Category: game design

A lot of GSB players are very hardcore. they have strong opinions on the cost/range ratios of beam lasers, and why wouldn’t they? this stuff seriously affects gameplay. This is why I’ve been asking their opinions on all manner of topics as I design the modules for Gratuitous Space Battles 2. I started a discussion on the old GSB forums here:

http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=9690&start=15

But in addition I thought I’d throw up the actual design doc for the modules here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t3geRZ5goyFsRkFibBNTqRW7fNiTuxijjnmhTnZQVgo/edit?usp=sharing

So anyone can read it, and add comments ()but can’t edit the actual doc). Hopefully this draws in some really creative ideas and shoots down any stupid decisions I try to make. I’m also working on the spreadsheet of actual raw module data, which is the way I’ll be working (as opposed to the individual ini files of GSB 1), as this allows a much simpler way to balance costs and power requirements of modules, maybe involving actual equations to ensure stuff is balanced (yikes!).

GSB 1 had a LOT of modules when you take into account extra content from expansion packs. I’m hoping to make all of that content included in the base game for GSB2, without any DLC required, so all the old faves like the decoy projector and the smart bomb will be in there. There are also some wacky new ideas, Combat tractor beams (like the cultures ‘effectors’), remote propulsion projection, fuel tanks for fighters, and so on. This kind of spreadsheet-work makes a change from my recent few days of crunching away on optimizing the asteroid rendering for the engine. I’ve got it faster now, but not as fast as I’d like, and the multi-threading is a *bit* better, but still not making that much use of extra cores yet…

Formation orders in GSB sucked a bit. You had to select a ship, then a target and basically the order was ‘stay at this position relative to that ship’. This sucks in two different ways. Firstly, it means if the ‘target’ ship gets destroyed, the formation is instantly abandoned (yikes). Secondly, it is laborious to set up 32 ships into a formation.

The new system for GSB2 is simpler. You group select a bunch of ships and then add a formation order in one go. They then attempt to stay relative to each other, regardless who gets destroyed. Internally, the ships ‘elect’ a command ship, that has ‘free-will’ and the other ships will try to stay in relative position to that ship. That ship getting destroyed or tractored results in a new election. So far so good, and certainly better when it comes to ship destruction and setting-up GUI. However, it leads me to question a few things. Take this formation (coder art!)

Just a simple line of 6 ships where randomly I’ve made the blue one the commander. If the commander heads to the right, then all is well. However, if he heads at an angle what do the ships do? Should they stay relative to the ship in absolute world terms, or in relative to the lead ships-angle terms? in other words, do we wheel?

Obviously the two different behaviors are vastly different. It also brings up the topic of what to do if the command ship decides to retreat when damaged, does the formation follow? what if it’s just 1 damaged frigate… I’#m guessing they leave the formation at this point. In my mind, the reason behind formations is to keep ships trogether in the sense that they should be able to cover each other in terms of support, and shooting down incoming missiles etc. With that in mind, I reckon it would make sense to always elect the biggest ship as the commander, where viable.  Theoretically you could have a super-slow ship with the entire fleet locked into formation with it, effectively preventing anyone from moving.

What do you think? do I ignore angles and stick to world space, or pivot? and will the system of commander elections work ok? For reference, this is how fighter squadrons already work in GSB 1.

I’ve been working away on GSB2 while I wait for some people to do work for the Democracy 3 Extremism expansion. There isn’t really enough polished stuff to show to people yet, but I have got quite a bit of extra fluff sorted out. One thing I’ve got vastly improved is shields. In GSB 1, shields were basically assumed to be a sphere around a ship, and things impacted on the outer shell like this:

For GSB2 I wanted shields that reflected the shape oif the ship, and eventually concluded that a combination of a grid (or in this case below, hex pattern) a blast texture and the alpha map of the target ship would let me convey the idea that a blast was absorbed at the last few millimeters by a tight ship-hugging energy field:

It looks much better animated, as usual. it really works very nicely in very dark-battles, and I think it leaves plenty of opportunity for me to customise ships shields using different energy field colors and patterns.

I’m currently working on a combination of better parallax effects for debris and smoke, and also the GUI for choosing missions, which will look totally different. GUI stuff takes ages, and the whole GUI will get a re-design from scratch. I’m just working on the basic systems right now. With the battle effects, the module mechanics re-write, the online challenge system to revamp, steam achievements and so on, there is a ton of work to do, without considering new sfx and music… Still it’s definitely making progress and I’m still aiming for late 2014.