Demo Update v0.17.0!

Hi all! Reality Break is in Bullet Heaven Fest 2.0, and I decided to update the Reality Break demo! This is the final demo update before the game's full launch early next year. I promised to include one more feature from the upcoming full version, and I'm pleased to deliver something new for you in this update!

[h2]Overlord[/h2]
This update includes a sneak peek into the Overlord endgame activity. In the demo version, an ultra-powerful Overlord enemy will now spawn as the target of Excursion missions at Challenge Level 20 or higher. You will have only a limited time to destroy it before it warps away! Be warned: the overlord has a massive health pool and powerful defenses, making it a true challenge to bring down.

In the full version, there's a major twist: The Overlord's current health is preserved across engagements, and even across profile breaks!

If you do manage to defeat the overlord, you will be substantially rewarded. I hope you enjoy this first look!

[h3]Thank you very much for playing Reality Break!![/h3]
~Courtney

Patch notes follow:

Reality Break Demo build v0.17.0 has gone live!

Courtney's Dev Notes: This is the final demo update before the full version releases next year, though if any severe issues pop up I will hotfix them. Enjoy!

[h2]Content[/h2]

Full version sneak peek: Overlord. This is a first look at an endgame activity where you have to destroy an ultra-powerful enemy capital ship. Once engaged, it begins firing up its quantum slipdrive to escape, and summons a variety of enemies to defend it. If you defeat it before it warps out, you get rewarded substantially! In the demo version, the Overlord has a chance to spawn as the target of an Excursion mission. In the full release, it will be available to pursue via its own mission type. What's more, its health will be preserved across engagements and even across profile breaks! However, it will drop better loot if defeated in a single go, making it a true test of both damage and survivability.
Unique Modifier Type rewrites on Epic items now use the same multiple-choice setup as Affix Type rewrites.
Added randomization to items' Core Multipliers for more variation in item drops.
Replaced the default engine sound for the player ship with more subtle audio and tuning.

[h2]Performance[/h2]

The particle effects spawned when anything takes damage are now metered out at a global level, allowing the game to detect when many are being spawned at once and reduce their spawn quantity. This improves performance substantially when operating at high levels of Haste, Twin Bolt, and various projectile/beam split effects, as well as against high enemy densities.
Reduced the max loot drop spawns from 5 per update to 1 per update, improving performance when many ships are destroyed on the same update and generate large amounts of loot simultaneously.
Don't update the ship dialog while it's not visible.

[h2]Quality of Life[/h2]

Improved the clarity of gameplay and reduced the impression of "visual clutter" across the board: (unit layer highlighting, reduced bg lighting, bg objects farther away, bg effects dimmer, destruction debris darker, lower bloom, smaller flares, lower exposure on skyboxes, dimmer stars.)
When a side mission is completed at a rewritten Challenge Level, all other side missions have their rewrite dropdowns set to that same Challenge Level.
Toggle Favorite/Scrap now locks itself to enable/disable based on the first item toggled. (Courtney's note: this lets you sweep the cursor across multiple items to batch enable or disable Favorite/Scrap based on what happened to the first item in the sequence, rather than a per-item toggle like before.)
Increased the width of the visual tell for the Restored Punisher's Overload Blast ability.
Decryption Key items now despawn when any other copy is looted.
Reduced the game's baseline audio volume.
Affixes that contribute to delta comparison tooltip rollups are now prefaced with an empty bullet point to distinguish them from the filled bullet point used for affixes that don't.

[h2]Balance[/h2]

Reduced the damage of the Restored Punisher's Overload Blast attack by 96%.

[h2]Bug fixes[/h2]

fixed loss of input control after opening nav map while jumping to a mission
fixed Epic Sensors item "The Scrambler"'s Virus debuff applying to the player's ship
fixed "skill points available" attention grabber showing even if all skills are maxed
fixed enemies staying on the area scan after they're destroyed
fixed inconsistencies/inaccuracies in area scan uncertainty radius indicators for points of interests that haven't yet been approached
fixed Demolition side missions sometimes marking Colossus Pulsers as their mission target
fixed issue where entities with colliders that prevent damage (such as the Colossus Reactor's armored rings) were still taking damage from certain collisions
fixed various UIs mistakenly continuing to display the pilot's class
fixed "skill points available" attention grabber showing even if all skills are maxed
fixed "on cooldown" flyouts showing in wrong positions for attempted activations of propulsion and ship regeneration
fixed being able to open various dialogs while camera was fully faded out
fixed Chaos Vortex spawning ships the player hasn't seen yet
fixed physics impulses against elites not propagating to their destroyed fx, and lowered impulse strength across the board
fixed not all parts of various numeric dropdowns being clickable, such as for mission challenge level and screen resolution
fixed equipment on clone spawned via the Through The Looking Glass skill not inheriting the source equipment's unique modifiers
fixed certain mission rewards not upgrading correctly or at all with Challenge Level
fixed mission rewards not displaying correctly if upgraded due to increased Challenge Level
improved scrollbar positioning in numeric dropdowns
fixed a bug that made the player ship engine sound play too loudly