1.1.8 - CONQUEST REWORK & BRICKTRON FACES!

Hey everyone!

We’re pretty excited to put today’s update into your hands! Conquest has been one of the most played gamemodes since the recent major updates but it was designed in a way where you could end up with a tremendous amount of Corruptrons on your island, roaming around, pathfinding and eating up all of your computer-juices, causing major loss in performance, which is the top complaint we’ve received for Castle Story.

Additionally, the gamemode had some issues with balance and difficulty – easy wasn’t always easy enough and hard was sometimes too easy for the pros.

All in all, you should see some major improvements in performance in shorter and longer Conquest games!

Also! A few of you expressed concerns over the Bricktrons looking a bit.. indifferent! Well, Bricktrons will now spawn with random expressions, from super-furious to suspiciously-happy. It has no relation to their current actions, so it’ll inevitably lead to some hilarious situations à la Alchemist blowing everything and everyone up with a big, beaming smile! Send funny screenshots pls.

Today’s update aims at addressing both these issues. Gameplay and performance have both been considerably improved in the Conquest mode.

Anyways, here’s the changelog. Note that all Corruptrons-related changes are mostly for the Conquest mode.

• Bricktrons will now spawn with different facial expressions.
  
• Improved Conquest early-game performance by pre-loading Corruptron raids, at the cost of a slightly increased loading time.
  
• When Corruptrons are spawned, they will now spawn at delayed intervals (one corruptron per half second or so). This not only looks more natural, but also resolves a frequent lag spike that occured when a large group of Corruptrons all spawned at once.
  
• Corruptrons will now only spawn when they have an objective; expanding, attacking or defending. When a Bricktron approaches a corrupted shard or crystal, Corruptrons will emerge from the ground to defend it.
  
• Tweaked difficulty settings for Conquest. Easy should be easier, hard should be harder and normal should feel challenging but not too difficult for semi-experienced players. Would love to hear your feedback on the difficulties! Note that hard may still be easy if you’re like, super pro. You can always make your own preset with insane settings!
  
• All existing Corruptrons will occasionally attack the player’s base as a wave, forcing you to create actual defenses around your shards and crystals.
  
• Plants now have real names in the world editor, instead of just being numbered.
  
• Removed the "Click to queue 1" label on tooltips for crafting items.
  
• Fixed an issue where Grab The Gems gamemode wouldn't start if the host wasn't blue.
  

We really hope you enjoy these changes and be sure to let us know what you think!

ALSO! If you want to checkout the neat stuff we're working on for the next update, catch one of our Thursday streams on Twitch & Youtube. Every Thursday at 3PM EST under the channel name SauropodStudio.