the tilt-control mobile version of the game, and the time it would take to make all of the recent changes (especially UI changes) suitable for mobile, it just does not make any sense for me to spend time updating the mobile version of Prepare For Warp at this time. My time needs to start being focused on forward-looking projects like Dehoarder 2, or I won’t be able to continue game development for long.
Given the magnitude and positioning of these forces, I have decided to delist Prepare For Warp from the Google Play Store for the time being, effective when version 2.0.7 is released to Steam Early Access. The PC/Steam version of the game will be the definitive and only Prepare For Warp experience available moving forward for the foreseeable future. I hope this won’t come as too great a disappointment for the few players that have Prepare For Warp installed on their Android devices.
Beyond Warp
Now that Prepare For Warp development is beginning to wrap up, it is time to start thinking about the next project. I will be returning to Dehoarder 2 development, probably starting slowly in the next week or two as my daily capacity for testing a quick-reflex game like Prepare For Warp becomes saturated and I find less bugs to fix there. My 50kfoot plan for Dehoarder 2 is to bring it to a state where I can host a closed beta for it. Already the game has been shown at several expos in the past, so it should not be too big of a leap from where the game is now.