Some new Auto Fire coming in! Check out what’s new:

New Equipment:

• Mines: When anybody (including you!) moves adjacent to one, it arms and then explodes 1 second later. Be careful!
• Oil Slick: Lay down a strip of this, and any cars that hit this immediately lose their grip… perfect for tight quarters like the city.
• Flaming Oil:  Leave behind a trail of flaming death. Sets whatever enters it on fire.
• Wide Smokescreen: Create a whole volume of smoke, 3 across

Gameplay:

• The player can choose one of three cars at start with different weapon and equipment loadouts:
  • The Stallion has 3 Junkthrowers, a smokescreen and an oil slick. Good starter vehicle if you’re just getting familiar with the firing arcs
  • The Panther puts 2 Bolt Rifles, one front and back, as well as a minedropper and smokescreen. Its longer range makes for stronger hit, but you’ll need to pay a bit more attention to your facing.
  • The Cricket is small but has a short-range machinegun on its front. It also can spray flaming oil behind it. Good vehicle if you wish to stay mobile.
• Things can now be set on fire, for continuing DOT. Right now just hooked to the Flaming Oil, although other weapons including the flamer will definitely be dealing this out.
• There are now two sizes of cities… There’s a medium-sized 64×64 city, and the old huge 100×100 city (which is much rarer). The appearance of the smaller city in the overworld map is different.
• The default boss is far less overpowered now. Sorry ’bout that!

User Interface:

• Automap icons for exits and garages
• Title screen popup allows player to enter name and choose starting vehicle.
• Health and armor UI over various enemies only appear when that component is damaged… reduces UI spam overall.
• Took a unifying pass on my amateur-hour HUD, so that everything has a more consistent look. Thanks to my developer friends for the feedback!
• The vehicle display is now unified with weapons and armor in a single location.
• Weapon names now pop up on the vehicle display so you are clear what weapon (and what side) you’re firing.
• Updated icons for some equipment
• Status icons are larger and more attention-grabbing.

Audio:

• New sounds for rockets, flamers, and cannons.
• Stingers and music now doesn’t start until a map is fully loaded.
• Ram and explosion sounds are replaced with less terrible ones.
• Vehicle acceleration (and visual effects) only play when speed is actually gained, rather than when you press forward (so it adjusts to “coasting” once you hit max speed).

Visuals:

• Rockets have new effects and sound
• Car body shakes when moving at high speed, camera shakes less.
• Overworld cars now visually swerve and arc like the cars in tactical maps.
• The borders on terrain maps look a hair better.

Bugs:

• Fixed some elements of map generations on height-mapped terrain (although there still is a bug in there).
• The Homestead and Walled City (both of which were ugly temp maps with very little functionality) cannot be entered. Will be replacing them soon. They are marked as not being able to be entered in the overworld.
• The Boss site in the city (which announced, temporarily and rather cheesily, “Here Comes the Boss") no longer can be seen. It was intended to be a marker for system use, not player facing.

I’m starting to enhance the equipment now, and am looking forward to new usable items and updating the inventory for its use.   As always, you can pop by the Vertigames blog for more information, or follow @autofiregame on Twitter.  The future is bright!