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Dev Ramble #5: The Price of Progress

It’s that time again folks, but this time, rather than the mindless utterances of a dedicated developer – we’re going to directly discuss some of the feedback that’s coming in.

Where's the damned tutorial?


We do have in-game help listing controls with a basic explanation of some of the games mechanics (top-centre left, question mark button,) but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that there needs to be some degree of ‘show me’ style instruction to the game.

It’s been suggested that a video tutorial would suffice but experience tells us that these are too quickly rendered obsolete, so the tutorial needs to be in-game.

The problem is, as more mechanics are introduced, the tutorial will have to be continually rewritten to accommodate them leading to a duplication of effort.

Looking at the feedback now coming in, we now accept that we will have to concede to the request of the Players for a tutorial and have plans to include a modular tutorial that will grow as the games mechanics grow. To start with, the basic module might encompass fleet manoeuvres and management later including an intermediate module of resource collecting and trade.

In any case, you have spoken and we are listening – the tutorial is now a top priority.

What's with the bugs?


I’d like to start off by saying that actually we have quite a slick bug reporting and resolving process here!

When the game crashes it tells you exactly what has happened and copies it to your clipboard. When we receive the crash report, either on the Steam forums or the Official game forums we are able to directly patch the issue and have a hotfix uploaded to all three platforms often within a day.

Let’s break down our rough 4 week development and release cycle:
  • Week 1: Major update; new features – new bugs introduced
  • Week 2 & 3: Incremental updates; Hotfixes and additional supporting features introduced – bugs get addressed
  • Week 4: Update freeze – game is relatively stable

This really works from an internal development point of view; the project moves quickly, features are introduced and tested and from the feedback the bugs are squashed. To some degree this is an ideal reality of ‘bleeding edge’ alpha software.

The problem is, people are paying money for this and content aside - people rightly expect the alpha to be playable and with this current system sometimes it’s only stable for 50% of a cycle which is simply not good enough (though it should be considered that we are adding stuff during that 50%!)

So what’s the problem? Well to a degree we are pushing forward at a pace that doesn’t really allow for sufficient testing to be completed before the updates are released. Often, only the new stuff that is coded is tested but the new stuff is breaking the old stuff. Problems of this type are known as regression issues which is the price of our rapid progress.

We can’t slow the project down, there is too much to do. But the issues are annoying some Players and getting us out of bed at 2am to fix them isn’t much fun.

So how can we have our cake and eat it?

Well we need to ‘airlock’ the newest updates in another BETA branch in Steam.

Similar to how we managed the Open-world Overhaul when it was being updated in parallel with the old alpha, we’ll continue the fast pace and put it out of the way but still accessible to anyone that comes looking with instructions on the update articles. Once we’re sure the new stuff isn’t causing any problems we’ll then make it live.

This way the game is stable 100% of the time and we get to keep the rapid rate of progress. Ideal.

We’ll be opening up the BETA of Update 5.3 early next week and will post some instructions on gaining access.

Why can't I save my game?


A number of you have expressed strong desires to be able to save and load.

The reason why so far this has been omitted is because really the sandbox was only a small cross-section of what is to come. So far we have been focused on injecting mechanics into the alpha. But with the mechanics already in-game and those due to be added shortly, we are now far enough along to consider this a priority.

Saving/Loading will be part of Update 5.3 which will be in BETA early next week.

We really appreciate the positivity and support of the comments in previous posts, there is simply nothing more motivating than that.

Once again let me take the opportunity to thank-you for your patience, the bug reports you’re sending in are massively helpful please keep them coming and brace yourselves because great things are inbound!

James

Overhaul Incremental Updates (to 5.2.3)

As promised another round of incremental updates to fix bugs introduced in 5.2 which was released last week.

A new BETA branch will shortly open up increasing the pace of the adding of new features and increasing overall stability by including a more regimented testing phase between the updates.

More details on this to follow.

Massive thanks to all those reporting the issues, please do keep those bug reports coming in!

Update 5.2.1 Change Log


- Fixes preventing player units from leaving playable area
- Fixes to range delimiting circle despawning
- Fixes to crash detecting mouseover text links

Update 5.2.2 Change Log


- Fixes to range delimiting circle despawning crash
- Fixes to double tapping camera focus when no fleet assigned

Update 5.2.3 Change Log


- Update transparency of various windows reduced
- Fixed selection issues after unit construction
- Fixed mission/context indicator visible for containers
- Fixed dialog/objective crash caused by save game prep
- Fixes to crash updating context panel buttons

Overhaul Update 5.2

Good news, Update 5.2 is now available Commander!

Additional markings on the Battlegrid should aid perspective and understanding of the visible area.

The last week or so we have predominantly focused on hardening the codebase in preparation for Single Player campaign and Multiplayer - nothing exciting enough to talk about. But in addition, we've added some more useful markings to the Battlegrid; namely adjoining scanning circles for player/allied units and a range finder for the currently selected ship (or lead ship.)

Some very interesting feedback over on the Official forums as to what our priorities should be with 95% of voters saying they would enjoy MP but 80% of voters say that we should focus on the SP experience first. Who are we to argue with the Players?! So brace yourself for advancements in SP as we set our sights back on rolling in new content after another short round of bug fixes.

We expect to maintain a quick pace as we roll features, persistency and missions/encounters into the sandbox, but as mentioned, for the purposes of bug control, we'll likely open a separate Beta branch for the testing of the new SP features which will start to be introduced in 5.3 - more information on that to follow.

Cheers for the support and keep those bug reports coming in!

Update 5.2 Change Log


- Fixes further to stability
- Fixes to Ships sometimes spawning without weapons
- Fixes to Ship Builder UI appearance issue (post 5.4 upgrade)

- Added player/allied forces adjoining scanning circles
- Added Selected Ship 2D distance rulers

- Updated 'Jump Safe Area' markers

Overhaul Incremental Updates (to 5.1.3)

As promised, the last few days has seen a flurry of incremental updates bringing predominantly fixes and visual tweaks.

Feedback on the forums (both Official and Steam) regarding the stuff we should prioritise has yielded a potential change of tactics when we resume the adding of features next week. For more information on that - checkout the 'Player Polls' category over on the Official forums and while you're there, cast your vote!

Update 5.1.1 Change Log


- Updated movement lines and height lines so they are more visible
- Updated lens glare so it's less prominent
- Fixes to Carrier abilities
- Fixes to abilities causing crash

Update 5.1.2 Change Log


- Further stability fixes
- Fixed issue updating group tactical icons
- Fixes to wreckage spawning/despawning

Update 5.1.3 Change Log


- Further tweaks to line visibility
- Fixes to duplicate spawning issue
- Fixes to repeated hull critical warning
- Fixes further to tactical icon refreshing
- Fixes to creating hard group process
- Fixes to ships wiggling about when switching zones

Overhaul Update 5.1

Good news, Update 5.1 is now available.

More massive changes under the hood, the game looks more vibrant as a result

We learnt a few lessons in the transition to 5.1. To address issues with the Linux build we needed to upgrade the core game engine to Unity 5.4.2 - this sadly broke a lot of the shaders and it took over a week to tweak and adjust, and get things back on track.

During that time, Update 5 had introduced some issues but by that point we were too busy with the upgrade to issue hotfixes. In future we're going to do more in-house testing before updates are released slowing things down a little but we'll also put online a 'bleeding edge' BETA branch for those happier to dive into the unknown.

As a result of the Unity upgrade there's another host of performance improvements, particularly on lower spec hardware and we've used the opportunity to brighten the game and give it more contrast so details such as hull customisation aren't lost to overpowering colour grading and darkness.

We've also fixed the bugs reported in Update 5.

As you can likely see, we're not quite done with that yet and will likely spend the next few days tweaking the visuals and bug hunting before continuing to add new features.

Cheers especially for your patience and for all the support and feedback!

Update 5.1 Change Log


- Update: Upgraded to Unity 5.4.2f
- Update: Replaced explosion VFX
- Added: Verbose loading
- Fixed crash switching between zones
- Fixed crash loading turret fire FX
- Fixed medium turrets always on fire
- Fixed large fleet icon onClick action