Alpha 1.11 - UI and presentation, part 1 of ???

---Dev Commentary---

Sorry this update took so long! I'm back at university again, and I've gotta worry about that stuff again :(

I got a lot of good feedback from the 1.10 update, and many people said (in different ways) that it was hard to intuitively figure out a lot of things, and a major factor is the extremely bad UI. That makes sense, since there is so much more in Clairvoyance now than there was back in, like, Alpha 1.6 when it was just a time-based checkpoint survival game. Up until around now, I was focused solely on developing the mechanics of the game, and the UI was completely left in the dust compared to everything else. That's probably because I'm really more of a mechanics focused person, but as I was informed, presentation sells people the game, and mechanics keep them playing. I became completely blind to how unclear the UI was since I already knew where everything was and what everything does, so I think this really shows just how important getting good feedback is.

God, this was a really annoying update to develop since I have very little experience working with UI. Along with UI stuff I also refactored a lot of my code for better extensibility. I still expect a decent few things to be broken, so I think there will likely be a few incoming hotfixes over the next few days. Also, a lot of the UI updates was just me throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks, so I can't promise all of it is super coherent or even good, so I'm definitely going to continue working on it over future updates. Just that I don't think I will dedicate an entire major update to UI any time soon again :P

I got pretty tired of working on just UI so I also added a new martial arts style, kyokushin karate, which unlocks at 300 arm and leg kills.

My next focus will be expanding on player skills and items, which are both extremely barebones at the moment.

  ---Gameplay changes and fixes---

    -Added new fighting style: Kyokushin karate

      -Karate's combat philosophy is "one strike, one kill", with higher damage from all attacks

      -There is also a recovery timer after each attack, which promotes the usage of carefully planned powerful katas instead of a more spammy fighting style.

    -After every encounter, 3 random nodes to become "reinforced"

      -Reinforced nodes have significantly higher enemy count and more spawn at once 

      -They also trigger fights at a higher frequency. Stealth becomes increasingly important to go through a reinforced node without triggering a fight. 

    -Lowered block strength from reducing 75% to 50% of incoming damage

    -Enemies now move slightly faster away from you than at you. This makes jumping past them harder, putting more emphasis on timing jumps instead of spamming them.

      -This excludes gunners, who now move slightly slower when moving away from you.

    -The more enemies you leave alive when leaving a level, the less actions you have before the next level.

    -Mind and spirit ugprades now increase relative to your base stats instead of flat set amounts.

    -Fixed AI and fighting style of the monster in secure containment. It should no longer freeze.

    -Random mod rewards should ACTUALLY reward random mods 

    -Save game not saving should be fixed 

    -High score should record properly now 

    -Removed impossible bottom sector push kicks defaulted to wing chun leg moveset

  ---UI changes and fixes---

    -Tons of small unlisted UI improvements/additions (still figuring out what works and what doesn't)

    -A blinking arrow now shows when you have killed all enemies, to signal that you have to go to the right side of the screen (people kept getting confused what to do once you killed all enemies).

    -Moved lifetime statistics to its own dedicated page instead of taking up a third of the main menu.

    -Replaced a lot of notifications with floating text instead. 

    -Added visual effects for consumable items.

    -Fixed cyan color for color scheme (was a bit too green before).

    -Fixed bug where bullet trails didnt exist for the actual shot. 

    -Made energy cost/damage numbers larger and last longer.

    -Fixed enemy ground slam attack's particle effect playing late 

    -Moved reset data button to options page

    -Pretty sure the text box staying too long upon loading the map page is fixed

    -Fixed changing styles dropdown not working at all 

    -Fixed style always changing back to default when going back to style select screen 

    -Fixed all outdated numbers in descriptions of items, abilities, etc. 

    -Added a keycard counter in the map screen