Greetings and welcome alpha fighter pilots; whether your are a medal laden veteran pilot, a new recruit cutting your teeth, from Earth, or from one of the furthest corners of the known universe.

I hope you’ve been priming your trigger fingers, as the Nexus Galactic as deployed several important milestone updates to whet your appetite for unmatched precision controlled skill based combat across the solar system.

Probably the biggest features added are CRT emulation capabilities, and an almost complete rendition of Vector mode.

CRT effects including scanlines and phosphors are now available.

Vector mode now has additional monochrome palettes in addition to the full color Solaroids palette.

Each aspect of the simulated XY Vector display can be tweaked to your taste and combined with other options like Bloom, Background Opacity, Stars, and CRT effects to simulate a variety of looks.

Many more tweaks and adjustments have been made to improve the experience. See the full list below.

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.

New Features

• Background and bloom amounts automatically adjusted based on theme (Vector/Raster)
• Backdrop stars now tied to Background transparency. You can now eliminate all raster based stars in addition to the backdrop, if you want for a more pure Vector mode experience
• Increased power-up capsule size for easier visibility.
• Colorized additional graphics in Vector mode
• Particles for smoke, sparks and explosions now match the theme when in Vector mode.
• Key representations are now 100% vectorized
• Added Background option category
• Added Emulation option category. Holding the two current modes/themes for now, but more planned still
• Add Vector option category to control the palette and beam parameters when in Vector mode:
  • Vector Palette – Choose from the Solaroids multi-color vector palette, or classic favorites that reproduce the look of classic Asteroids®, and Asteroids Deluxe®.
  • Intensity – Adjust the intensity of the beam
  • Focus – Adjust the focus of the beam for ultra precise focus, or wide and vibrant
  • Shimmer – Adjust the shimmer effect to your liking and photo-seizure susceptibility
  • Jitter – Old Vector XY monitors weren’t always the most accurate things and were often particularly finicky. Adjust the precision of the beam
• Add CRT option category to apply CRT emulation effects:
  • CRT Mode – Turn CRT emulation on/off
  • Scanlines – Turn on scanline simulation
  • Scanline Intensity – Adjust how intense the scanline effect is
  • Phosphor Pattern – Old monitors has much more visible RGB phosphors, turn this on to heighten the retro feel of older color monitors.
  • Phosphor Pattern Intensity – Adjust how intense the RGB phosphors. A little goes a long way with this one.
• Supports Steam Remote’s virtual touch-pad with configurations for Classic, Hybrid, and Modern control styles
• Supports Steam Remote Play for local multiplayer over the network
• Many many performance optimizations and engine improvements as I port the code base to less powerful consoles and mobile. Every platform benefits.
• The OST is now separate and can be purchased/activated separately
• Updates to platform libraries (FNA, SDL, etc)
• High score tables now hidden while in option menu.
• Add Exit option category with options to:
  • Resume – Close the option menu and resume the game in addition to Esc/Back
  • Forfeit – Forfeit the current players session
  • Title Screen – Forfeit all players and immediately return to the title scree
  • Exit to System – Exit completely out of the game. No rage quitting!
• Exit option category also replaces the former pop-up dialog when pressing Esc/Back for more options and better consistency
• Options that are not available due to the setting of other options, are now “muted/grayed-out” until they have been activated
• The current option is highlighted better
• New Reticle option under the Gameplay option category. Allows you to adjust whether the reticle shows other Players, the Ammo/Heath bars, both, or no addition information other than enemies/power-ups
• New per player Reticle Size option under the Player option category. Can be used to turn the reticle complete off for the die hard, or adjust the size when playing on different screens or different player “bio parameters”. As an added bonus, if the reticle is turned off for a player, that player will not show up in the other players reticles making it a bit more difficult to seek out your friends/foes
• Added a delay countdown when resuming the game. Gives you a little time to remember what horrible situation you left yourself in when you panic hit pause.
• When editing visual related options, the game is shown, non-darkened for easier tweaking of the many visual aspects of the game, from bloom, background/star visibility, reticle, CRT, or Vector parameters
• New Positional Audio setting to adjust positional audio based on your speaker setup. Leave it on Surround to play as before with Left/Right + Top/Bottom mapped to Front/Back, tune to use just Stereo Left/Right, or turn off positional audio all together.
• CONNECTION CONTROLLER messages will now fade out completely (after a few minutes of controllers being disconnected).
• New Mouse Rotation option under the Player option category. I the Hybrid (single-stick) control style, allows you to rotate with relative mouse movements (horizontal/vertical) instead of the mouse position on the screen. Trackballs or spinners should work, though haven’t been tested yet.

Issues Addressed

• Fix thruster scaling issues in Vector mode.
  Fix power-up icons missing in some prompts in Vector mode.
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