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

Category: gsb2

Gratuitous Space Battles 2 with Graphics Debugging!

So here is something you might enjoy, especially if you like gratuitous charts and stats porn, or are interested in graphics programming, or maybe you just want to tell me I’m doing it wrong. This is a video of me demonstrating nvidia nsight, and how I use it to spot things that are inefficient in my engine for Gratuitous Space Battles 2. I’ve already fixed the two inefficiencies I point out in the video, while I was waiting for it to upload :D Enjoy! (And please share!)

Big Pharma update, GSB2 Trading Cards

Lots going on. Its good fun when you have two games in production, you get more stuff happening each day. Anyway… GSB2 is getting steam trading cards. I really enjoy getting art done for this stuff. here is a preview montage of some of it.

montage

Plus I’m working on adding web high score tables for every mission, so you can compete to win with the smallest fleet. Its a work in progress, but so far the empty scores table is here.

Plus big pharma is coming along. There is a nice preview of the game here, on Rock Paper Shotgun. And you might want to check out Tims latest video blog:

And because you *might* have missed the new, you can grab the Democracy 3 collectors edition from steam at 50% off all this week and weekend:

discount

Gratuitous Space Battles2 Patch 1.20 Live NOW!

So yay! It’s that exciting time again, it’s PATCH TIME. What is in this version? Here are the highlights… <drumroll!>

  1. Default ship designs added for all Zyrtari ships!
  2. Subtle fill-bars behind variables when looking at a module stats now show immediately how that stat compares with others of the same size class.
  3. Fixed a lot of bunched-up dreadnought turret GUI things.
  4. Fixed some horrible bugs where composites got scrambled
  5. Also fixed thing where layers below the hull were forgotten about.
  6. Fixed a pesky ‘design vanishes’ bug.
  7. Spatial anomalies are now added to missions!
  8. Default engagement ranges now more sensible…
  9. Shield resistance of most shield modules reduced.
  10. Support for French, Spanish and German!

Plus there are a load of minor tweaks, adjustments and fixes, including some performance tweaks. There are likely still two more patches before release day, and the final one is likely to be pure polish/optimization. (and possibly some module tweaking for balance).

Here is a screenshot showing what I mean about showing relative values of variables:

patch1

I think that makes things clearer than asking people to click on a variable and view the comparison chart.

And here is proof that the translations (first pass at them) are in!

patch2

(Hopefully that makes sense in Spanish?). On a related note. I’d like a sanity check on the translation in general, so if you speak Spanish, German or French, if you go the steam store page for the game (you still can’t buy it yet) which is here. You should be able to change language at the top right from your account to those 3 languages. Does it all look ok to you?

If you have already bought GSB2 from our website here, then you should get a patch download kick in either today or tomorrow. If you can’t wait,. or it won’t trigger, then just re-download the game using your original download link.

And tell your friends to grab a copy!

 

Things that I have done & learned lately

Soooo…I went to rezzed, which was cool for two days and then I just wanted it to ENDDDDDDDD. I get very burned out by shows. I could talk at length about how I was one of the chosen 0.00001% who got to try Valves new VR thing, and how it is just awesome and even better than the one I saw last year, but you know all that kind of thing anyway, and nobody will believe me until they try it…

I’ve been back working in GSB2 land since then, tweaking, adjusting, bug fixing and generally doing the 101 jobs you have to do before shipping. The current projected shipping date for GSB2 is April 16th. before then I need the trading cards set up, final bugs squashed, French,German and Spanish translations done and integrated, Linux & Mac ports done (hopefully), the final release trailer done, and some missing stuff like medium & hard difficulty enemies set up, plus default ship designs for every ship (only some are done so far). Plus those missions need some more interesting starting restrictions (something planned for today). With any luck, all that will be done by release day. Yay!

I’ve been advertising on twitter lately, with both GSB (a bit) and Democracy 3 (a lot). I got a few people complaining that they saw the ad too many time, which seems nuts because I have selected a very large group of people to target, and they shouldn’t really have seen it twice. I pestered twitter who said ‘you don’t need to limit frequency, our algorithm does that’ to which I had to refrain from replying ‘Sack your fucking programmer then’. The thing is, if you write an app that hooks into the twitter API they have a variable to set the frequency, so as usual, the front line customer service rep knows fuck all about their own product, and as usual (as with google, facebook…) I am more informed about their advertising delivery system than they are. Grrrr…

twit1

Apologies if you see an ad from me too many times. You can always just click ‘dismiss’.

And on that topic…why do people get so annoyed at seeing a promoted tweet. Twitter is a business. Businesses need to pay their staff and server costs. If you really object to twitter ads, ask for a refund…oh wait.

twit2

There is an argument that twitter should allow ad-free subscription service too, but they don’t, and frankly that isn’t my fault :D. Ho hum. I guess if people think they see too much promotion from me now they may have to go hide in a cave when I release GSB2 :D

Even More Gratuitous than before (1.19) + Rezzed

Sooo… because making decent mac & linux ports, and translating into French German and Spanish takes so long…I’ve put back my target release date for GSB2 to …

April 16th

Which is a pain, but on the plus side it does mean that I have more time to be careful about stuff like final mission and hull balancing, optimizing and polishing and general improvements. Plus it means I’ll have steam trading cards on launch day. I’m also hoping for a simultaneous Steam/Humble/GoG launch.

With that on the horizon, today is patch day to version 1.19. what has changed I hear you cry? Here are the highlights:

1) New more helpful text displays instead of ‘no effect’ in battle.
4) Improved tabbed interface with more data for the end-battle stats.
9) Simplified system for quickly and simply posting a ship design as a steam workshop submission added after saving a ship design.

(and obviously lots of minor tweaks & fixes).

I’m hoping the one-click posting of ship designs will work, and be cool. It *might* not work for anyone but me until the game is officially steam-launched, not sure TBH.

In other news, tomorrow I head off here:

london

That’s London. Hopefully there will be less cybermen and more gamers as I will be at REZZED showing off both Gratuitous Space Battles and Big Pharma, with the help of Tim from Twice Circled. COME TRY OUR GAMES. With any luck GSB2 will have dual monitors. Plus if you have a youtube channel and want some content, come interview us. We are photogenic and literally ooze charisma. We have boxes of leaflets (mine are printed wrongly because I’m a dork, so they seem to read backwards or in some funny order. I am too busy to care),

stuff

and boxes of badges. The GSB2 ones printed weirdly, again, I’m stupid, but the Big Pharma ones are cool. Tim *may* have jelly beans.

So please come along on Thursday Friday or Saturday and enjoy the show! Also I have a new phone. I may do some exciting live-tweeting from the show floor!!!!111oneoneone.