Zwar konnte man Revenge of the Titans (ab 14,95€ bei kaufen) schon seit einiger Zeit erwerben, bis dato hatte das Projekt von Puppy Games allerdings immer noch Beta-Status. Nachdem die Entwickler vor Kurzem noch die Spielmechanik deutlich umgestrickt hatten, teilt man jetzt mit : Version 1.80.6 kann jetzt heruntergeladen werden und wird als offizielle Releasefassung erachtet.

Momentan kann der Tower Defence-Titel nur über die hauseigene Webseite bezogen werden. Ab dem 7. März werden sich die Titans allerdings auch auf Steam rächen. Dort soll das Spiel dann 27,72 Dollar kosten - wohl dem, der sich den Titel bereits in der Beta-Phase oder gar als Teil des zweiten Humble Indie Bundles zugelegt hat. Für letztere gilt: Die jüngste Version kann über die persönliche Bundle-Download-Seite bezogen werden. Eine Registrierung jener Fassung auf Steam soll möglich sein, sobald Revenge of the Titans auf Valves Online-Plattform verfügbar ist.

Die Patch-Notes:

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed: lasers now no longer blocked by crystals when firing at aerial targets
• Fixed: droid bullets didnt cause +1 damage after researching Biology
• Fixed: at high difficulties, some gidrahs suddenly stopped moving so the level would never end
• Fixed: droids caused serious performance degradation because of a brain glitch

Balance

• Dropped pickups now last very slightly longer on the earlier levels
• Cooling tower now less effective on shotguns, lasers, rockets and disruptors&
• ∧ more effective on multiblasters
• Disruptor nerfed to just 3 shots and 24pts damage
• Rocket explosion radius nerfed to 48px from 64px
• Rocket minimum and maximum range increased by 32px when plastic charge patterns researched; this should prevent rockets damaging their turrets so easily!
• Heavy weapons now have very long reload times
• Buffed sergeant droids weapons to ap 4, dam 8, stun 8 and doubled fire rate

New Features and Enhancements

• You can now scroll past the edges of the map finally! The edges now fade out to black.
• scale commandline parameter now works in fullscreen modes too
• Droid AI now makes droids attack any target in range if primary target is not yet in range
• Droid AI now causes droids to prioritise normal aliens if they are significantly closer than gidlets
• Droid AI now ignores targets that cant be hurt, similar to turrets
• New graphics for sergeant droids and buffed droids
• Lasers and disruptors will now also stop firing at targets they cant damage
• Saturn boss is now immune to laser fire
• Titan boss now immune to disruptors
• Clicking on a turret in build mode no longer reloads it

Internal

• Weapons now express fire rate in rounds per minute, plus rounds per minute per cooling tower
• Droid AI was unbounded; now limited to max. 128 steps per frame
• Much improved font display & quartered texture memory requirements

Analysis

The most significant change youll immediately notice is that you can now scroll past the edges of the map (and its got this natty looking cool fade to black as well which makes the whole game look moodier and scarier). This sort of makes the flip-down HUD controls a bit redundant, but what the hell, they can stay in for now. At last! You can plonk turrets and things right at the bottom of the map with ease.

Ive twiddled with how various upgrades affect turrets: some turrets respond best to certain sorts of upgrades. The multiblaster, in particular, is now very good with lots of cooling towers; the laser turret was always best with scanners; and so on. As usual the very best effects are achieved with the full complement of four of one particular type - so youve got a bit of a balance and tradeoff to work out there.

Ive fixed the performance problem that using lots of droids caused. And the droids have received a fair bit of attention in the process. They should be noticeably more useful, though still probably not a total replacement for turrets. On Survival mode they are easily one of the best value buildings to buy though.

You can twiddle the scale parameter on the commandline for fullscreen mode now. You might be amused to try out scale=1.0 briefly but the graphics are naturally at scale=2.0 so they will be tiny and illegible, and I suspect performance might be a bit grim.

I made pickups a tad easier to grab, but theyre still going to be particularly tricky on later levels. This is deliberate. Harvest some crystals, you lazy sod!

Oh and the game may now be playable on G4 and G5 Macs& but I have no way to test this as my G5 died. Any takers? Its likely to be fairly slow on everything except the fastest G5s mind.

So there we go. Steam release 7th March. Source code to follow in April I think.