Alien Interactions:

Aliens will now interact with each other. They might fight each other, they might run away from each other ... they might do stuff that makes little sense, but that's the point!

I was still getting a rare, occasional bug, but nothing game breaking. Also, it hasn't happened in a while and I suspect it might have been resolved. At worst, what might happen (with this bug in particular) is that one of the bipedal aliens might freeze and stop interacting.

I plan to release it to the main branch by the weekend but I figure this is something I should continue testing a bit longer. These are pretty significant changes, so who knows what else might go wrong...

Here is a strange animal confronted by a star shaped floater


Weapon Tiers:

I have updated the whole weapons system, now weapons have three tiers. Yellow weapons represent the lowest quality weapons. Blue are the middle quality, and red are rare, and highly powerful weapons. From a gameplay standpoint, these kinds of weapons, in terms of the increase in firepower, already existed in the game, but they were not color coded and all looked the same.

I think it adds a certain level of comprehension, so you can tell at a glance which weapons will be more useful. I also might actually update the models, so each tier has more interesting looking weapons, but for now color coding was a fast and easy way to get this system started.

Here, you can see two different color laser pistols (yellow and blue) among other things


Alien Weapons:

Bipedal aliens have been given an upgrade. Instead of just standard laser pistols, they can now have assault rifles and even rocket launchers! I have abstained from giving them access to sonic cannons because they would be likely to kill off their friends.

Weapon Costs:

Weapons now have a working system of differentiating the cost of the weapon from the cost of any ammo that has been loaded into the weapon. You can still buy and sell loaded weapons. But if you unload them, the price drops accordingly. Rocket launchers and sonic cannons are considerably more valuable when loaded.