So in case you missed the news from my last blog post (I haven’t exactly made it to the cover of Newsweek), I have released a demo for my space based autobattler Ridiculous Space Battles. You can grab the demo from here. In the run-up to release I knew a bunch of players had said they really don’t like the idea of grid-based movement, which marked a change from Gratuitous Space Battles, but I thought people would be won over when they tried it…
Anyway, to cut a long story short, almost everyone disliked it when they tried it :D. And I am not immune to persuasion from players, so I decided, with less than a month to go before the game goes into Early Access to just do the sensible thing and totally redesign the entire movement system :D. A lot of it is already done, checked in and updated, so the current demo has the new movement code in. It is still missing ‘Keep Moving’, ‘Escort’ and ‘Formation orders’, but ‘Keep Moving’ is already done and tested, and I’ll work on the others over the next week or so.
People also wanted Hit Indicators from GSB in there, so I added those too… (obviously you can switch them off)
So far I have generally enjoyed having the game out there, reading people’s feedback and suggestions. I had a bit of a silly crash bug, but it is since fixed, and a number of people have problems running the game on…Linux. Oh what a shock. I do wonder if linux gamers actually ENJOY games just not working, or apps not being available. It just seems weird to deliberately install a game that expressly says its Windows only, and then be surprised when it doesn’t work for you. I would say that at least 90% of bug reports are from linux gamers. I cant see demo platform data any more, but from what I remember around 1% of my customers are on Linux. 1%, but 90% of bug reports…sigh.
Anyway, I am kind of resolved not to care, I hate this sort of thing. 95% of players are wonderful, cool, friendly and clever people with great feedback and ideas, but some seem to have a desire to just start an argument. I am 56 years old and semi-retired, I am not wasting any of my remaining years arguing about linux or AI. If you are a furiously anti-AI linux gamer, do us both a service and just play something else.
BUT! For the other 99%, give the demo a try and tell me what you think. I do really enjoy constructive feedback on my games ;D.