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

Category: game design

Fighter nerfs, Spatial anomalies, UI fixes galore

Posted on September 29, 2009

I have a mental trigger than once I’m past 11 things on the ‘recent bug fixes and improvements’ list then I need to get off my ass and release a new patch for all you lucky beta players of Gratuitous Space Battles.

So hopefully some time earlyish tomorrow I’ll be doing that with version 1.13. Here is what will be in it:

1) Fixed bug where power consumed can seem to equate to power produced but still be shown to be invalid on ship design screen
2) New feature : new minimap-button and hotkey ‘O’ turns on or off a green/red overlay to show friend or foe ships.
3) Fixed bug where the size of a ship-destruction shock wave varied based on your zoom level at the time of detonation
4) The option to turn off repair-drone effects now actually works correctly
5) Better repair drones, in that they have better weld effects, and actually carry out visible repairs so ship’s damage now reflects their true status much better
6) Added tooltips to the options
7) Added a new ‘hardware sounds’ option you can disable on options if you want pitch shifting sounds without slowdown at fast speed and have certain sound cards”
8) Added a new button on the deployment screen that lets you read all of the restrictions and spatial anomalies for this mission.
9) Added some better spatial anomalies
10) Fixed bug where tutorial got stuck at ‘select orders’
11) Various scenario deployment changes to take into account the new spatial anomalies
12) Missiles that are en-route whilst their target explodes will now autodestruct rather than fly on aimlessly (regardless of missile type).
13) Fixed major bug involving engine modules where damage to an engine module is ignored until the next time the ship is damaged (should make fighters more vulnerable)
14) Rebel atlantis bomber now has it’s drifting space hulk triggered
15) Attempting to load a design of ship into the editor that is invalid now gives a nicer, in-game error rather than a crash!
16) New delete button on file opening windows lets you delete existing ship designs and deployments.

It’s the usual mixture of minor niggles like 1) and usability stuff like 2) plus big enhancements such as 5) which I already blogged about. The big ones here are definitely 5) and 9). You might enjoy trying out the emerald nebula again, and the last skirmish mission, as these now have some more interesting spatial anomalies. Hopefully this will make for some good new challenges too, because people who hate fighters or love frigates can now have their fun.

Also, fighters have been nerfed a bit, partly by huge balance change improvements to anti-fighter missiles (not listed here), but also more subtely by 13). This means that it’s all fun and giggles in your high speed mega fighter until you take a single lucky hit. Then you are just some slowly drifting piece of metal with ‘target’ written on your ass.

Repair Drones

Posted on September 27, 2009

It’s amazing how much extra effort had to go into this over the last 48 hours…

Repair drones have always looked a bit cool, but not been much help to the player. The problem is, their only tie to the core simulation was their quantity. Every repair module gave you a ‘swarm’ of repair drones, and once your ship took some damage, you would see them hovering around and looking like they were welding the ship back together. The problem was, they didn’t actually achieve anything froma  visual point of view.

Thios was worse than a visual bug, because it means that when you play against an enemy fleet that has lots of ships which make strong use of repair drones, you cannot tell if that enemy cruiser is on it’s last legs, or just cosmetically burned, yet at 100% hull integrity. Surely this had to be fixxored.

So now (behold the youtube vid below), those drones (as well as having nicer welding effects) do actually weld those damaged bits of your ship back together. To make it REALLY obvious in the vid, I built a ship with three repair modules, so until the repair supplies run out, it’s pretty nippy at welding stuff back together.

Let me know what you think. I reckon it not only looks better, but will make playing against repair-spammed ships much easier and more enjoyable. (in terms of learning from the battles. The simulation is unchanged)

Another patch, some web stuff…

Posted on September 24, 2009

Today I released version 1.12 of GSB. That fixes a ton of AI stuff, and a lot of minor UI niggles. It is pretty handy that beta testers compile lists of little UI things they notice (that as developer, you tend to become blind to).

Fixing bugs is relatively stress free, it just takes time and effort, and concentration. Improving Ui stuff, new features and new graphics are all quite stress free too. The really scary stuff seems to be balance changes. Everyone who plays the game uses different tactics, and no matter what you test, the nanosecond you release the new patch, people find some cunning way to design ships that takes advantage of a loophole you hadn’t even thought of.

That sort of stuff is inevitable with a game that involves competition, but it does make it pretty scary and time consuming to ever change anything. I concluded that missiles were not good enough, and that fighters flew too fast, but there are a dozen ways to fix both those issues, and every change has its side effects. Still, the game is much better balanced and playable that it was on first release, and despite minor niggles, I do think that on the whole it gets better with each patch. (If not, I’m wasting my life!)

In other news I added a flash widget to the GSB website that scrolls through images. It cost me actual real money! I’m no flash expert, so buying a pre-made component was worth it for me. I normally don’t like flash on websites, because it seems a bit gratuitous but…

How complex?

Posted on September 20, 2009

How complex should a game be? Obviously it’s a huge question dependent heavily on genre. Most simulation games are pretty complex. Turn based strategy can be uber complex, MMOs too. Flash games are often very simple and iphone games can be simpler still. Is it a question you can even attempt an answer to?

I think an interesting take on it, is “what are you asking?”. Too complex can mean two things:

“This game is too complex to enjoy”

“This game looks too complex. I’ll pass”

Similarly:

“This game is very simple”

“This game is too simple to be worth buying”

There are loads of games out there I might find fun, that I would not buy. There are also games out there that look awesome, and incredible, and wonderful, and I would not buy them either, and it comes down to complexity.

Take a game where you make a single mouse click to time a guy swinging a bat to hit a ball (there are many, some involve penguins). As a web-based flash game, this can be fun. You might even waste a whole lunchtime on it. But ultimately it’s throwaway disposable fun that we all know someone coded in a weekend. It’s very unlikley you would pay more than $0.99 for it at the very very very most.

Now, Take Eve online, or any of those Hex Based wargames. Or, take Empire: Total War. These are all great, awesome games, with TONS of stuff to do, incredible depth and complexity, but tbh, life is just too short for me to play them. I played eve for years, playing an hour a day or more, and never more than scratched the surface. I never got far into 0.0 space. In E:TW, I played ONE campaign game a third of the way through, then gave up. It was taking ages, and there was too much to do.

The weird thing, is not only are games like that more complex than they need to be in order to get a sale from me, their complexity actually has a negative impact on my chances of buying. Even though I know it’s irrational, I am put off buying them because I’d actually resent having paid for content I’ll never see or use. (ironically I do own E:TW anyway, but I’m aware of my own niggling feeling about it).

I’m probably not alone. I think almost everyone has a ‘complexity’ curve for games that influences their purchase decision. We all regard some games as too trivial or simplistic to buy, and some are too overcomplex and involved to buy. Obviously mass market games need to be in the sweet spot at the top of the aggregate curve. Niche developers like me can cater to the other extremes, and GSB possibly heads slightly towards ‘too complex’ rather than the opposite.

What I find a lot of game devs forget is that a game can be fun, enjoyable, playable and cool, and well made, and addictive and generally excellent, but a LOT of people will play the demo and never buy it, because they resent buying a game that seems like it’s too simple in form.

Are you one of those people, or is it just me?

The metagame

Posted on September 16, 2009

Gratuitous Space Battles right now is probably best thought of as a very complex, expanded and pretty versions of the space battle segments of a 4X game.

In other words, these are just battles, fought out between similar fleets with similar objectives, in the same way. It’s kind of like chess. In chess, the map never changes, the pieces are set in stone.

It takes a loooong time to perfectly design and balance the ‘sandbox’ that allows games like this to remain fun over a long period, nd its definitely my aim to get to that point. Howver, I’d also like to introduce a lot more variety and options to keep things interesting. I can always describe more ideas than I have time to implement but here are a few:

1) More unlocks, and modules in general. Although I sympathise with those people who dislike the whole unlock concept, I think there is some good middle ground. People who are very good at the game have lots of spare honor, and as long as there is nothing too game-brekaing, I think some extra, expensive modules might be a good idea

2) Scenario variety. Right now the ‘terrain’ options are quite limited. They aren’t really major in terms of changing tactics (25% range reduction isn’t really earth-shattering), and there are many more possibilities. Maybe a nebula where plasma weapons just do not work? or one where radiation levels mean that no fighters can survive?

3) Modding. There has been little in the way of formal mod support so far. I have some very primitive tools, instructions and general information on how to do stuff like add ship hulls. I should write this up and make it available.

That’s what I’m currently thinking of, and hope to add to the game. So if you think the missions are a bit samey and the ship design options too limited, this will change. If people have similar suggestions, please throw them out there. I love hearing peoples ideas.