On September 1, Auto Fire was demoed at the Seattle Indies Expo, a companion exhibition to PAX West in Seattle, held just down the street.  It was an exciting time and an exciting place to be, where 25 local game developers showed their stuff in a chill environment where players could interact directly with creators.  

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The good news for those of you who didn’t make it out there is that there are a ton of updates that came in to make that demo play well, and you can now check them out for free on Itch.io!

Fame 

• Made changeover of interactions in the direction of social media to start to push the build-your-following gameplay.
• Fame is now “likes” and bosses now have their own followers that reflect their level of fame.
• Dialogue is now flavored as a chat/twitter interface.  More of this to come.
• A media drone can now follow the player and take shots of their kills for extra fame.  The specific drone loadout slot is coming soon.

Gamepad and Controls

• Revised gamepad controls!  A button drives, B button brakes, B button enters location.
• D-Pad will aim vehicle weapons if not in targeting mode.
• You can now select all squares with the cursor keys or gamepad when the vehicle is aiming diagonally (it had “the bishop’s limitation” before this)
• Improved the inventory and loadout to better work with keyboard and gamepad.  There still is a bug with the gamepad if you have a lot of items when loading out.
• Gamepad buttons have cooldowns before auto-repeat.
• Gamepad move marker now renders through the world if you are controlling next to a wall.

UI and Presentation

• The speedometer is now centered onscreen, and the boost key is hinted when the player reaches the 40 mph “safe” speed.
• Resources have been moved to the right side, and the armor is now in the lower-left, making for a less-cluttered interface.
• Icons now fly to their locations onscreen with some more panache.
• Easier to buy and sell in the store.
• Loadout popup is easier to use.
• Gamepad buttons are now prompted, and are put up instead of key tips if the gamepad is currently in use.
• New key art is used for the title and loading screen.
• Fixed some sounds in the store.
• Cleaned up the targeting panel somewhat.
• Tutorial dialogue and loading screen hints now include some gamepad hints.
• Armor panel now uses an alternate visual
• Offscreen objective pointer now pulses and shows over more UI elements.

Content

• There is an invisible, harmless barrier behind the exit square on terrain maps.  This keeps players from moving “past”.
• Loot drops now include a large variety of new drops, including some weapons with modifiers (such as high-density machineguns).
• New levels of tires, armor, ram plates were all created.
• The multi-rocket damage was brought down significantly, it was pretty silly.
• Adjusted the price of repairs (chassis costs twice as much, armor costs half as much) and gas.
• Large cities (the 5×5 ones) no longer generate in the overworld.  They were cool but just stupidly complicated to get through.
• Fixed some agent names so that females don’t get stuck with a male surname that looks like a first name.
• Fixed some bad results from the procedural boss quotes.

You can download the newest gameplay (linked below) or check out this quick video showing some of the revised gameplay/gamepad experience: