Help this game get on Steam!

Steam Marines v0.7.8a has come bearing a Target Panel, context sensitive buttons, and more!

Hello, everyone.

It's been a hot and humid week for me, but I still managed to swing some changes!

In my ongoing war against UI, I managed to add more UI. Oops. But I also reduced the clutter in the center of the screen. Enemy target HP/AP, damage/accuracy to fire, and a keybind tooltip all pop up on the bottom center of the screen now instead of overlaying text on the target directly.

Buttons have been shifted and Grab and Interact buttons are not context sensitive, only popping up when the active character can actually perform those actions. In addition the inventory has been shifted down and the upper right corner now informs the player when the game is being autosaved.

Additionally talents have been tweaked, more dialogue and randomized marine names have been added, class weapon variants have been implemented, and a nasty preferences file bug causing crashes has been squashed!


As usual you can download the latest alpha build of Steam Marines from the official website or the forums. Thanks for reading and happy robot hunting!



Changelog for v0.7.8a

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New/Changed Features
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Added a context sensitive Grab button that appears when the current character is on an item or chest.
Added a context sensitive Interact button that appears when the current character is facing an environment object that can be used.
Added an auto save indicator to the upper right hand corner of the screen.
Added basic geomorph functionality to level generation. Eventually this will be extended to special rooms and encounters, locations for hidden gear, cross level connections (e.g. a small Medical Deck room on the Engineering Deck), and other uses.
Gratings now appear on walls and can spawn monsters on floor tiles below them.
Monsters cannot use gratings to travel on the first level of the Command Deck.
Added more randomized marine names for character creation.
Added more marine dialogue when spotting/killing enemies.
Added more starting marine dialogue on new game.
The camera mounts to the first valid target when toggling fire controls.
Added new Support class passive talent icons.
Changed Scout class passive talent "Biohazard" to affect all organics.
Increased Scout class active talent "Stasis" to require 4 Action Points per use instead of 3.
Added new enemy targeting panel on the bottom center of the screen. It pops up when a valid enemy has been targeted and shows a portrait, current/max health, current/max action points, and the approximate damage and accuracy of the shot if taken.
Added Grenadier class weapon variants.
Updated weapon/armor swap panel to use the consistent HUD theme.
Stripped device names (e.g. "keyboard", "joystick") from keybind tooltips.
Added a small delay when firing. This is to prevent accidental firing and to lock the camera onto valid targets throughout the firing sequence.
AI downgrade; enemies will not alert quite so many nearby enemies upon spotting the player's units. This reduces the likelihood you will be surrounded and smashed to pieces in the early game.

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Bug Fixes
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Fixed the grab action deducting an action point even when no items/treasure is on the active character's tile.
Marines can now only have a single dialogue popup at any given time to avoid text overlapping.
Fixed nasty keybinding/input.cs.dso bug that could cause crashing on startup for players first installing the game or using a non-installed version.