Main Update 15 - Now Live — Space Bob vs. The Replicons News

Introduction:

If you haven't played in years, it's time to take another look. If you're thinking about picking up the game, you couldn't have picked a better time.

Take a look at the brand new 'Funky Gameplay' trailer and then read on to see how it shaped the very fabric of this update.

▶ Watch on YouTube

Main Update 15 - Weapons & War Overview:

Double the Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew and more Replicons to Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew!!

More bullets, more explosions, more enemies, more variety, more carnage. Everything has been tweaked to make combat faster, more fun, and more exciting and, by making the player more powerful, it's allowed for far more diversity and unpredictability in Replicon combat behavior without increasing the overall difficulty.

There's also a brand new predictive camera system blended into the existing framework and a host of other quality of life improvements suggested by the players. Thanks everyone who offered such great feedback after the most recent updates. You were an inspiration.

Weapon Overhaul

The fire rate of all the weapons have been doubled! Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew.
The fire rate of the lander's gun has been doubled.
The damage of all weapons have been reduced by approximately 40-60% to compensate.
The time that Replicons are shocked has been reduced to compensate.
The energy cost of firing each weapon has been halved to compensate.
The recoil push back for each weapon, on the player, has been tweaked on a per weapon basis.
Self damage from the rocket pistol has been reduced to trivial levels.
The rocket pistol's knock back has been doubled. This thing is a beast now.
All the weapon visual effects have been juiced up.

Combat Overhaul

Replicon spiders now scuttle around much faster like real spiders.
The maximum number of Replicons on any given planet, at any given time, has been increased by 40%.
The spawn rate in order to reach that maximum number has also been increased by approximately 40%.
The shield values for each Replicon have been altered to suit the new weapon damage values.
The Replicon Invasion speed (how quickly they spread across the system) now ranges from 75% - 200% normal speed based on the game's difficulty. (This only affects Invasion Mode. This was previously 50% on the easiest difficulty and 100% on all other difficulties.)
Replicon combat AI, behavior, and movement characteristics have been significantly updated.
Replicon spiders can now move at a variety of different speeds - often faster than Bob.
Replicon rasks can now move at a variety of different speeds - rarely but sometimes faster than Bob.
Replicon wasps can now move at a variety of different speeds - occasionally faster than Bob
Replicons shock duration is now varied creating more combat unpredictability.
Replicons now react in various ways after being shot. They might start dodging, become even more aggressive, turn away, or simply carry on as before.
Replicon rask jump trajectories are now far less predictable.
Although Replicon wasps can survive and function in water, they now prefer to avoid it, and can't see the player through it's surface.
To balance the other changes, and maintain overall difficulty, wasp damage has been reduced by 20%, rask damage has been reduced by 25%, dart damage has been reduced by 25%

Quality of Life Improvements:

The camera system has been overhauled. It's now smooth as butter and uses far more advanced tracking and prediction algorithms.
The 'tap to cancel' functionality of the grapple gun has been removed by default.
- Simply tapping the fire button will now fire a grapple if it has a valid target. This is far more intuitive behavior.
- It is possible to re-enable the old behaviour again by setting tapToCancel = True in gameConfig.ini if you prefer it.
A new slider has been added allowing the player to choose the game's difficulty prior to starting the tutorial.
A new 'Reset Game' button has been added for Survival Mode at the game select screen.
A new hotkey has been added to allow toggling of the user interface.
Using the 'Reset Game' button, for either game mode, now resets Dave's conversation history and memory for that game mode only.
The physics system has been extended to test if either Bob or his lander have glitched into an impossible position and offers the option to reset both.
The crafting recipe for a new lander now requires 100 fuel and the lander will spawn with 100 fuel.
Improved the font styling and readability of Dave's chat panel again. This was also tweaked in the last update.
Updated the tutorial to simplify the instructions during the grappling gun section.
Replicon Wasp shield value and scared status is now saved allowing 'wasp balloons' to still work after reloading.
To aid performance on lower end machines, Replicons will stop dropping loot if there are more than fifty pieces of loot already on the current planet.
Reduced the damage taken by bumping into crystals by 40%
Reduced the damage taken by bumping into the various stalactites by various amounts. 10%-40%

Miscellaneous Improvements:

The central Replicon station's main event has been tweaked.
- A disabled mechanic, that caused wasps to spawn during this event, has been reactivated.
- To compensate, and also to make the event more manageable on higher difficulty settings, the laser damage has been reduced by 40% and slowed by 20%
The drop pod sequence at the start of the tutorial has new visual effects.
Various UI text element quality improvements
Updated the tutorial to reflect the changes to 'tap to cancel'.
Updated the dialog that appears after completing the tutorial, for the first time, to more clearly state that it's possible to directly click on grapple lines to select them.

Bug Fixes:

Fixed : Missing planet name added to the starting planet.
Fixed : Replicon spider drop ships now receive splash damage.
Fixed : Inconsistencies with the use of bullet points in the difficulty slider information texts.
Fixed : After loading a save, Bob would sometimes have the incorrect footstep sound for the surface he was initially standing on.
Fixed : A bug that allowed Bob access to the refinery ship during the tutorial.
Fixed : A bug that prevented Dart (spiky ball) Replicons from appearing on regular planets.
Fixed : A text bug on the game complete screen that read "Continue to Start Act 2", instead of "Continue to Start Act 3".

Final Notes:

The plan is still to release a demo ASAP. It was meant to go live for the Summer Sale, but then work began on the trailer, and that took a couple of weeks, and then the trailer inspired this update to increase the combat speed and here we are - running behind schedule like any good game development.

Not to mention the fantastic feedback you guys have given over on Discord to help polish off the last few rough edges and improve the overall QOL for the players.

So the current plan is to release the demo in a month or so, or whenever the next discount happens. If you find anything that still grinds your gears, please don't hesitate to let me know either here in the discussion forum or over on Discord where it's much easier to chat and share ideas. https://discord.gg/VUKM4tR3

This announcement was written and published by the developers/publisher of Space Bob vs. The Replicons on Steam; it is mirrored here unedited for readability, with full credit and a link to the original above. © the respective rights holders. Rights holder and want it removed? Email us — we take it down promptly.