Unobserved: Lasers, Shields, Artifacts, and Vortex Control

From upgrades to active powers

This update covers May 26 through May 29, and the theme is very clear: Unobserved is getting more things the player can actually use in the moment. The previous devlog was about making the universe readable, adding progression, and getting multiplayer foundations in place. This one pushes deeper into combat identity.

The game now has more item variety, more survivability, stronger feedback around fog and visibility, and the first real active artifacts. Instead of only becoming stronger through passive stats, the ship can now dash, place a vortex, disappear from enemy targeting, extend its radar, stack shields, and build a more expressive weapon kit.

Lasers, radar, shields, and invisibility

The old bullet-style item became a laser item with its own textures, projectile script, inventory behavior, and ship integration. It also gained a separate Laser Rate Boost, which means laser damage and laser rhythm can grow independently as the player levels up. That gives the progression system more room to offer meaningful choices instead of only bigger numbers.

Radar is another important addition because it ties directly into map control. It increases ship vision and weapon range, which makes exploration, fog of war, and combat reach feel connected. If the player invests in radar, they are not just seeing farther; they are also affecting how far the ship can fight.

Survivability also became more layered. Shields now exist as a real system with UI integration, network synchronization, damage absorption, regeneration, and a segmented shield bar. I also added a ship HP row and dynamic inventory rows, so the game has a clearer place to show what the ship owns and how much punishment it can still take.

• Laser upgrades now cover damage, projectile behavior, and fire-rate scaling.
• Radar upgrades extend both vision and weapon range.
• Shield upgrades add absorbable hit points, regeneration, UI presentation, and networked state.
• Invisibility makes the ship untargetable for a short time, with remote presentation and shader support.
• Repair Kit terminology replaced the older repair item wording, which makes the level-up choices read more cleanly.

Better feedback in the fog

Fog of war kept improving too. Enemies, planets, ships, explosions, and items now have more controlled presentation alpha, so visibility is not just a binary on-off switch. Objects can respond visually to whether they should be fully known, partially present, or hidden from the player.

That matters a lot for a game called Unobserved. The fantasy depends on information being limited but still readable. If the fog feels arbitrary, the player stops trusting it. If the fog has consistent presentation rules, then radar, stealth, enemy pressure, and exploration can all lean on the same visual language.

I also added destruction effects and XP box spawning around player death. That gives defeat a stronger physical footprint in the universe and creates another place where rewards, danger, and spectacle can connect.

Drones, missiles, and combat drift

A lot of the combat work this time was about making motion feel more intentional. Drone companions moved away from simpler orbit behavior and into formation logic, acceleration, deceleration, and delayed ship-position tracking. Later in the update, drone companion handling was split into a dedicated manager so the ship script does not have to own every detail directly.

Homing missiles also received more configuration work. Their range calculations, targeting logic, turn speed, fire timing, and explosion feedback were adjusted alongside the ship and drone systems. The goal is to make missiles feel powerful without turning them into invisible background math.

Combat drift is one of the more interesting movement changes. It gives the ship a way to keep sliding through an attack moment instead of feeling like movement and combat are completely separate modes. Enemies also learned more about target-facing and clearing movement direction, which should make attack behavior read better in motion.

• Drone companions now use formation logic with smoother acceleration and deceleration.
• A DroneCompanionManager now owns more companion management and pruning behavior.
• Weapon range calculations were tightened around ship vision and item upgrades.
• Enemies gained target-switch distance handling, safe-zone avoidance, facing behavior, and cleaner movement-direction state.
• Explosion feedback now includes camera shake for ship and homing missile impacts.

Wormhole Dash

The first new active artifact is Wormhole Dash. Once unlocked, it gives the ship an Artifact HUD button and lets the player dash forward through a wormhole on cooldown. This is a different kind of upgrade for Unobserved: it is not passive power, it is a timed decision.

I kept iterating on it after the first pass. The dash now continues movement toward the target position, has a continuation distance multiplier, exposes cooldown state in the UI, and gained distortion effects so the activation has a stronger visual identity. The important part is that it gives the player an emergency repositioning tool without hiding the cost: once it is used, the cooldown is visible.

Vortex placement and capture

The second active artifact is Vortex, and it is the flashier system in this update. Activating it arms placement, then the player clicks in the universe to place a gravity vortex. The artifact has its own item, runtime scene, shader, placement preview, validation rules, network activation path, cooldown, and visual tuning.

The vortex is not just a decal. It captures nearby ships and enemies, pulls bodies inward, suppresses attacks while targets are captured, and updates drone formation behavior around that state. That makes it a crowd-control tool: useful for creating breathing room, interrupting pressure, or turning a dangerous cluster into something the player can survive.

The shader work went through several tuning passes because this kind of ability has to be readable instantly. The player needs to know where the vortex is, how large it is, and whether the placement is valid before committing to it. The preview and validation work are as important as the final effect because active powers only feel fair when their boundaries are clear.

• Vortex can be armed, previewed, validated, placed, and synchronized.
• The runtime effect pulls captured bodies inward with a visual shader response.
• Captured enemies and ships can have attacks suppressed while inside the effect.
• Artifact cooldown UI now supports masks, labels, and disabled-button feedback.
• The item creator tooling was updated so future active artifacts can follow the same pattern.

Testing the bigger shape

With more active systems in the game, the tooling had to improve too. I added a Makefile for type checking and network testing, removed an older run script, and kept cleaning unused functions out of the codebase. There is also a God Mode toggle in the debug UI now, which makes it easier to test enemy pressure, artifact behavior, and late-run combinations without constantly dying during iteration.

The technical direction is also becoming healthier. Some logic was decoupled from ship.gd, companion behavior moved into clearer management, active artifact state became reusable, and several systems now expose enough state for UI, networking, prediction, and tuning to talk to each other.

The result is a game that feels less like a collection of prototype pieces and more like a combat sandbox with tools. The ship can see farther, shoot differently, protect itself, vanish, dash, place a field-control artifact, and bring drones into formation. That is the kind of foundation I need before pushing into bigger enemy variety, stronger balancing, and more multiplayer stress testing.

Thanks for reading,

Hack the planet!

Arliax