On the side I found some programming time to work on the update for Astral Defense. I always prefer to do the hardest part of any project first. That being said, my first step was the go through every line of code to change all sound effects to use a new custom block I’ve ported over from Sonar Smash. Luckily, Astral Defense is a pretty tiny game so this resulted in only a couple hours of work and really helped me “re-understand” the project. The reason for all of this was because the way Stencyl sets volume for channels has changed since Astral Defense’s release. In addition we added some info splash screens, a cross-promotion button for Sonar Smash, and put in a new rate button . 

Next up were some changes to the game play, including our new Touch Control system imported from Sonar Smash. The pacing of Astral Defense has been vastly increased. All enemies are available to spawn on wave 1 and every wave has more enemies. There was also a little problem with the player getting to strong from infinitely stacking the Fire Rate buff. I fixed this up by capping Fire Rate at a .22 sec cooldown and rewarding the player with 20 score to compensate. With the Touch Controls being implemented, I greatly increased the player’s base speed and acceleration once again. I don’t intend to release this update for awhile as the Sonar Smash buttons won’t work quite yet.