Straight from the build
Changelog
Every shipped Gunmetal Orbit version in player language — synced from the same changelog the Steam builds are cut from. If it's here, it's in the game.
v0.52
NEW
- Your commendations now count on Steam. All 24 pilot commendations — from SUIT UP to APEX PILOT — sync to Steam achievements, popping the moment a run enters your Service Record. Commendations you already earned catch up automatically the first time you launch through Steam
IMPROVED
- Your spacer moves like a body, not an action figure. Arms and legs got a full lifelike pass: elbows and knees trail a beat behind the body on thrusts and turns, each leg streams independently instead of scissoring in lockstep, held weapons breathe and sway instead of freezing in a vice grip, and sustained flight settles into a relaxed soft-kneed glide with a loose straddle — no more ramrod legs or mirrored mannequin arms
v0.51
NEW
- Trading a weapon is no longer a blind pick. Buying a weapon with a full rack now raises a TRADE-IN panel: the incoming gun and the one leaving the focused slot side by side — icons, names, tiers, and damage / fire rate / range / DPS with green/red deltas — plus a plain verdict line ("Higher damage — a straight upgrade" / "a sidegrade"). It follows your focus live as you sweep the rack, warns before you break up a MERGE pair, and the rest of the hand dims so the decision owns the room
- Your own weapons answer at a glance. Focusing any rack slot (stick or mouse) now shows that gun's full dossier above your slate — name, tier, damage, fire rate, DPS, range, tags, and its combine status — no select needed
- Bug fixes and performance improvements. (Online co-op groundwork lands under the hood — nothing player-visible in this build)
FIXED
- Card prices could vanish mid-visit. On Steam Deck, a session's worth of buys and rerolls could leave the REPLACE verb and price permanently blank on otherwise healthy cards — the offer footer is now rebuilt fresh on every refresh so it can never stick
- Replace mode is fenced in. While picking a slot to swap, focus can no longer wander up into the offer hand or down onto LAUNCH mid-trade; B/ESC backs out, the recycle row states the task, and MERGE badges stay lit so you can see what a swap would break
v0.50
IMPROVED
- Ore chunks and credit motes got a full remodel. Dropped ore is now a real fractured basalt chunk with a cluster of sharp glowing crystals in the ore's tier color — Dust gray, Ferrite orange, Cobalt blue, Plasma purple — instead of a bare floating prism, and the Reclaimer's cargo rack now carries the same chunks when it steals from you. Credit motes are now spinning emerald chips: a faceted deep-green gem gripped in a gunmetal clamp, tipped toward the camera and slowly rotating so the money-green read is unmistakable at combat range
NEW
- Nine new build-defining items across four families. GRAZE turns near-misses into a resource — Static Harvest banks ultimate charge when an enemy bolt slides past you, Phase Rebate cashes clean dodges into stacking damage, and Deathwish Coils keeps your kill streak alive while you thread the pattern. SURGE makes the ultimate meter a build axis — Capacitor Bleed pays you for holding a charged super, Overcharge Coils lets the meter overfill to 150% for a bigger blast, and Discharge Loop ignites OVERDRIVE every time you fire it. BANKER pays for the credits you refuse to spend — Dividend Engine converts your wallet into damage, Escrow Plating into armor. And the Monomania Lens rewrites the rules: +12% damage and +8% attack speed for every weapon slot you leave empty
- The Corsair. A pirate boarding cutter that hunts miners with heavy holds — fly light and you'll never see one, run a stuffed hold and it comes for the cargo. Its slashing pass cuts your straps, knocking extra chunks loose. Kills pay well, and the first one each wave is announced
- Two new elite powers. SIPHON latches a visible drain tether onto you and pulls a carried chunk every two seconds — break the line or kill it (it carries your ore, and killing it drops every chunk back). WARPING blinks away from heavy single hits, the anti-burst mirror of PLATED's anti-chip armor
v0.49
FIXED
- Title screen colors restored. v0.48's title-jank fix accidentally washed the key art dark and muddy in the shipped game (the drift shader rendered differently on the real renderer than on the test renderer that verified it). The drift now moves the plate itself at sub-pixel precision with no custom shader involved — full art fidelity back, smooth drift kept
v0.48
IMPROVED
- The Spacer Roster is a real hangar now. Choosing your exosuit happens in the lit roster bay from the key art — all four spacers standing full-body on their own platforms — instead of a row of flat cards on a dim background
- The roster cards read cleanly at a glance. Every card's ultimate sits on the same line across all four spacers, so you can compare supers by scanning across instead of hunting for them
- Rookie is now the Drifter. The starter spacer's old name read like a difficulty setting next to the Hazard tiers; every suit on the roster now carries a role name. Existing runs and saves carry over untouched
- The title screen stopped twitching. The key art's slow idle drift used to freeze and visibly snap a pixel sideways every second or so; it now glides smoothly
- Your chosen Hazard level glows. On Run Configuration the selected H-tier lights up gold with a halo — no more reading the fine print to confirm what you picked
- The Outfitter got out of your way. Your build slate now shows just your spacer and the six-slot weapon rack; the full stat dashboard and passive-item list live one press away behind VIEW STATS (which also fixes the passives line clipping off the slate's fold)
- Weapon slots and offer cards got bigger. The rack's slots grew about a third, offer cards grew and now sit evenly spaced across the bay instead of drifting with the camera perspective
- Your guns shoot what's actually closest. Auto-targeting now compares the nearest enemy and the nearest rock and fires at whichever is physically nearer (enemies win ties) — no more shooting past the rock you're pinned against. Combat drones still ignore rocks
v0.47
IMPROVED
- BULLET STORM actually looks like a bullet storm. The Gunner's ultimate now pours a swarm of homing tracer rounds out of the astronaut into every enemy on the field — no more thin lasers strobing — with a muzzle flare per volley, heavier minigun audio, and a cracking finisher on the last volley
- The Gunner plants while the storm runs. Movement and dash freeze for the ~1.3-second channel (the guns keep firing), so unleashing the super is a commitment instead of a free kite
- The ultimate meter glows when it's charged. A soft gold halo pulses around the full meter — alongside the existing READY banner and audio cue — so you can feel it's ready without staring at the bar
- Ultimates charge a little slower. All four supers cost about 20% more kills to charge, so they land as wave-turners instead of an always-up button
v0.46
FIXED
- REPLACE / COMBINE prices no longer spill out of the Outfitter cards. With a full weapon rack, the action word now sits on its own line above the price, so the whole footer stays inside the card on the Deck
v0.45
NEW
- Options got a real settings menu. The old three-slider panel is now a proper tabbed menu — AUDIO, VIDEO, GAMEPLAY, CONTROLS — that you flip through with LB / RB (or by clicking the tabs), with every setting applying instantly and saving automatically
- AUDIO: Master Volume joins the Music and SFX sliders, so you can turn everything down with one rail
- VIDEO: Fullscreen / windowed display mode, V-Sync (off by default), and an FPS counter overlay
- GAMEPLAY: Damage Numbers, a Screen Shake strength slider, and a Screen Flash setting (Full / Reduced / Off) for photosensitive players
- CONTROLS: Invert Aim Y for the right stick and an adjustable stick deadzone, alongside the live input-device readout and control hints
- The main menu has been rebuilt to match the game's key art. The title screen now opens on the full Gunmetal Orbit hero shot — the six-armed exosuit, the orbital station, the planet and the belt — with the chrome GUNMETAL ORBIT logo across the top and a slow drift that keeps the frame alive
- The menu hardware is real hardware now. COMMAND DECK and the run-status readout sit on the art as dark smoked glass instead of boxy grey panels, and the active entry glows instead of just changing outline
- Your run-in-progress panel actually reads like a status board. A station schematic and crew glyph light up beside a wave-progress rail that fills as you push deeper into a run
v0.44
IMPROVED
- The ultimate hits like the biggest weapon in the game now. Charging your super and unleashing it both play authored, hard-hitting audio — a deep dubstep detonation on fire and a confident armed-and-ready cue — instead of the old thin synth beeps
- Every sound in the game is now authored audio — no synthesizer music anywhere. The soundtrack is the real dubstep jukebox in every phase; the old placeholder synth music beds are gone for good
v0.43
FIXED
- Analog stick menu navigation is now smooth and reliable on every screen. Push to move, hold to scroll — the title menu, Spacer Roster, Run Configuration, Options, the Outfitter, level-up picks, and the Outpost blueprint all respond identically, with no dead pushes and no double-steps. The D-pad also repeats while held
- Button prompts can no longer get stuck showing keyboard controls while you play on a controller. Pressing any pad button in the Outfitter, level-up, or Outpost screens flips the prompts and glyphs back instantly
- Steam Deck now gets a real gamepad out of the box. The game's Steam Input default is set to the Generic Gamepad template, so sticks, glyphs, LB dash, X lock, and hold-B launch behave exactly like the Xbox pad — no more keyboard-emulation weirdness
IMPROVED
- Docking is smoother on Steam Deck. The game no longer renders the entire invisible arena behind the Outfitter, and the one-time stutter the first time you docked each session is gone
- LAUNCH is instant. Holding B (or clicking LAUNCH) departs immediately — no departure delay
v0.42
IMPROVED
- The central cargo station is now half its former footprint. The dock no longer dominates the combat frame, leaving the astronaut, enemies, and surrounding Industrial Belt room to breathe while keeping the same generous cargo delivery ring
v0.41
FIXED
- Steam Deck stick navigation works across every setup screen and the Outfitter. Normal left-stick movement now changes focus without needing near-full deflection, and the D-pad follows the same explicit routes
- Holding B launches reliably from the Outfitter. Steam Input repeat packets can no longer restart the hold timer and leave the launch plate stuck
- Controller back navigation is complete. B now returns from Spacer Select and Run Configuration instead of trapping the player in setup
- The Deck-native layouts fit again. Spacer cards stay above the controller rail, and the Outfitter slate shows the weapon rack and recycle action instead of cutting them off at the bottom edge
- PC menu controls match their prompts. WASD now navigates menus alongside the arrow keys, with the full controller and keyboard layouts shown in Options
v0.40
NEW
- The Outfitter bay is alive. Docking now wakes the room around you: the left-wall monitor is a real operations terminal (scrolling stock manifest, telemetry trace, rotating item scan, transfer/maintenance bulletins), fans turn behind the wall grilles, status LEDs breathe on every cabinet, the airlock runs a slow diagnostic ring, and three counter readouts track pedestal power, stock, and station feed. Dust drifts through the window light and the projector beams, a floor vent purges coolant every half minute or so, and passing traffic outside sweeps a soft reflection across the deck
- Every shop action plays out in the room. Entering docks the pedestals up left-to-right before your offers materialize. Hovering an offer spins its projector ring up and strengthens its light. Buying compresses the hologram into its pedestal and sends a charge to your wallet. Locking clamps the pedestal into an amber secured state. Reroll dissolves the hand into scanning noise and rebuilds it in sequence. An unaffordable offer is refused physically — the pedestal knocks back and spits red. Launching dims the whole bay into departure mode with clearance on the terminal before the round starts
- The dock has a voice. A low electrical-and-ventilation bed loops under the jukebox, with quiet terminal chatter, relay clicks, distant hull groans, a muffled rumble when a craft passes the window, and a projector tone per offer tier — commons hum low, prototypes chime bright
- A maintenance drone occasionally drifts the counter, pauses to scan a pedestal, and moves on; a rare station tender silhouette crosses the far window
IMPROVED
- The Industrial Belt finally looks like the place in the key art. A monumental layered station, attached cargo and relay works, armored bridges, cranes, docking machinery, and antenna structures now form one working outpost instead of a few disconnected props
- The first map has real rock and real space. Dark fractured crags, jagged overhangs, compact mineable asteroids with restrained cyan seams, and a deep navy-blue nebula replace the soft prototype rocks, oversized purple crystals, and flat background treatment
- Home base has clearer physical boundaries. The solid station core, cargo sell ring, and eight-module construction ring now each use their own readable footprint, while enemy spawns sweep for a collision-safe point around every industrial structure
FIXED
- Bug fixes and performance improvements.
v0.39
NEW
- Bosses announce themselves — and show their health. Boss waves open with a "⚠ BOSS — NORTH RIM ⚠"-style banner naming the compass front, an authored menacing braam sounds as the boss materializes, and a boss HP bar rides under the wave timer while one is alive (the Hazard-5 twins share one bar)
- You can pause at the dock. MENU/START now works in the Outfitter with the same resume/options/quit menu as mid-wave — and since the dock IS the save point, the quit confirm honestly says your run is saved right there instead of warning about lost progress
IMPROVED
- The flight-controls hint actually reaches new pilots. It used to fade out behind the title menus before anyone ever launched; now it appears when wave 1 starts and only marks itself seen once you've had the full read. The gamepad hint also finally mentions docking at the pad to sell
- Alt-tabbing no longer gets you killed. The game pauses itself when the window loses focus, so you come back to a held wave instead of a fresh hit
- Locking a shop card sounds like locking a shop card. The authored heavy steel-latch cue replaces the reused buy blip
- The pre-boss warning now says "BOSS INBOUND" instead of colliding with the Hazard difficulty dial's name
FIXED
- Banked free rerolls ride the save schema properly. Express Contract's banked rerolls were round-tripping through the save's foreign-key side channel instead of the whitelisted schema; they're covered now, with a regression guard so no future field drifts the same way
v0.38
IMPROVED
- The Outfitter now looks like a modern station bay. A dense armored interior, panoramic planet window, layered hull panels, warm ceiling practicals, cool hologram light, and a polished deck replace the prototype-looking room
- Every offer feels physically projected into the space. Four detailed hex plinths throw animated scan rays and colored light into the room, with a white-hot cyan focus state and restrained amber accents on idle offers
- The whole shop is framed like the approved target. Four readable glass offer cards, a compact handheld build slate, a centered controller rail, and an unobstructed launch action keep the room visible while preserving buy, lock, reroll, compare, and launch controls
v0.37
IMPROVED
- The display pedestals are the real thing now. Rebuilt as faceted hexagonal columns — dark armored graphite panels, twin teal light bands, a glowing hex ring at the floor, and warm orange chamfers at the base — matching the target look instead of reading as round drums
- The bay got its final light pass. Hologram beams read teal down their whole length (hot only at the projector lens), the warm ceiling ribs glow like recessed station lighting without competing with the card labels, the planet vista shines clearly through the bay window, and the polished deck mirrors the pedestal rings and beams
- The Outfitter bay finally fits on screen — and looks alive. The camera pulled back so you see the whole dock: all four display pedestals base-to-top, the ceiling, and the reflective deck stretching out in front of you. The hologram projections got real presence — bright streaked cones of light rising off every pedestal with a hot projector ring at the lens, warm orange light pooling at each pedestal's base, and the planet vista glowing through the bay window
- Cleaner, glassier holo cards. Offer cards shrank to a tighter reference size and now read as true glass — the bay and the beams show through them — with a proper header band (item type + rarity), ruled stat tables, corner ticks, and a gold price strip. The big mid-screen COMPARE box is gone; comparisons now appear as a compact strip beside your build slate so they never hide the room
- A tighter cockpit-style HUD. One centered button-hint pill (BUY / LOCK / REROLL), a compact wave preview, a restyled reroll pill, and a new center reticle — plus your build slate now fits every stat and the weapon rack without scrolling
v0.36
NEW
- The Outfitter went holographic. Offers now beam up out of the pedestals as teal hologram projections: every card floats on its own cone of light (with a live projector flicker), the selected card's edge snaps white-hot, and buying an offer powers its beam down. Your build readout is a translucent handheld holo-slate at bottom-left, the weapon-compare readout is a matching hologram band, and the old dark menu overlay is gone — you're standing in the bay looking at its projections, not reading a screen drawn over it
v0.35
NEW
- The Outfitter is now a real place. Docking drops you into a dark station bay rendered behind the shop screen: four hexagonal display pedestals light up with your offers (ring color matches the item's rarity, the weapon itself slowly turning on top), warm light pools spill onto the deck, and the bay is dressed with a vendor counter, a dubstep jukebox, a relic display case, cargo crates, and the launch airlock — its status bar flips green while you hold LAUNCH
- A real view of space. The bay's viewport window looks out on a planet turning below — city lights glittering on its night side — with a distant sun and nebula beyond
- Every prop in the bay carries AAA-grade painted textures (armored hull plating, worn deck plates, brass trim) with normal-mapped surface detail, bloom, soft shadows, and floor reflections
v0.34
IMPROVED
- Bug fixes and performance improvements (development test tooling can no longer touch any real save file, on any machine)
v0.33
IMPROVED
- Ultimates now LOOK like ultimates. Firing your super slams a full-screen flash in your spacer's colors, punches a pillar of light into the sky, and rolls a double shockwave ring out to the real blast radius — and your spacer visibly throws it with a crouch-and-pop flourish instead of the blast just happening nearby. NOVA CHARGE and BASTION SLAM now spark every enemy they hit, BULLET STORM's volleys pour out of the Gunner with a muzzle flare, MOTHERLODE's seismic pulse is a gold field-wide wave worthy of the name, and BASTION SLAM pops a green +hull number so the patch is felt where you're looking
v0.32
NEW
- Ultimates — every spacer now has a super. Kills feed a new gold charge meter beside your dash bar (elites and bosses fill it fast). When it reads READY, press RB (Q on keyboard) and your character's signature move fires: the Rookie's NOVA CHARGE detonates a massive shockwave around you, the Gunner's BULLET STORM rakes every enemy on the field with eight minigun volleys, the Prospector's MOTHERLODE cracks every rock on the map in one seismic pulse and drags the loose ore home, and the Bulkhead's BASTION SLAM hurls everything back and patches 30% of the suit. Charge banks between waves and survives a save/quit, and every super scales with your Damage (and Explosion) stats — the meter matters at wave 20, not just wave 2. The Spacer Roster cards now advertise each super, and firing one has its own authored-weight blast cue
v0.31
NEW
- Synergy items — builds now live in how you fly, not just your stat sheet. Twelve new Outfitter items key off what you actually do in the field, in five families the cards call out loud: GREED pays for flying with a heavy hold (Ballast Rounds turns carried ore into damage, Pressure Manifold spins the guns up while you're half full, and the relic Midas Hold removes the greed cap entirely — but real hits spill harder), COURIER pays the delivery route (Dock Fever adds float speed per streak step, the relic Gilded Circuit turns the streak into damage, and Express Contract banks a FREE shop reroll the first time each wave you deliver at max streak), SPILL turns getting hit into a plan (Salvage Insurance spills less and gives you longer to recover it, Volatile Cargo detonates your spilled chunks into nearby enemies), RAMPAGE rides the kill streak (Adrenal Feed feeds hull back per streak step, Hot Barrel adds pierce and damage while OVERDRIVE is hot), and MINING makes the rocks fight for you (Core Tap keeps your kill streak alive when you break a rock, Seismic Charges detonates every rock you crack). Blast items scale with your Explosion stats; stackable ones stack
- Synergy cards read at a glance. Each family has its own color chip on the card and states its rule in plain words; the Outfitter's REROLL button shows FREE ×N while Express Contract rerolls are banked
v0.30
FIXED
- Your progress survives every update, for good. Installing a new build can no longer wipe or reset a run. Saves from older versions always load forward (nothing you earned is dropped), a save written by a newer build than you're running is never quietly overwritten, and a bad launch can't stomp your slot with a blank profile — the game now refuses to save until it has actually loaded or started a real run. A hidden per-version backup is also kept as a last-ditch safety net
v0.29
IMPROVED
- No more random mid-flight freeze. The game could lock up for a second or two at seemingly random moments during a wave — while you were scooping ore, banking scrap, or trading hits. That stall is gone: the soundtrack and every sound effect now load up front behind the loading screen instead of stopping the game the first time a song rolls over
v0.28
NEW
- Magnetar — the gravity well. From wave 8, a floating gyroscope of three counter-rotating armored rings parks at mid range and charges its core behind an honest ground ring that marks the exact pull radius. Then it drags — you and any loose ore chunks bend toward it for a second before it snaps a radial pulse with real knockback. Your thrusters always overpower the pull and your guns never stop working; killing it during the wind-up or the drag cancels the attack on the spot. Lazy circle-kiting now has a counter that isn't just another chaser. Two wells maximum at once
- Ore Reclaimer — the thief. From wave 5, an industrial salvage scarab swoops in hunting the ore chunks you haven't scooped yet. It grabs up to three (you can watch them lock into its cargo cage), then bolts for the arena rim. Kill it before it crosses and every stolen chunk drops right back; let it escape and the haul is gone. It barely fights back — it doesn't have to. It never touches ore you've banked or the chunks knocked loose from your own cargo, and no more than two thieves work the field at once
IMPROVED
- Four enemies got their own faces. The Reaver, Weaver, Juggernaut, and Aegis Warden now fly unique production bodies instead of placeholder shapes or borrowed hulls: the Reaver is a low crescent predator with forward sickle blades, the Weaver a four-fin plasma loom with glowing spool drums, the Juggernaut a colossal near-black dreadplate ram with a furnace-red visor, and the Warden a steel-blue gunship behind two canted shield vanes. Every silhouette reads at a glance on the Deck
- Enemies move like machines now. The Reaver pitches into its committed slashing pass and folds out of it, the Weaver sways through its strafing runs and compresses at each turn, the Juggernaut sways heavy and recoils when its ram connects, and the Warden widens its stance through its firing tell and kicks with each rail shot — all honest reads of what each enemy is actually doing
v0.27
IMPROVED
- Smoother, steadier combat frames — second slice of the locked-60-on-Deck pass, aimed at the frame-time spikes of dense late waves. Same aim feel, same balance: verified by the full autoplay loop and all 25 weapons landing damage with zero script errors
- Bug fixes and performance improvements (third locked-60-on-Deck slice: sustained fire no longer allocates)
- The title screen now hangs in real deep space. The menu backdrop is the game's own sky — drifting nebula, stars, and a distant landmark planet — instead of an empty gradient with a hard seam across the middle. The hero statue is haloed against the dark, its jets read as tight thrust plumes instead of puffs, the GUNMETAL ORBIT marquee glows like a lit sign, and the whole screen fades up in a quick staggered entrance on boot
- Sharper title hero. The menu statue now ships from the higher-fidelity Studio export with best-quality texture compression and stronger anti-aliasing on the menu stage
FIXED
- The Flight Record plate no longer wraps the best-run line mid-word ("MINING RUSH H0" used to break into "RUSH HO")
v0.26
IMPROVED
- Smoother frame rate, same look — first slice of the locked-60-on-Deck performance pass: cheaper anti-aliasing and the removal of an invisible ambient-occlusion pass and debris shadows. Verified pixel-for-pixel that combat and the Outfitter read identically before and after
FIXED
- Service Record selections now read as one clean focus frame. The selected commendation keeps its complete white clamp and even gold halo instead of clipping into disconnected stripes at the edges of the scroll panel
v0.25
FIXED
- The end-of-run screen always fits on the screen now. A run that earned a double-digit commendation haul used to push the GO ENDLESS / END RUN (or NEW RUN / MAIN MENU) buttons clean off the bottom of the display — on the Deck and on desktop alike (Austin's Deck photo, 2026-07-15). Big hauls now read as a compact gold pill row under "COMMENDATIONS EARNED" (the tail folds into "+N MORE" — the full list always lives in the Service Record), and pressing B/Esc on the screen always backs out to the safe choice
- The outpost's module detail panel now scrolls inside its frame instead of pushing its BACK button below the screen on a fully built Endless station
- Outfitter build-panel stat numbers no longer clip on the right once the build grows long enough to scroll
- Spacer cards no longer spill the VICTORIES win-marks row past the card's bottom edge once a spacer has several hazard wins
- The title screen's run-status plate now grows upward, so three active save slots with long mode names can't walk its last lines off the screen
v0.24
NEW
- Sector shifts keep the belt fresh (Jay's playtest, LC-5574): from wave 4, every few waves the run drifts into a new sector, announced with an "ENTERING: …" banner. Scrap Drift turns the field warm amber with denser rocks and slightly richer ore; Ion Storm bathes the belt in electric blue-violet and hurls a telegraphed ion surge at one zone of the arena every 15 seconds — a warning ring gives you 3 seconds to clear out (or to herd the swarm into it: enemies caught in the surge mostly die). Waves 1–3 are always the calm Open Belt
IMPROVED
- Mousing over a spacer or a mode card now moves the same highlight the sticks and arrow keys drive — the mouse and the controller finally agree on what's selected (Jay's playtest, LC-5574)
- The hazard ladder is now a real ladder: a fresh profile starts with Hazard 0 only; win it to unlock H1, and each victory opens the next rung. Mining Rush and Union Rules are now visible-but-locked goals on the mode screen — Mining Rush opens with a Hazard 1 win, Union Rules with a Hazard 2 win. Nobody loses anything already earned: every hazard you've ever flown stays unlocked
v0.23
IMPROVED
- The outpost finally shows its work (Austin's Deck read: "feels like it does nothing"). Every built module now reads as YOURS at a glance: a glowing family-colored plinth ring at its socket, a powered beacon light, and a floating name holo (SENTRY, AEGIS II, DRONES…) in the same vocabulary as the HUD badges. Tier-II modules glow brighter and wear their rank
- Module work is credited on screen as it happens: sentry and aegis kills pop a gold/teal tag on the target, every aegis interception calls "BLOCKED", drone deliveries pop "DRONE +ORE" at the pad, and Repair Wing announces its hull patch instead of healing silently
- A new SENTRY ×kills badge joins the in-wave outpost readout, and the wave-end banner now carries the outpost's shift report — "OUTPOST: 4 KILLS · 6 ORE HAULED · 2 BLOCKED" — so every wave ends with proof of what the station did for you
FIXED
- Every run now counts toward your Service Record, not just the ones you finish. Starting a New Run over an old save used to erase that run as if it never happened — its waves, kills, credits, and flight time now land in your career stats, commendation progress, and the flight log (shown as SCRUBBED) the moment you overwrite it
- Going Endless no longer forfeits your victory. Clearing a contract and pushing into Endless used to log the run as a plain loss if you eventually went down — the win, the hazard unlock, and the spacer's victory crest are now recorded the moment the final wave clears, no matter how the run ends
- Continuing a save that was docked at the start of the final wave no longer skips straight to the victory screen — you fly the last wave for real
v0.22
IMPROVED
- The game now boots to its own splash screen — the Gunmetal Orbit emblem and wordmark on the deep-space navy — instead of the stock Godot logo
BALANCE
- Run length now scales with hazard (Austin's call, top tuned down the same day): Standard and Union Rules runs are 10 waves at H0, then +4 per hazard level — 14, 18, 22, 26, and 30 at H5 — so a low-hazard run is a quick patrol again instead of a 20-wave victory lap, and the high-hazard runs are real campaigns. Mining Rush stays a fixed 10-wave sprint; Endless stays uncapped
- Long runs are paced, not stretched: campaigns past 20 waves field a mid-boss every 10th wave (skipped within 5 waves of the finale so bosses never stack back-to-back; the twin boss stays an H5 final-wave flourish) and schedule extra elite/horde special waves spread across the whole run instead of crammed into the back half
- The outpost keeps pace with any run length: station milestones now land at 20/40/60/80% of the run (2/4/6/8 on an H0 patrol, 6/12/18/24 on the H5 campaign), with construction objectives still arriving the wave before each milestone
- The run setup screen shows the real wave count live as you move across the hazard row
v0.21
NEW
- Every commendation now carries its own HD emblem — 24 unique machined-hardware icons in the Service Record ladder, glowing gold in a lit socket when earned, dimmed steel while locked, with a live progress bar on every locked card
- New commendation: FULL ROSTER — win a run with every spacer. The Service Record career panel now tracks it ("Spacers mastered 2 / 4")
IMPROVED
- Save hardening: the flight history and options files now recover from their backup generation after a corrupted write, the same protection the run slots and lifetime record already had
- Saves now live in a permanent home (`GunmetalOrbit/` in your OS profile) that will never move again — and is Steam Cloud-ready for the day the game ships on Steam. Existing progress is found and carried over automatically on first launch
v0.20
NEW
- SERVICE RECORD — a new RECORDS screen on the title menu shows your whole career: lifetime totals (runs, victories, critters cleared, credits earned, time in the belt), your best wave, streak, and haul, your last five flights, and a 23-commendation ladder. Locked commendations show honest progress ("7,214 / 10,000"); unlocked ones carry the date you earned them
- Commendations — 23 named career achievements, from SUIT UP (finish your first run) to APEX PILOT (win at Hazard 5). Fresh unlocks are celebrated right on the run-end screen as gold pills
- Your career now survives forever: lifetime totals accumulate in their own record, so nothing is lost when older runs roll off the 50-run flight history. Existing pilots are migrated automatically — every run you've already flown counts from the first boot
IMPROVED
- The save-slot picker now shows when each run was last saved ("07-14 22:36"), so you know which spacer you left where
IMPROVED
- The run's ending is a moment now: HULL BREACH lands in ember red and SECTOR CLEARED in triumph teal — a colored verdict rail, an animated entrance, stats that read out one by one with kill and credit totals counting up, and death lines that rotate so the hundredth breach doesn't read like the first
- Combining weapons finally FEELS like the tier-up it is: the upgraded slot punches and a gold "SMG III ONLINE" ribbon rises off the rack with the level-up sting — on the rack merge and on full-rack twin purchases alike
- The end screen now brags your hottest kill streak of the run ("Best kill streak ×17") — shown once a streak was worth talking about, archived with the run history
v0.19
NEW
- RICH VEIN events: every third normal wave (from wave 3), a cluster of high-tier ore surfaces at a called compass point — "RICH VEIN — EAST RIM — 25s" — and collapses when the countdown ends. Cross the arena, mine it under fire, get greedy: purposeful movement every few waves instead of the same orbit (Austin's engagement feedback)
- Two new elite powers join VOLATILE, REGENERATING, and PLATED: PHALANX projects a standoff field that soaks shots fired from range — dive inside its bubble to hurt it — and BERSERKER erupts into a one-way speed rage below half health, glowing hot so you see it coming
- Banking at the pad now shows its math: every delivery pops a payout breakdown — "+214 ¤ · GREED ×1.22 · STREAK ×1.15" — so the reward for flying home mid-wave is visible, not a mystery (Austin: "wasn't sure if returning was rewarded." It is: streaks only build on real trips, and hauling risks a spill — now the pad says so)
v0.18
IMPROVED
- Floating damage and crit numbers are ~15% smaller (Austin's Deck read: they crowded the fight) — still readable at arm's length, less noise over the action
v0.17
BALANCE
- A well-played first wave now buys something (Austin's v0.16 report: nothing affordable until round 4): Dust chunks pay 3 instead of 2, a FLAWLESS wave 1 pays 31, and the round-2 shop hand is guaranteed to contain at least one offer within a good opener's budget — work hard in wave 1, walk out of dock one with a purchase
IMPROVED
- Waves no longer go quiet before the bell (Austin's v0.16 report: wave 9 emptied out with time left): once a wave's spawn budget is spent, normal enemies keep trickling in at a relaxed pace while there's still ore to mine — you work the leftover rocks under fire, not in silence. Mine the field out and the trickle stops, so clearing everything early still ends the wave and still pays FAST CLEAR
v0.16
BALANCE
- Getting rich no longer levels you up (the LC-5495 headline fix, confirmed by two independent audits): scrap XP now measures the threat you killed, while Harvesting, the run economy, and your kill streak pay out as credits only. Income builds still print money — they just stop printing free stat picks with it
NEW
- H0 and H1 runs finally have a wave worth talking about: every low-hazard run now schedules one real special wave (elite or horde) in its back half, with the full kit — the compass-lane telegraph, the dock preview warning, the affix banner, and the outpost reacting. H2/H3 step up from one scheduled special to two, so the ladder reads 1/1/2/2/3/3
v0.15
BALANCE
- Gear prices now track the wave economy (Austin's round-two report: ~10K by wave 10 on H2 still bought everything). Shop offers keep their sticker price early, then cost curves upward through the run — about ×2.7 at wave 10 and ×6.5 at wave 20 — so a mid-run dock buys a meaningful few upgrades, not the whole shelf. You still get rich; the shelf just keeps pace
- High-tier ore arrives a touch later and saturates slower: Cobalt and Plasma odds climb more gently through the mid-game, so the ore income curve rises instead of exploding — Plasma is a prize again, not the default rock by wave 8
v0.14
IMPROVED
- Every icon in the game — stat upgrades, weapons, credits — has been redrawn in the gunmetal-industrial look: dark machined steel, luminous cyan energy, ember-orange heat. The soft cozy-era icon set is gone
- The character roster portraits now match the game: hard heroic exosuit spacers instead of the old cozy art
- Level-up cards now light their art the same way Outfitter cards do: a rarity-tinted glow socket sits behind every icon, quiet steel on Commons, louder as the tier climbs
- The title screen and pause menu command decks now sit in a modeled equipment-cabinet frame — machined bevel, amber rail, corner screws — instead of a flat bordered panel
- Icons and portraits no longer shimmer or alias when drawn small on the Deck's screen
v0.13
BALANCE
- The credit firehose is off (Austin's Deck report: "tens of thousands per wave"). All income — ore sales and scrap alike — now runs at its real tuning instead of the 2× debug generosity the project had been playtested on
- Harvesting now pays full value up to +100%, then half value beyond it — greed builds still scale, but harvesting can no longer buy itself into a runaway. The build panel shows your real effective bonus, and the stat's description says so up front
- Waves now genuinely climb: enemy contact, bolt, and boss-sting damage all ramp +3% per wave (about +57% by wave 20), and past wave 10 enemy hull gains a compounding kicker on top of its normal growth — so a snowballing build keeps meeting opposition worth respecting
v0.12
FIXED
- Upgrading a tiered weapon with a full rack actually works now (Austin's Deck report: an SMG II with an SMG I on offer had no path forward). With all six slots filled, any offer of a weapon you already own now arrives AT your owned tier — so buying it is a straight COMBINE toward the next tier instead of a pointless downgrade-replace. With open slots nothing changes: cheap low-tier copies for slot-filling builds still roll
v0.11
IMPROVED
- Combining weapons is now one press (Austin's first Deck-session feedback): merge-ready slots light up gold with a MERGE badge on BOTH twins, and LB combines the focused slot on the spot — from anywhere else in the shop, LB jumps you straight to a merge-ready slot. The old hunt (select a slot, deselect, try the next, navigate to the COMBINE button) is gone
- Replacing a weapon on a full rack is now a guided flow: press A on any weapon card and the rack lights up — pick the slot to swap with A, or back out with B. The dead "SELECT SLOT" no-op and its manual round-trip are retired; full-rack weapon cards now always show their REPLACE price
- The build panel finally scrolls with the stick: moving focus below the fold pulls the passive-items strip into view, so long-run builds are actually readable on the Deck
- The shop's button hints now follow what the pad can do right now — replace mode, a merge-ready slot, or the normal buy/lock/reroll set — and keyboard players get C to combine
v0.10
NEW
- Your hull now rides with you: a health bar floats under your spacer all fight long — green, amber, then red — so you always know how close the run is to ending without looking away from the action
- Every real hit shows its cost: a red damage number pops off your spacer with exactly what that bolt or contact took
- Critical hull is a state you can feel, not a flash you can miss: below a quarter hull the screen edge breathes red and an alarm sounds until you heal back over the line
- OVERDRIVE: pin your kill streak at its cap and your guns fire 10% faster until the streak breaks — the banner calls it, the streak chip burns red, hold the heat
- Elites now roll an affix, named in the wave banner so the counterplay is announced: VOLATILE dies in a death nova (respect the corpse), REGENERATING heals itself whenever you leave it alone, PLATED wears Juggernaut-grade armor that taxes chip fire
- The Hazard ladder: H0 and H1 are open from the start — win a run at a hazard level to unlock the next. Every hazard you've already flown stays unlocked, so nobody loses access they had
- Spacer victories now show on the roster: each character card lists the hazard levels it has won at, so the "clear every hazard with every spacer" campaign is visible at a glance
v0.9
IMPROVED
- The Outfitter got a real card design: every offer now carries a colored rarity rail across its top, a tinted light wash down the card face, and a glowing backplate behind its art — Refined, Prototype, and Relic offers read from across the room while Commons stay quiet steel. The selected card glows in its tier color, the SOLD stamp lands at a tilt, and your credits sit in a proper wallet chip
- Your spacer's portrait now sits in a frame tinted to their suit color, and the build panel's sections are divided by clean hardware rules instead of floating labels
- Every enemy now rides an accent-colored light pool that lifts its silhouette off the dark void — you can read a threat crossing the deepest nebula pocket, and elites and bosses burn wider and hotter
- Asteroids stopped cloning themselves: every rock now varies in tone, warmth, and silhouette, and richer ore tiers tint the whole boulder so a Plasma rock reads purple at a glance, not just by its crystals
- The combat frame is now graded with a subtle cool edge vignette, so the arena reads like a finished game instead of a raw viewport
FIXED
- Five pieces of shop art that had shipped as corrupt generations (the Mining Laser and Orbital Wrench icons, plus the Explosion, Melee, and Luck stat icons) are now proper painted icons matching the rest of the set
v0.8
NEW
- Kill-streak combo: chain kills within four seconds and every scrap drop pays more — up to +60% hotter at a twenty-kill streak. Take one real hit and the streak dies with the bonus. A STREAK chip under your kill counter heats from gold to red as it climbs
- Wave-end skill payouts: finish a wave without taking a single hit and a FLAWLESS credit bonus lands at the bell (worth more the deeper the wave); empty the field before the timer and FAST CLEAR pays for every second left on the clock
- Elite and boss kills now burst a high-tier ore jackpot on top of their scrap — Cobalt from elites, Plasma from bosses. Scooping it mid-fight swells your hold and your Greed multiplier right when the field is most dangerous: bank it or risk it
- Last stand: when a wave's spawns are all out and only a few stragglers remain, they stop kiting and come finish the fight — faster, closer, committed. No more chasing one strafing Stinger around the rim to end a round
v0.7
NEW
- Two armored heavyweights join the deep waves: the Juggernaut, a slow dreadplate hulk whose plate eats flat damage off every hit (rapid-fire streams tickle it — bring real per-hit punch), and the Aegis Warden, a plated fire-support platform that anchors mid-range and pounds you with slow heavy bolts while shrugging return chip fire
- Enemy armor is a real mechanic now: plate reduces each hit by a flat amount but can never absorb more than 75% of it, so heavy single hits punch through while pea-shooter spam gets taxed — and bosses at higher Hazard levels grow plate of their own
- Your outpost now reports in mid-fight: small HUD chips under the XP bar show live Aegis interception charges, the drone recovery budget, and Forge / Launch Rail boost timers (with "BANK 6+" reminding you how to trigger them), plus a Redline overdrive readout
- New OUTPOST screen at the dock (RB on controller, TAB on keyboard, or the new Outfitter button): a top-down schematic of your station's build ring where you inspect every module, drag them between the eight compass sockets, and see the next wave's incoming lane drawn on the map — arrange your defense to meet it
- Tier-II module upgrades can now be bought with credits on the OUTPOST screen — skip a gun this dock to harden the station instead
- Horde, elite, and boss waves now close in from one telegraphed compass front: the Outfitter's next-wave preview and the wave banner both call the lane ("HORDE — WEST RIM"), and most of that wave's contacts really do come from there — turn your outpost's defenses to face it
- Outpost modules now live on a real eight-socket compass ring around the station — and position matters: the Sentry Spire fires from its own tower, the Aegis Pylon's intercept bubble covers its side of the dock, and cargo drones sweep their hangar's flank of the field
- Space Miner is now Gunmetal Orbit across the title screen, project metadata, build artifacts, and SteamPipe setup
- The main menu is now a live 3D scene: the six-armed hero from the new key art — guns in both hands, four weapon arms fanned off his back — floats in real space with jet plumes, a nebula backdrop, and a slow drifting camera, under a native GUNMETAL ORBIT marquee (the old painted title card is retired)
- Two new hunters join the deep waves: the Reaver, an acid-green interceptor that flies to where you're GOING and commits a slashing pass to cut you off, and the Weaver, a fuchsia wake-layer whose strafing runs leave a lingering plasma trail across your flight lanes — kill it fast or watch the arena silt up
- Enemies got smart about your movement: Stingers lead their shots, Lancers lunge where you're headed, Poppers sprint to intercept, Siege Turret mortars land ahead of your flight path, and the boss half-leads its aimed bolt — flying one steady circle all round is no longer a free win; change direction and every attack is still cleanly dodgeable
- Your world grows with your outpost: placing your first module, choosing an evolution, and committing a command protocol each physically widen the asteroid field and ease the camera out for a broader view — build your base to see and roam further
- Gunner now wears the new hero armor in-game: matte-black segmented plates with blood-red accents and a glowing amber visor, straight from the new key-art direction — athletic proportions, sharper silhouette, fully rigged and alive under the flight animator (new portrait art follows with the other spacers)
- The whole soundscape went hard: every laser, impact, asteroid shatter, pickup, payout, and alarm is a new hard-hitting studio-grade sound effect
- Two original dubstep tracks now drive the soundtrack — heavy drops in the belt, front to back
- Dash through the asteroid belt with Shift or LB; tap for an instant burst or hold to chain another dash when its visible charge refills
- Three independent save slots now live on the title screen, each showing its spacer, wave, level, mode, Hazard, and credits before you continue or overwrite it
- Gunmetal Orbit has a new HD game mark — a luminous armored miner helmet breaks through an asteroid-and-crystal crest, replacing the old placeholder in the window, taskbar, and project list
- Build your orbital outpost during a run: choose one of three free station blueprints after milestone waves, then watch the station physically grow
- Six outpost modules create distinct routes — dock sentries, bolt shields, stronger delivery streaks, deposit overclocks, cargo drones, and launch boosts
- Outpost progression now grows with the run: build modules first, choose one of twelve specialist evolutions, then commit the whole station to one of three command protocols
- Construction objectives appear before milestone waves; completing one banks a Fabrication Core that rerolls the entire three-card blueprint hand
- Horde, elite, and boss waves now wake up different parts of the outpost — including one capped Sentry cannon strike earned by making two large boss-wave deliveries
- Deep Endless runs offer stackable contracts every ten waves, pairing stronger station effects with more enemies, faster threats, or heavier cargo
- Carrying ore now builds a live Greed multiplier; taking a real hit spills part of the hold for a four-second recovery scramble
- Repeated deliveries build a payout streak, while a full hold adds up to 15% weight until you bank it
- Six advanced weapon variants join the Outfitter: Rotary Cannon, Flak Array, Cryo Repeater, Starfire Lance, Hydra Rockets, and Breach Driver
- Twelve new passive items add cargo builds, defensive tradeoffs, specialist damage picks, and dangerous high-reward contracts
- Every shop card now says WEAPON or ITEM at the top, with its firing style or passive category beside it
- The deep-space arena is now a handcrafted industrial asteroid belt with HD crane, cargo, relay, ore, and rock-island landmarks framing clear flight lanes
- The home station now connects to its cargo works through a detailed armored bridge, so the opening reads as one industrial installation instead of floating props
- Character select shows the new hero portraits — all four spacers in their new look
- Space flight is back as the main arena — layered stars, nebula, dust, distant rocks, and a landmark planet surround the asteroid field
- Flying has been rebuilt around responsive thrust, readable coasting, body banking, zero-G limb drift, stronger jets, and smooth arena-edge glides
- Every primary combat model uses the HD set now — all four spacers (including the new Gunner), all six enemies, the station, and all 19 weapons
- Asteroids have denser sculpted geometry and now float around their real collision centres instead of inheriting a ground offset
- New runs launch straight into wave 1 — no more empty-pocket shop stop before the first fight
- The pause menu has QUIT TO MAIN MENU (your run save is kept — Continue picks up at your last dock)
- Weapon COMPARE panel in the Outfitter: focus any weapon card to see it stacked against the right owned weapon (your copy of the same gun, the one it would replace, or your weakest) — DPS/range/rate/tier deltas in green and red plus a plain-language verdict
- Buying a weapon you already own now fills an open slot — run six SMGs if you want. Combining two same-tier copies is a new COMBINE button in the Outfitter's build panel, next to Recycle; a purchase only merges when all six slots are full
- Credits flow more generously across the board (scrap and ore sales roughly doubled)
BALANCE
- Packs run denser now: up to 44 enemies can share the field late-run (was 36), the biggest waves bring more total bodies, Hazard 3+ fields genuinely bigger packs (H3 +15%, H4 +40%, H5 +50% enemies), and about a third of spawns now arrive AHEAD of where you're flying instead of always trailing behind you
- Dash is a fixed-strength exosuit burst now: Speed builds still dash a little farther, but only 35% of speed above base feeds the dash — no more blinking across the whole map on a maxed Speed build
- Union Card and Reroll Subscription are now one-per-run finds — no more stacking shop discounts to the cap
- Buying the same passive item over and over gets pricier: each copy you own raises the next one's price by 25% of its base, so first purchases cost the same but a sixth Nanoweave Suit costs over double
- Leveling now slows down as you climb: early levels cost about the same, but deep-run levels take real work — a wave-15 pilot was hitting level 102 and banking ten level-ups per dock, which turned every run into an unstoppable stat avalanche
- Waves push back harder at every Hazard level: enemies toughen ~15% faster each wave, waves bring more of them (and the biggest late-game waves got bigger), and up to six more can be on the field at once deep in a run — the recent credit boom made runs snowball past the danger
IMPROVED
- The four backpack weapon arms are real robotic hardware now — a new segmented industrial manipulator (shoulder mount, articulated elbow, gripper) replaces the old placeholder arm, repainted per spacer: near-black gunmetal on the Gunner's hero suit, class colors on the rest
- Hand weapons now track your actual aim: the palm guns and the arms holding them swing with the target and settle back into a forward brace when the target is gone, instead of freezing off-axis
- Guns look like hardware now: every mounted weapon runs ~15% bigger with a real gunmetal finish — metallic surfaces that catch the light, a stronger silhouette edge, and brighter powered accents
- Fresh asteroids now drift into the field mid-wave while the fight is on — long late-game rounds no longer strand you in a mined-out belt
- Maximized and ultrawide windows now fill edge to edge in combat — the deep-space backdrop covers every aspect ratio instead of showing black flanks
- The Outfitter's build panel is wider so ship stats breathe, and the passive items header now answers the question everyone asked: there's NO LIMIT
- The Outfitter's stat dashboard now always shows the damage stat for every weapon class you own — run drones or turrets and Engineering appears at +0% instead of hiding until you buy a point of it (same for Ranged, Melee, and Elemental)
- Controller menu navigation no longer skips: flicking the stick toward an upgrade card can't bounce focus down to REROLL anymore — diagonal stick drift is filtered on every menu and the upgrade hand keeps focus inside the row
- Explosions now hit in layers: a white-hot core, radial spark spray, and an expanding damage-radius shockwave replace the old single-ring pop
- Flight animation blends smoothly through thrust, coast, reversal, aim, and bank changes without threshold chatter or frame-rate-dependent snapping
- Sound effects now default to half volume so the soundtrack comes through — the new set runs hot (adjustable in Options as always)
- Jukebox songs now hand off with a smooth crossfade when the playlist shuffles instead of a hard cut
- Blaster fire, plasma impacts, character level-ups, dash ignition, and dash recharge now use premium authored sci-fi sound effects with a mix tuned for stacked weapons
- Level-up, outpost, Outfitter, victory, and title screens now fully lock flight controls and clear zero-G drift; launching the next wave restores control cleanly
- Saves now keep a validated backup generation, recover from a damaged primary, migrate the old single save into Slot 1, and reliably resume mid-wave quits from the last secured dock
- Controller shortcuts now show real Xbox or Steam Deck button glyphs in the Outfitter and upgrade hands instead of text-only A/B/X/Y labels; Deck and Xbox/PC artwork switches automatically
- The Outfitter now has direct controller shortcuts: Y rerolls, X locks offers or can be held to recycle a selected weapon, LB combines a selected twin, and holding B launches; upgrade hands use Y to reroll too
- The game has a real soundtrack now, played as one continuous jukebox: the dubstep tracks "Core Breaker" and "Gravity Drop" shuffle end-to-end, and whatever is playing keeps playing straight through the Outfitter, pause, menus, and round changes — tracks never restart or switch just because you opened a screen
- Pausing no longer cuts the music to dead air — the soundtrack keeps playing under the pause menu
- Xbox controllers, Steam Deck/Steam Input, and compatible PC pads now hotplug and switch prompts automatically; D-pad flight, always-available pause input, drift protection, and an Options device readout make the active control path explicit
- A full six-weapon build now reads as one exosuit: two weapons ride the astronaut's hands while four compact articulated backpack arms carry the rest, then fold away when they are not in combat
- The void has depth everywhere now — the landmark planet and distant rock belt are back around the industrial arena, drifting debris reaches under the flight lanes instead of hugging the rim, and the dust haze breathes a little more
- The tractor field and landing pad are proper energy rings now — a soft glowing core with a light sweep — instead of flat drawn circles
- Enemies feel alive: every mover shows a propulsion trail in its signature color, banks into its turns, and warps in with a flash of its own hue instead of quietly inflating
- Firing has body now — the astronaut's arms visibly absorb each volley's recoil, and heavier guns kick harder than the SMG
- Rapid fire sounds like individual shots instead of one buzzing sample: one-shots vary slightly in level, and identical sounds landing in the same instant no longer stack into a louder pop
- Spacers no longer hover in a seated mascot pose: they hang naturally in zero-G, dive into thrust with their legs streaming, and vector their exhaust opposite every strafe and reversal
- Hovering in place looks like a fighter riding his jets now, not a mannequin or a floating teddy bear: legs extended long under the thrusters with a staggered soft knee and boots pointed into the twin plumes, chest open, guns held in a low ready carry at the chest instead of arms locked straight out at shoulder height, and a free hand drifting relaxed at the hip (Dev notes: BASE_POSE reauthored — legs near extension with IDLE_FOOT_POINT toe point, slight chest-open spine arch; BRACE_UPPERARM raise 0.72→0.38 with thrust now raising the carry via HERO_ARM_RAISE instead of releasing it)
- Flying finally looks like the key art: under thrust the whole body pitches into a diagonal hero dive — helmet leading the travel vector, chest joining the line, both legs streaming long behind with pointed boots — instead of staying upright and throwing one knee high; dashing straightens the dive even harder (Dev notes: retired the THRUST/DASH_KNEE_LEAD one-knee split in AstroAnimator for symmetric leg extensions + one soft lead knee; _lean() pitch sign flipped to dive with LEAN_PITCH_CAP 0.85 + dash bonus, spine pitch-counter axis-split down to 0.10/0.06; flight_check now asserts the dive and fails on any knee-raise/boot-fold regression)
- Your first weapon is now held in the astronaut's braced gun hand and rides every pose — no more gun floating alongside the suit
- Direction changes visibly punch the jetpack — thruster glow and trail kick with acceleration, not just speed
- The arena is brighter and more colorful — a stronger warm sun, a cool blue fill light, and richer ambient bring out the sculpted rock and station detail that used to sink into darkness (Dev notes: main.tscn ambient 0.24→0.85 + FillLight, saturation 1.22; asteroid stone tint lightened 6b625c→a89a8e with a stronger ore-color lean toward the doc'd Overwatch-luminous render language)
- Asteroid island textures now load GPU-compressed, cutting video memory use with no visible change (Dev notes: Godot detect_3d resolved the crag/ridge Color/NormalGL/ORM maps from lossless 2D to VRAM-compressed s3tc_bptc on first editor import; committing the .import flip stops it dirtying every fresh checkout)
- The title, Outfitter, pause, spacer, run setup, options, upgrade, and results screens now share one luminous industrial command-deck presentation built for gamepad focus and Steam Deck readability
- Menus keep the asteroid belt visible behind clear run status, stronger type hierarchy, cyan focus hardware, safer leave-run confirmations, and readable unaffordable shop cards
- Level-up hands always lead with one upgrade that matches the weapons currently equipped
- The asteroid belt is now a wider 32-unit playspace with a soft tracking camera, solid station/island collision, and authored industrial landmarks around the expanded perimeter
- Asteroid islands now use two distinct 50k-triangle fractured silhouettes, while mineable rocks use their own compact 42k-triangle model instead of a shrunken island
- Live enemies now enter around the player inside the wider arena, keeping the onslaught readable without sacrificing exploration space
- The void now uses a painted deep-navy nebula backdrop with target-matched midtone coverage, restrained stars, deeper shadows, and stronger warm/cool separation
- Rookie now uses the approved bulky orange-and-white hero model in-world, with authored flight-idle/thrust motion layered over reactive zero-G posing
- A closer fixed camera, richer PBR material response, warmer industrial lights, sparser stars, and clearer enemy/station scale make the combat frame read like one finished place
FIXED
- Inspecting weapons in the Outfitter works every time now: pointing at any weapon — a shop card or one of your equipped slots — reliably shows its readout. Equipped slots get a new EQUIPPED panel with DPS, range, rate, tier, special behavior, and exactly what COMBINE needs; the panel no longer sticks to a previously clicked card
- Weapon levels always show now: every equipped slot wears its tier badge and every weapon card states its tier, including Tier I
- The recurring one-to-two-second freeze every few seconds of combat is gone — enemy arrivals no longer stall the whole game, so fights hold a smooth frame rate (including on Steam Deck)
- Siege Turret mortars no longer spam an invalid-position error after landing or crash a fight
- Internal: the alien regolith/ship-deck comparison remains available behind `SPACEMINER_ARENA=world` plus `SPACEMINER_WORLD=<id>`; it is no longer the default arena.
v0.6
NEW
- Two new enemies: the Lancer, a fast predator that telegraphs and dashes in a straight line you can sidestep, and the Siege Turret, which plants at long range and lobs mortars onto marked ground rings
- The wave-20 boss now fights in phases — radial bolt volleys once it's hurt, and a furious enrage when it's nearly dead
- Your best run shows on the title screen, and beating your record earns a gold NEW PERSONAL BEST on the results screen
IMPROVED
- Enemies are much bigger and pop off the backdrop — everything reads at a glance
- The camera sits closer to the action
- The battlefield has a real floor now: dust haze and distant rock silhouettes anchor the space instead of empty void
- The astronaut finally moves like an astronaut — weightless floating and drifting, no more walk-cycle look
- Combat sounds hit harder: weapon fire cracks, explosions boom, the boss alarm means it — while the shop and dock stay cozy
- Ore chunks and XP motes are easier to spot and grab
FIXED
- Big performance pass: shooting and flying no longer stutter (weapon fire, impacts, and kill effects were rebuilding graphics resources every shot)
- Guns no longer keep firing sound effects on the shop and level-up screens after a wave ends