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

Online integration fun

Posted on December 9, 2009

You know what’s missing in GSB?

Yes, yes I know you want a big 4x style campaign game built around it. ONE DAY maybe, but certainly not by the end of the week. One thing that is not quite so huge and unwieldy for a short term project is the area of online community.

Player A reads a forum post by player B, and decides to issue them with a challenge that proves their point that tribe frigates kick ass. Player B is oblivious, unless they happen to be browsing the challenges and spot they have a new one, from that player. Wouldn’t it be much cooler if every time someone issued a challenge to you, beat your challenge, or played (and presumably lost) your challenge, the game knew about it, and collected those messages for you to review at your leisure?

So rather than having to go to challenges, filter by personal and check if anything looks new, you could have a little spangly message popup saying “you have new messages“, on the main menu, and clicking there would tell you what’s new in your world of GSB.

This sort of stuff isn’t *that* evil to code, even though it involves server-side stuff. I already have it all up and running, UI and all, and the server is currently processing messages as I speak (although nobody has  a game version that lets them see them yet. But I can tell that a bit earlier, superneals sent a new challenge to knightsofni, for example.)

This will go into version 1.28. At the moment it’s system generated messages, so you just get pre-defined text messages notifying you of events. If people liek it, I think it would be awesome to be able to win a challenge, then type a message for the person you just beat saying “Ha!, i beat that fleet without even using plasma. I’ve responded with my winning fleet.” of course, you need to be able to block abusive / spam messages, but I’m working on that now. Besides, anyone spamming or being abusive will get the ban hammer :D

Nearly finished supply limits

Posted on December 7, 2009

The long talked about supply limits stuff is all done and nearly ready for the 1.27 patch. That patch has some other stuff like a challenge fix, increasing the taunt to 256 characters, some balance changes and introducing a hidden, not very supported ability to manually edit the maximum zoom out distance.

Anyway, as is usual, when I do my final sanity checks before uploading a patch, I noticed a bug. And then fixed it, and tested again…and again… five times in total. And it’s still not done. The final ‘gotcha’ was the code that displays what supply limits are in place for the current mission. I have to have support for restricting new modules from expansion packs, BUT, the game can’t do it’s normal freaking out if a module can’t be found. So that needs fixing and then testing again… hopefully tomorrow morning.

This is basically phase I of the usefulness of supply limits. I’ve added them to a single mission (gravity well). This means that they will also be  in place for new challenges issued on that map. Hopefully feedback on them will be positive

Phase II will be a new route for issuing a challenge, that will wrap into a basic scenario editor. The data in a scenario is effectively included in a challenge, so I don’t even need to change the challenge format. All I really need to do is code a UI that lets the player pick a map size, the spatial anomalies etc. I already have the supply limits editor done, which is a full screen pop-up dialog. My eventual aim is that people start issuing some cunningly designed challenges with supply limits that prevent the most obvious tank/spam fleets, and encourage some clever and aesthetically pleasing fleets instead.

Insulating Positech Towers

Posted on December 5, 2009

Now and then I stop programming for thirty seconds to do other things. Compulsive blog readers may recall I moved house recently, just before PC Gamer put my business on the map as being in Guildford (not any more!). The good news is instead of having a view of a busy road, and the house about 60 feet away from me across the street, I can now look out of windows and see this:

Woot. There are sometimes cows and sheep and horses and all sorts of ‘country’ things. It’s l33t. the downside is that the only way I get to afford to live here is by getting somewhere that needs ‘work doing’ as they say. This house was built in 1750, and I think 1750 was the last time anyone tried to insulate it. Having no cavity walls, single pane thin ‘post-war glass’ windows and a damp cellar/dungeon with a well in it, does not make for a warm house. Even worse, as it’s ‘listed’, you can’t even bung in modern windows. Nor can you do almost anything. What you *can* do is insulate the cellar ceiling / living room floor, so it’s no longer just floorboards and then icicles. But due to the damp / listedness, it can only be insulated with sheeps wool.

Cue a whole day installing wool insulation. Now you might think its’ easy, if you’ve seen the TV ads. After all, they sell the stuff pre-cut to the standard joist gaps. Those gaps must have become standardised sometime after the battle of waterloo, meaning when this house was built, it was more freeform. Not a single strip of insulation went in without cutting it to size first with a breadknife (it’s the best way). The insulation is called thermafleece, but it’s basically just wool. Cue silly expression posed for camera… Behold my l33t pipe lagging too. (They hadn’t even done that).

It’s about half done, And I don’t reckon just wedging it up there will hold it in place. I need a breathable membrane sheet over it I reckon. Still, it’s one step towards being able to sleep without 6 jumpers 4 blankets and 2 cats on the bed to keep warm.

I still did *some* work today. Some more work on the supply limits editor, which I’ll use to test out and implement that feature, and eventually will maybe make it into a generic player-usable challenge editor.

Tweaking Supply Limits

Posted on December 3, 2009

I’ve been doing lots of stuff around the release of the Tribe expansion pack, so I’ve got behind on work for the next patch. I ended up taking some time to re-balance a few of the least-used weapons, and do some admin stuff, like tweak the challenges code so that it doesn’t show you older challenges in the list when newer ones are available. I also got rid of some really really old challenges. Currently the list only displays up to 1,024 of them, sorted in date order now. That was always enough in the past, now it’s not, hence the tweaking.

Anyway…

I was testing out the new supply limits stuff and trying to ensure it was user friendly at the deployment phase. One of the things I needed was a way to see how much of each supply limit was taken up, and the other was exactly which ships were using up those limits. My current solution isn’t perfect,but it’s a starting point. The supply limits window is on the right, so you can still your fleet. The individual module icon bars now have a feint progress bar as their background showing you how much of that specific modules supply limit is used up. If it turns red, you are using too many and the fleet is invalid. If you click one of those strips, it will highlight the ships in the fleet currently using that module so you can see where you are using them up.

My current thinking is that when I next patch the game, with this functionality included, I will put it in one of the existing missions, so people can see how it plays out (and of course modders will be able to use it). In the lonegr term, this functionality will form part of any meta-game or maybe a map editor that gets done next.

Gratuitous Expansion Pack Released!

Posted on December 2, 2009

Ok, so it’s finally here. The long awaited invasion of the space tree-huggers* is upon us: THE TRIBE!!!!!!!!! bwahahaha

Video!

I’ve never released an expansion pack for a game before, but I think GSB was the perfect game to do so. I have no idea how it will sell. I hope to at least pay back the art costs (which are not trivial). If it does that, then I’m a happy man. Basically this is an extra fleet for the game. In theory this would be moddable, but obviously this way other people will be more likely to also have the same fleet, and it uses the same super talented artist as the others so it has a consistent look. I’m sure there will be GSB players who will buy it immediately, and some who will not see the point, which is fine because that’s what DLC should be about: Options for the player. (someone make some DLC for Company of Heroes. Russian + Japanese + Italian armeis plz)

This doesn’t add any huge gameplay changing features. It’s not the direct-control or 4x meta-game expansion people sometimes suggest. It’s just mroe ships/modules/maps.

That’s not to say some big-ass future expansion that adds meta game stuff or whatever is not going to happen. Who knows where I’m heading next after Supply Limits?

I await the verdict of the interwebs with gritted teeth. At least if people complain about the price of DLC, ‘space armour’ sounds more l33t than ‘horse armour’ surely?

Check it out here:

http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/tribe.html

*used in a jovial fashion. I’m a bit of a green geek myself, so I’m not having a go.