Some good progress as Auto Fire enters a new phase of its development...  Getting the prestige and reputation system in is important to the future of the game.

You see, the world of Auto Fire is not the dreary low-tech wasteland that it appears to be so far...  Yes, the world did undergo a dreadful catastrophe, but that was many years ago.  Life goes on.  The corporate citadels around the badlands are packed with people living out their lives in relative monotonous comfort... Wages slaves in a company town.

It's dangerous for the average person to travel and gas is extremely scarce, so few people ever leave the shelter of the city they grew up in.  Meeting new people is a rare delight.  Entertainment is limited to whatever the can find within the walls or by watching vids.

Life is pretty boring in the citadels.

By contrast, things are pretty rough out in the badlands, but it's a lot more interesting.  City folk are eager for any tales from the outland.  Drivers are their reality stars, and sometimes even their heroes.  As a driver, your reputation is everything, so you'll have to do whatever you can to build it.

More about this to come in the future, but for now here are the changes to version 0.5.14 (Download now!):

• Weapons have been rebalanced to make one-turn cooldowns the norm.  This helps people get a better feel for turns, and hey, it's more fun.
• Action pips have been added to the HUD above the grip meter.  This shows how many actions you have in a given turn based on your speed, and counts off as you use them.
• When the player moves diagonally, the movement between squares takes longer (reflecting the 1.4x distance between them).
• Resources now visually fly from where they are collected to their location at the bottom of the screen.  Juicy!
  • Gas now has a maximum that is definable per car chassis.  Yes, better cars have bigger gas tanks.
• There is a new Fame System being tracked on the player.
• • Completing missions and killing enemies will gain you Fame.
  • Fame will also visually fly from where it is collected to its home in the top left corner of the screen.
  • Fame will cause your Prestige Rank to level up when you hit specific boundaries.  There are ranks from 0 (Nobody) to 20 (Immortal).
• The player's portrait now lives at the upper left, reading out the current fame.
• The enemy boss portraits now have a lot more variety, with a cleaned up style.
• Fixed a bug with light trails when cars are killed.
• VO added to introduction.  The intro is now 33% more gravelly.
• Lots and lots of code cleanup (good for me, fewer bugs for you!)