Another dev update, imagined readers of my blog, you must be sick of them.

As I make changes to the full game, if they’re going to have a noticeable affect on the demo, I’ll get them pushed out—occasionally too soon—but hopefully of some benefit to new/returning players.

Upgrades

Your base model robot can be upgraded in all manner of ways, from visiting merchants on different planets, an asteroid base, or even discovering strange anomalies in space.

Your base stats can be increased – Energy (how much max HP you can have), Damage (how hard you hit), Armour (protects from enemies rather than environmental damage—upgrade it enough and a radioactive Wurm won't even be able to scratch you). 

Anyway, I’ve finished adding the last upgrades ‘Energy’ into the game, your Max HP can now be boosted to 125%, 150% and 200%.

You can also upgrade your mobility, speed, jumps etc and there are a few secret upgrades to be discovered for keen explorers, I won't spoil these.

Difficulty modes!

If you’ve had a nosey around of the third option in the start menu, you’ll have seen that as well as the Controls, Jukebox and Secret Disks/printer options, there was a greyed(greened?) out difficulty option.

I’ve now added Easy, Hard and Fallen difficulties, as well as the default.

I’m often an easy mode player, any game, hit me with the easiest experience so I can play though the story and see everything—there are the odd exceptions, moreish games like FTL, multiplayer games like Street Fighter I’m trying to not suck at—but generally, I’ve got a back log and other things to deal with like everyone, and the less stress the better.

At the same time, I appreciate sometimes you want an extra challenge, perhaps on future play throughs, and Fall from Space does encourage multiple play throughs due to decisions the player can make.

Fall from Space from the start was built with all enemy values as variables. ‘Trash Squid HP’, ‘Trash Squid DMG’ etc. With the goal of being able to change them in one place to aid with development/balance, and also if I needed to be able to adjust the difficulty in the future.

What these modes adjust will change the game gets balanced, but for now – 

Easy mode: This lands you with three pre-installed upgrades, HP/Energy upgrades 1 & 2, boosting your starting health to 150%, and Damage upgrade 1, so you’ll hit harder. Making a more forgiving game.

Hard mode: You start off with only 13% health, unlucky. You’ll want to get to the first town unscathed and get repaired, because enemies now hit harder, all of them. 

Fallen mode: Unfortunately the fall did irreparable damage, you’re going to be more vulnerable and only so much could be repaired. Expect less health and don’t expect anyone to be able to fix it because Armour and Health upgrades can’t be fitted on your battered chassis.

Regrettably with all the variable max health percentages possible I was forced to do MATHS.

Anything else?

Mostly work on the upgrades, and while there have been some big changes behind the scenes, you may just notice levels transitioning a little quicker and more smoothly.

Also, a large chunk of space has been freed up in the ROM with some tweaking of how scripts nest, in particular with the UI, and a reworking of how the in game menu is loaded. It's a big deal and will make a huge difference to the finished game.