Void Engine, the 3D rebuild of Kuro Kishi, got a hazard, a warning and a pacing fix today.
The sand tornado
The desert stage's timed hazard used to be a generic debris field. It is now a translucent, rotating sand funnel with branching red lightning inside it.
Flying into it captures the ship for two spins over 1.25 seconds, then releases it with a 0.75-second toss that decays. Safe bounds are enforced throughout so the ride cannot carry you out of the playfield. Damage protection lasts for the whole forced movement and 1.1 seconds afterward, and the ride costs no hull, shield or upgrade. Each funnel captures once, which rules out a loop that traps you.
Regular enemies get the same treatment with a worse outcome. They are pulled into a shrinking orbit, stop moving and firing under their own control, and are destroyed after 0.9 seconds, with normal kill and squad score credit. Bosses, capital ships, rocks and chained sandworm segments are excluded.
The debris was the interesting decision. Destroyed enemies feed a pool of 32 reusable metal pieces that swirl inside the funnel, instead of being thrown out as harmful shrapnel. The tornado reads as dangerous, and the only thing it takes from you is position. The pool is capped, so the cost is fixed however many enemies it eats. Funnel lifetime, captured actors and GPU resources are cleaned up on exit and on restart.
The regression covers a one-hit player surviving the ride, release and protection expiry, recapture prevention, enemy kills, the capped debris and cleanup.
A boss warning
The small boss-name callout became Void Strike's full-width red hazard band: ENORMOUS ENERGY SIGNATURE, WARNING, then the boss name and APPROACHING. It uses the existing warning sound and a gentle pulse driven by game time. With Screen Flashes off, it stays steady.
Boss warnings last 3.7 seconds. Wave spawning pauses while one is up, and a final boss waits for the scheduled waves, active squads, regular enemies and capitals to clear before it arrives. Mini-bosses get a deliberately lighter version: 1.6 seconds, a smaller amber CAUTION panel and 55% alert volume. The full red band is kept for the main bosses.
The warning follows world state. Pausing and resuming keeps it, and a boss arriving, dying or the stage being replaced clears it.
The backlog bug
Waves, capsules and hazards were scheduled against total elapsed world time. After a late death, respawning at an early checkpoint left the schedule "overdue", so the game fired every wave it thought it had missed in a burst. The schedule was also running through mini-boss fights.
Everything now reads a checkpoint-aware stage clock. It holds during mini-boss fights and during boss warnings. The checks put 200 seconds of elapsed world time against an early checkpoint and confirm that only stage-time waves come due, and that the wave index stays fixed through a warning.
Smaller changes
- Losing window focus pauses an active run, as hiding the tab already did. Coming back requires Resume and keeps the same world.
- The charge percentage in the hull line is now a compact bar: blue while charging, gold and labelled READY at full strength. It reuses the HUD's existing nodes and its 15 Hz update.
- Normal and spread shots use Void Strike's blue plasma palette, a broader bolt body and a hot white core. Spread bolts follow each fan angle. Reflected rounds keep their green identity. Damage, speed, collision sizes and firing patterns are unchanged.
The full eight-stage run completes with no failures and resource counts flat across repeated stage loads. Human difficulty balance is still unverified.