Beta 10 "Surround Sound" Early Prerelease (X2) (Patreon)

Beta 10 is still probably a ways off from release (still lots of fixes to go, plus some new content to add...), but I do have another prerelease for you if you're playing now or want to explore some of the new features.

The main feature of X2 is that we now have SIX new RIF abilities! This means you'll be that much less likely to get a specific ability from among those introduced back in the original Beta 9 (since the pool is now larger), but the new group includes some nice abilities as well, so it essentially further increases the variety of RIF runs. (Of course this means Alert ID Control and Crosswire will become less common, but they are a bit on the OP side anyway :P)

Part of why I added these now was because I had a growing list of concepts for abilities, and wanted to stream another RIF run in the near term (started that today) so decided to make it a little more interesting by adding some new abilities to release as X2. In addition to my own list I also asked patrons on Discord for ideas, and some of those have now been implemented (plus one was a comment made here on Patreon some time ago).

One of the new ones, which I happened to get on stream today, is "Watcher Feeds," allowing you to simultaneously peek in on the FOV of all Watchers within 22 spaces, which comes in pretty handy:

Probably even cooler, albeit less reliable unless leveled up, is Command Fork, which copies a robot hack to the nearest other applicable robot:

Other new/modified features in X2, from the changelog:

• NEW: Warned on attempting to fire a volley from a position where doing so might cause a cave-in
• NEW: Warned if line of fire is currently blocked by another robot
• NEW: Option to mute all audio whenever program loses focus (advanced.cfg: muteAudioOnFocusLoss)
• NEW: Toggle the new Audio Log via the options menu
• NEW: "Audio Log" subsection in the Advanced UI section of the manual summarizing its features
• MOD: Removed Audio mute from options menu (to achieve the same effect, set Master Volume to 0)
• MOD: Updated context help for Locale volume setting in options menu
• MOD: Removed Ambient Music section from Credits page and README file

Because the audio log was moved to the main options menu, but is off by default, you'll have to turn it on again if you had it on in advanced.cfg from X1. The other advanced tweaks remain unchanged.

Get Beta 10 X2

On Steam, Beta 10 X2 is located on the beta branch "beta_10_x2" accessible with the code "SixRifPowers", or if you don't have Steam and would like to try the DRM-free version, send me an email at gridsagegames@gmail.com. E-mails have already gone out to those who signed up for Beta 10 X1.

Beta 10 X2 saves are not compatible with X1/previous releases, so consider first finishing up any in-progress run, or keeping a separate copy of your save while you play this one in the meantime.

Building Cogmind’s Ambient Soundscape

Yesterday I published a new article on the blog, "Building Cogmind’s Ambient Soundscape," where you can read about a lot of the work that went into the entire system.

I didn't put that one up on Patreon first since much of its content was covered here before across a number of posts, though you'll find a few new tidbits there which were added later, for example the audio variety visualization:

...and ambient audio dynamic volume visualization:

Leaderboards

The new leaderboards have seen some progress, getting yet a few more steps closer to being public again. The back end management system is more or less complete:

Now it's just time to put finishing touches on the front end!

In any case, I'm confident this will be ready by the time Beta 10 officially releases. 

Perk Reminder

Just a reminder in case you forgot, but if you're a higher (Hacker+) tier patron and haven't yet registered your info via the quick form(s) linked in the welcome/thank you email, do that if you're interested in getting your perk(s) (the ones that require additional info, anyway), since that's the way that info is collected. Thanks!