Cliffski's Blog

A fair number of people ask if its possible to have a mode where you set up both sides of a battle in Gratuitous Space Battles 2. Now, veteran players will know that such a mode already exists to an extent, because you can simply post a challenge fleet to yourself, but I agree that is not immediately obvious. It also means that you are stuck with the missions already in the game. (I’m steadily adding more…but even so…). Anyway…

I’ve agreed that both custom scenarios & a ‘deploy both sides’ mode is a good idea, so for the past two days I’ve been working on that. I hope to have a working, but unpolished version by tonight. The current model looks like this:

So this is launched from a new main-menu button, and you get to build a scenario from scratch, or load in a previously saved out one. You can customize everything that makes up a scenario, move planets around, add nebula clouds, change map sizes…it’s all there. Then, the two deploy buttons will let you deploy the player fleet, and then the AI fleet, and from there you can issue a challenge with this custom map, or just enjoy the fireworks.

This should make it into the next patch.

Adding stuff like this is great fun, because once a game is finished, shipped and stable, adding in another mode, or option, or feature is pretty negligible in terms of time compared with the insane effort of actually making the game engine from scratch. As a result I’m quite enjoying adding little features and options as people request them. Obviously it makes for a much better game, and a game people are happier to buy full price, and that all helps.  I’m also pretty keen to get my moneys-worth from the investment of time into the graphics engine, so adding extra features is one way to do that. There are plenty of things I could add, but the one thing everyone wants is a campaign mode.

Thats a BIG undertaking, given how complex I made the galactic conquest mode for GSB1. People would like that to go in again, and I think that might take me forever. Whats more likely is a new sort of campaign, with a series of (possibly branching) missions, with a chance to repair and refuel a fleet in-between. That would be a lot of work too, but not the miniature 4X that the first game’s campaign turned into.

I’m still considering options.

BTW if you are a youtuber who wants to do a lets-play of the game, please get in touch. And don’t bother trying to scam me, we all know how to check who people are :D

Hey there, remember Limpet Modules in Gratuitous Space Battles 2! You know…these things…

Well I’m updating them for the next patch. In the past, we had two forms of limpet launchers, Weight-based ones (Which stuck to an enemy fighter and weighed them down, thus slowing them and making them easier to hit) and Tracer ones, which did the same but gave an overall bonus to hit rather than affecting speed. Now we have two more..

The REPAIR limpet and the REFUEL limpet. These do what their names suggest, in that they repair and refuel YOUR fighters and gunships mid-battle. They have to clamp to the fighters just like the ordinary ones, meaning they *will* slow down your ships temporarily while they do the business, but on the plus side it means those ships can often be repaired and refueled without having to fly all the way back to the nearest carrier to do so.

More information on these, and visuals of it happening in this INCREDIBLY EXCITING GSB2 blog video thingy below. If you like this sort of video blog thing let me know and I’ll keep doing them,. They take decades to upload from the field I work in, so I don’t get to do them that often.