Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Gratuitous Space Battles 2 Updated to 1.38

A long list of fixes, tweaks and improvements this time for Gratuitous Space Battles 2. Here is the full list:

Version Release 1.38 July
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1) Fixed bug when toggling between fleets in a custom map, where the player fleets icons would not re-load.
2) Fixed bug where ship components that spun are were not composites ignored applied custom textures.
3) Fixed bug where textures may display wrongly in some cases on the ship design screen.
4) Fixed bug where green ship running light did not appear.
5) F2HullMod 8 can now be colored correctly.
6) Zyrtari ship components now ordered correctly.
7) Fixed bug where the game could crash if you beat the first campaign mission when trying to autoload the next one.
8) Point defense beams now oscillate wildly around missiles traveling too fast for them to intercept.
9) Weapons that deliberately do zero damage (like decoys) no longer qualify as least damage done in the post-battle stats.
10) Contrails now correctly drawn even on complex multi-layer fighter & gun ship designs.
11) Ship module comparison window now shows extra data for shield penetration vs resistance.
12) Point Defense weapons now display tracking speed.
13) Missile modules now display missile speed.
14) Balance Change: Frigate/Destroyer Anti-fighter missile Range boosted from 800 to 900.
15) Balance Change: Frigate/Destroyer Anti-fighter missile Damage effectiveness changed to 100% vs Hull, 25% vs Shield.
16) Balance Change: Frigate/Destroyer Anti-fighter missile Firing interval reduced from 2900 to 1500.
17) Fixed text spillover on the messages screen.
18) Added new feature: messages in your inbox now contain a button to jump to the challenge if appropriate.
19) Added new window that shows effectiveness of point defense weapons vs missiles when you select the tracking attribute for one.

The ones in bold are the ones I think really matter. These are things that make the user experience of the game so much smoother. Making comparisons between modules and selecting the right tool for the job just got a lot easier. Since this patch uploaded I’ve been working on a fairly ambitious change to the way shields are drawn, and it looks like it just cannot be done, but its helped me find and fix some other minor graphical glitches as I do it, so hopefully its not time wasted. I may do a long technical blog post about what I was attempting and why it didn’t work at some point.

In the meantime you can grab the game from the link below:

buy_button

In other news Tim is still beavering away on the code for Big Pharma, you can read about the upcoming patch for the game which includes patents and custom games over at his blog here.