Add a few missing mipmaps to improve GPU performance and texture clarity — the new background stars shouldn’t “sparkle” anymore
Localization updates:
Hungarian – in progress
Greek – 99.9% complete
French – 99.9% complete
Italian – 99.9% complete
Japanese – 99.9% complete!
Dutch – now current!
Brazilian Portuguese – now current!
Portuguese – in progress
Simplified Chinese – in progress
Updates to FNA used on Linux/OSX versions.
Issues Addressed
Improve processing of Steam Leaderboards which due to increased size (a good thing) could result in frame skips (a bad thing) during background leaderboard refreshes (approximately every 5 minutes).
Thank you for supporting me on my journey to try and make the Best Asteroids Style Space Shooter. If you ever want to chat about Solaroids with myself or other players, or brag about your top scores and share tips, join the Solaroids Discord Server. It’s quiet there now, but maybe you can help change that!
I’ve also created a dedicated Early Access Page filled with, gifs, links, and a place where you can sign up to be notified at full launch.
Hello Solaroids players around the world – literally. It was high time that the supported languages get an overhaul after adding so much TEXT to the game. So, with this release I’m happy to announce that all major supported languages will be complete once again – now or very soon. They are actively being worked on by localization experts around the world so expect a few small patches to complete to the work over the coming weeks.
Oh and another thing… It’s also time to drop the Prologue from the title and branding. I conceived of the Prologue sub-text as my way of introducing an incomplete game to the Steam Early Access community. While I still plan more updates before leaving Early Access, the game has grown out of its Prologue moniker. In addition, I’ve noticed a lot of demos being branded as Prologues over 2020, and Solaroids: Prologue is not a demo! Hopefully, this reconciles that annoyance as well. If you see any references to Prologue lurking about, let me know!
Those are the big things this round, but on a smaller scale I’ve tweaked the default options to something that I think will improve the first player experience. If you want to “trust me” and try them for yourself, just go to the Miscellaneous menu and hit that Reset button.
New Features / Tweaks
Add back button to difficulty selection screen.
Optimization to the vector renderer.
High score listing now shows up after 5 seconds instead of 10.
Allow rebinding of ENTER and ESC keys for use in-game.
Language option is sorted by popularity now.
Switch from Solaroids: Prologue branding to Solaroids.
Change default zoom level from 100% to 130%.
Change default inertial dampening from 20% to 50%.
Change default HUD size from 100% to 125%.
Change default reticle size from 100% to 150%.
Change default controller vibration to 50%.
Change default music volume from 60% to 40%.
Change default vector focus from 100% to 80%.
Updates to FNA/SDL libraries under the hood.
Language updates:
German – now current!
Spanish – now current!
French – now current!
Portuguese (Brazilian) – now current!
Serbian – now current!
Russian – in progress
Simplified Chinese – in progress
Japanese – in progress
Italian – in progress
Polish – in progress
New languages:
Greek – complete
Hungarian – in progress
Traditional Chinese – in progress
Issues Addressed
Fixes to the vector renderer related to color/thickness.
Fix a regression that would cause the game to exit when a controller was disconnected.
Fix issue where key icons were not responding to language changes.
Fix issue with demo expiration screen (DEMO build only).
Fix some typos in English text.
Thank you for supporting me on my journey to try and make the Best Asteroids Style Space Shooter. If you ever want to chat about Solaroids with myself or other players, or brag about your top scores and share tips, join the Solaroids Discord Server. It’s quiet there now, but maybe you can help change that!
I’ve also created a dedicated Early Access Page filled with, gifs, links, and a place where you can sign up to be notified at full launch.
Remove the VECTOR MODE IS EXPERIMENTAL warning now that everything has been “vectorized”.
Updates to SDL/FNA frameworks under the hood.
Issues Addressed
Fix initial resolution selection.
Thank you for supporting me on my journey to try and make the Best Asteroids Style Space Shooter. If you ever want to chat about Solaroids with myself or other players, or brag about your top scores and share tips, join the Solaroids Discord Server. It’s quiet there now, but maybe you can help change that!
I’ve also created a dedicated Early Access Page filled with, gifs, links, and a place where you can sign up to be notified at full launch.
Minor feature updates and/or bug fixes, but one requested visual enhancement worth calling out…
Vector Explosions
Vector mode now adds vector styled explosions in addition to the point “particles” it previously used. Thank you community for the great idea.
Solaroids PaletteAsteroids Palette
New Features / Tweaks
Refresh icon.
Vector mode now has “vector” explosion effects in addition to single point explosion “particles”.
Removed “Exclusive” FullScreen mode (FullScreen=On, Borderless=Off). This mode is not necessary these days and has become an uncommon mode that made it difficult to switch back and forth between screens and other windows. In addition it made it more difficult to work with some screen recording software. Now the only full-screen mode is “Borderless” FullScreen, so as such, the Borderless option has been removed. Alt-Enter also still toggles between full screen and windowed as common among games.
OSX Version now uses Vulkan for graphics which improves/restores lost performance for low-powered Macs (tested with 2016 era Mac Mini).
Updates to FNA used on Linux/OSX versions.
Issues Addressed
Fix issue with invalid unicode characters in Steam leaderboard names.
Fix an issue with mouse behavior in the game and menus when running at non 1920×1080 resolutions in full screen modes.
Thank you for supporting me on my journey to try and make the Best Asteroids Style Space Shooter. If you ever want to chat about Solaroids with myself or other players, or brag about your top scores and share tips, join the Solaroids Discord Server. It’s quiet there now, but maybe you can help change that!
I’ve also created a dedicated Early Access Page filled with, gifs, links, and a place where you can sign up to be notified at full launch.
Hello Solaroids players around the world. I’ve got a potpourri of improvements ready to ship out to you this spring. There are a bunch so I’ll get right to them!
RETICLE IMPROVEMENTS
Several months ago, I received some great suggestions from the community to improve the experience. They’ve been hanging out on the BETA branch but it’s time for them to hit the main build. The first one was to improve the visibility of things in the reticle, so I’ve made several tweaks that are hopefully in the right direction. Enemy ships are now colored based on their color, and bright red is reserved exclusively for missiles (yes, they are back in the reticle!). Missile indicators are also larger and blink rapidly. That coupled with the recently released ability to change the size of the reticle should help to keep threats and goal targets in mind just a little bit better.
COLORED SCORE TOKENS
Another great suggestion from a player was to improve the ability to tell the value of the score tokens. Now they are colored based on their relative value in bronze, silver, gold style, along with sparkles at the upper end. Note the really REALLY large score tokens are not (yet) available in the game. However, the colors and sparkle effects are based on the highest valued token available for a given level, so you won’t just see a bunch of bronze at the higher levels!
MORE VECTORS IN-GAME
The “level indicator” is finally completely vectorized, so it no longer sticks out like a sore thumb. In addition, there is a “wave” indicator while in Free Play mode to keep track of how many waves you’ve decimated. The wave is also displayed under the Free Play text at the beginning of each advancing wave.
Another thing that is finally “vectorized” (is that a word?) completely is the reticle itself. Ammo heath bars and all! Enjoy, and don’t forget for those that want an uncluttered reticle you can tweak what it displayed in it through the option menus (in the Player and Gameplay menus), so feel free to fly naked if you’re feeling dangerous!
And finally all elements in the Player HUDs are now completely vectorized with the exception of your Steam profile icon. Feel free to enjoy a big SOLAROIDS S in it’s place.
VECTOR CONTROLLERS AND BUTTONS
Finally, the time has come to round out vector mode with vectorized controller graphics for the four controller types I support directly. They include not only the controller binding screen but the in-game representations of the controller buttons. I hunkered down in Inkscape and created these matching vector representations to ensure a perfectly accurate match with the controller images. I’m quite happy with them and think they complete the vector experience, so I hope you’ll like them too!
VECTOR LOCALIZED TEXT
Last but not least, I did a ton of research on techniques I could use to bring the vector look to all the languages I’m fleshing out in the game. After trying several techniques, I honed in on one that I think works the best, so if you play in non-English mode and have been frustrated with no text while in that mode, this update is for you. All but one of the languages in the game are supported for now. I will still be refining things (mostly adjusting things for consistency), but Japanese, Korean, and Chinese never looked better! This is a good time to plug my LOCALIZOR page if you can help review translations!
New Features / Tweaks
Change the color of “points” tokens based on their value. They will now display as bronze, silver, gold, or gold with “sparkles” based on their value.
Point tokens are now worth exactly their face value, previously they were worth at least their face value.
Make missile indicators in the reticle narrow triangles instead of fat triangles to help differentiate them from enemy indicators (squares).
Change the color of enemy indicators in the reticle to a similar color as the actual enemy instead of making them all red. This will help to distinguish between missile threats and regular enemies.
Strobe missile indicators in the reticle to help to ensure they are noticed as imminent danger.
Show current wave in Free Play mode.
Initial tips are not dropped until the first player joins the game.
If no controllers are connected, will automatically connect the keyboard for use with Player 1.
Vector controller layout/binding screen and controller button graphics for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, and PS4 controller types.
Reticle is now fully converted to vector mode.
Level indicator is now fully converted to vector mode.
Will now display a warning if the game is unable to access local storage for save game data, local high scores and stats.
Multi-thread some aspects of the game. It will use additional processors if available.
Improved performance of vector rendering.
Improvements to vector graphics for enemies.
Improved text handling/management.
Improvement to handling of full-screen/borderless/maximized mode handling. The game will try and maintain the current select resolution in these cases.
MacOS now uses Metal graphics API for improved performance on OSX.
Updates to FNA/SDL libraries under the hood.
Issues Addressed
Fix a potential crash when updating leaderboards.
Thank you for supporting me on my journey to try and make the Best Asteroids Style Space Shooter. If you ever want to chat about Solaroids with myself or other players, or brag about your top scores and share tips, join the Solaroids Discord Server. It’s quiet there now, but maybe you can help change that!
I’ve also created a dedicated Early Access Page filled with, gifs, links, and a place where you can sign up to be notified at full launch.
When accessing via Steam Link, override and limit choices for Reticle Size, HUD Size, and Zoom Level to optimize the experience for phone and tablet client types.
Add a Particles option under the Effects category that allows the number of particles to be tuned to taste and/or system capabilities.
Updates to framework libraries.
Issues Addressed
Fix issue with Steam Link where using the Steam Link “shortcut” results in the wrong action set being applied first.
Fix issue where selecting a Framrate of 144 results in actually using 120.
Fix potential crash when refreshing high scores.
Fix Infiltrator behavior under Framrates higher than 60 where the enemy would “turn slowly”.
Thank you for supporting me on my journey to try and make the Best Asteroids Style Space Shooter. If you ever want to chat about Solaroids with myself or other players, or brag about your top scores and share tips, join the Solaroids Discord Server. It’s quiet there now, but maybe you can help change that!
I’ve also created a dedicated Early Access Page filled with, gifs, links, and a place where you can sign up to be notified at full launch.
When changing resolution it no longer changes the resolution immediately, but instead waits for confirmation.
Issues Addressed
Fix issue where lowest resolution was used as the default when no save game data is available to select the preferred resolution.
Improve robustness when changing resolutions in full-screen/non-borderless mode.
Thank you for supporting me on my journey to try and make the Best Asteroids Style Space Shooter. If you ever want to chat about Solaroids with myself or other players, or brag about your top scores and share tips, join the Solaroids Discord Server. It’s quiet there now, but maybe you can help change that!
I’ve also created a dedicated Early Access Page filled with, gifs, links, and a place where you can sign up to be notified at full launch.
Another update coming at you in time for the “cold” holidays here in the northern hemisphere. This one is primarily some quality-of-life features.
Quality of Life is a Thing
Not all screens are created equal and so several enhancements were made to improve the experience for those on small, but hi-res screens – for example Steam Link on iPhone/iPad.
It’s not automatic, but now you can increase the size of the reticle around your ship up to 200% regular size which can make taking advantage of its capabilities even easier. Whether it’s tracking other players whether friend or foe, enemies (red squares), incoming missiles (red triangles), your lost power-ups (rings colored based on the weapon slot), or just that all important landmark the sun (yellow circle), the reticle has you covered. The Reticle Size option is configurable independently for each player.
Another Heads Up Display (HUD) improvement is now many of the text in-game (not menus) can now be adjusted up to 150% of normal size. Technically, you can reduce the size as well for any of you with mammoth monitors that just want the HUD “mostly” out of the way. It will adjust the size of each player HUD, Level Progress Indicator, Tip Text, Threat Lists, and so on. The HUD Size option is located under the Video option menu. Another option that can be useful in a similar situation is to adjust the Zoom Level under the Effects options menu to bring you closer to or further away from the action, adjust to your taste.
Another small but useful quality of life feature is I’ve added an [b]Aim Indicator[b] that will project a line out from the front of your ship to assist in ascertaining your heading when everything is flying at you from all directions. By default, it is off, but you can turn it on per player under the Player option menu.
The above screen shot has Reticle Size set to 200%, HUD Size set to 150%, and Aim Indicator set to On. If you need help remembering what things looks like by default… here you go.
Localizor based Community Translation/Localization Finally, and this is a pretty big move for me. I’ve created a Localizor project for Solaroids on localizer.com.
Localizor is a platform for helping to bring small developers together with passionate game lovers that are both fluent in other languages (besides my native tongue of English) and wanting to help with the effort to translate, review, or just correct those pesky language barriers. As Solaroids has developed the amount of text in it has ballooned, and it is hard to keep things current, even when I can find translators on my own. If you would be willing to lend a hand, or know someone that would, it is a great way to contribute in addition to helping spread the word about the game. Kudos to the studio that created Localizor, Hovgaard Games (out of Denmark), and for making it available to us micro-indies free of charge.
New Features
Aim Indicator – Adds a line projecting out of the reticle to help track your ship orientation and aim. It is configurable per player under the Player options menu.
HUD Size – Allows you to tweak the size of the Score / Ammo area in the corners of the display as well as other overlay elements (excluding menus). Find it under the Video options menu.
High score tables are now shown after a delay when entering a game session.
In addition to shrinking reticle indicators with distance, also fade them out a bit.
Allow reticle size to be up to 200% instead of 150%.
Improve resolution of reticle and other circular shaped bars.
Localizor support – Help to fix translation errors or help translate from English to your preferred language. Find a link to the Localizor community project from the main menu. You can find the project here: https://www.localizor.com/solaroids-prologue
Added additional language options with initial machine translated text for Bulgarian, Danish, Greek, Finnish, Korean, Portuguese, & Thai. If there is another language you’d like or like to help translate to in Localizor, let me know and I’ll add the infrastructure to the game.
Updates to framework libraries.
Issues Addressed
Fixes to HUD fade-out when controllers are disconnected.
Missile indicators in the reticle were removed at some point, I’ve put them back. They are little triangles facing right at their target (YOU).
Thank you for supporting me on my journey to try and make the Best Asteroids Style Space Shooter. If you ever want to chat about Solaroids with myself or other players, or brag about your top scores and share tips, join the Solaroids Discord Server. It’s quiet there now, but maybe you can help change that!
I’ve also created a dedicated Early Access Page filled with, gifs, links, and a place where you can sign up to be notified at full launch.
Hello arcade shoot’em up and classic Asteroids lovers across the globe. I have a “small” update for you this fall primarily focused on performance improvements, but has a few significant changes under the hood that especially benefit those with either “creative” steam names, or are from a culture with vast numbers of unique characters.
Some
of you that also play games on Xbox One may already know, but I
released a free demo for Xbox One last summer along with an update
earlier this fall that added full leaderboard including daily, weekly,
and monthly support to that demo. If you play on that platform too,
please give it a try! Anyway as a part of that effort, I’ve done a ton
of performance tuning in my custom engine under the hood to support
consoles. This should translate to lower resource/gpu usage for
PC/Linux/Mac users, so everyone wins.
In addition I have ripped
out my entire text rendering system and replaced it with an improved
framework. Everyone should notice slightly improved text rendering, but
the big feature this enabled is the ability to render more character
sets such as Chinese and Japanese as prime examples. ? marks in steam
leaderboards should now be a thing of the past for non-vector mode.
Vector mode will still suffer until I can figure out how best to create a
vector font that can encompass these diverse characters.
For
first time players, I’ve also introduced selection screens on game
launch that allow to to pick both an initial theme and control style.
This should help those just starting out get familiar with some of the
ways to play and reduce initial frustration. The demo always shows it,
but the full version will only show it the first time playing. There is
an option under Miscellaneous to force it on/off.
Finally, I’ve started work on additional difficulty settings. For now, I’m only exposing the new Easy mode for more casual players, but in the future I’ll enable Hard and Insane modes, once they are ready.
New Features
Performance improvements.
New text rendering that supports full character sets.
Introduction screens to pre-select a theme and control style
New Easy mode for casual play. Select before each game, or from the options menu before starting.
Update framework libraries used under the hood
Improved demo experience
Guest player scores default to Anonymous 1-4.
Issues Addressed
Better handling of thruster volume in Modern (dual-stick) mode.
Borderless mode now supported on Linux/Mac
Many other little fixes, that probably only I notice.
Thank you for supporting me on my journey to try and make the Best Asteroids Style Space Shooter. If you ever want to chat about Solaroids with myself or other players, or brag about your top scores and share tips, join the Solaroids Discord Server. It’s quiet there now, but maybe you can help change that!
I’ve also created a dedicated Early Access Page filled with, gifs, links, and a place where you can sign up to be notified at full launch.
Greetings and welcome alpha fighter pilots; whether your are a medal laden veteran pilot, a new recruit cutting your teeth, from Earth, or from one of the furthest corners of the known universe.
I hope
you’ve been priming your trigger fingers, as the Nexus Galactic as
deployed several important milestone updates to whet your appetite for
unmatched precision controlled skill based combat across the solar
system.
Probably the biggest features added are CRT emulation capabilities, and an almost complete rendition of Vector mode.
CRT effects including scanlines and phosphors are now available.
Vector mode now has additional monochrome palettes in addition to the full color Solaroids palette.
Each
aspect of the simulated XY Vector display can be tweaked to your taste
and combined with other options like Bloom, Background Opacity, Stars,
and CRT effects to simulate a variety of looks.
Many more tweaks and adjustments have been made to improve the experience. See the full list below.
Thank you for supporting me on my journey to try and make the Best Asteroids Style Space Shooter. If you ever want to chat about Solaroids with myself or other players, or brag about your top scores and share tips, join the Solaroids Discord Server. It’s quiet there now, but maybe you can help change that!
I’ve also created a dedicated Early Access Page filled with, gifs, links, and a place where you can sign up to be notified at full launch.
New Features
Background and bloom amounts automatically adjusted based on theme (Vector/Raster)
Backdrop stars now tied to Background transparency. You can now eliminate all raster based stars in addition to the backdrop, if you want for a more pure Vector mode experience
Increased power-up capsule size for easier visibility.
Colorized additional graphics in Vector mode
Particles for smoke, sparks and explosions now match the theme when in Vector mode.
Key representations are now 100% vectorized
Added Background option category
Added Emulation option category. Holding the two current modes/themes for now, but more planned still
Add Vector option category to control the palette and beam parameters when in Vector mode:
Vector Palette – Choose from the Solaroids multi-color vector palette, or classic favorites that reproduce the look of classic Asteroids®, and Asteroids Deluxe®.
Intensity – Adjust the intensity of the beam
Focus – Adjust the focus of the beam for ultra precise focus, or wide and vibrant
Shimmer – Adjust the shimmer effect to your liking and photo-seizure susceptibility
Jitter – Old Vector XY monitors weren’t always the most accurate things and were often particularly finicky. Adjust the precision of the beam
Add CRT option category to apply CRT emulation effects:
CRT Mode – Turn CRT emulation on/off
Scanlines – Turn on scanline simulation
Scanline Intensity – Adjust how intense the scanline effect is
Phosphor Pattern – Old monitors has much more visible RGB phosphors, turn this on to heighten the retro feel of older color monitors.
Phosphor Pattern Intensity – Adjust how intense the RGB phosphors. A little goes a long way with this one.
Supports Steam Remote’s virtual touch-pad with configurations for Classic, Hybrid, and Modern control styles
Supports Steam Remote Play for local multiplayer over the network
Many many performance optimizations and engine improvements as I port the code base to less powerful consoles and mobile. Every platform benefits.
The OST is now separate and can be purchased/activated separately
Updates to platform libraries (FNA, SDL, etc)
High score tables now hidden while in option menu.
Add Exit option category with options to:
Resume – Close the option menu and resume the game in addition to Esc/Back
Forfeit – Forfeit the current players session
Title Screen – Forfeit all players and immediately return to the title scree
Exit to System – Exit completely out of the game. No rage quitting!
Exit option category also replaces the former pop-up dialog when pressing Esc/Back for more options and better consistency
Options that are not available due to the setting of other options, are now “muted/grayed-out” until they have been activated
The current option is highlighted better
New Reticle option under the Gameplay option category. Allows you to adjust whether the reticle shows other Players, the Ammo/Heath bars, both, or no addition information other than enemies/power-ups
New per player Reticle Size option under the Player option category. Can be used to turn the reticle complete off for the die hard, or adjust the size when playing on different screens or different player “bio parameters”. As an added bonus, if the reticle is turned off for a player, that player will not show up in the other players reticles making it a bit more difficult to seek out your friends/foes
Added a delay countdown when resuming the game. Gives you a little time to remember what horrible situation you left yourself in when you panic hit pause.
When editing visual related options, the game is shown, non-darkened for easier tweaking of the many visual aspects of the game, from bloom, background/star visibility, reticle, CRT, or Vector parameters
New Positional Audio setting to adjust positional audio based on your speaker setup. Leave it on Surround to play as before with Left/Right + Top/Bottom mapped to Front/Back, tune to use just Stereo Left/Right, or turn off positional audio all together.
CONNECTION CONTROLLER messages will now fade out completely (after a few minutes of controllers being disconnected).
New Mouse Rotation option under the Player option category. I the Hybrid (single-stick) control style, allows you to rotate with relative mouse movements (horizontal/vertical) instead of the mouse position on the screen. Trackballs or spinners should work, though haven’t been tested yet.
Issues Addressed
Fix thruster scaling issues in Vector mode. Fix power-up icons missing in some prompts in Vector mode. screen.
