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.