The past few weeks have been a mix of school holidays (again) personal time off, and being heads down fixing bugs left right and centre in Exo.

Interloper was more or less at this stage when I decided to launch it, all the pieces were in place, but it could’ve used a lot more love. None of the remaining bugs are totally game breaking, and none of the rough edges would turn away a dedicated fan of the genre, but they’ll add up for prospective new fans, so I’m determined to make sure this release is as polished and clean as possible, even if it takes me another couple months to launch the game.

Forty two bugs down in this sprint, only counting the one’s I’d added to my task list. Some of these range from simple UI issues to frustrating game breaking problems. Some as recently introduced as last week, others have been around since I first launched the game in early beta. Those older ones in particular are nice to wave goodbye to.

And in the meantime I’m still polishing up edges, adding new animations, updating sound effects, clearing up jankiness wherever possible. It all leads to the game feeling less like a tech demo and more like something that’s worthy of shipping!

The new animations for switching units are so much fun

At my count there’s another forty more bugs to clear out, and another twenty odd features to modify, extend or upgrade to go with the game. I’m at the tail end of developing it, and am really starting to look forward to playtesting it with a wider audience.

In other news though, I came across a recently released title: SOVL. It’s a singleplayer and multiplayer turn based rank and flank game, and it plays so much like Charge . The dev has achieved everything I wanted to do with Charge, and in many ways has done a way better job than I could’ve mustered. I’ve been playing the absolute heck out of it over the past few days and I’m super impressed. The addition of a rougelite campaign structure really makes the rank and flank format shine, and is even a nice throwback to the mechanics of old GW gems like Shadow of the Horned Rat!

Seriously, its free, its excellent, if you even remotely liked the concepts I talked about in Charge, go give them some of your time (or even better, buy some DLC!) (the ratkin, you want to buy the ratkin yes yes!)

Exoloper Tasks completed:

  • Bug: UI: Shouldn’t be able to launch extract with zero items

  • Bug: UI: Input field in save loadout popup doesn’t clear on open

  • Bug: UI: Input field in loadout keeps placeholder when typing into it?

  • Bug: exits still not showing properly on drop sequence, on device

  • Bug: Fortress seems to be the only combat map that gets populated

  • Bug: UI: reset data popup needs to close + need to take us back to main menu on reset all data confirm

  • Bug: When viewing other pages in campaign, sometimes touch on POI becomes unresponsive

  • Bug: oversubscription of “add unit” -> campaign adds phantom units

  • Bug: Current slot in roster no longer changes

  • Bug: Ai missiles are guided

  • Bug: Sprites are now improperly rotated

  • Bug: All Campaign objectives always show as not completed in campaign extract menu

  • Bug: Having a seperate canvas for each POI in campaign blows out draw calls.

  • Bug: iPhone landscape safe area isn’t working

  • Bug: HUD layout overlaps badly on mobile landscape

  • Bug: sometimes teamcolour trimsheet shows on Exos after deleting a unit

  • Bug: When inspecting the info for a weapon to add to a unit, pressing back takes you back to edit unit, instead of weapon list page

  • Bug: “clearing slot” in edit unit takes you back to roster, not edit unit

  • Bug: Equipping and unequipping / deleting units can lose items in roster builder

  • Bug: Main menu bug report button should always be bottom right side, even on tablets

  • Bug: Utilities no longer function after multiple battles.

  • Bug: Utilities no longer show their icons

  • Bug: Toggling torso twist on iOS requires two taps (double toggle?)

  • Bug: Exits aren’t all properly accessible across levels

  • Bug: No exit icons in intro map for industry

  • Bug: Respawns POI in combat showing up in game?! (industrial intro)

  • Bug: Fresh install with no iCloud keys breaks on null key. (HIGH PRIORITY)

  • bug: Level: Fortress, Cannot leave, exits are blocked inside terrain

  • Bug: second Paper Doll sometimes shows up in camping / drop sequence

  • Bug: Nullref after losing campaign then switching campaigns

  • Bug: Hills map has no exits?

  • Bug: Suspect that modify hud doesn’t work in menu

  • Bug: Not usubscribing from paint view properly

  • Bug: UAV Uses are at -1 on new campaign

  • Bug: weapon_burst_count not present in default part effect data.

  • Bug: Nullref while modifying hud (touch reposition) in menu

  • Bug: nullref “top speed” no default string value (some info screen items have no default strings)

  • Bug: Tanks make track noises in hangar.

  • Bug: Nullref in tutorial coroutine

  • Bug: Unit structural parts are in the loot tables

  • Bug: Enemies don’t appear in hud on drop mission

  • Bug: Performance sucks on campaign on iPad mini landscape

  • Graphics: Shield needs better shader

  • Graphic Design: Melee Weapons need icons

  • Graphics: add paint smoke to unit when painting in hangar

  • Feature: Tie campaign length + objectives to difficulty level

  • Feature: Limit Loadouts per unit type

  • Feature: Per unit camera positions in Hangar.

  • Feature: Drop sequence mission should just be “escape”

  • UI: Campaign: Extracts need to be way better telegraphed

  • UI: Haptics needed on toggles in repair cells in exobay

  • UI: sliders should fire haptics

  • UI: iCloud status in settings

  • SFX: UI: Audio

  • Audio: UI - Campaign Extract item rarities

  • Audio: UI - settings sliders need audio. (specific ones for SFX and Music

  • Audio: Specific SFX for reset settings

  • Audio: UI - Campaign Battle Complete Popup - objective

  • Audio: UI - Campaign Battle Complete Popup - regular

  • Audio: UI - Save + delete loadouts need sfx

  • Audio: UI - Campaign Difficult choices?

  • Audio: UI - Campaign Use UAV

  • Input: Add initial support for all controller types

  • Debug: on throw error page, always show debug info

  • Debug : Battery drain stats in debug info