The Shadow Government Simulator News

[h2]Hello fellow co-conspirators![/h2]

This week was mostly a time for plumbing (i.e. doing all those things that are not gameplay (booo), but which are important for the game to run smoothly). On top of improving localization and optimizing the game, some friends of mine noticed that the game had no settings for v-sync, anti-aliaising, etc... I want our conspiracy to be as inclusive as possible (you know...for subversion purposes), and for that, we need to make sure the game works in a wide variety of configurations. So I decided to do something about it.



Not all are fully functional and tested yet, but I've advanced quite a bit on them. Unfortunatley a few nasty new bugs that were discoved stopped me from finishing all of this. And these are NASTY ones, one of them stopped players from finishing the tutorial, but only after you've completed it. Another one was so powerful, it stopped the game engine! :O Some of the bugs have been squashed, but as of this writting, the battle continues.

However, not all progress has been stopped on it's tracks by those buggers. We've also been working on new art. Each faction will get it's own loading screen. Now, it's not finished, but I wanted to show you the first iteration for the Freemasons:



Pretty sweet right? I want to make one for each faction to use for interstitial screens (loading screens, backgrounds, etc...) I hope to have the final version and the next two factions next week.

Happy conspiring!
Rafa

[h2]Hello fellow co-conspirators![/h2]

Last time I mentioned we were laser focused on tutorial bugs; but with those mostly out of the way 🤞, I've spent the last pummeling through the backlog of bugs related to the Save and AI systems. Now, ask any programmer, and they'll tell you these are particular systems are some of the worst to troubleshoot.



Pictured: A programmer after being asked that question.

The former is a pain because generally you don't find a bug until AFTER loading a save game (so not actually when the error ocurrs), making them hard to track down. The latter is a pain becuase the issue with giving something the ability to think, is then trying to convince it to do so again time and time again.



Pictured: Templars being jerks and capturing a unit they shouldn't be able to

Fortunatley, many of these bugs were found and subsequently squelshed. Some were kinda benign.



Some gave them an unfair advantage:



I also added a few light features, like the mush requested sleeper cell view, which allows you to see which abilities sleeper cells have access to without going through the activation menu and new automated feedback system that sends me an email everytime the game crashes. (v1.0 had an error that would send me 35 emails a second!)

[h2]Beta Update[/h2]
v0.2.40 is now up on steam on the beta channel. Changes include:

🔹 New background error reporting system - it silently sends me an email if there's a crash
🔹 Sleeper cell view - you can now see all sleeper cell potential abilities at a glance
🔹 A huge bunch of bugs and fixes, including:
🔹 HQ will no longer resist localization when in cyrilic
🔹 AI will not earn cooldowns when taking over units
🔹 Units will no longer remian visible if surveillance expiresI feel there are still more bugs lurking in the shadows of the AI and save systems, so I'll be spending some more time looking at them. I'll keep you posted on any other weirdness I find.

Happy conspiring!
Rafa

[h2]Hello fellow co-conspirators![/h2]

Now that the tutorial has been live for a bit, I've been getting a whole bunch of feedback on what works and what doesn't. Last week I took care of over 35 (!) bugs, issues and suggestions on how to improve it.Just look at what my bug tracker used to look like:



Issues ranged from the general quality of life (like showing locked buttons in the ability select screen to show that you'll eventually unlock more):



passing to the game breaking (like making sure that a wrong step doesn't end your game):



To the "this should be simple, but in reality it take a lot of work to get it right" (like allowing players to click through a mask and into a country):



Trust me, as simple as it looks, this last one was a nightmare. I'll be continuing on the hunt for bugs and patching them as I find them. Its not the most glamorous part of game development, but we want to make sure we don't release with any terrible, obvious bugs. Join our discord to learn more on the game's progress! And in the meantime:

Happy conspiring!
Rafa

[h2]Hello fellow co-conspirators![/h2]

Guess what guys! I'm on the internet \o/ Josh from Game Wisdom did an interview on Chupacabra, indie game development and game design. It was tons of fun and we went deep into the nuts and bolts of planning a game. Josh has done multiple interesting analysis and opinion pieces on industry sites like Gamasutra, so it was really cool to have a chat with him. If you're interested in what we had to say on 'behind-the-scenes' game development, take a look below!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

But tiny internet fame has not stopped me from working on the game. After a month and a half of work, the new tutorial is now live! On my end I've been testing the 'happy path', which is how the game responds when the player does what the instructions tell them. However, we all know how much players like to read tutorials, so I'll be spending the next few weeks testing the 'unhappy paths', where we basically pretend to be drunk and/or illiterate and play through the game that way.

[h3]Beta Update[/h3]

v0.2.37 is now up on steam on the beta channel. Changes include:

🔹New tutorial level focused on connections
🔹 Modified other tutorials to make them easier to understand
🔹 Potential fix for load crash found by discord user @Laaaarrryyyy
🔹 A fancy new background image for the main menu
🔹 A whole bunch of minor fixes

Tutorials are always finicky and sensitive;.if a new player finds a bug in a tutorial, they'll just quit the game. To those who have access to the beta, it would really help me if you guys could go through it and let me know if anything is amiss. I want to dedicate the next few weeks to fixing any bugs that might crop up. Join our discord to stay up to date on the game's progress!

Happy conspiring!
Rafa

[h2]Hello fellow co-conspirators![/h2]

Regular readers will have probably noticed that I mention testers a lot in these emails. It makes sense though, it's honestly thanks to them that the game is shaping up to be what it is. Testing a game in progress is not always fun; the game is incomplete, buggy and hard to understand. Tester tears are constantly shed. Usually, little by little though, it gets better. But this time is a bit different. I've been tackling one of the main tester complaints, and this time we're aiming for a big jump in quality 💪

I'm talking of course about the tutorial.

This is an image of just a fraction of the tutorial improvements I've been asked for:



And slowly, but surely, I've been tackling them. So far:

• I've created a new tutorial level that focuses more on connections
  
• streamlined the objectives so they are more visible
  
• simplified language
  
• will change the last level to focus more on turns and abilities.
  

The tutorial is a bit longer, but information should flow better 😀



There's still work to do, but it's really shaping up. I hope to have it ready by next week. For all you co-conspirators that haven't played the game yet; when you do, pour one out for the testers who suffered to give you a better experience.

Happy conspiring!
Rafa