This release is dedicated to YouTube player/reviewer Big Joe Bear who was kind enough to both make me aware of a key issue now fixed in this release, and to also make a stellar video tour de force of Solaroids. Note to self, cause internet outages around the world to entice more players to play!! If you can, give his channel a look and support him if it interests you:

Hello Everyone! Things have been quiet on the Solaroids update front lately. Work hasn’t stopped, but I’ve had to focus on some other aspects related to the game that are outside of the game itself. Stay tuned.

Some things I’m working on, but aren’t ready yet, are additional leaderboards. I’m considering weekly and monthly boards, as well as per control type boards. I will probably be adding daily leaderboards once I have the planned Daily Challenge game mode implemented.

New Features/Tweaks

• Reset parallax in multiplayer when doing a cut transition.
• Don’t show initial tips (in a ring around the sun) in free play mode.
• Tuning of score multipliers:
  • Modern Control Style gets a 1x base multiplier now instead of 0.5x, with increased adder and increased decay factors.
  • Classic and Hybrid control styles stay mostly the same but get an adder boost.
• Turn agility power-ups now increase (a little bit) the maneuverability of the ship in Modern (dual-stick) control style.
• Fade in/out of per player stats / leaderboard displays.
• Update framework libraries for Linux and OSX versions. These are big changes, especially with respect to audio, so please report any issues.
• A bunch of internal changes to prepare for new features.

Issues Addressed

• When playing with keyboard or mouse+keyboard, the mouse cursor is now locked to the game window during gameplay so you don’t accidentally move it outside the window in the thick of combat. This is also in effect when borderless mode is active. So, for those of you that play borderless full-screen on a multi-monitor setup, you’ll no longer accidentally scroll to the other screen and click on some other window with catastrophic results. Note that the mouse won’t be locked to the window when pausing or from the main or exit menus. Thank you Big Joe Bear for communicating this issue to me.
• Fix an occasional 1-frame visual glitch when detaching outriders and exploding complex enemies.

Happy blasting!!

Solaroids is available on Steam Early Access and is still being actively developed by Chad Yates as part-time Indie game developer. Come try out the free Demo, join the Community HUB on steam, or join the ranks of brave fighter pilots defending the solar system and competing for high scores and prestige!