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

Category: gratuitous space battles

More challenge refinements

Posted on March 8, 2010

I’ve been fixing some minor bugs and issues today, and doing some businessy stuff I won’t bore you with. I’ve also been tuidying up the challenge list screen, given the new fangled details window. It now looks like this (click to enlarge)

Basically the details button replaces the old download and delete ones, the history button has moved, and there is a new column showing a challenge’s unique ID, and allowing you to sort by it, handy for finding a specific challenge if you know it’s ID, which I hope will be of use for forum discussions etc.

Feedback most welcome!

Also, GSB got a geat new review here:

http://www.games32.com/Gratuitous-Space-Battles-(PC)-Reviews/p2000_articleid/1296

Yay!

New Challenge Details Screen

Posted on March 7, 2010

This isn’t finished yet, so this is just a work in progress screenshot, click it to enlarge…

This is new challenge UI stuff. I got sick of squeezing more columns in 1024 res on the list view, so now those download and delete buttons get replaced by ‘details’ which opens this new screen for a selected challenge. All the old data is here, with room for some more, and the history of that challenge is now auto-downloaded and displayed here at the top right. You can also now see the challenge ID in the titlebar, (I’ll probably add that to the list somehow too). there are two super-exciting new things:

  • The challenges now uplaod a screenshot of their deployment, as you can see. Obviously old challenges will not have one, but new ones will. I’m very happy about this :D
  • The challenges now have a parent, because when you win a challenge, you can send your fleet back as a ‘retaliation’. These get listed like any other challenge, but if you pick one of your challenges, you can see a list of it’s retaliations on the bottom window. I don’t have a super-threading view of it all, but this is a first step.

My plan for this is that

  • Players will be able to see what a challenge looks like before downloading, which helps detect ‘spammy’ fleets for people who prefer not to play against them
  • There will be a more on-going to-and-fro between players over who has the best fleet, using retaliations.

I still have more tweaks, and a ton of testing to do, to make this work well. I’m hoping the next patch will really improve the online stuff. Ideas and feedback are most welcome, as ever.

DIE you heathen alien scum!

Posted on February 26, 2010

Ok so here we go, It’s finally ready for release. Hopefully all will go smoothly! Here is the new DLC for GSB:

THE ORDER are a group of aliens who take their beliefs very seriously. Their holy book may have been written when The Order had spears and lived in mud huts, but they cling to the letter of the book even now, ten thousand years later. And you no what isn’t in the holy book? That’s right… YOU.

And the order interpret this the way every rational life-form would. That you are heathen aliens who must be destroyed in the name of ‘The One True God’.  They tried Hymns, then they tried leaflets, but now they are trying nuclear missiles, radiation guns and limpet mines. Stand aside heathen alien scum.

Details here

Video here:


The order have three new weapons. Radiation guns, firing radioactive bullets which infect your ship and do damage long after the impact (cue nice green glowy effect), Nuclear Missiles, which are a similar effect in missile form, and limpet mines, which are like remote controlled drones which stick to enemy fighters and drag them, down to speeds where anyone can hit them. They also have faster firing cruiser rockets called ‘firefly’ rockets. In terms of ship bonuses’ they are big on power, low on speed.

I hope you enjoy them. BTW, One of the new scenarios is a survival mode map. I know you enjoy them :D

Spot The New Feature

Posted on February 23, 2010

It’s very minor. But what have I changed in this screenshot below?

I’m supposed to be finalizing the new expansion. I’ll do more work on that tomorrow, but I’ve resigned myself to one more patch before I release it. I needed more weapon variety for them, and that meant code changes to the main game. Then I suddenly got a bit manic and obsessed about improving the graphics in all ways. Hence, 2 days were wasted trying to add shadows (I tried various methods but none of them look right, not without re-rendering every existing ship and a major re-write) and then a decent bloom effect. In the end, I junked all that code, because it didn’t get me anywhere.  I’ve made 3 tiny changes today to some stuff which make the game look very slightly better. Overall, it all adds up methinks….

Gratuitous Patch Number 32!

Posted on February 16, 2010

At last I’ve released patch 32 (version 1.32) for GSB today. If all goes well, then I’ll roll that out to partners like steam over the next two days. There are many changes big and small. Here are the big ones:

1) Performance: UI performance improvement for scrolling on the challenge browser screen.
2) Performance: Differential challenge data downloading means that refreshing the challenge list is much faster now.
3) New Feature: Fleet overlay UI for the battle screen showing every ship on your fleet and it’s current status.
4) Usability: Mouse cursor now changes to the hand icon when over something clickable.
5) New Feature: Added module stat comparison window when you click any item of module data.
6) Bug Fix: Weapons will now fire at anything within range correctly, even if ordered not to attack a certain class, providing that no other suitable targets are in range.

Depending how you play the game, some of these may be irrelevant, or awesome. I really like the module stat comparison stuff. I should have done it ages ago, and the fleet overlay is handy too. People who micromanage their weapons orders to the nth degree will appreciate number 6. I always thought it was working that way, but it turns out my code is buggier than a bug breeding colony on bug island. It works in a much more sensible way now, and its more viable to build ships that mix and match anti-fighter and anti-cruiser weapons :D

The patch will auto-download over the next 24 hours for existing buyers. New buyers get a  ready-patched copy anyway.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. I forgot to mention in the readme that I beefed up some of the explosions and particle effects too. The very next thing I do will be the next expansion pack, which I’m pretty excited about. After that, it’s likely the mini-campaign.