Spacebattles Uploading Images From Phone or Computer

Free Infinite Battles did not start off as a hybrid management/simulation/strategy infinite combat game. In fact, it started off every bit a turn based 'dictator-simulation' back in the nighttime days of 2008. In November 2008, I was starting piece of work on the next game after Kudos 2, and had decided to do a game that was similar to Democracy, just from a dictators point of view. A sort of 'Virtual Saddam' game. It but took a few weeks of writing lawmaking for this for the game to strangely morph into a totally dissimilar direction, and before long I was working on a infinite strategy game. Thankfully, every bit an indie developer who self-funds, I can do this without having to get anyone'due south permission, or go through endless blueprint meetings. Gratuitous Space Battles was born, but the name wouldn't exist picked until Feb of the next year.

In it's early days, like most games (even AAA) ones), GSB was put together with 'coder art', while the very basics of getting moving and firing ships was put together. Initially, the game looked similar this:

The very first screenshot from what would get gratuitous space battles

Thankfully, it didn't stay similar that for too long. Initially, I clung to a lot more of the typical Existent fourth dimension strategy game UI decisions that crop up in every game, significant ships even had wellness bars over them (split for hull and shields). This always looked pretty bad:

Wellness bars over ships. Yuck.

I also experimented with a 'burn' issue that is a inexpensive and easy fashion of getting glowing style images. The idea was that the game was not a real-world visual image of a space battle, but more what an admiral commanding the flagship might see on a tactical screen, similar to the view used by the klingon captain at the start of 'Star Expedition: The Motion Picture show'. This also made it look a bit too similar to the manner of Introversion'south games, and although I initially liked it, I'm glad I went in a realistic direction instead.

It'southward all TRON's fault.

One time I'd settled on an fine art way, I had to make that difficult indie-developer decision of whether or not I really needed to employ an artist, or whether I could buy stock images. Obviously, employing an artist to do original art would look meliorate, simply how much meliorate? Did I even have the money to pay them? (My income from earlier games was dropping every month, and this game was not about to keep auction whatsoever fourth dimension soon). I at kickoff experimented by spending a few hundred dollars on stock spaceship models and tried them in the game:

Off-the-shelf ships (cheaper!)

Evidently better than coder fine art, but not adept plenty. Most stock 3D models are done for 3d games. With a 2nd game that used 3d models every bit sprites, I could push the poly count off the calibration, so I needed an artist that could do incredibly detailed work and ideally, one who specialized in spaceships. In that location are a lot of generic artists and musicians out there, but I always think that its best to pick the very all-time person for the electric current job. Often that means using different artists for dissimilar games. I got quotes from 3 artists I liked, and after a lot of nail biting and looking at banking company statements, eventually decided to go with the about expensive one. I don't regret it at all.

The art styles for the ships evolved as they were fabricated. The first fleet was the federation, and so rebels, and so the brotherhood, and finally the empire. Later, the Tribe would appear in an add-on for the game. The original blueprint for the alliance ships was actually influenced by biological science, rather than anything from sci-fi movies. I sent a bunch of different pictures of microscopic organisms to the spaceship artist and asked for space battleship versions...

That was the spaceships sorted, and I always knew that I'd be doing the special furnishings gfx myself (the explosions, tractor beams etc). I still needed graphics for the hundreds of transport components, and a logo and UI. For toll reasons, I had to do all the module gfx myself, which took forever, and was less than perfect, but for the user-interface I got a UI good (Chris Hildenbrand) to do a decent UI for me to use

That was the artwork sorted, simply I notwithstanding needed a decent game design! Initially, the flow of the UI was rubbish. The thespian designed fleets on a unlike screen to the one in which he/she deployed them, which was insane, and difficult to explain (even if information technology made for less chaotic screens). This was pointed out to me at bully length by fellow indies subsequently taking a look at the unfinished game. (I'k non sure activision exercise this with EA, but indies do) A expert long rewrite of the UI sorted this out, and the game was in far better shape.

Unused Armada Design UI

Of course, it's very true that the final 10% of game development takes the other xc% of the time, and that was very true with Gratuitous Space Battles. When I thought the game was finished, it was far from it. The screenshot below shows the original ship design UI. From a distance it looks the aforementioned, only at to the lowest degree fifty things got improved steadily on this screen, from better text edit boxes, to extra buttons to show more data, to sorting of information for ameliorate usability, to newer module groundwork graphics, better tab buttons, and countless other minor tweaks.

Nearly done UI

This, of course merely covers the UI of the game, which in something like GSB is vital, but also in lawmaking terms, pretty trivial in comparison with the graphics engine powering the matter. Although its unremarkably thought that 3D graphics are difficult, whereas 2nd graphics are like shooting fish in a barrel and you don't need to optimize them any more on mod PC'southward, this is (to exist frank) consummate bullshit. It might be true if yous are making a friction match-3 game, but if you take 300 spaceships per side, with harm textures, engine trails, flashing lights on wingtips, drifting space hulks, debris, explosions, missile trails, fancy shader effects, shield glow and impacts, cloaking devices and tractor beams, with parallax scrolling starfields, zoom and pan, a UI layered on the top, variable game speed and pause, sound effects for every weapon..... and all the AI for target selection and damage calculation for those ships in real time, then of a sudden optimizing becomes your full fourth dimension job.

I spent a huge amount of time minimizing the corporeality of texture swaps and draw calls used by the game. The old graphics engine I'd used for earlier games was not upward to the chore and was junked, and an entirely new Directx9 engine was written for Gratuitous Space Battles. The engine isn't generic at all, it'south purely designed around GSB, with all kinds of special case code to handle certain scenarios. For case, when bullet are drawn, they are fatigued every bit a big group, to speed upwardly rendering. This puts them *above* all the ships, yet considering of the way the images work, and the need for them to be seen to sally from a laser cannon, they demand to be drawn underneath the turret that fires them. This means the first few frames of each bullet become drawn one way (under the turret) and then later this they get drawn some other way. Like hi-jinks take identify for fighters that ordinarily wing over a transport, but fly nether information technology when they dock at a carrier.

Oh the joy of programming :D

I of the things that makes all this 100 times worse is the power to freeze-frame and slow down time in the game. Unlike a FPS, I tin can't go away with a graphical glitch for just 1 frame. The histrion may well be zoomed in and focused on information technology. Needless to say, I spent weeks zooming in and freeze framing to spot anything that looked bad.

Spotting poor graphics

Eventually information technology was time to really release the game. I was as well a bit nervous of the online 'claiming' organization which I suspected would not be used much (oh how I express mirth now). I actually coded in a bit of a cheat to compensate for it, whereby if the player was already online, if they beat Whatsoever singleplayer battle in the game, that would get uploaded as a challenge silently to 'anybody'. That style, the challenge list wouldn't be empty and the game wouldn't wait like a flop. I was very happy to have to patch that 'feature' out very soon, and before long I had to rewrite the challenge code to handle the problem of downloading list of over a thousand challenges to select from. This is a groovy problem to accept.

Originally the game went on sale as a pre-society from my website, which was cracking for getting feedback from real paying (and thus brutally honest) gamers, and also allowed me to pay the bills without panicking and rushing the game into 'finished' land. The pre-lodge period went on for a few months and gave me an opportunity to really polish the game so it would come beyond well in it'south outset reviews.

During this menses, I moved house, and turned 40, and went to GameCity Nottingham. This was all intensely decorated, and how I didn't accept a nervous breakup is quite a miracle. Despite the ensuing anarchy, the games release actually worked pretty well, despite that mean solar day when everyone'due south copies stopped working at midnight due to 'error 31', a pre-release timeout I'd accidentally left in the game. Ooops. And that press release that got sent in black text on a black background didn't help. Very spinal tap...

Oh Noes!

Not long after the game going on sale, I managed at concluding to get it on sale through steam (my kickoff game to do so), which boosted sales and was very welcome. I was besides very pleased to see it selling well on Stardocks' impulse system, equally I'm such a huge fan of the GalCiv games. I still think they should let me put Drengin ships in the game :D.

Post-release, i continued to patch and improve the game (and still am), and currently there have been 31 patches to the game, generally improving and adding new features, ships, gameplay modes and effects. Thankfully the game was designed with a built in automobile-patching feature.

GSB has been my fastest selling game always (although at the time of writing, sales aren't and so hot), and is definitely the well-nigh polished, circuitous, and hardest to brand (every bit well as costing more and so whatsoever of the others in terms of artwork and other evolution costs). It'southward currently the game I'yard virtually proud of, and the beginning game I've made that looks good in video and screenshots (the others are good when you play them, honestly!). I remember information technology's fair to consider GSB a successful and even slightly assisting PC-only game, which is a rare thing these days.

Cliffski.

drakestalich.blogspot.com

Source: https://positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/makingofgsb.html

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