Idle Exotics Patch 0.0.5 and DevLog (September 2025)

I got a lot done this time, so I'm not going to waste much time with the intro. I'm feeling inspired this month, and maybe a little ambitious.

Code

Code updates for this month are definitely plentiful.

The first and biggest update is the collection menu. The collection menu lets you view morphs you've discovered, which is something that's been kind of a sorely missing feature. What's the point in collecting all the morphs if you can't view your collection?

But that's not all that's here. The tabs are all functional, including a readout of your stats, which upgrades you have currently active in the background, and a new feature - achievements.

Achievements were implemented - they're not all possible to unlock right now, because some of them are meant for 100% completion. So, for obvious reasons, those aren't ready to be unlocked yet. However, there are a lot of them in the game right now. I will say, that there are 100 entries in the achievements menu, but not all of them have an assigned achievement. A lot of them are placeholders for stuff I couldn't implement yet, but it does fill out the menu and let me make sure the scroll functionality works as intended.

They are in a bit of a haphazard order, but each achievement has its spot, and all of the ones currently in the game have their unlock conditions coded in. All of them will pop when meeting their condition.

Speaking of achievement pops, those are shown on the main screen, so you know when you've unlocked them.

But the collection menu isn't all that's new this patch. I've implemented another new feature that's a staple for most idle games: the buy multiple button.

These options will let you buy multiple interns or automatic incubators at a time. This should help for when players reach the stage where they don't have to be monitoring things too closely, and maybe even have it running overnight or while they're away from the game.

Due to the way that the layout has changed for both the incubator and upgrades menus, I decided to give the breeding menu a little bit of a faceleft to match the others. Now, the add breeder tank button isn't a part of the breeding tank list, and uses the asset for the filter menu button. This took a little doing because I was using the breeder tank's position in the list for a few things, so I did have to track down all the times I was referencing the panel's position in the greater list. But, in the end, I think I got them all because they seem to be working like they did before.

Art

For those who might be a little fed up with seeing the same poorly-drawn placeholder icons for upgrades, I have good news. I've gone through and updated those icons with some of the time I had left over after the code changes were finished. They now have a proper foreground and background, and the backgrounds have even been hooked up with a shader to better control the colors, Adjusting the self_modulate on the sprite just wasn't cutting it anymore. So, I defined some real pallette swaps. You might have also noticed that I re-drew the overlays for the different species. Updates to the individual species icons are on the way, but I think I can afford to procrastinate on that a little while longer, because they look fine for now.

But, anyways, in other art news, there were some additional icons added, but those weren't a huge effort. Things like the new quantity selector buttons, the highlights to go around selectable buttons that weren't previously selectable, small things like that.

I think I did a good job in keeping on top of the new icons I'd be needing - I made sure to make new icons for all the new menus, like stats, collection, and achievements. While each individual achievement doesn't have its own icon yet, most of the other ones are getting their final updates.

I was going to show off the new assets in screenshots, but I'm sure most of them are visible in the ones I've already posted, and there's enough screenshots in this update already.

What's Next?

Now that we're getting close to when I'd like the project to be finished, I think it's time to take a big swing and see if I can't try to get more code done. Specifically, I'm targeting the save/load feature. I've been holding off for a while now, because I want the save system to be relatively stable after introduction. And to make it stable, I have to know exactly what kind of data I'm saving. I really don't want saves to become invalid between minor versions. So, I'm hoping I have enough done that I can reasonably expect the save system to work until the final release.

Unfortunately for me, that means I have to lock down a few things, and finish some lingering features first. So, before I can do that I've got to clean up the following tasks:

- Finish adding all the achievements (and put them in the correct order)
- Implement the Prestige system
- Add all new species (even if they don't have their art assets yet)
- Title Screen

It's a decent chunk of work, but I think with the progress I made this month, I might just be able to do it.

If I have time at the end, I might turn to some small optimization tasks I've been meaning to get around to. I haven't heard anyone complaining about excessive lag or bad performance, but if I can future-proof things for up-and-coming increases in complexity to calculations that are happening every frame, I should probably do that.

It's a lot to work on, but I'm still feeling confident - especially because I've been working on this for about a week now.

Yes, patch 0.0.5 has been ready for a while. That's how far ahead I was this month. But, I still have a lot of analysis to do for the prestige system, and a lot of things to clean up.

So, wish me luck. I just hope I'll have a development blog post this positive at the end of October.