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The Shadow Government Simulator News

🔍 Transparency? In my secret society?!

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

Last time I promissed the bug-ridden audio manager would submit or die, and I have kept my word!! The game's audio has been completely revamped, using a more advanced state machine (🤖)  in order to keep everything in place. Reports of audio bugs have significanlty lowered, and they will stay that way if they know what's good for them! (ed. please, please stay that way)

In other news, I've also tackled one of the UX issues that has plagued the game from the beginning. When activating a unit, it was hard to understand how it affected their traits and what bonuses were going to be gained or lost. It was not transparent, and that confused new players.

There were several iterations:



But after a vote from the Kickstarter backers over at Discord (thanks guys!); we ended up with as the final screen:



Turns out the more information you give players the better! 

Next week I'll be focussing on the end game. It's a loooong campaign, so it'll be a bit of a grind, but the advantage of being the dev is that you can always cheat 😉

[h2]Community[/h2]
In discord news: Last week we had our first-ever community lecture! The idea is for the community to present and discuss interesting topics. We realized we had a lot of very knowledgable and interesting folks in our server, and we're trying to spread the knowledge. The first lecture was "Demystifying Artificial Intelligence" by OWA.

It went well and was really interesting to hear from an AI master's degree student how modern AI works. 

It was a nice experiment and we might be doing that again in the future. If you want to stay up to date with these events, join our community!

Happy conspiring!
Rafa

When in doubt add more particles ✨

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

As mentioned last time, this was a week of bug fixing and polishing the tutorial. Nothing too major, but some tears might have been shed and some cursing might have been carried by the wind. I did focus on visual bugs, so instead of the usual "things that don't work are now working" I can show you some cool gifs:



Notice how non-connected units go to half transparency on unit select. This will be super helpful in small countries (like my personal bane: UK ).
However, in between all the bug fixing, I did find time to add something just for fun. I've always felt that the VFX for when a unit is attacked are functional, but not super great. I decided to take some time and see what we can do about it. The result: MORE PARTICLES! MOAR MIST!



Looking juicy 😎
Next week bug hunting will continue, this time with special focus on audio bugs. Alpha and Beta testers know that the audio sometimes does weird things, like unexpectedly jump in volume to 100% or loop in bizarre ways.
It doesn't happen often so it hasn't been high priority, but enough to be annoying for me to see similar bugs popping up. Well next week it ends. It's smack down time!


[h2]Beta Change Log[/h2]
v0.2.31 Is live on steam; it includes:

🔹New difficulty modifier! If a player reaches certain global exposure, the world's nations will start surverillance of communications, meaning creating connections will cost intel!
🔹 Corrected currency panel sometimes showing wrong value for next turn
🔹 Units now become transparent when not connected to selected unit
🔹 Players can now zoom when hovering over a tutorial panel
🔹 Unit names are now saved/loaded correctly
🔹 Cinematic bars not appearing during enemy's turns has been fixed
🔹 Tutorial levels no longer show units in a straight line


[h2]Community[/h2]
In discord news; We'll be soon starting community-led lectures about interesting topics. We realized we had a lot of very knowledgable and interesting folks in our server, and we're trying to spread the knowledge. The first lecture will be "Demystifying Artificial Intelligence".

To learn more about the talk and the schedule, join our Discord!

Happy conspiring!
Rafa

Check out our swanky new steam page! 😎

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

As the game gets a bit of more glitz and polish, it is important for it's steam page to look snazzy! It's a bit of a secret outside of indie game dev circles, but for us the most important metric if a game is going to be a success is wishlists. The more wishlists you have before launching your game the more chance of it being a success! Because of this it's important to have a steam page up and running asap....even as the game is still developping!

I launched this bad boy in the middle of my first kickstarter campaign; so about a year ago:



I think we can all agree it could use a facelift... I mean the screenshots still said pre-alpha for crying out loud! Well without further ado, here's the new version:



It's still an open question how the wishlist count will change with the update, but I'll be keeping a close eye on it for the next several weeks and to continuously iterate on it. Next week is more bug fixing and I'm considering perhaps another version of the tutorial 🤔 We'll see how it pans out!

[h2]Beta Change Log[/h2]
v0.2.17 Is live on steam; it includes:

🔹 Russian has been added to the game (Italian almost made it, but we found some last minute issues)
🔹 Game should no longer randomly start in spanish
🔹 Camera saves location after ending a turn and returns to it
🔹 Currency tooltips now show the correct value of resources
🔹 Fixed issue with zooming over tutorial panels
🔹 Added new VFX for units when under attack
🔹 A brick ton of smaller tutorial bug fixes


Happy conspiring!
Rafa

😳 Even secret societes can be humbled

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

As promissed last update, this time around I took it a bit easier working on minor bug fixes and updates. A workaholic's version of a vacation 😛 The acivation menu's layout was tightened up, warnings were added before you cut a connection, french & portuguese support was fully added to the game. However, in between all this I decided to take on a small feature that, to my surprise, really dug itself into my mind...... the credits.



It's honestly, not the first thing someone thinks of when thinking of games. I think no players really look at it, and I myself left it as one of the last things to do. However, I found the process really revealing and ultimatley very humbling.

You see, I'm a lone dev, which means I spend a lot of time inside of a bubble, working by myself on the game. Writing all of the kickstarter backers into the credits, typing every person who has supported SGS during its creation put in perspective that I might be the only one working on it; but I'm definitley not alone in creating it. Honestly, thank you all for this game.

I know it sounds cheesy, but I mean it.



[h2]Beta Change Log[/h2]
v0.2.26 will soon be live on steam. It includes:

🔹 Warnings for cutting a connection that will hurt the player
🔹 Final localization for potuguese and french added
🔹 Preliminary localization for german, italian and russian.
🔹 Fixed bug with tutorial objectives remaining open after level end
🔹 Miscellaneous bug fixes & improvements


Join our Discord to learn more about the game!

Happy conspiring!

Rafa


PS For all you kickstarter/indiegogo backers try spotting yourself in the credits! It's a fun minigame, haha

📀 Backer Soundtracks have been sent!

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

Last week all soundtrack keys were distributed! \o/ If your kickstarter backer tier includes them, check your email and get into the groooove 🎶

Soon they'll be available to everybody on steam, so stay tuned ;)

In dev news, spanish localization is practically done. All text now changes correctly, but I am finding bugs where the text is too long for the screen. For example this little bugger in the bottom left:



I'll have to hunt those down and add them to my bug list. Speaking of which, I need to spend time to take care of those low level bugs. They're not game breaking, but those tiny annoyances can add up and ruin a players day. I'm going to take the next several weeks to focus on them before preparing for release.

[h2]Beta Change Log[/h2]
v0.2.25 is live on Steam; it includes:
🔹 Localization backend has been added
🔹 Fixed issues with mission descriptions
🔹 Several minor bug fixes


[h2]Discord Challenge[/h2]
Instead of a challenge, I decided to switch it up a bit and, we had a mini-auction for a free game. This week the game in question was Parkitect, a really fun sim game based around making your own theme park!

It was a fun experiment and I might do more giveaways and games this way; come join our
discord to learn more!

Happy conspiring!

Rafa