1.24c (1/27/16) -

- Fixed high score submission not working on my new web host

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1.24b (7/1/9) -

- Fixed randomly claiming memory had corrupted during play.  Removed PayPal link and had the game start up in windowed mode by default since full screen mode doesn't work on multi-monitor machines.

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1.24 (5/9/8) -

- Fixed crash when trying to view high scores when there is more than 101 of them.  Now no matter how many high scores there are on the web site the game will be able to display them without crashing.

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1.23 (4/19/8) -

- Windowed mode can now be switched to at any time and supports minimize, maximize (switches to full screen), etc.  Can switch via Options or Alt-Return or F6.

- Can now take screenshots with F9.

- Fixed high scores not interfacing properly with www.zauron.net due to a change my web host service made.

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1.22 (11/8/4) -

- Prevented the game from declaring a corrupt memory error and exiting from getting to a certain point in Survival Mode.

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1.2 (11/4/4) -

- Improved anti-cheating security measures to better protect the high score list.

- By request, you can now adjust the overall sound volume in the game in the Options screen.

- All unlockable modes except Practice and Skip to 21 are unlocked instantly the first time you click Start Game.

- Insane Mode has been removed and replaced with Hardcore mode, since I felt that Insane mode wasn't very fun in the way its difficulty was implemented.  Instead of just swarming you with enemies, the new Hardcore mode spawns the same enemies as Normal mode but your Minebot is less powerful, making it more difficult.  You have less hull strength, weaker mines and shots, recieve more damage from bumping into walls, and get less cash to buy upgrades between waves.  Also, many enemies move faster and/or have better attacks in this mode, and you will have to fight the more powerful bosses sooner.  Getting a high score in Hardcore mode should be the goal of the best players of the game.

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1.1 (10/21/4) -

- Ctrl-key auto-mine-drop now drops mines more frequently, making it actually usable in boss fights (which is the main place I would use it anyway).

- After Wave 10, any upgrades that are worth $100 or less will no longer be lost on death, even without Insurance.  After Wave 20, any upgrades that are worth $250 or less will no longer be lost on death.  This is because not having Insurance was always intended to be a big risk, but it was NOT intended to be a guaranteed game over if you died.  With the level difficulty curve, many new players were not buying Insurance thinking that they were taking a certain risk, but the risk was much higher than they anticipated because the later levels absolutely require some basic upgrades to survive.  With this change, you should still have at least some chance of recovering, continuing, and re-purchasing lost items on death without Insurance, but it is still a risk to go uninsured since you will lose the more expensive upgrades you have.  This change should make the game more accessible and less frustrating to new players.

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1.0 (8/25/4) -

- Game officially released to the masses!

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0.64 Beta RC5 (8/24/4) -

- Altered custom music system to allow up to 80 normal wave songs and 10 boss songs to be specified, and the option to randomize song playing order.  The lines it looks for in the custommusic.txt file are different now, so old custommusic.txt files won't work any more.  See the readme file or the custommusic.txt file included in the .zip for more info.

- Music of any format should now properly repeat if it reaches the end of a song.

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0.63 Beta RC4 (8/24/4) - 

- Fixed a bug where every wave past 43 would not load correctly after I tweaked wave 43 earlier...whoops!

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0.62 Beta RC3 (8/24/4) -

- Players can no longer pick up Repairs or use a Gravity Well during the death explosion animation.

- Force Shield now recharges in upgrade purchase screen if it is active.

- Wave 14 made a bit more difficult.

- More Repairs added to wave 43.

- You can now longer move out of bounds of the Arena while dead (transparent and preparing to respawn).

- Text of wave victory screen changed slightly to be more clear.

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0.61 Beta RC2 (8/22/4) - 

- Fixed a small bug where pressing P to pause and unpuase the game would make the letter P show up at the end of your name when submiting a high score.

- Replaced the level 80 Boss's shield with a second claw to make it more reasonably killable.

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0.6 Beta RC1 (8/21/4)

- This is release candidate 1.  That means I think the game is ready to be released, but I'm not actually releasing it yet to make sure I didn't miss anything.  So if there's some problem you have with the game, better tell me now!

- Space Bar and Enter have switched roles.  Now Space Bar executes a Gravity Well and Enter changes the music.  This change was made because Space Bar is easier to hit and it's likely people will be more interested in performing Gravity Wells than trying to change the music selection.

- Fixed a bug where having certain modes unlocked and not others would cause the Game Type menu item to not display properly.

- Fxed a bug that made the level 50 Boss have only 6 health...OOPS!!

- Several tweaks to difficulty curve in all modes from testing.

- Fixed a few point exploits and bugs with unlocking modes.

- New keyboard command for the Ctrl key.  Holding Ctrl will make your Minebot drop mines automatically and repeatedly.  The point is to reduce wrist strain from the rapid clicking that is often involved in dropping enough mines to survive.  However, generally a fast clicker could drop mines faster than holding Ctrl will do.

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0.55 Beta (8/20/4) - 

- A new "unsupported" feature, custom music, is now available.  The user must have a custommusic.txt file in the same place as minebot.exe that contains lines that read Music1=songname.wma, Music2=songname.mid, Music3=c:\music\songname.mp3, etc. up to Music9.  Then the game will play whatever song files that are specified instead of the music it comes with.

- Fixed a problem with the Windows mouse cursor showing up when it shouldn't be...

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0.53 Beta (8/19/4) -

- Windowed mode is now supported by using the command line paramater '-windowed' or choosing the option in the Options menu.  However you must restart the game before it can actually switch to windowed mode.  Also you can't minimize or resize the window (although if you press WindowsKey+D it will hide it).  You can only move your cursor outside the game window when the game is paused.

- You can now press P as well as Esc to Pause the game.

- In order to make text easier to read, sprites are now deleted when the Game Over screen comes up.

- The cost for Insurance is no longer listed as $0/$###, it is instead listed as "Cost with current upgrades: $## per wave" to be more clear that Insurance is a per-wave cost rather than an up-front cost.

- Defenders will now shut down when there is no longer any threat to them (ie after you are dead) in order to conserve power.  While shut down their shields and shield beams will drop.  When a new threat is detected (you respawn) they will power back on again.  However, it will take a few seconds for them to reach full power and until then, they and any enemies they would normally be protecting are vulnerable to mines!  Thus it is now possible to destroy Defenders with mines for a few seconds just after spawning.

- Increased the difficulty curve of Survival Mode.

- Triple shot shots will now spread out a bit more when choosing their homing targets, so they will more often look like a true "triple shot" rather than just one big shot.

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0.52 Beta (8/18/4) -

- Fixed a bug where pausing the game then clicking Resume would sometimes cause you to skip past the screen you were on when you paused it (such as the upgrade store screen at the end of each Wave).

- Fixed a bug making Wave 5 never end in Insane mode.  Tested all other waves, they should all be passable in that mode now.

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0.51 Beta (8/18/4) -

- For a limited time, all modes will be unlocked automatically (except skip to 21 mode).

- Made the Boss Rush mode more refined, and included a Time Bonus after each Boss that depends on how long it took to kill the Boss.  Boss Rush mode now has it's own seperate high score list.

- New game type - Insane Mode.  Has its own seperate high score list, and is just a super hard version of the normal game.

- New game type - Survival Mode.  You get 1 life, all upgrades pre-purchased, and are put in one giant never-ending Wave that slowly gets more and more difficult.  The only way to get points in this mode is by time, so there's no reason to use the most effective point-giving attacks - just do all you can to live as long as you can to get the highest survival score!

- High mouse sensitivity settings should be more responsive and feel more normal now (although anything above 3 will still be jumpy at low frame rates).

- The Hull Upgrade and the Force Shield upgrade no longer raise the cost of Repairs.

- The High Scores button on the Main Menu will take you to a different High Score list depending on what Game Type you currently have selected on the Main Menu.

- The first time (after a new version) that you try to submit or view high scores, the game will give a warning to properly set up your internet connection and any firewalls you have before proceeding.

- Reduced the forced freeze time for using the right-click blast method.  You can also completely eliminate the freeze time by letting go of both buttons as soon as the blast starts (or by using the old method of just holding still first then letting go of the left mouse button).

- Changed Wave 43 to a completely different wave (I never liked it anyway and it was complained about often).

- Added a Resume option to the Esc menu, although I find it harder to use than pressing Esc because of the sudden jump in mouse cursor location (from the menu mouse to your minebot's location).

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0.42 Beta (8/16/4) - 

- Made some tweaks to the Practice Mode settings.

- Made the main menu's mode option more clear that you have to click on it to change modes, and then it uses that mode when you click on Start Game.

- Enemy mines will now be a bit more like player mines in that they will not detonate if a mine-laying enemy (dodger or snake) is overlapping the mine.  This should prevent being hit by mines you never had a chance to see, particularly from long Snakes.

- Until the end of Beta, the web site will no longer force you to have the current version in order to submit high scores.

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0.4 Beta (8/15/4) -

- Fixed a bug where the force shield damage effect was not being drawn.

- Change the functionality of the second Main Menu option.  It now just displays what will happen when you click Start Game.  Click on it to change what game mode you want to play.  At first it will just be ??????? and the only mode you can play is Normal Mode.  Later you can unlock more options for it: Skip to 21, Practice Mode, and Boss Rush Mode.  Note that Practice Mode and Boss Mode do not allow you to submit a high score.  I'll leave it up to you to figure out how to unlock these extra modes...

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0.35 Beta (8/15/4) -

- You can now double-click on an upgrade to purchase it instantly, rather than having to click on it once then click Purchase.  You can still single-click on an icon to view its description.  You can turn this option off with a check mark box on the purchase screen and the Options screen.

- Improved hints on wave 20 and 30 and expanded Boss Bot information in the Instructions.

- Gave an option in the Options screen to make the Gravity well use the middle mouse button instead of right-click.  Also pressing Enter on the keyboard will use a Gravity Well.

- Waves 43 and 44 made slightly easier.

- Alt-tab'ing in the middle of play will automatically pause the game and put you in the Esc menu so when you return to the game you will be safely paused and ready to resume play at your leisure.

- Updated Instructions to include new features.

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0.34 Beta (8/14/4) -

- Tweaked the difficulty of waves 39-50 to be better balanced.  Most were made a bit easier.

- The cost increase for the Gravity Well has been reduced from $75 per purchase to $50 per purchase.

- Added a special You Win screen with a cash bonus after you beat level 50, although the game still has unique bosses all the way up to level 100, level 50 is the last truly unique level and I consider anyone beating 50 to have "won" the game.

- Added buttons on the main menu and credits screen that link to the paypal donations page at www.zauron.net for those that wish to donate.

- Added names for the rest of the levels.

- Fixed a bug where player shots could fly right through a Boss's sword blade as if it wasn't there.

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0.33 Beta (8/14/4) -

- Fixed a bug where if you pressed Esc to pause the game, then alt-tabbed out of the game, when you return to the game and un-paused it, you would instantly die and all your scores, wave, and cash would be set back to 0.  Major oops!

- If the level is essentially over except for some leachers attached to your Minebot, the remaining attached leachers will disengage and retreat off the edges of the Arena thus ending the level.  This is to prevent confusion on why the level hasn't ended yet when there is a leacher attached that the player hasn't noticed.

- Fixed a bug where you would not take any damage from crashing into a Gunner.

- Added code to help ensure that the level WILL end on a Boss level (I don't see how it could not have been ending before, but since some people reported it, this should hopefully prevent it from being a problem any more).

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0.32 Beta (8/13/4) -

- There is now an alternate way to do a point-blank blast (although the old method still works fine) and performing the Gravity Well move has changed slightly.  Here's how it works now:

If you have enough charge for a blast, you can either hold still and let go of the left button to blast, or, even while moving at full speed, right-click and you will automatically hold still and release a blast. At that point, you will be unable to move until you let go of both mouse buttons or wait a second. 

If you choose to just wait rather than letting go to move again, once movement resumes you will automatically start charging up another shot/blast if you have the left mouse button still held down, or you will execute the gravity well move if you have the right mouse button still held down (and have that item purchased). 

In order to perform the gravity well normally, you must now right-click when you have no charge built up (so if you need to do it while you have charge built up, quickly let go of your left mouse button first to release your charge then right-click for the gravity well). Those that choose to use this new right-click method are more likely to accidentally use the special move than those that continue using the normal hold-still-then-release method, so both have their downsides (accidental shots vs accidental gravity wells).

- Fixed a crash when trying to view the high score list when there was more than 50 scores in the list.

- Waves 10, 15, and 20 were further reduced in difficulty (especially 15).

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0.31 Beta (8/13/4) - 

- New beta player feedback has resulted in levels 10, 15 and 20 being made a bit easier.

- Fixed a bug where the level could end while you were still dead.

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0.30 Beta (8/12/4) - 

- Welcome to the Minebot Arena Beta!

- You will now be given a free extra Minebot every 50,000 points.

- Because the above makes extra lives worth less in comparison to buying points than they were before this version, extra lives will now cost $250 extra per life rather than $500.

- Scores were adjusted to more accurately reflect the difficulty of each enemy.

- Instructions and Credits are now completed.  The Instructions includes a current scores breakdown and description of each enemy, in addition to standard controls and gameplay information.

- The web site will now require that your Minebot Arena version be updated to submit your score, and the game will display an error asking you to update the game if it is too old when you try to submit a score.

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0.24 Alpha (8/9/4) - 

- All bosses are now complete, with a boss for every 10 levels up to level 100.  Level 50 is what I would consider the "final boss" but there are bosses for 60-100 that are derived from the normal 10-50 bosses but are much harder.  Even if you've never gone that high, you should skip to level 40 and check out that boss 'cause I'm pretty proud of it! :)

- Enemy shots no longer set off your mines.

- The increase in cost for buying a Gravity Well has been reduced to $75 from $150.

- The FPS indicator is now hidden by default, but pressing the F key on the keyboard will toggle it on and off.

- If you absorb one of your own shots with the Absorption upgrade then fire another shot with the absorbed energy, the fired shot will start with the bonus of the absorbed shot (up to a max of 40% bonus).  This bonus will only apply to the center shot with the triple shot upgrade.

- Once you have reached level 21, the new ???????? prompt on the main menu will change to "Skip to 21" which will skip you to the end of level 20 but give you the score and cash you had by that point, and allow you to still submit your score.  This way experienced players don't need to do the first 20 "tutorial" levels every time they play and can still get a high score.  If you go back to level 1 again and reach 21 again naturally, the score you get for skipping to 21 will change if your new score is higher than the old one.  Thus you can keep doing 1-20 to get as high a score as possible then use your highest score when you skip to the later levels.

- The Restart prompt will also give you the option to skip to 21 if you have that option unlocked.

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0.23 Alpha (7/30/4) -

- The second Boss is now available at level 20!  This Boss is much more complex than the first one, including multiple phases as it becomes more damaged and with 6 different weapons.

- Boss's will now stop spawning enemies after a long while, to prevent infinite points gained from killing the spawned enemies and leaving the bBoss alive after destroying his other weapons.  The Boss should never stop spawning stuff during a normal length battle.

- Further tweaks to level balance and item balance.

- Optimizations in code structure.

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0.22c Aplha (7/19/4) -

- City of Heroes is still way too hard to stop playing!  Arg!

- New spawn code allows spawning of unique formations of enemies and has lead to more interesting levels!  This version is a huge upgrade to the later levels in terms of interesting design and smoother difficulty curve.

- New enemy - Snakes.  These just randomly slither around the screen dropping mines.  If you destroy the middle part of a Snake, it splits into multiples that can each drop mines.  These didn't turn out to be as cool as I thought they would be, so they won't be used very much.

- Enemy spawning code and physics code was restructured and streamlined to be more efficient and robust.

- Enemy damage amounts, points given, and item costs were adjusted for better balance.

- Defenders will no longer bother to put shields on Spikes.  Spikes are hard enough to kill as it is, and a protected Spike looked too similar to a Defender.

- When you have defeated enough enemies to beat the level, any Spikes still around will float off the edge of the screen and disappear.  This way you don't have to spend a lot of boring time just "cleaning up" on levels where there's a lot of Spikes, since they take a while to kill and aren't really a threat by that point.  If you want full points for the level, try to kill the Spikes first!

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0.21 Alpha (7/8/4) - 

- The Homing Shots upgrade has been removed, and it is now an automatic property of your shots to have that slight homing ability.  Most new players probably won't even notice that their shots correct their angle on near misses anyway, but it should reduce complaints of aiming difficulty for new players.

- A new upgrade has been created, although it just gives you back what you had before - the rapid mines upgrade allows you to drop mines as fast as you want, but now without that upgrade there is a half-second delay between each mine drop where you can't drop any mines.

- You now start the game with enough cash that after the first level, you will have $100 - exactly enough to buy your choice of 3 upgrades.  This way new players actually have some reason to be at the store screen after the first level.  For veteran players, this means you can immediately buy the new rapid mines upgrade after level 1 and be at the same power level you were before except for the first level, with no loss in your previous cash flow (in fact it's an overall increase since you get homing shots for free now).

- Big Mines upgrade was reduced to $150 again.  Prices are still being tweaked as needed.

- The Cash and Point Bonus displays at the end level screen have been altered to be more clear.  Cash now shows your previous cash, the bonus you recieved with a + in front of it, then the total you have now after an = sign (also a - in front of the insurance cost if you have insurance).  So it will look like "Cash: $100 + $35 - $5 Ins. = $130" for example.  This is because some players were confused and thought the bonus was how much total cash they had.

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0.2 Alpha (7/6/4) -

- This version introduces the first boss at level 10!  Good luck!

- Fixed a big bug that gave you points every time you hit a Boomer or Spike with a shot, even if it didn't kill it.  Since these enemies can take several shots to kill, you could get tons of points by hitting them with small shots over and over again!  Whoops!!

- There is now a small effect of shrapnel flying off of an enemy when it is damaged but not destroyed.  This is so you can easily tell if an enemy is taking damage from an attack you used or not.

- Any shot (yours or enemies') will now set off any mine it touches (yours or enemies').

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0.14 Alpha (6/22/4) - 

- Fixed a bug where your high score would not display properly just after submitting it if you had worse than 10th place.

- New enemy, Spikes, are now in the game with a few levels for them.  They haven't really been integrated into most levels yet.  They are the most simplistic AI - they just bounce around the level - but they take a lot of damage to destroy and they can be dangerous if you get close to one of them.

- Leachers now do more damage and slow you down more than before.

- The base cost of the Gravity Well (special move) has been decreased, but the increase in cost each time you buy it has been greatly increased.

- The Hull Upgrade cost has been increased due to the new repair effect it now has.

- The menu system has been changed a bit from player request - now the "Restart" prompt will just restart the game at the first wave rather than returning to the main menu, and the Quit option on the Esc Menu is now an Exit to Main Menu option.  Thus in order to quit the game entirely now use alt-F4 or the Quit option from the main menu.

- Enemies will no longer continually try to attack you even after you're dead.

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0.13 Alpha (6/17/4) -

- City of Heroes is way too fun and consumes much too much of my time!!

- Added some levels with Dodgers in them to test them out more.

- Added code that will create a mbacrash.txt log file in the same directory the executable was in if the game exits abnormally.  This way people trying out the game that can't get it to launch can send me this file and I can get a better idea of where the problem is.  This is temporary and will be removed by release.

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0.12 Alpha (6/7/4) - 

- The gravity well (special move) has been improved - it now fires a nova of shots at the end.  It is more expensive now, however.

- Charge speed upgrade cost lowered.

- Hull upgrade now repairs you as well.

- A new enemy, Dodgers, has been implemented.  However, they don't actually show up in any levels yet so this doesn't mean much.  I haven't decided how I want to use them yet, they may only show up for boss fights.

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0.11 Alpha (6/4/4) - 

- Fixed a problem where sometimes a level would end with enemies or repairs still on the screen, due to something spawning during the brief animation delay before the level truly ended.  Now if something spawns during the animation delay, the game will wait until there is no enemies/repairs on the screen anymore and start the level ending delay again.

- Gunners will now stop moving while charging up a rapid fire volley.  They will still rotate to aim at you, they just won't try moving around to dodge you or your shots.  Once they start firing, they won't even rotate but will stay completely locked in place while shooting.  This will make them a bit easier to kill - just wait until you see them start charging and know that, for a few seconds at least, you can easily move right up next to them and mine them.

- Purchasing the Force Shield will now completely repair you when it is actually purchased so it can immediately be used.  The price was increased a bit.  Also purchasing it will increase the cost of your next Repair just as if you had purchased a Repair.

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0.1 Alpha (6/3/4) -

- Your Minebot will now flash briefly when you have enough charge built up to release a point-blank blast.  It will also flash again when you have full charge once you have the battery upgrade.

- Fixed another bug preventing a level from ending because enemies killed themselves (ran into a wall or something) and thus didn't count toward the number of enemies you needed to kill to end the level.  Now enemies killing themselves counts towards how many you need to destroy to end the level, you just don't get points for them.

- You will no longer be rewarded with a Flawless bonus when you pass a Wave if you got hit enough to lose your Force Shield then got a floating Repair item during the Wave and your Force Shield reactivated.

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0.09 Alpha (6/2/4) - 

- New enemy in the game, Gunners.  They look like Boomers with claws on the front of them, and they fire shots at you when they hold still.  If they hold still long enough, they will charge up for a bit then fire a cone of rapid fire shots for a while.  Gunners can move quickly and will try to stay away from you.  They will also try to dodge your incoming shots.  They will not, however, try to avoid mines.  Mines don't move so they can't detect them, and will often run right into them while dodging you or one of your shots.  Gunners can be destroyed by any shot, mine, or point-blank blast - they have no more health than a Homer.  If they run into you, they will die and they will damage you but only by a very small amount.

- Fixed a bug introduced in version 0.08 that made alt-tabbing not work properly any more.

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0.08b Alpha (6/1/4) -

- I'm back from my vacation!

- Fixed a crash bug relating to a shot hitting too many enemies at the same time.

- Restructured the code for detecting when a level ends to make sure that all levels WILL end, even if somehow an enemy got stuck off screen or something.

- Pressing the V key at any time during the game will switch the V-Synch method of timing frames.  At first the timing is based on refresh rate and polled from the CPU.  If you press V, it polls the video card instead (the reason it does CPU by default is some video cards will lie about the refresh rate from user settings, but the CPU never lies).  Next V press switches to using both CPU and video card (which means half FPS in most cases).  Next V press does manual timing and forces the FPS to be exactly 30.  And the next V press turns off all timing methods and lets the game run at the maximum FPS for your system, regardless of refresh rate.  Pressing it one more time switches back to the default method.  This option was made because some video card configurations seem to have strange timing problems with the default one, so users can switch to whichever method seems to run the smoothest on their system.

- With the above, I was experimenting with the results of different frame rates and discovered that some of the player input calculations were actually different depending on the user's refresh rate - namely the timing for blasts and the rate at which the shot angle changed.  Thus, the player input system has been revamped so that, on my system at least, it responds exactly the same at 30 FPS as at 300 FPS.

- Spawn system changed so that enemies will spawn at the same base rate even when the user is running the game at below 30 FPS (before, below 30 FPS meant some frames were skipped and as a result some enemies would not spawn because the frame they should have spawned at was skipped).

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0.07 Alpha (5/21/4) - 

- Levels completely changed around, in addition to bonus scoring system, cash bonus system, item pricing, and so on.  High score table was wiped.  Have fun!

- You can now skip a level by pressing the + key on your number pad while on the Next Wave screen.  However, doing so will make you unable to submit your high score at the end of the game.  This is just to test out/practice the higher levels without having to go through the whole sequence first.

- The auto-difficulty-increasing system now caps out just below the "completely impossible" level, so with skill you should be able to get to a very high level now without reaching an impossible barrier, although it will be difficult enough that you will eventually run out of lives (hopefully...if people seem to go on indefinitely I will increase the cap).

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0.06 Alpha (5/20/4) - 

- Point-blank blasts should now be easier to perform - you don't have to sit still for quite as long, and you can still move a little bit once you've got it ready without aborting it.  As a consequence, it's more likely to accidently Blast when you meant to Shoot if you tend to pause as you let go of your shot (which most people do).  The code has been rearranged such that I can now adjust the pause time for blasts vs shots with the change of a single constant, so the value can be tweaked for the right balance of performing shots when wanted and blasts when wanted from feedback.

- Small-sized point-blank blasts will no longer instantly kill Boomers.  It will take 2 small-sized blasts or 1 large-sized blast to kill them.

- Your health bar now blinks more rapidly when a leacher is attached to you.

- Fixed a bug introduced in version 0.05b that made Defender shields not appear on other enemies.

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0.05b Alpha (5/19/4) - 

- You can now collect a repair power-up that will sometimes spawn during a wave.  Touching the repair icon before it floats off screen will repair a small bit of damage on your Minebot.

- Repair cost will now only go up at the time you actually purchase a repair, rather than going up in price every wave.  However, how much it goes up depends on what wave it was when you purchased it.  Also, extra lives and gravity wells go up in price each time you buy one, but the increase in cost is the same no matter what wave you buy it in.

- Your health bar will now flash red when you have leachers sucking your life out.

- Hull upgrade cost was reduced, as most players did not feel it was worth it, especially compared to the regenerating properties of the Force Shield.

- Big Mines cost was increased due to how powerful they are with some of the new enemies.

- Absorber range and shot pulling power was slightly reduced.

- Boomers will take a bit more damage from shots now, but still enough that it's usually not worth trying to kill them with shots.

- Some code optimizations were done to improve performance on slower machines.

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0.04 Alpha (5/18/4) -

- Absorbers now fire back at you after absorbing enough energy.  The shots they fire can be absorbed with the Absorption upgrade, but the upgrade is still cheap since you won't have to deal with shots that often (yet).

- Detection of multiple mine hits improved to be much more accurate.  Before, an enemy that required multiple mines to destroy (Boomers and Absorbers) would only count a mine blast as a seperate hit if there had been a significant pause since the last mine had hit it.  This meant that rapid-dropping mines next to it could potentially only count as one hit.  Now, each mine will count as a hit, so you can kill Boomers and Absorbers quickly by dropping 2-3 mines rapidly then moving so that all hit it at once and it will destroy it.

- With the above fix making it much easier to kill Boomers, especially with Big Mines upgrade, Boomers health has been increased back to what it was at version 0.02 Alpha (3 regular mines, 2 big mines).

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0.03b Alpha (5/17/4) -

- It's my birthday today!

- Fixed a bug where some upgrades were not lost on death - their icons were gone and the game behaved as if they were gone, but you would still have extra mines, more health, faster charge speed, etc. without them.

- New enemy, Leachers, now in game.  Leachers are so small that they will not set off mines or attract homing shots, but they will still die if they hit a mine explosion, shot, or point blank blast.  They have the same AI as Homers, but they are much much faster and more manueverable.  When they hit you they don't do any damage, but instead latch on to you and slightly lower your movement speed.  They will also drain your health over time, but very slowly.  The more you have attached the more life lost and slower your movement speed.  The only way to get rid of them once they are attached is with a point blank blast.

- Getting hit by a Leacher will NOT count against your Flawless bonus, since they are nearly impossible to avoid.  However the damage they do could potentially lower a Survival bonus score.

- Another new enemy, Absorbers, now in game.  Absorbers try to maintain a certain distance from you and pull in any of your shots and absorb them.  Then they can fire shots back at you with the absorbed energy (firing back not implemented yet).  They can be killed by mines or blasts, but take more than one mine.

- Fear not!  Leachers and Absorbers are the only enemies planned where using Blasts is the best option, the rest of the enemies will be mostly vulnerable to mines and shots.

- Boomers health was lowered such that it now only takes 2 mines or 1 big mine to destroy them.

- Levels were redesigned a bit to include Leachers, and the bonus points and cash given at the end of each level was adjusted.

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0.02c Alpha (5/12/4) - 

- Fixed a crash bug relating to multiple shots hitting a Boomer on the exact same frame.

- A math error was making Boomers much too vulnerable to Shot damage.  Boomers were intended to be highly resistant to shot damage to encourage the purchase and use of upgrades besides Shot upgrades.  They should be much more resistant to shot damage now, although still killable.

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0.02 Alpha (5/11/4) - 

- Added new explosion effect for dying Defenders.

- Added new enemy, Boomers, which are just bigger and slower Homers that take multiple mines to kill and are resistant to shot damage (although can still be killed by enough shots).

- Fixed a math error with the survival bonus that was actually giving you MORE points for being damaged and LESS points for being nearly undamaged!  Oops!!

- High scores wiped again due to above bug and new enemy.

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0.01 Alpha (5/6/4) -

- Graphical effects have been added for Absorption and Force Shield upgrades.  This means that everything in the game is working except for the the rest of the enemies, the rest of the waves, and the instructions and credits screens.  Yay!

- High scores were wiped again after a bug fix to the scoring system (sometimes bonuses at end of level were extremely high).

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0.009 Alpha (5/5/4) -

- The final upgrade, absorption, has been added.  However, it is missing the graphical effect of the shot being absorbed.  For now it has been made extremely cheap because without any enemy shots to absorb, it's only use at this point is to quickly recharge and refire a bad shot.  Once shooting enemies are in, this upgrade will be extremely valuable as a defensive manuever and the price will reflect that.

- You will now still be given a Flawless bonus even if you get hit if the hit only affected your Force Shield and didn't actually damage your hull.  This adds even more value to the Force Shield item.

- The relative cost for Repair has been reduced, since no one was buying them...

- The high score screen in the game mentions what wave each player got to now.  This way some people can obsess about scores whereas others can just try to get to the highest level they can and survive.

- The game now remembers options that you have changed by storing them in a tiny file in your temp directory (I put it there so you wouldn't have some stupid cfg file floating around your desktop if you run it right from the desktop).

- The code for the force shield has been implemented, although there is currently no graphic/sound effect for it yet.  This upgrade is especially helpful to players that only get hit occasionally, since it's regenerating propety will prevent any permenant hull damage if you don't get hit too often.  Be aware, however, that it is completely useless once you are already damaged!

- The right-click special move item has been implemented.  It's not as impressive looking as I had hoped for but it gets the job done.

- The right-click special move awards a flat rate of 15 points per enemy killed (since it requires no additional skill for different enemy types when using this move, you don't get more points for harder enemies).

- The concept of the regular gravity mines upgrade had to be scrapped.  The problem was that when you were surrounded by enemies, a gravity mine would just make matters worse because you would usually end up between the mine and an enemy and the enemy would fly into you while being sucked in by the mine, making it even harder to dodge enemies.  Thus, it has been replaced by a simpler upgrade - bigger mine explosions.

- To better reflect the planned difficulty curve, the cash bonus per wave has been temporarily increased.  In the final game, the first 10 levels or so will be about the same difficulty as levels 1 and 2 are now, but in this version the game is much harder due to the lack of new enemies to introduce in tutorial fashion.

- High score table has been cleared again due to the above changes.

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0.006 Alpha (5/4/4) - 

- Most of the rest of the upgrade icons have been drawn, although they may be replaced later.

- Tiny versions of the upgrade icons will appear in your score bar for each upgrade you have purchased.

- Insurance is now implemented - if you die you will lose all upgrades unless you have active Insurance.  You can toggle Insurance off and on as much as you want.  If it's active, you will be charged a per-wave fee based on what upgrades you have, but if you die you won't lose any of your upgrades.  If it's not active, there's no fee but if you die you'll lose all upgrades.

- Triple Shot upgrade is now implemented.

- Fixed a problem where sometimes the Wave displayed in the game when submitting your high score would not be properly reflected on the web site.

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0.005 Alpha (4/30/4) - 

- High scores from previous versions of the game were deleted from the web site due to scoring system changes.

- Waves now have a victory screen that rewards you with cash and bonus points when you complete a wave.

- Bonus points awarded depend on how well you survived the wave.  If you never got hit, you get a Flawless bonus that's 1000+100 per level (so level 2 gives 1100, level 3 gives 1200, etc.)  If you never die, you get a survival bonus that varies with how much health you lost during the wave but maxes at 500+50*level.  Finally, if you did die during the level you got will only get a level completion bonus which is 200+10*level.

- Running into the walls damages you even less now (since some players seem to do that much more often than I had anticipated).

- You are given $50+$5 per level (so level 2 gives $55, level 3 gives $60, etc.).  You can use this money to buy certain items between each level.  Not all items can be purchased yet.  The prices on these items will most likely be altered after more testing, and not all of them are available yet.  Here are the items you can buy now:

Repair: Repairs your Minebot to full health instantly.

Homing Shots: The shots from last version (you don't start with these any more)

Mine capacity upgrade: Lets you drop more mines at once.

Charge Max upgrade: Increases maximum size of shots and blasts (you start with smaller maximum charge than before).

Charge speed upgrade: Lets you charge up shots and blasts faster.

Hull upgrade: Gives you 50% more max health.

Extra Minebot: Gives you an extra life.

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0.004 Alpha (4/26/04) -

- Shields from a Defender will now drop after absorbing a single mine blast (if it is not immediately reactivated by a Defender beam).  Thus if you lure an enemy away from the Defender and use two mines you can destroy it without waiting for the shield to wear off naturally.  Also remember that Blasts and Shots are unaffected by Defender shields.

- Shots now have a slight homing ability.  They won't chase down an enemy but they will swerve to connect on a near miss.  In order to not screw up your aim, they have a limited detection range and will target enemies that are closest to the direction they are already traveling first, so they should only swerve to hit an enemy if there isn't one directly in front of them already.  Later on you will need to buy this ability with cash..

- Mines no longer explode when there are too many on the screen - instead, you just can't drop any more mines.  You will have to get rid of the old mines by leading enemies into them or using a point blank blast to set them off.  This is to give the later upgrade of allowing more mines on the screen greater appeal and to add a bit of challenge.

- Score/wave/etc. data at the top of the screen is drawn differently to fix an issue with a particular machine flickering the image.

- Fixed a bug where Defenders were not properly moving towards other enemies at times when they should have been.

- Level system modified such that after the last currently created level, the game will go back to a predefined spot and repeat the levels from that point but with a modifier to make them more difficult each loop through.  This way the game will never actually end, but once you get past a certain point you will have to get past a cycle of the most difficult levels over and over with them getting continuously harder.

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0.003 Alpha (4/25/04) - 

- High score data is now encrypted, so the web site will not accept high scores from previous versions.  If you want to see the high scores without loading up the game, go to www.zauron.net/modules.php?name=MHS

- There is now a visible barrier around the edge of the screen.  You will take a small amount of damage if you run into it.

- Defenders now use a small blade to attack you if you get too close.

- You can no longer move straight through/over Defenders (unless you are moving very fast).

- Defenders' anti-mine shields are now visible on the Defenders themselves.

- Anti-mine shields now flash briefly when hit by a mine explosion to help the player realize that they block mine damage (but not blast or shot damage).

- Defenders will detect collisions with shots better now.

- Level defining system has been made more robust, allowing for spawn frequency to change midway through the level and for the spawning pattern to repeat at different points.  With this new system, Wave 2 will now spawn 5 defenders and nothing else, giving a great opportunity to practice your shot accuracy without worry of more stuff showing up.

- Shots now give bonus points if they kill something after bouncing off a wall or for killing multiple enemies in one shot.  Thus you get more points for getting stylish kills with shots using bank shots or lining up multiple enemies with a big shot.  Of course this is harder to do than other methods of killing enemies.  The way this works is a value is stored in each shot called the ShotBonusMultiplier that starts at 1.  Then whenever an enemy is killed or the shot bounces, a value is added such as .5 or .25.  When the shot actually kills something, the value of that kill is multiplied by the ShotBonusMultiplier to get the final point worth of the kill.  The ShotBonusMultiplier is stored individually for each shot, so future shots are not affected by the multiplier from past shots.

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0.002 Alpha and below (4/5/04 - 4/23/04) -

- Player's Minebot is moved by the mouse and can drop mines (click), fire shots (hold button, move, release) and release point-blank Blasts (hold button, release without moving).

- 1 completed enemy, the Homer, which tries to smash into the player and includes an AI that must detect the player with a limited detection range and radius, but can remember and seek out the player's last known location, and will try to navigate around other enemies so as not to "bunch up" into one big overlapping mass of Homers.

- 1 incomplete enemy, the Defender, which puts little shields around Homers that protect them from player mines and whose AI just tries to slowly move toward any unprotected enemies on the screen.  The Defender still needs to stop player movement, attack at close range, and have its own unique explosion effect before it can be considered complete.

- Player's minebot is damaged by running into Homers, can be destroyed, and will respawn until the player runs out of lives.

- Completed menu system including an Esc menu, main menu, options menu with working sliders for Music Volume, Mouse Sensitivity, and Graphics Detail, and a High Score submission system that interfaces with www.zauron.net.  Only menu items left incomplete are Instructions and Credits (since they will be done when the game is near completion).

- Game includes graphics for player, the 2 enemies, special effects (smoke trails, explosions, beams, shields, etc.) and background.

- Game includes some sound effects, but these may need to be modified or replaced later and new ones added.

- Game includes 6 songs using mod/it/s3m/xm formats obtained from the mod archive (www.modarchive.com).  Current song changes whenever the level changes and whenever the player presses the Space Bar.

- Level/spawning system completed and the first few enemy waves are created for testing purposes.
