Hi All,

We have spent the last month continuing our preparations for the 1.0 release. The month was all about removing those last few hard to find bugs and doing a bit of deeper optimization that was not possible while the codebase was in flux.

We have also begun to work on the Mac and Linux builds in the hopes that they will be ready before for the Windows 1.0 release.

So lets delve into what's been going on....



Some of these last bugs have been on our list for over a year, but we finally got the time to fix them. It feels great to clear them off the list.

• Fixed hang when retreating from battle after destroying a starbase.
  
• Fixed case where is was possible for loading an autosave to force you into a battle instead of being on the starmap.
  
• Fixed rare case where bandit's demand surrender menu would appear at the start of battles.
  
• Removed Scrap and Loose Scrap text from the bandit hive attack menu since it was just confusing. Look at the values of the Rez,Goons,Scrap to see what the raid potential is. Bigger is better.
  
• Fixed scavenge node coloring updating when the owner is changed.
  
• Fixed scavenge nodes losing player ownership when a new node lands on top of it.
  
• Added code to detect and skip loading of corrupted settings/save files.
  
• Fixed case where XP rewards often returned 50 when late game when the player was much much higher threat than other enemies. Now XP rewards will continue to scale down appropriately even once the player is uber strong.
  
• Added Custom Order Parts Max Stars to the Sandbox options. Allows setting how good the custom order parts can be. Can also turn off custom order parts entirely with the slider.
  
• Motherships higher prioritize fighting other motherships in battle, about twice as much as before.
  
• Starbases much higher prioritize targeting other motherships in battle, about 3x as much as before. This is to prevent them wasting missiles and bombs on strike craft. Their local beam defenses will still target any strike craft that stray too close.
  
• Starbases are now priority targets in combat as well for motherships. Targeting weighting 2x higher than before.
  
• Added nice fade out to loading savegames, instead of a frozen screen.
  
• Fixed Kill Captain side objective to only count captains, not bandits or transports.
  
• Fixed special hot swap case when switching medium sized parts left to right sometimes the swap would fail.
  
• B button can now back out of the Tactics Panel in controller mode.
  
• If in escape pod on the starmap, territories are now discovered as you travel.
  
• Spelling fixed across all languages
  
• Bloom now has 4 intensity settings

These optimizations may not seem like much, 8% here 4% there, but for lower end machines these will be pretty substantial. Whenever the game starts running too slowly, the physics needs to update multiple times per frame, making performance worse and worse. This train wreck feeds on itself when it happens. So what we have essentially done is made the train wreck a LOT less likely for people both in battle and on the starmap.

• Major starmap optimization, prevents rolling movement lag in large galaxy. Smooths out the map a lot. This will be a huge improvement on slower machines in big galaxies.
  
• Weapon mounts now cache their battle wagon targeting for 100ms instead of constantly re-thinking. This bought back about 8% cpu in battles.
  
• Weapons now don't rethink targeting while they are reloading, saves about 4% cpu in battles.
  
• Major fighter optimization at lower frame rates. When train wrecks happened, fighters were particularly impacted... Not anymore.

VR is really stable now and pretty much final. Reviews indicate that the vast majority of people are really enjoying SPAZ 2 in 3D, and they are surprised that a VR game can work so well in 3rd person. So were we :)

Now the challenge will be to get VR players to know we exist.

• In VR mode, the physics update was automatically being set super high by the SteamVR Vive plugin. This caused major slowdown in physics intensive battles. Now the VR updates at the same rate as the flat screen/Rift so big battles are nice and smooth. This will be a HUGE performance improvement on the Vive.
  
• Added display menu for VR to size the output window.

The Mac version is in a 95% working state, including the Xbox controller functionality. We are using six year old Mac Books to test it (the same ones we used to test SPAZ 1), and the game still runs quite well. Expect to see an experimental version available soon.

The Linux build has been a bit of a challenge so far, mostly because of our inexperience working with the platform. This doesn't mean the Linux build is going poorly, but it's a slow process while we learn something new to us. Expect to hear an update on this front soon.



So as of September 1, our two year project has hit year number five. We still cringe at being on the most anticipated titles of 2014 list... In the end though, what we ended up with was well worth the extra time, and we love how the game evolved during Early Access.

Our bugs lists are now pretty much empty for the windows build. We still have a set of smaller tasks that are not new feature related that we would like to complete such as adding more achievements, and adding new arena ships to showcase the new weapons added months ago in the super strike craft update. This all all icing on the cake stuff though. For all intents and purposes the windows build is ready.

Code is in hard lockdown now in prep for 1.0 and also to help with the Mac and Linux porting, the Early Access goals are complete, and the bug lists are empty. It feels good... really good!

We are also starting to look at ways of getting exposure for the 1.0 release. This will involve talking to PR agencies, contacting Let's Players, somehow advertising etc. This will take a bit of time, but really is the last step before we release. We need to build a bit of buzz for release and any help with that would be appreciated! As with SPAZ 1, please tell your friends.

Thanks very much for your continued support!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi All,

We have spent the last month continuing our preparations for the 1.0 release. The month was all about removing those last few hard to find bugs and doing a bit of deeper optimization that was not possible while the codebase was in flux.

We have also begun to work on the Mac and Linux builds in the hopes that they will be ready before for the Windows 1.0 release.

So lets delve into what's been going on....



Some of these last bugs have been on our list for over a year, but we finally got the time to fix them. It feels great to clear them off the list.

• Fixed hang when retreating from battle after destroying a starbase.
  
• Fixed case where is was possible for loading an autosave to force you into a battle instead of being on the starmap.
  
• Fixed rare case where bandit's demand surrender menu would appear at the start of battles.
  
• Removed Scrap and Loose Scrap text from the bandit hive attack menu since it was just confusing. Look at the values of the Rez,Goons,Scrap to see what the raid potential is. Bigger is better.
  
• Fixed scavenge node coloring updating when the owner is changed.
  
• Fixed scavenge nodes losing player ownership when a new node lands on top of it.
  
• Added code to detect and skip loading of corrupted settings/save files.
  
• Fixed case where XP rewards often returned 50 when late game when the player was much much higher threat than other enemies. Now XP rewards will continue to scale down appropriately even once the player is uber strong.
  
• Added Custom Order Parts Max Stars to the Sandbox options. Allows setting how good the custom order parts can be. Can also turn off custom order parts entirely with the slider.
  
• Motherships higher prioritize fighting other motherships in battle, about twice as much as before.
  
• Starbases much higher prioritize targeting other motherships in battle, about 3x as much as before. This is to prevent them wasting missiles and bombs on strike craft. Their local beam defenses will still target any strike craft that stray too close.
  
• Starbases are now priority targets in combat as well for motherships. Targeting weighting 2x higher than before.
  
• Added nice fade out to loading savegames, instead of a frozen screen.
  
• Fixed Kill Captain side objective to only count captains, not bandits or transports.
  
• Fixed special hot swap case when switching medium sized parts left to right sometimes the swap would fail.
  
• B button can now back out of the Tactics Panel in controller mode.
  
• If in escape pod on the starmap, territories are now discovered as you travel.
  
• Spelling fixed across all languages
  
• Bloom now has 4 intensity settings

These optimizations may not seem like much, 8% here 4% there, but for lower end machines these will be pretty substantial. Whenever the game starts running too slowly, the physics needs to update multiple times per frame, making performance worse and worse. This train wreck feeds on itself when it happens. So what we have essentially done is made the train wreck a LOT less likely for people both in battle and on the starmap.

• Major starmap optimization, prevents rolling movement lag in large galaxy. Smooths out the map a lot. This will be a huge improvement on slower machines in big galaxies.
  
• Weapon mounts now cache their battle wagon targeting for 100ms instead of constantly re-thinking. This bought back about 8% cpu in battles.
  
• Weapons now don't rethink targeting while they are reloading, saves about 4% cpu in battles.
  
• Major fighter optimization at lower frame rates. When train wrecks happened, fighters were particularly impacted... Not anymore.

VR is really stable now and pretty much final. Reviews indicate that the vast majority of people are really enjoying SPAZ 2 in 3D, and they are surprised that a VR game can work so well in 3rd person. So were we :)

Now the challenge will be to get VR players to know we exist.

• In VR mode, the physics update was automatically being set super high by the SteamVR Vive plugin. This caused major slowdown in physics intensive battles. Now the VR updates at the same rate as the flat screen/Rift so big battles are nice and smooth. This will be a HUGE performance improvement on the Vive.
  
• Added display menu for VR to size the output window.

The Mac version is in a 95% working state, including the Xbox controller functionality. We are using six year old Mac Books to test it (the same ones we used to test SPAZ 1), and the game still runs quite well. Expect to see an experimental version available soon.

The Linux build has been a bit of a challenge so far, mostly because of our inexperience working with the platform. This doesn't mean the Linux build is going poorly, but it's a slow process while we learn something new to us. Expect to hear an update on this front soon.



So as of September 1, our two year project has hit year number five. We still cringe at being on the most anticipated titles of 2014 list... In the end though, what we ended up with was well worth the extra time, and we love how the game evolved during Early Access.

Our bugs lists are now pretty much empty for the windows build. We still have a set of smaller tasks that are not new feature related that we would like to complete such as adding more achievements, and adding new arena ships to showcase the new weapons added months ago in the super strike craft update. This all all icing on the cake stuff though. For all intents and purposes the windows build is ready.

Code is in hard lockdown now in prep for 1.0 and also to help with the Mac and Linux porting, the Early Access goals are complete, and the bug lists are empty. It feels good... really good!

We are also starting to look at ways of getting exposure for the 1.0 release. This will involve talking to PR agencies, contacting Let's Players, somehow advertising etc. This will take a bit of time, but really is the last step before we release. We need to build a bit of buzz for release and any help with that would be appreciated! As with SPAZ 1, please tell your friends.

Thanks very much for your continued support!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi All,

This version was all about completing the final deliverables for the 1.0 release. We are so close now. We have had a ton of great input over the last 14 months in Early Access, and we really appreciate you taking this journey with us!

• Professional Voice Acting.
  
• Localization to French, German, and Russian.
  
• VR motion controller support for VIVE and OCULUS

Here we go.



Hiring professional voice talent was new to us, but in the end we think that we found the perfect voices for each character. In fact, originally we were not going to professionally voice Mac, Skid or the Computer but in the end the quality of the main cast's voice acting was so high that we decided to voice everything because the difference between the professional voice acting and the text to speech was just too glaring.

We now have over 2 HOURS of spoken dialogue in the game between Elsa, Carl, Jamison, Mac, Skid and Janeframe (the Computer) It was surprising how much voice work is actually in the game, over 18000 words.

We originally tried to have the voice work done locally, but it was too short notice for the local studios, so we decided to try to to do it ourselves. We put together detailed character packages and posted on a couple big voice acting sites (Voice123 and CastingCallClub) and what do you know, we got over 300 auditions over the course of a week. We narrowed and narrowed and finally both Richard and I independently came to the exact same picks for the voices (so no arguing there, phew)

After that we interviewed each actor over Skype and answered questions, we finally had a group table read using a 5 way Skype call. It was really incredible to hear the voices of our characters come alive after 8 years of developing them.

Once the table read was done, recording started individually by each voice actor, and they delivered audio files weekly for about a month. And now we have it all compiled together and balanced and in game, ready for you to hear. We hope you love the voices as much as we do.

Note: The old text to speech voices are still in there and are individually selectable via the sound menu for nostalgia sake.



This version was also about getting the localization system ready for public consumption. We were contacted by some fans of SPAZ 2 and decided to Localize French, German, and Russian. French and German because they are fairly large sections of our European player base, and Russian was picked because of its large player base and for having an entirely different alphabet from Germanic languages.

Having fans translate the game was a great choice we think. They really understood the feel of the SPAZ universe and sometimes even suggested inside jokes from their own languages to replace our own. All in all it was a great experience and the translators were super dedicated. They translated over 30,000 words type dedicated.

There may be some translation issues or missed spots so please report any mistakes or omissions. Its a lot of words, and things will have been missed/mislabeled. The translators will want to fix them and we want them fixed! :)

Once the localization has settled, we will be releasing custom localization XML files. This will allow player localization to any language. The process we went through with the translators should have knocked off most of the translation rough edges. Long term, we would like to hook up player translations to Steam Workshop, though that probably wouldn't be before 1.0.

For official translations we are going to see how the current translations do sales wise before branching out further. Managing an official translation takes considerable time and a non trivial amount of funds. So for example if the translated versions suddenly explode in sales, it makes doing other languages more attractive. This is all new to us, so we need to see. In any case we will support custom translation by players, so if there is an interest in a particular language, a translation will always be possible.



As a final step to our VR support, we have added motion controls to SPAZ 2 VR. Richard has prepared a video linked here to explain it a bit. Even if you don't have VR, you may be able to get a bit of a sense of how SPAZ 2 feels in VR.

https://youtu.be/r8b5cgoaL9M

One motion controller is for aiming and ship functions like boosting shields, reloading, and camera controls. The other controller is for movement, switching weapons, and switching ships. It was quite a challenge to get all the SPAZ 2 functions on the few controller buttons, but we managed it by using the grip button as a sort of “shift key.”

Gameplay wise, shooting is definitely my favorite on the motion controls. Lazing targets is just cool. Flight wise there are three modes. Controller relative (point where you want the ship to go), Helmet relative (forward means go toward where you are looking), or Ship relative (pressing left turns you left) Find a mode that is most comfortable to you. Note: VR also allows you to use a regular XInput style controller instead of the motion controls. This behaves the same as on the flat screen.

This version will bring our VR support to completion aside from bugs. Please please give it a try if you can and let us know if you have problems (especially with the motion controls)

• Fixed issue where sometimes the camera could get caught flickering when toggle camera was selected right before pause.
  
• Made AI captains attack Bandit Hives longer so they try to destroy them more vs just raiding them for supplies.
  
• Fixed case where captains would raid bandit hives with bounties instead of trying to destroy them.
  
• Made local governors more likely to clear bandit hives from their territory.
  
• AI captains more likely to complete Starbase building tasks where they have to pay a portion of the cost themselves.
  
• Made the blocked port checker a little more forgiving to allow fitting parts in spots that look like they should allow parts to fit.
  
• Fixed bug where sniper cannons and mass drivers would cause a hitch in the enemy ship's movement when they hit.
  
• Fixed exploit where you could disband a starbase you own to get salavge access to the store inventory which you do not actually own.
  
• Fixed Starbases not dropping their Stockpile contents when disbanded.
  
• Fixed mouse over resource values disagreeing with Starmap values (Ceil/Round Conflict)
  
• Fixed Join faction button round off error, reporting relations too low when it is possible to join.
  
• Fixed issue where bombs on strike craft would impact the player ship when starting combat.
  
• Added Starmap Explored button to the Sandbox level setup options. This makes the starmap fully explored on start.
  
• Accessing Cheat menu easier for a variety of keyboards: (Left Alt or Right Alt or AltGr) + (F7 or 0)
  
• Starbase bounties are now checked vs the bounty taker's relation with the owner. So friends will no longer attack your bases.
  
• Bounty takers will now take into consideration their relations with the faction leader before taking on a bounty to destroy a starbase (So player friends won't attack the bases in the Player faction, even if the player does not own that base)
  
• Fixed issue where you could contextual target parts in the inventory level, causing Battle Wagon to attack them.
  
• Fixed issue where you could lock onto an ally outside of battlewagon mode, then switch to battlewagon mode and your ship would automatically fire at your ally.
  
• Fixed fighter docking issues on high speed motherships where they couldn't catch up.
  
• Increased Rez drop from zombie Starbases from a flat 200 to 400-1000 based on the size of the base.
  
• Fixed case where you could mark a part for hot swapping in the inventory level then attach it to your ship using the tractor instead, leaving the part in a weird state.
  
• Starbase threat level now properly updates when you level up.
  
• Starbase threat updates when transferred to a new owner to reflect their tech level
  
• Fixed knocked off enemy parts attached to player ship not consuming any capacitor power. In fact, it was stealing the power from the old ship.
  
• When the player rams a ship, the ship being rammed now takes it as a hostile act. Especially so if they are an ally and there are not hostile ships left in the region. Allies now react to being rammed to death for free parts after battles conclude.
  
• Fixed case where after player lost a battle and player continued instead of loading that the winning ships did not recover their strike craft and their health was not updated to the proper post battle health.
  
• Taught Motherships not to avoid Strike Craft and since they will rarely collide due to being at different Y heights. (Also taught strike craft not to avoid motherships)
  
• New AI flight system that attempts to de-clump the ships and keep ships at optimal range with each other. Also smooths out their decision making so they stick with ideas longer and don't criss cross each other so much while re evaluating.
  
• New weapon analyzer that weights damage potential of all equipped weapons and decides the best combat range based on that.
  
• AI ships better at deciding when to boost engines.
  
• When clicking “Fight” on a station, you need to click the button a second time within 3 seconds to prevent accidental fights.
  
• On Easy and Normal difficulties the max stars for AI strike craft are 4 for larges, and 5 for mediums and smalls. Hard and Insane unchanged.
  
• Fix for case where ship parts could not reattach sometimes when they were knocked by enemy captains.
  
• Fixed issue where zombie strike craft spawned from eggs were much higher in Y than regular strike craft.

With the addition of voice acting, localization, and the completion of VR, our Early Access goals are now complete. We still have a bit of tuning and bug fixing to do, but the codebase is mostly on lockdown now in preparation for 1.0. Even seemingly simple changes sometimes cause nasty bugs, so we have to let the build settle before release.

Once 1.0 releases, we will be spending time on a Mac and Linux port right away. Then we plan to re-open the code base in response to the new player input that “hopefully” floods in.

It has been a really long road for SPAZ 2 (5 years as of September 1) but we are thrilled with the results and the support you all have given us!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi All,

This version was all about completing the final deliverables for the 1.0 release. We are so close now. We have had a ton of great input over the last 14 months in Early Access, and we really appreciate you taking this journey with us!

• Professional Voice Acting.
  
• Localization to French, German, and Russian.
  
• VR motion controller support for VIVE and OCULUS

Here we go.



Hiring professional voice talent was new to us, but in the end we think that we found the perfect voices for each character. In fact, originally we were not going to professionally voice Mac, Skid or the Computer but in the end the quality of the main cast's voice acting was so high that we decided to voice everything because the difference between the professional voice acting and the text to speech was just too glaring.

We now have over 2 HOURS of spoken dialogue in the game between Elsa, Carl, Jamison, Mac, Skid and Janeframe (the Computer) It was surprising how much voice work is actually in the game, over 18000 words.

We originally tried to have the voice work done locally, but it was too short notice for the local studios, so we decided to try to to do it ourselves. We put together detailed character packages and posted on a couple big voice acting sites (Voice123 and CastingCallClub) and what do you know, we got over 300 auditions over the course of a week. We narrowed and narrowed and finally both Richard and I independently came to the exact same picks for the voices (so no arguing there, phew)

After that we interviewed each actor over Skype and answered questions, we finally had a group table read using a 5 way Skype call. It was really incredible to hear the voices of our characters come alive after 8 years of developing them.

Once the table read was done, recording started individually by each voice actor, and they delivered audio files weekly for about a month. And now we have it all compiled together and balanced and in game, ready for you to hear. We hope you love the voices as much as we do.

Note: The old text to speech voices are still in there and are individually selectable via the sound menu for nostalgia sake.



This version was also about getting the localization system ready for public consumption. We were contacted by some fans of SPAZ 2 and decided to Localize French, German, and Russian. French and German because they are fairly large sections of our European player base, and Russian was picked because of its large player base and for having an entirely different alphabet from Germanic languages.

Having fans translate the game was a great choice we think. They really understood the feel of the SPAZ universe and sometimes even suggested inside jokes from their own languages to replace our own. All in all it was a great experience and the translators were super dedicated. They translated over 30,000 words type dedicated.

There may be some translation issues or missed spots so please report any mistakes or omissions. Its a lot of words, and things will have been missed/mislabeled. The translators will want to fix them and we want them fixed! :)

Once the localization has settled, we will be releasing custom localization XML files. This will allow player localization to any language. The process we went through with the translators should have knocked off most of the translation rough edges. Long term, we would like to hook up player translations to Steam Workshop, though that probably wouldn't be before 1.0.

For official translations we are going to see how the current translations do sales wise before branching out further. Managing an official translation takes considerable time and a non trivial amount of funds. So for example if the translated versions suddenly explode in sales, it makes doing other languages more attractive. This is all new to us, so we need to see. In any case we will support custom translation by players, so if there is an interest in a particular language, a translation will always be possible.



As a final step to our VR support, we have added motion controls to SPAZ 2 VR. Richard has prepared a video linked here to explain it a bit. Even if you don't have VR, you may be able to get a bit of a sense of how SPAZ 2 feels in VR.

https://youtu.be/r8b5cgoaL9M

One motion controller is for aiming and ship functions like boosting shields, reloading, and camera controls. The other controller is for movement, switching weapons, and switching ships. It was quite a challenge to get all the SPAZ 2 functions on the few controller buttons, but we managed it by using the grip button as a sort of “shift key.”

Gameplay wise, shooting is definitely my favorite on the motion controls. Lazing targets is just cool. Flight wise there are three modes. Controller relative (point where you want the ship to go), Helmet relative (forward means go toward where you are looking), or Ship relative (pressing left turns you left) Find a mode that is most comfortable to you. Note: VR also allows you to use a regular XInput style controller instead of the motion controls. This behaves the same as on the flat screen.

This version will bring our VR support to completion aside from bugs. Please please give it a try if you can and let us know if you have problems (especially with the motion controls)

• Fixed issue where sometimes the camera could get caught flickering when toggle camera was selected right before pause.
  
• Made AI captains attack Bandit Hives longer so they try to destroy them more vs just raiding them for supplies.
  
• Fixed case where captains would raid bandit hives with bounties instead of trying to destroy them.
  
• Made local governors more likely to clear bandit hives from their territory.
  
• AI captains more likely to complete Starbase building tasks where they have to pay a portion of the cost themselves.
  
• Made the blocked port checker a little more forgiving to allow fitting parts in spots that look like they should allow parts to fit.
  
• Fixed bug where sniper cannons and mass drivers would cause a hitch in the enemy ship's movement when they hit.
  
• Fixed exploit where you could disband a starbase you own to get salavge access to the store inventory which you do not actually own.
  
• Fixed Starbases not dropping their Stockpile contents when disbanded.
  
• Fixed mouse over resource values disagreeing with Starmap values (Ceil/Round Conflict)
  
• Fixed Join faction button round off error, reporting relations too low when it is possible to join.
  
• Fixed issue where bombs on strike craft would impact the player ship when starting combat.
  
• Added Starmap Explored button to the Sandbox level setup options. This makes the starmap fully explored on start.
  
• Accessing Cheat menu easier for a variety of keyboards: (Left Alt or Right Alt or AltGr) + (F7 or 0)
  
• Starbase bounties are now checked vs the bounty taker's relation with the owner. So friends will no longer attack your bases.
  
• Bounty takers will now take into consideration their relations with the faction leader before taking on a bounty to destroy a starbase (So player friends won't attack the bases in the Player faction, even if the player does not own that base)
  
• Fixed issue where you could contextual target parts in the inventory level, causing Battle Wagon to attack them.
  
• Fixed issue where you could lock onto an ally outside of battlewagon mode, then switch to battlewagon mode and your ship would automatically fire at your ally.
  
• Fixed fighter docking issues on high speed motherships where they couldn't catch up.
  
• Increased Rez drop from zombie Starbases from a flat 200 to 400-1000 based on the size of the base.
  
• Fixed case where you could mark a part for hot swapping in the inventory level then attach it to your ship using the tractor instead, leaving the part in a weird state.
  
• Starbase threat level now properly updates when you level up.
  
• Starbase threat updates when transferred to a new owner to reflect their tech level
  
• Fixed knocked off enemy parts attached to player ship not consuming any capacitor power. In fact, it was stealing the power from the old ship.
  
• When the player rams a ship, the ship being rammed now takes it as a hostile act. Especially so if they are an ally and there are not hostile ships left in the region. Allies now react to being rammed to death for free parts after battles conclude.
  
• Fixed case where after player lost a battle and player continued instead of loading that the winning ships did not recover their strike craft and their health was not updated to the proper post battle health.
  
• Taught Motherships not to avoid Strike Craft and since they will rarely collide due to being at different Y heights. (Also taught strike craft not to avoid motherships)
  
• New AI flight system that attempts to de-clump the ships and keep ships at optimal range with each other. Also smooths out their decision making so they stick with ideas longer and don't criss cross each other so much while re evaluating.
  
• New weapon analyzer that weights damage potential of all equipped weapons and decides the best combat range based on that.
  
• AI ships better at deciding when to boost engines.
  
• When clicking “Fight” on a station, you need to click the button a second time within 3 seconds to prevent accidental fights.
  
• On Easy and Normal difficulties the max stars for AI strike craft are 4 for larges, and 5 for mediums and smalls. Hard and Insane unchanged.
  
• Fix for case where ship parts could not reattach sometimes when they were knocked by enemy captains.
  
• Fixed issue where zombie strike craft spawned from eggs were much higher in Y than regular strike craft.

With the addition of voice acting, localization, and the completion of VR, our Early Access goals are now complete. We still have a bit of tuning and bug fixing to do, but the codebase is mostly on lockdown now in preparation for 1.0. Even seemingly simple changes sometimes cause nasty bugs, so we have to let the build settle before release.

Once 1.0 releases, we will be spending time on a Mac and Linux port right away. Then we plan to re-open the code base in response to the new player input that “hopefully” floods in.

It has been a really long road for SPAZ 2 (5 years as of September 1) but we are thrilled with the results and the support you all have given us!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi All,

The goal of this update was to sneak in a couple final features before 1.0 code lockdown as well as to get a start on our remaining Early Access goals, voice acting and localization.

We need to get the build as solid as we can for the v1.0 release, so going forward we will be focusing on tuning and bug fixing to ensure a great 1.0 release. After 1.0 we will again be able to look at new features, and we will hopefully see a lot of new faces joining the community with great ideas.

In this update we have added a new 100 territory map “The Clockwork Void,” as well as the “Dark Cycle,” a system of rebounding ever increasing zombie infection for the sandbox mode. Behind the scenes, we have now cast our voice actors and begun localization.

Now for the details!




We have added a new 100 territory map! Richard and I decided that we needed something between the 53 territory Micro Spiral and the 200 territory Milky Colossus.

We are now using this new 100 territory map as the basis for the story mode.

The original map (now called the Micro Spiral) has had years of testing with the Story, but this new map has had maybe a dozen hours. So there may be issues, please report them if you see them.

It is scary to make a change of this magnitude this late in the project, but from a high level the 100 territory map seems like the best galaxy size for first time players.

For those of you familiar with playing the story mode, a comparison to the old story mode with the smaller map would be great!



We have added a system of rebounding zombies to the Sandbox Mode. This has been an ongoing request from marathon players, that they want ever increasing challenges. Well the rebounding zombies should fulfill that and then some. Here's how it works...

Under the “Zombe War” section of the Sandbox Tuning menu you can now activate “Rebounding Zombies.”

One important note, we made it so that you can even activate Rebounding Zombies in old sandbox saves, so you don't need to start from scratch to bring the zombie menace back!

Rebound strength is based on the zombie generation. The sliders show how bad the next incoming generation will be. This means the values on the sliders will increase as the generation increases, but you are still able to fine tune how bad each next incoming generation will be (until it arrives)

You are also able to turn off rebounding zombies as long as the dark infection count down has not started for the next round. So, if you are fighting the zombies and need a breather between outbreaks, you can turn off the rebound for a while. It is kind of a “self serve apocalypse.”

Rebound Level Increase:
For each zombie generation this is how much higher level the Zombie Alpha will be than you when it arrives. Note, this is multiplied by the current zombie generation. So if 10 levels at generation 1, then 20 levels at generation 2 and 100 levels are generation 10.

Extra Underlings:
This dictates how many of the AI controlled captains will instantly become infected on the next outbreak. This is also multiplied by rebound generation.

How this works is that the weakest captains will fall to the new infection. They then have their levels buffed to somewhere between your level and the Alpha's level. So this means there will be a continuum of nasty zombies to fight and the weakest captains from the Galaxy now become highly relevant conflict wise.

In general the weakest captains will be the neutral captains, so the factions will take less of a hit than the neutrals, until you run out of neutrals... Filthy neutrals.

Extra Territory:
This is how many territories the zombie outbreak will spread to on a new infection cycle. The territories are picked such that they will try to take empty territory first, but will spread into faction territory if they have to. This is also multiplied by the rebound generation.

Timer Decrease:
This is how much shorter the zombie arrival timer will be for the next rebound. So the rebounds can come faster and faster based on the current generation.

Minimum Zombie Time:
This sets some minimum time for rebounds, so you don't end up with zombies respawning every 10 seconds (unless you want them to)



This month we also made big strides with our localization system. We have hired translators for French, German, and Russian versions of SPAZ 2. It took some time to get the translation pipeline in order, but now the translators are busily localizing the 30,000+ lines of text.

Going forward we hope to release a system that will allow fan translations of SPAZ 2 using a system like Steam Workshop. This current round of official translation is a test bed for that future fan based system. So if someone someday wants a Latin version of SPAZ 2, then they will be able to make one by editing some XML files.



Well, 300 voice auditions later we have our Elsa, Carl, and Jamison. 8 years we have worked with these characters and they finally have voices!

Casting was a huge learning experience for us, because in our combined 28 years of video game development experience, we have never directly handled acquiring voice talent. Now that we have the cast, we are excited to put on our director hats :)

We will be keeping the option to use the old Text To Speech version of the cast as well for posterity, but we think that once you hear these voice actors that it will be really hard to go back to TTS. We love you TTS, but these professional voice actors are just so, so... much better.

• Changed minimum armor repair rate to 0.1% for Sandbox mode. Setting 0% was causing armor break-off updates to be skipped, preventing parts from ever breaking off.
  
• When ramming, less of the damage is transmitted through the skeleton of the ship so fewer parts will break off that weren't directly impacted by the ram. So your engine won't break off when you ram with your nose anymore.
  
• Lowered the reflected back damage to the rammer when ramming by 20%
  
• Fixed connection helper arrows remaining on when the part being connected is destroyed due to being used to smack other ships.
  
• Made tractored parts less likely to be destroyed when they hit enemy ships while being tractored.
  
• Fixed VR zooming on the starmap when pressing RB with the controller
  
• Added Vertical menu offset slider for VR
  
• Added menu distance slider for VR
  
• Reversed combat zooming in VR mode with the controller
  
• Custom part price multiplier slider for sandbox mode.
  
• Fixed the auto deploy button on the tactics panel so it wouldn't be disabled when a strike craft is currently active.
  
• Fixed controller not being able to advance dialogue in the final mission.
  
• Fixed case where the level set dressing asteroids could get too close to the play area and look like intractable asteroids.

This next update will be about tuning and bug fixing for v1.0. Schedule permitting, we will also be recording and adding the new voice acting. We also hope to have the French, German, and Russian translations completed.

VR wise, we will be getting the motion controllers working and finalizing as well so it can be tested for hopefully a parallel release with version 1.0.

So we are really really close now. Thank you all so much for taking this 13 month Early Access ride with us!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi All,

The goal of this update was to sneak in a couple final features before 1.0 code lockdown as well as to get a start on our remaining Early Access goals, voice acting and localization.

We need to get the build as solid as we can for the v1.0 release, so going forward we will be focusing on tuning and bug fixing to ensure a great 1.0 release. After 1.0 we will again be able to look at new features, and we will hopefully see a lot of new faces joining the community with great ideas.

In this update we have added a new 100 territory map “The Clockwork Void,” as well as the “Dark Cycle,” a system of rebounding ever increasing zombie infection for the sandbox mode. Behind the scenes, we have now cast our voice actors and begun localization.

Now for the details!




We have added a new 100 territory map! Richard and I decided that we needed something between the 53 territory Micro Spiral and the 200 territory Milky Colossus.

We are now using this new 100 territory map as the basis for the story mode.

The original map (now called the Micro Spiral) has had years of testing with the Story, but this new map has had maybe a dozen hours. So there may be issues, please report them if you see them.

It is scary to make a change of this magnitude this late in the project, but from a high level the 100 territory map seems like the best galaxy size for first time players.

For those of you familiar with playing the story mode, a comparison to the old story mode with the smaller map would be great!



We have added a system of rebounding zombies to the Sandbox Mode. This has been an ongoing request from marathon players, that they want ever increasing challenges. Well the rebounding zombies should fulfill that and then some. Here's how it works...

Under the “Zombe War” section of the Sandbox Tuning menu you can now activate “Rebounding Zombies.”

One important note, we made it so that you can even activate Rebounding Zombies in old sandbox saves, so you don't need to start from scratch to bring the zombie menace back!

Rebound strength is based on the zombie generation. The sliders show how bad the next incoming generation will be. This means the values on the sliders will increase as the generation increases, but you are still able to fine tune how bad each next incoming generation will be (until it arrives)

You are also able to turn off rebounding zombies as long as the dark infection count down has not started for the next round. So, if you are fighting the zombies and need a breather between outbreaks, you can turn off the rebound for a while. It is kind of a “self serve apocalypse.”

Rebound Level Increase:
For each zombie generation this is how much higher level the Zombie Alpha will be than you when it arrives. Note, this is multiplied by the current zombie generation. So if 10 levels at generation 1, then 20 levels at generation 2 and 100 levels are generation 10.

Extra Underlings:
This dictates how many of the AI controlled captains will instantly become infected on the next outbreak. This is also multiplied by rebound generation.

How this works is that the weakest captains will fall to the new infection. They then have their levels buffed to somewhere between your level and the Alpha's level. So this means there will be a continuum of nasty zombies to fight and the weakest captains from the Galaxy now become highly relevant conflict wise.

In general the weakest captains will be the neutral captains, so the factions will take less of a hit than the neutrals, until you run out of neutrals... Filthy neutrals.

Extra Territory:
This is how many territories the zombie outbreak will spread to on a new infection cycle. The territories are picked such that they will try to take empty territory first, but will spread into faction territory if they have to. This is also multiplied by the rebound generation.

Timer Decrease:
This is how much shorter the zombie arrival timer will be for the next rebound. So the rebounds can come faster and faster based on the current generation.

Minimum Zombie Time:
This sets some minimum time for rebounds, so you don't end up with zombies respawning every 10 seconds (unless you want them to)



This month we also made big strides with our localization system. We have hired translators for French, German, and Russian versions of SPAZ 2. It took some time to get the translation pipeline in order, but now the translators are busily localizing the 30,000+ lines of text.

Going forward we hope to release a system that will allow fan translations of SPAZ 2 using a system like Steam Workshop. This current round of official translation is a test bed for that future fan based system. So if someone someday wants a Latin version of SPAZ 2, then they will be able to make one by editing some XML files.



Well, 300 voice auditions later we have our Elsa, Carl, and Jamison. 8 years we have worked with these characters and they finally have voices!

Casting was a huge learning experience for us, because in our combined 28 years of video game development experience, we have never directly handled acquiring voice talent. Now that we have the cast, we are excited to put on our director hats :)

We will be keeping the option to use the old Text To Speech version of the cast as well for posterity, but we think that once you hear these voice actors that it will be really hard to go back to TTS. We love you TTS, but these professional voice actors are just so, so... much better.

• Changed minimum armor repair rate to 0.1% for Sandbox mode. Setting 0% was causing armor break-off updates to be skipped, preventing parts from ever breaking off.
  
• When ramming, less of the damage is transmitted through the skeleton of the ship so fewer parts will break off that weren't directly impacted by the ram. So your engine won't break off when you ram with your nose anymore.
  
• Lowered the reflected back damage to the rammer when ramming by 20%
  
• Fixed connection helper arrows remaining on when the part being connected is destroyed due to being used to smack other ships.
  
• Made tractored parts less likely to be destroyed when they hit enemy ships while being tractored.
  
• Fixed VR zooming on the starmap when pressing RB with the controller
  
• Added Vertical menu offset slider for VR
  
• Added menu distance slider for VR
  
• Reversed combat zooming in VR mode with the controller
  
• Custom part price multiplier slider for sandbox mode.
  
• Fixed the auto deploy button on the tactics panel so it wouldn't be disabled when a strike craft is currently active.
  
• Fixed controller not being able to advance dialogue in the final mission.
  
• Fixed case where the level set dressing asteroids could get too close to the play area and look like intractable asteroids.

This next update will be about tuning and bug fixing for v1.0. Schedule permitting, we will also be recording and adding the new voice acting. We also hope to have the French, German, and Russian translations completed.

VR wise, we will be getting the motion controllers working and finalizing as well so it can be tested for hopefully a parallel release with version 1.0.

So we are really really close now. Thank you all so much for taking this 13 month Early Access ride with us!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi all,

This update is centered around further expanding the sandbox gameplay as well as tackling many of the larger player tuning requests. There is a lot of stuff to cover, so lets dig right in!

• Deadspace Territory! (A way to set galaxy generation options that change its layout)
  
• New higher starbase threat levels. (starbase threat works a lot more like captain threat now)
  
• Missiles got a tuning boost (the continuing effort to make them relevant)
  
• Personality based AI retreating (they tend to flee less often now)
  
• Better in combat part attachment (fix your ship in battle hopefully with less fumbling)
  
• Large strike craft health tuned to be less tanky. (6 star larges are less insane)
  
• Ship Construction Undo (in construction level, back out changes when experimenting)
  
• Zombies worth hunting (parts now have stars, they drop a lot more rez)
  
• VR Beta (our first crack at a public VR build)

So one huge player request has been custom player galaxies. Creating custom maps in Maya and importing them into the game won't work because of the huge amount of connection work they require as well as the requirement to add hooks to other internal game systems for the AI. We wanted to answer those requests and deliver something that served the same purpose, so Deadspace territory was born.

A Deadspace territory is a territory with no starbase controller. This means no one owns it and no one will ever own it. It can almost be thought of as the water on your typical strategy game map. It does not restrict travel, but it does stop trade lines and acts as a natural neutral zone between empires.

Now lets delve into the settings so you can make the most of this new galaxy generation ability.


Deadspace Clusters vs.Veins:

A Cluster will form like a blob. It always tries to form in a position that connects it to the most of its own territory, but it hates to touch other deadspace. The blobs pinch factions together creating high conflict zones.

A Vein (cluster mode off) is the opposite. Veins still don't want to intersect other deadspace, but they also want to touch their own territory as little as possible. This ends up generating string like veins throughout the galaxy, forming natural empire borders. Veins create discrete pockets of territory.


Deadspace Resources:

This setting tells the galaxy generator to allow resource nodes and lore to spawn in deadspace, or to keep it totally empty.

Empty deadspace won't attract captains, so regular space will have a much higher population.

Resource filled deadspace provides more opportunity to harvest full and unowned resource nodes.


Deadspace Volume:

This is how much of the galaxy can be filled with deadspace territory, up to 50%.


Deadspace Scatter:

This is a 0-1 value of how many separate deadspace pockets you want. 0 means one big pocket, and 1 will mean the maximum number of pockets, each pocket being 1 territory. To get 2 deadspace territories, set the slider to 0.01-0.03ish area. It is a bit of a weird concept, but luckily we have pictures!


Example Layouts:

Cluster: On, Volume 50%, Scatter 0.01

This shows two large blobs of deadspace. This is due to the very low scatter value.


Cluster: On, Volume 50%, Scatter 0.25

Now instead of two big oceans of deadspace, we have a series of small lakes due to the higher scatter.


Cluster: On, Volume 50%, Scatter 1.00

Now with the scatter maxed, we have essentially a shotgun of 1 territory wide deadspace pockets.


Cluster: On, Volume 20%, Scatter 0.05

Here is an example with less overall deadspace in the galaxy. Only 20% here, so we have a lot more play area left intact.


Cluster Off, Volume 50%, Scatter 0.02

One huge set of veins has covered the entire galaxy, creating a series of small islands to seize.


Cluster Off, Volume 50%, Scatter 0.20

Now we still see lots of islands, but the veins are now not touching.


Cluster Off, Volume 20%, Scatter 0.20

Finally we have only 20% of the galaxy veined into deadspace. Look at that ripe territory on the bottom right... Only two connections in.


Hopefully with these examples you will be able to make the most of the new deadspace generator. Each galaxy should now be a little different and you won't know what was generated until you uncover those territories, so this should add a lot to early exploration. We hope you like it.



One problem since the big strike craft update (v0.8.0) was that starbase threat became too low due to the new increased threat being brought to the table by the beefy strike craft. In short, 80 used to be a lot, but now it isn't so we needed a better way of measuring Starbase threat and more importantly keeping AI captains away from the big ones longer.


Starbase threat now maxes out at 150:

But it wasn't just a number change. We have changed how starbase threat is calculated. It used to be a flat rate per expansion level, but now it is a combination of expansion level and the owner's level since the starbases inherit the perks of the owner.

So what this means is early on a fully upgraded base may be around threat level 100 or so, but at the owner levels up and gets new perks, that starbase's threat will also increase. We now show a starbase's level when you mouse over it as well so you better know what you are getting into.


The last four starbase expansions cost an increased amount of scrap:

This was to offset the new higher threat levels for starbses. So it takes a little extra work to get the starbase maxed out.


Starbase health now matters:

Starbase health now impacts threat so captain can whittle down a base by damaging it and running away.

There was also a bug where starbase health was not being saved and would reset to 100% each time you reloaded. This has been fixed. Health really matters for starbases now.

Also, Starbase health is properly taken into account when you start a battle with them now, so attacking weakened starbases will be a lot easier. Use those bounties to soften the bases before attacking yourself.


Starbase Notes:

Starbases inherit their owner's perks as well at strike craft star levels. So we now adjust the max threat level of their starbase based on that. This means not all fully expanded starbases will be of the same threat level, but higher leveled captains will have higher threat leveled bases. So as you level up, the bases you own will increase in threat. Another good reason to place the highest level captains in charge of bases.



Missiles have been a hot topic for a while now, and we wanted to improve them further based on continuing feedback. So here's what we did.

First off, there were requests for a better faster missile. We re-purposed the old starter missile for this. It is now a very fact intercepting missile. Here are the stat changes:

Normal Missile:

• Damage increased 25%
  
• Reload 20% faster
  
• Range increased 33%
  
• Speed 33% faster
  
• MUCH more agile and has 10x the thrust. (its faaast)

Also:
Ion SRM damage increases 33%
Torpedo damage increased 36%, speed up 33%, range up 33%
Cloud torpedo damage up 33%, speed up 33%, range up 33%
SRM damage up 25%



Raise your hand if you are tired of chasing retreating captains. So the retreat mechanic is good, but it is used way too often by the AI, so we decided to make retreating heavily personality based.

Captains have a bravery trait. ( Note: It will be invisible when it is normal)

Bravery

• Cowardly = Retreat very likely (even more likely than before)
  
• Timid = Retreat likely (about as likely as pre v0.9.5 was for all captains)
  
• Normal = Less likely retreat than before v0.9.5
  
• Courageous = much less likely retreating.
  
• Fearless = almost never retreats.

So overall there should be quite a bit less retreating, at least right off the bat. They will still run if the odds are stacked way against them, but it takes much higher odds for some captains now.



Attaching parts while in combat has been a problem for a while. It is just hard to do while being shot at. Here's what we did.

Snap distance for attach points increased in combat levels to improve on-the-fly building. This means that the parts are MUCH more magnetic in combat. We realize you probably aren't fine tuning a design while a particle hose just removed your engine, so they snap right on now if they see a good spot to attach nearby.

We also added a much stronger auto-levelling system to the ships when the tractor is on. One problem was that you cant attach a part while the ship is banked because the attach points don't line up with the combat plane, now we un-bank you when the tractor is on using a good dose of physics.



Large strike craft are too strong. This comes up a lot as well. If you have been around since launch you would have never thought those words would be uttered, but they are too strong.

First off we lowered large strike craft health by 33% so they don't take forever to kill at high star levels.

If that isn't enough we have further ideas to lower their health tanking, but we want to see how this sits with players first.

Second and more importantly, strike craft now take a bit of splash damage when they are medium and large, depending on size. This means area of effect weapons will impact them more. It still is no where near as much AoE damage as a large mothership takes, but it keeps warheads somewhat useful against the big and slow ones.

Also:

Small strike craft health up 33%
Small strike craft armor up 17%



In the ship construction level, you can now undo changes made while experimenting with your design. This system will remember the initial ship configuration you had when you first entered the construction instance and you can always revert to it.

Hopefully this combined with the root core hot swapping from last update will make design experimentation a lot less painful.



Zombies parts now have stars. These stars follow the same rules as regular factions, so larger zombie infections = greater chance of higher star parts. This should make them more appetizing to hunt for parts vs other captains late game.

Note: this also means that zombie ships will be stronger than before. Beware.

Zombies now also drop 100% of their Rez supply on death. Previously it was 25%. So zombies are a decent Rez farm as well now. Just don't get infected.



Richard has been spending time on our stretch goal of a VR build and has been making some good progress behind the scenes this update.

One important note is that Richard's VR time is not taking away from regular game development time. Core game development, as above, always takes priority, but at this point in any project when we are stabilizing the game and tuning, content work ceases and usually the art team moves to another project.

In the case of MinMax there are only two of us, and we are not going to split focus with another project so Richard now spends that downtime on the VR build. There have actually been quite a few rendering improvements that have come along into the main game as a side effect of the VR build as well.


Now onto the VR build itself.

Right now we are not “officially” a Steam VR title. Only the two of us here have even tried it, so it is very much a beta. We want to make sure it is decent before we add that tag to the game.

We are going to release it as a Beta build on Steam that you need to opt into.

We will create a new sub-forum for VR topics.

The current build has been tested on the Vive and Rift.

The VR build requires a controller and will not work with a mouse and keyboard. There are plans to get the Vive and Rift hand controllers working for a future update.

Please give it a try if you have one and let us know how it works for you. Literally 2 people have seen this, so we want to know.

VR Beta Password: experimentalVRbeta

• Strike craft quick deployment hotkeys: F1, F2, F3, F4
  
• Galactic Colossus costs less to fund new starbases so building large empires is not so expensive. Was +500 scrap per base, now is +250.
  
• Added Blueprint Drop Rate Multiplier to sandbox sliders
  
• Fix for replacing an allied captain in battle, then reloading the game causing a non interactable battle.
  
• Removed the limit of max zombie thralls on Hard. So zombies can take over the whole galaxy just like on insane.
  
• Bandit strike craft get half the stars compared to captains of the same level. This is more in keeping with their junk part but large fleet theme.
  
• Lowered strike craft threat calculation strength by 50%. They were making fleets seem much more powerful than they were, this lead to wild changes in threat level based on the number of strike craft in a fleet.
  
• Bandit threat calculation takes 33% less threat from strike craft to better represent that their strike craft are not an issue if you kill the mothership (weak point)
  
• Flak cannon chance to hit targets in cloud increased from 50% to 67%.
  
• Fixed issue where initial threat level calculation for strike craft was too high, but reset on load which would have lead to early game threat level confusion.
  
• Fix for too many spawn crates causing bandit hive to fail to become red.
  
• Prevent levelup exploit when using a single core to cheese battles. max levelups now capped to 4 per battle.
  
• Added special Alert_EnemyAttack autosave for when the AI attacks the player to prevent loss of regular autosave progress.
  
• Fixed case where zombies would attack while player's level was still below the player ignore level when the player was harvesting resources.
  
• Fixed a rare bug where you could join a fight against an ally when a captain from a different faction was also aiding your ally.
  
• Updated Unity 5.4.4 to Unity 5.4.5 (Tried Unity 5.6.0f3 but it still contains a bug that needs fixing before we can use it (issue: 899009)
  
• Fixed bug where faction relations were not being properly capped between -100 and 100.
  
• Fixed bug whereby executing captains could increase overall faction relations beyond what losing that captain from the faction should have caused.
  
• add base construction hint on create faction that other faction leaders will not be happy.
  
• add base construction hint on build rebel starbase that other faction leaders will not be happy.
  
• On easy mode, only allow one war on the player at a time.
  
• Leech Beams now work on large strikecraft and battlewagon knows how to target them with leech beams properly.
  
• Distance numbers now also show on the currently locked target as well as the current contextual action target for strike craft and drones.
  
• Added starmap distance number to the enemy bounty list in the captain info page.
  
• Fixed starbase tip to report the right unlock level for building when the unlocking is changed for sandbox mode.
  
• Wingmen won't trade Rez at stations because the player may have given it to them to help them keep up.
  
• Fixed a possible case where it was possible for wingmen to ignore a player battle and not join.
  
• Made wars more likely between factions when they run out of space to expand.
  
• Fix for having to move that 1 pixel after battle to reach the scavenge field.
  
• Captain info on mouse over was not reporting the relations values that took into consideration faction standing. This meant you could see someone with -5 relations being friendly instead of neutral. This is now fixed and shows the final relations which are used for hostility calculations. (Derived Relations)
  
• Added gamplay option Toggle Combat Zoom (instead of right mouse hold)
  
• Added combat zoom Controller and Mouse sensitivity slider to gameplay options.
  
• Only display mouse sensitivity sliders for mouse mode and controller sensitivity sliders for controller mode, less menu pollution.
  
• Added Invert Y selector for the combat scope separate from the 3rd person cam to gameplay options.
  
• Fixed AI captain joining player faction request text so that when they offer 0 scrap it doesn't show “0 Scrap” as if that was something being received.

We hope to start interviewing voice actors in the very near future and to get a good start on localization. Right now those are the two big tasks keeping up from 1.0, and it is time to start tackling them.

Beyond that we also hope to deliver a medium sized map (100 territories) as well as a sandbox mode to rebound the zombie infection so it comes back stronger each time you kill them until you are finally overwhelmed.

SPAZ 2 is getting really close to v1.0 now and it has been an amazing year of early access. The community interaction has taken SPAZ 2 way beyond where it could have been without you all, and we are so thankful for your patience and insight!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi all,

This update is centered around further expanding the sandbox gameplay as well as tackling many of the larger player tuning requests. There is a lot of stuff to cover, so lets dig right in!

• Deadspace Territory! (A way to set galaxy generation options that change its layout)
  
• New higher starbase threat levels. (starbase threat works a lot more like captain threat now)
  
• Missiles got a tuning boost (the continuing effort to make them relevant)
  
• Personality based AI retreating (they tend to flee less often now)
  
• Better in combat part attachment (fix your ship in battle hopefully with less fumbling)
  
• Large strike craft health tuned to be less tanky. (6 star larges are less insane)
  
• Ship Construction Undo (in construction level, back out changes when experimenting)
  
• Zombies worth hunting (parts now have stars, they drop a lot more rez)
  
• VR Beta (our first crack at a public VR build)

So one huge player request has been custom player galaxies. Creating custom maps in Maya and importing them into the game won't work because of the huge amount of connection work they require as well as the requirement to add hooks to other internal game systems for the AI. We wanted to answer those requests and deliver something that served the same purpose, so Deadspace territory was born.

A Deadspace territory is a territory with no starbase controller. This means no one owns it and no one will ever own it. It can almost be thought of as the water on your typical strategy game map. It does not restrict travel, but it does stop trade lines and acts as a natural neutral zone between empires.

Now lets delve into the settings so you can make the most of this new galaxy generation ability.


Deadspace Clusters vs.Veins:

A Cluster will form like a blob. It always tries to form in a position that connects it to the most of its own territory, but it hates to touch other deadspace. The blobs pinch factions together creating high conflict zones.

A Vein (cluster mode off) is the opposite. Veins still don't want to intersect other deadspace, but they also want to touch their own territory as little as possible. This ends up generating string like veins throughout the galaxy, forming natural empire borders. Veins create discrete pockets of territory.


Deadspace Resources:

This setting tells the galaxy generator to allow resource nodes and lore to spawn in deadspace, or to keep it totally empty.

Empty deadspace won't attract captains, so regular space will have a much higher population.

Resource filled deadspace provides more opportunity to harvest full and unowned resource nodes.


Deadspace Volume:

This is how much of the galaxy can be filled with deadspace territory, up to 50%.


Deadspace Scatter:

This is a 0-1 value of how many separate deadspace pockets you want. 0 means one big pocket, and 1 will mean the maximum number of pockets, each pocket being 1 territory. To get 2 deadspace territories, set the slider to 0.01-0.03ish area. It is a bit of a weird concept, but luckily we have pictures!


Example Layouts:

Cluster: On, Volume 50%, Scatter 0.01

This shows two large blobs of deadspace. This is due to the very low scatter value.


Cluster: On, Volume 50%, Scatter 0.25

Now instead of two big oceans of deadspace, we have a series of small lakes due to the higher scatter.


Cluster: On, Volume 50%, Scatter 1.00

Now with the scatter maxed, we have essentially a shotgun of 1 territory wide deadspace pockets.


Cluster: On, Volume 20%, Scatter 0.05

Here is an example with less overall deadspace in the galaxy. Only 20% here, so we have a lot more play area left intact.


Cluster Off, Volume 50%, Scatter 0.02

One huge set of veins has covered the entire galaxy, creating a series of small islands to seize.


Cluster Off, Volume 50%, Scatter 0.20

Now we still see lots of islands, but the veins are now not touching.


Cluster Off, Volume 20%, Scatter 0.20

Finally we have only 20% of the galaxy veined into deadspace. Look at that ripe territory on the bottom right... Only two connections in.


Hopefully with these examples you will be able to make the most of the new deadspace generator. Each galaxy should now be a little different and you won't know what was generated until you uncover those territories, so this should add a lot to early exploration. We hope you like it.



One problem since the big strike craft update (v0.8.0) was that starbase threat became too low due to the new increased threat being brought to the table by the beefy strike craft. In short, 80 used to be a lot, but now it isn't so we needed a better way of measuring Starbase threat and more importantly keeping AI captains away from the big ones longer.


Starbase threat now maxes out at 150:

But it wasn't just a number change. We have changed how starbase threat is calculated. It used to be a flat rate per expansion level, but now it is a combination of expansion level and the owner's level since the starbases inherit the perks of the owner.

So what this means is early on a fully upgraded base may be around threat level 100 or so, but at the owner levels up and gets new perks, that starbase's threat will also increase. We now show a starbase's level when you mouse over it as well so you better know what you are getting into.


The last four starbase expansions cost an increased amount of scrap:

This was to offset the new higher threat levels for starbses. So it takes a little extra work to get the starbase maxed out.


Starbase health now matters:

Starbase health now impacts threat so captain can whittle down a base by damaging it and running away.

There was also a bug where starbase health was not being saved and would reset to 100% each time you reloaded. This has been fixed. Health really matters for starbases now.

Also, Starbase health is properly taken into account when you start a battle with them now, so attacking weakened starbases will be a lot easier. Use those bounties to soften the bases before attacking yourself.


Starbase Notes:

Starbases inherit their owner's perks as well at strike craft star levels. So we now adjust the max threat level of their starbase based on that. This means not all fully expanded starbases will be of the same threat level, but higher leveled captains will have higher threat leveled bases. So as you level up, the bases you own will increase in threat. Another good reason to place the highest level captains in charge of bases.



Missiles have been a hot topic for a while now, and we wanted to improve them further based on continuing feedback. So here's what we did.

First off, there were requests for a better faster missile. We re-purposed the old starter missile for this. It is now a very fact intercepting missile. Here are the stat changes:

Normal Missile:

• Damage increased 25%
  
• Reload 20% faster
  
• Range increased 33%
  
• Speed 33% faster
  
• MUCH more agile and has 10x the thrust. (its faaast)

Also:
Ion SRM damage increases 33%
Torpedo damage increased 36%, speed up 33%, range up 33%
Cloud torpedo damage up 33%, speed up 33%, range up 33%
SRM damage up 25%



Raise your hand if you are tired of chasing retreating captains. So the retreat mechanic is good, but it is used way too often by the AI, so we decided to make retreating heavily personality based.

Captains have a bravery trait. ( Note: It will be invisible when it is normal)

Bravery

• Cowardly = Retreat very likely (even more likely than before)
  
• Timid = Retreat likely (about as likely as pre v0.9.5 was for all captains)
  
• Normal = Less likely retreat than before v0.9.5
  
• Courageous = much less likely retreating.
  
• Fearless = almost never retreats.

So overall there should be quite a bit less retreating, at least right off the bat. They will still run if the odds are stacked way against them, but it takes much higher odds for some captains now.



Attaching parts while in combat has been a problem for a while. It is just hard to do while being shot at. Here's what we did.

Snap distance for attach points increased in combat levels to improve on-the-fly building. This means that the parts are MUCH more magnetic in combat. We realize you probably aren't fine tuning a design while a particle hose just removed your engine, so they snap right on now if they see a good spot to attach nearby.

We also added a much stronger auto-levelling system to the ships when the tractor is on. One problem was that you cant attach a part while the ship is banked because the attach points don't line up with the combat plane, now we un-bank you when the tractor is on using a good dose of physics.



Large strike craft are too strong. This comes up a lot as well. If you have been around since launch you would have never thought those words would be uttered, but they are too strong.

First off we lowered large strike craft health by 33% so they don't take forever to kill at high star levels.

If that isn't enough we have further ideas to lower their health tanking, but we want to see how this sits with players first.

Second and more importantly, strike craft now take a bit of splash damage when they are medium and large, depending on size. This means area of effect weapons will impact them more. It still is no where near as much AoE damage as a large mothership takes, but it keeps warheads somewhat useful against the big and slow ones.

Also:

Small strike craft health up 33%
Small strike craft armor up 17%



In the ship construction level, you can now undo changes made while experimenting with your design. This system will remember the initial ship configuration you had when you first entered the construction instance and you can always revert to it.

Hopefully this combined with the root core hot swapping from last update will make design experimentation a lot less painful.



Zombies parts now have stars. These stars follow the same rules as regular factions, so larger zombie infections = greater chance of higher star parts. This should make them more appetizing to hunt for parts vs other captains late game.

Note: this also means that zombie ships will be stronger than before. Beware.

Zombies now also drop 100% of their Rez supply on death. Previously it was 25%. So zombies are a decent Rez farm as well now. Just don't get infected.



Richard has been spending time on our stretch goal of a VR build and has been making some good progress behind the scenes this update.

One important note is that Richard's VR time is not taking away from regular game development time. Core game development, as above, always takes priority, but at this point in any project when we are stabilizing the game and tuning, content work ceases and usually the art team moves to another project.

In the case of MinMax there are only two of us, and we are not going to split focus with another project so Richard now spends that downtime on the VR build. There have actually been quite a few rendering improvements that have come along into the main game as a side effect of the VR build as well.


Now onto the VR build itself.

Right now we are not “officially” a Steam VR title. Only the two of us here have even tried it, so it is very much a beta. We want to make sure it is decent before we add that tag to the game.

We are going to release it as a Beta build on Steam that you need to opt into.

We will create a new sub-forum for VR topics.

The current build has been tested on the Vive and Rift.

The VR build requires a controller and will not work with a mouse and keyboard. There are plans to get the Vive and Rift hand controllers working for a future update.

Please give it a try if you have one and let us know how it works for you. Literally 2 people have seen this, so we want to know.

VR Beta Password: experimentalVRbeta

• Strike craft quick deployment hotkeys: F1, F2, F3, F4
  
• Galactic Colossus costs less to fund new starbases so building large empires is not so expensive. Was +500 scrap per base, now is +250.
  
• Added Blueprint Drop Rate Multiplier to sandbox sliders
  
• Fix for replacing an allied captain in battle, then reloading the game causing a non interactable battle.
  
• Removed the limit of max zombie thralls on Hard. So zombies can take over the whole galaxy just like on insane.
  
• Bandit strike craft get half the stars compared to captains of the same level. This is more in keeping with their junk part but large fleet theme.
  
• Lowered strike craft threat calculation strength by 50%. They were making fleets seem much more powerful than they were, this lead to wild changes in threat level based on the number of strike craft in a fleet.
  
• Bandit threat calculation takes 33% less threat from strike craft to better represent that their strike craft are not an issue if you kill the mothership (weak point)
  
• Flak cannon chance to hit targets in cloud increased from 50% to 67%.
  
• Fixed issue where initial threat level calculation for strike craft was too high, but reset on load which would have lead to early game threat level confusion.
  
• Fix for too many spawn crates causing bandit hive to fail to become red.
  
• Prevent levelup exploit when using a single core to cheese battles. max levelups now capped to 4 per battle.
  
• Added special Alert_EnemyAttack autosave for when the AI attacks the player to prevent loss of regular autosave progress.
  
• Fixed case where zombies would attack while player's level was still below the player ignore level when the player was harvesting resources.
  
• Fixed a rare bug where you could join a fight against an ally when a captain from a different faction was also aiding your ally.
  
• Updated Unity 5.4.4 to Unity 5.4.5 (Tried Unity 5.6.0f3 but it still contains a bug that needs fixing before we can use it (issue: 899009)
  
• Fixed bug where faction relations were not being properly capped between -100 and 100.
  
• Fixed bug whereby executing captains could increase overall faction relations beyond what losing that captain from the faction should have caused.
  
• add base construction hint on create faction that other faction leaders will not be happy.
  
• add base construction hint on build rebel starbase that other faction leaders will not be happy.
  
• On easy mode, only allow one war on the player at a time.
  
• Leech Beams now work on large strikecraft and battlewagon knows how to target them with leech beams properly.
  
• Distance numbers now also show on the currently locked target as well as the current contextual action target for strike craft and drones.
  
• Added starmap distance number to the enemy bounty list in the captain info page.
  
• Fixed starbase tip to report the right unlock level for building when the unlocking is changed for sandbox mode.
  
• Wingmen won't trade Rez at stations because the player may have given it to them to help them keep up.
  
• Fixed a possible case where it was possible for wingmen to ignore a player battle and not join.
  
• Made wars more likely between factions when they run out of space to expand.
  
• Fix for having to move that 1 pixel after battle to reach the scavenge field.
  
• Captain info on mouse over was not reporting the relations values that took into consideration faction standing. This meant you could see someone with -5 relations being friendly instead of neutral. This is now fixed and shows the final relations which are used for hostility calculations. (Derived Relations)
  
• Added gamplay option Toggle Combat Zoom (instead of right mouse hold)
  
• Added combat zoom Controller and Mouse sensitivity slider to gameplay options.
  
• Only display mouse sensitivity sliders for mouse mode and controller sensitivity sliders for controller mode, less menu pollution.
  
• Added Invert Y selector for the combat scope separate from the 3rd person cam to gameplay options.
  
• Fixed AI captain joining player faction request text so that when they offer 0 scrap it doesn't show “0 Scrap” as if that was something being received.

We hope to start interviewing voice actors in the very near future and to get a good start on localization. Right now those are the two big tasks keeping up from 1.0, and it is time to start tackling them.

Beyond that we also hope to deliver a medium sized map (100 territories) as well as a sandbox mode to rebound the zombie infection so it comes back stronger each time you kill them until you are finally overwhelmed.

SPAZ 2 is getting really close to v1.0 now and it has been an amazing year of early access. The community interaction has taken SPAZ 2 way beyond where it could have been without you all, and we are so thankful for your patience and insight!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi All,

This update was all about replayability. We are going to get right into the guts of the update because there is a lot to read!

• Flight physics got a big upgrade, which also lead to a 20% CPU savings.
  
• Improved missiles to make them a more viable choice.
  
• Added ability to hot swap the root core in the inventory level.
  
• Changed Fighter energy consumption to be on attack only.
  
• Added an Insane difficulty mode for experts who hate themselves.
  
• Added Extended core modes (now have up to 21 cores)
  
• Upgraded the sandbox mode with 73 sliders and new pre-defined game modes.
  
• Added the Milky Colossus (a huge 200 sector map!)

One important note:

This was a huge update, and we are just two people. We tested this as best as we could, but the breadth of changes in this update would require an army to test properly. The old map has had three years of testing and the new map has had about a week. Also, we tried to apply logical limits to the tuning sliders, but there are thousands of permutations to the possible tuning now. So we “think” everything is good, but we expect a few hot fixes to come in the next couple days as you find and hopefully report weirdness. The game just got a whole lot bigger...



One of our big goals was to optimize the physics a little more to allow for more cores and to take some of the pressure off slower CPUs. The end result of this work is that there should be about 20% less physics load on the CPU, and when the load gets high, fps drops will be less noticeable. So it was a pretty big win.

The root of the upgrade is that we now use physics for everything flight related. This means the ship handling will feel slightly different and may be a bit foreign at first. The ship banking used to be controlled by a forced rotation over time that overrode physics (this lead to some nasty problems we will discuss below as well.) This is why the banking could feel a bit robotic, because it was. Now we use some crazy vector math to handle the banking with physics forces.

From your perspective:

Some ships will bank more quickly and others more slowly than before. Since the banking is using real physics the shape along the spine of the ship matters. It takes very little force to rotate a pencil along its length, but a lot more to rotate something with wings sticking out from the center line.

Root core placement matters. This is where the physics is centered (somewhat) So if you put the root core up front you can make turns that can slide out the tail end on fast turns (this feels pretty good) Experiment with a placement you like.

Ships now nose down or up on turns. Ship pitch rotation is no longer locked, so on turns they look a lot more dynamic.

One extremely awesome side effect is that ramming and collisions look fantastic. If you see an arena event with the Krule Intention ship, try it out and you will see what the new physics can do.

Extra physics info for nerds:

So physics and the frame rate update at different speeds. This means that physics needs to interpolate between drawn frames to look smooth. Now when we were doing the robotic banking, it was fighting this interpolation because we were forcibly changing the physics all the time. This lead to a “tick” it was really fast and you may have never noticed it, but you probably heard it (ears are better at picking this stuff up) So if you did a high speed turn in the past your engine sound would kind of warble. That warble was the sound of the physics being reset dozens of times per second. Tick Tick Tick. Drove us nuts but we didn't know what it was until we fixed it. Now the engines hum instead of yodel.

At high frame rates the visual tick became visible. The camera is fixed to the ship, so the ship itself never ticked as it rotated because the camera ticked with it, however the entire rest of the environment (aside from the skybox) WOULD tick since the actual thing ticking was the ship with the camera attached. These subtle little tick tick tick when looking at asteroids and turning... All fixed.

Sound and flight are a lot more smooth now. We like smooth.



The missiles have come up a lot on the forums recently as not being viable, and we agree, so we set out to fix that.

Missiles now shoot twice as often, but do half damage (dps is unchanged)

Missiles get a 3 second point defense buffer before being lockable. This prevents them being popped while next to the parent ship.

Flak cannons now work like flak cannons and are not 100% effective within the flak cloud. Some missiles will make it through the shrapnel, others will be damaged, others destroyed. Expect around 50% to survive with some remaining level of health.

Missiles, Torpedoes, and Warheads have a short warm up time before being fired while in initial formation with the mothership (to prevent friendly fire accidents)

Missiles, Torpedoes, and Warheads have 50% more health.

Ion Warhead clouds now have a 1 second lifespan but do 2x damage. This makes them the shield killers they are meant to be.



In the inventory level, you can now re-position the root core without disassembling your entire ship. Right click the root core, then right click a sub core where you would like to place it.

Please report any anomalies with this. The code to make this work is really fiddly, but we figured the convenience to the player outweighed insanity of writing it.



In the unending battle to make fighter fun but not overly epic compared to other weapons, we have adjusted their power consumption to only consume while the fighters themselves are actively trying to kill something. This brings them back into line with the power consumption of other weapons systems.



Its back and less fair than ever. This difficulty mode is about pain, and please do not try this mode with less than 50 hours of experience. It will hurt you.

Details:

• AI does 2X damage.
  
• You do 0.5X damage.
  
• AI levels MUCH more quickly. You can still out pace them, but barely. They get a base of 97.5% of your experience. Expect the AI to stay ahead of you for a good long while.
  
• Zombie provinces can now have 2X as many zombies. They will vacuum factions to death.
  
• Zombies will do 2X damage (that is 4X total... there's some hard zombies)
  
• Outside of the difficulty slider there are 73 other sliders which are not connected that you can use to inflict pain on yourself.

You have been warned...

Note: Insane mode is still in the works so there is not achievement for it yet, but there probably will be someday once we know it is settled and evil enough.



The physics improvements above have had the side effect of making the long awaited extended core modes possible. They do eat a fair share of CPU so keep that in mind, and the story will still use the good old 15, but if you want bigger ships, they have arrived...

Note: this applies to the whole galaxy. All captains get the extra cores.

There are 6 modes:

• Default: normal progression (15 cores total)
  
• 3 Early: Your starter ship will now have 6 cores instead of 3, normal progression. (18 total)
  
• 3 Late: This extends the end game allowing cores to be added further along in the level tree (18 total)
  
• 6 Early: Start with a 9 core ship. (21 total)
  
• 6 Late: Greatly extend the end game core perk hunt. (21 total)
  
• 3 Early and 3 Late: This one starts you bigger and ends you bigger, and is quite fun. (21 total)

Why the odd number MinMax? 21? What you smokin?
The reason for 15, 18, and 21 is to allow 3 X N brick shapes for synergies without wasted dangly bits. We hate dangly bits...



So, there are now 73 sandbox sliders, and with great power comes great responsibility. Awesome new modes are at your finger tips, but it is also possible to make a horrible untuned mess. Try for the first option, and please don't blame us for the second.

To help with this, we have made a few pre-built game modes using the sliders to act as helper examples for your own tuning templates.


Game Modes:

• Default: Good old default. This is what the story uses.
  
• All Unlocked: If you want it all and you want it now, well this is for you.
  
• Epic War: Brutal marathon conquest.
  
• Rising Star: Carve out an Empire... Somehow.
  
• Hidden Menace: While bandits rule, dankness looms...

For most players the game modes above will be a great starting point and will add tonnes of replayability.

For those of you who like to get your hands dirty, read on...



When you select a game mode, you can inspect the sliders below in the advanced section to see what they did. This allows you to use a game mode as a starting point and then tweak it however you want.

Once you have the sliders where you want, you can save them and that will become your new sandbox default when loading the menu. There are ways to save multiple tuning files but more on that later...



Starmap Setup:
These build the galaxy and cannot be changed after generation. These are very powerful and define things like the levelup mechanics and faction spread, the guts of how the galaxy will play out.

Note: the rest of the sliders can be changed in game at any time.

Starmap Meta:
This is how the metagame works. How many systems are needed to make part sizes, how many perks you can pick from on levelup, the levelup speed.

Combat:
This one is really powerful, and it is the reason alt-F8 exists. You can change darn near everything about combat in here, live. Expect to spend a good while fiddling in here.

Zombie War:
How strong is the infection and how hard is it to overcome.

Resources:
Feast or famine it is up to you.

Raids:
Adjust the power, effectiveness, and frequency of raids.

Cloaking:
Tune the cloaking mechanics to your liking

Misc:
This is a little bit of everything else that doesn't fit in a category. There are some cool things in there like determining how much rez parts and goons consume, if any.




In sandbox mode we try not to lock you down, so if a tunable won't break the game we let you tune it while the sandbox is running. If you made a bad choice, and that choice wasn't used to generate the galaxy, just change it :)

To access tunables while the game is running look in the options menu (not available in story mode)
Also if you are tuning ships, you can press Alt-F8 to bring up the menu more quickly.

We also allow you to save your own tuning table. Each time you load the sandbox menu it will default to your saved tunings.

Note: You can even share these tuning files with friends (if you rename them they will appear in the pre-defined tuning lists at the top of the sandbox menu)

Located here: C:\Users\MinMax\AppData\LocalLow\MinMax Games\SPAZ 2\Cloud\Tunables
Just rename MyTunables to something else and it will appear in the game modes menu. The hope is to someday set these via workshop, but there is no reason people can't share them themselves for now.



Saved the best for last. It is finally here! The giant map! Not much more to say than that. Go, explore, have a new adventure.

Well there is a tiny bit more to say. So the new map is huge and has 1 week of testing. We think it all works, but it is huge and has 1 week of testing. If you see anomalies, please let us know. Did we mention that it is huge and has 1 week of testing?

• Fixed issue with controller input scaling with frame rate. Now rates are constant like with the mouse.
  
• Fixed issue where if you press escape on the select difficulty menu while already in a game it would revert to the galaxy creation screen.
  
• Zombies should respawn with a full compliment of 0 star parts. on hard zombies do 33% bonus damage now (offsets their poor parts) on insane 2x.
  
• Fixed a bug where in rare cases a save could become corrupted due to a loading timing issue and subsequent save. Sprung up in V 0.9.0.
  
• Fixed sound persistence issue where too many looping audio sounds were active on the starmap after loading from a combat instance. Got some CPU back on starmap.
  
• Ai captains start with more real parts.
  
• In inventory level the firing arcs are now easier to test since guns will always fire instead of only firing if they can hit something.
  
• Zombies get strike craft at zombie starbases. Keeps them threat relevant.
  
• Zombies levelup more aggressively. To keep them closer to the top of the heap.
  
• Zombies wont attack transports on easy and normal, but will on hard and insane.
  
• Fixed capital transports returning to parent station after they are attacked.
  
• Fixed Join my faction and kick from faction not appearing when an Ai captain is in battle
  
• Bandit hive interaction text show when they are blocked by battle to avoid confusion as to why the fight button is inactive.
  
• Fixed demand surrender not showing why the option is disabled in some cases.
  
• Fix for beeping warning sound going off when a missile wants to fire in battlwagon mode.
  
• Added a frame limiter for then Vsync off. 30,60,90,120,144 selectable.
  
• Fixed it such that games with zombies deactivated will not spawn zombie roids in missions.

We expect a few hotfixes to come out as a result of all the changes in this build, but we are on deck to get them out as quickly as possible.

While I am working on script optimization, and an endless mode for the zombie infection, Richard will be exploring our big stretch goal, VR. He will likely make a separate post talking about that in the near future.

Long term the major goals left are VR, Voice Acting and Localization. Beyond that there is the ongoing support of the new systems, bug fixing, tuning, and the addition of features as they are needed or just sound really cool.

Thanks again for your support and great ideas!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi All,

This update was all about replayability. We are going to get right into the guts of the update because there is a lot to read!

• Flight physics got a big upgrade, which also lead to a 20% CPU savings.
  
• Improved missiles to make them a more viable choice.
  
• Added ability to hot swap the root core in the inventory level.
  
• Changed Fighter energy consumption to be on attack only.
  
• Added an Insane difficulty mode for experts who hate themselves.
  
• Added Extended core modes (now have up to 21 cores)
  
• Upgraded the sandbox mode with 73 sliders and new pre-defined game modes.
  
• Added the Milky Colossus (a huge 200 sector map!)

One important note:

This was a huge update, and we are just two people. We tested this as best as we could, but the breadth of changes in this update would require an army to test properly. The old map has had three years of testing and the new map has had about a week. Also, we tried to apply logical limits to the tuning sliders, but there are thousands of permutations to the possible tuning now. So we “think” everything is good, but we expect a few hot fixes to come in the next couple days as you find and hopefully report weirdness. The game just got a whole lot bigger...



One of our big goals was to optimize the physics a little more to allow for more cores and to take some of the pressure off slower CPUs. The end result of this work is that there should be about 20% less physics load on the CPU, and when the load gets high, fps drops will be less noticeable. So it was a pretty big win.

The root of the upgrade is that we now use physics for everything flight related. This means the ship handling will feel slightly different and may be a bit foreign at first. The ship banking used to be controlled by a forced rotation over time that overrode physics (this lead to some nasty problems we will discuss below as well.) This is why the banking could feel a bit robotic, because it was. Now we use some crazy vector math to handle the banking with physics forces.

From your perspective:

Some ships will bank more quickly and others more slowly than before. Since the banking is using real physics the shape along the spine of the ship matters. It takes very little force to rotate a pencil along its length, but a lot more to rotate something with wings sticking out from the center line.

Root core placement matters. This is where the physics is centered (somewhat) So if you put the root core up front you can make turns that can slide out the tail end on fast turns (this feels pretty good) Experiment with a placement you like.

Ships now nose down or up on turns. Ship pitch rotation is no longer locked, so on turns they look a lot more dynamic.

One extremely awesome side effect is that ramming and collisions look fantastic. If you see an arena event with the Krule Intention ship, try it out and you will see what the new physics can do.

Extra physics info for nerds:

So physics and the frame rate update at different speeds. This means that physics needs to interpolate between drawn frames to look smooth. Now when we were doing the robotic banking, it was fighting this interpolation because we were forcibly changing the physics all the time. This lead to a “tick” it was really fast and you may have never noticed it, but you probably heard it (ears are better at picking this stuff up) So if you did a high speed turn in the past your engine sound would kind of warble. That warble was the sound of the physics being reset dozens of times per second. Tick Tick Tick. Drove us nuts but we didn't know what it was until we fixed it. Now the engines hum instead of yodel.

At high frame rates the visual tick became visible. The camera is fixed to the ship, so the ship itself never ticked as it rotated because the camera ticked with it, however the entire rest of the environment (aside from the skybox) WOULD tick since the actual thing ticking was the ship with the camera attached. These subtle little tick tick tick when looking at asteroids and turning... All fixed.

Sound and flight are a lot more smooth now. We like smooth.



The missiles have come up a lot on the forums recently as not being viable, and we agree, so we set out to fix that.

Missiles now shoot twice as often, but do half damage (dps is unchanged)

Missiles get a 3 second point defense buffer before being lockable. This prevents them being popped while next to the parent ship.

Flak cannons now work like flak cannons and are not 100% effective within the flak cloud. Some missiles will make it through the shrapnel, others will be damaged, others destroyed. Expect around 50% to survive with some remaining level of health.

Missiles, Torpedoes, and Warheads have a short warm up time before being fired while in initial formation with the mothership (to prevent friendly fire accidents)

Missiles, Torpedoes, and Warheads have 50% more health.

Ion Warhead clouds now have a 1 second lifespan but do 2x damage. This makes them the shield killers they are meant to be.



In the inventory level, you can now re-position the root core without disassembling your entire ship. Right click the root core, then right click a sub core where you would like to place it.

Please report any anomalies with this. The code to make this work is really fiddly, but we figured the convenience to the player outweighed insanity of writing it.



In the unending battle to make fighter fun but not overly epic compared to other weapons, we have adjusted their power consumption to only consume while the fighters themselves are actively trying to kill something. This brings them back into line with the power consumption of other weapons systems.



Its back and less fair than ever. This difficulty mode is about pain, and please do not try this mode with less than 50 hours of experience. It will hurt you.

Details:

• AI does 2X damage.
  
• You do 0.5X damage.
  
• AI levels MUCH more quickly. You can still out pace them, but barely. They get a base of 97.5% of your experience. Expect the AI to stay ahead of you for a good long while.
  
• Zombie provinces can now have 2X as many zombies. They will vacuum factions to death.
  
• Zombies will do 2X damage (that is 4X total... there's some hard zombies)
  
• Outside of the difficulty slider there are 73 other sliders which are not connected that you can use to inflict pain on yourself.

You have been warned...

Note: Insane mode is still in the works so there is not achievement for it yet, but there probably will be someday once we know it is settled and evil enough.



The physics improvements above have had the side effect of making the long awaited extended core modes possible. They do eat a fair share of CPU so keep that in mind, and the story will still use the good old 15, but if you want bigger ships, they have arrived...

Note: this applies to the whole galaxy. All captains get the extra cores.

There are 6 modes:

• Default: normal progression (15 cores total)
  
• 3 Early: Your starter ship will now have 6 cores instead of 3, normal progression. (18 total)
  
• 3 Late: This extends the end game allowing cores to be added further along in the level tree (18 total)
  
• 6 Early: Start with a 9 core ship. (21 total)
  
• 6 Late: Greatly extend the end game core perk hunt. (21 total)
  
• 3 Early and 3 Late: This one starts you bigger and ends you bigger, and is quite fun. (21 total)

Why the odd number MinMax? 21? What you smokin?
The reason for 15, 18, and 21 is to allow 3 X N brick shapes for synergies without wasted dangly bits. We hate dangly bits...



So, there are now 73 sandbox sliders, and with great power comes great responsibility. Awesome new modes are at your finger tips, but it is also possible to make a horrible untuned mess. Try for the first option, and please don't blame us for the second.

To help with this, we have made a few pre-built game modes using the sliders to act as helper examples for your own tuning templates.


Game Modes:

• Default: Good old default. This is what the story uses.
  
• All Unlocked: If you want it all and you want it now, well this is for you.
  
• Epic War: Brutal marathon conquest.
  
• Rising Star: Carve out an Empire... Somehow.
  
• Hidden Menace: While bandits rule, dankness looms...

For most players the game modes above will be a great starting point and will add tonnes of replayability.

For those of you who like to get your hands dirty, read on...



When you select a game mode, you can inspect the sliders below in the advanced section to see what they did. This allows you to use a game mode as a starting point and then tweak it however you want.

Once you have the sliders where you want, you can save them and that will become your new sandbox default when loading the menu. There are ways to save multiple tuning files but more on that later...



Starmap Setup:
These build the galaxy and cannot be changed after generation. These are very powerful and define things like the levelup mechanics and faction spread, the guts of how the galaxy will play out.

Note: the rest of the sliders can be changed in game at any time.

Starmap Meta:
This is how the metagame works. How many systems are needed to make part sizes, how many perks you can pick from on levelup, the levelup speed.

Combat:
This one is really powerful, and it is the reason alt-F8 exists. You can change darn near everything about combat in here, live. Expect to spend a good while fiddling in here.

Zombie War:
How strong is the infection and how hard is it to overcome.

Resources:
Feast or famine it is up to you.

Raids:
Adjust the power, effectiveness, and frequency of raids.

Cloaking:
Tune the cloaking mechanics to your liking

Misc:
This is a little bit of everything else that doesn't fit in a category. There are some cool things in there like determining how much rez parts and goons consume, if any.




In sandbox mode we try not to lock you down, so if a tunable won't break the game we let you tune it while the sandbox is running. If you made a bad choice, and that choice wasn't used to generate the galaxy, just change it :)

To access tunables while the game is running look in the options menu (not available in story mode)
Also if you are tuning ships, you can press Alt-F8 to bring up the menu more quickly.

We also allow you to save your own tuning table. Each time you load the sandbox menu it will default to your saved tunings.

Note: You can even share these tuning files with friends (if you rename them they will appear in the pre-defined tuning lists at the top of the sandbox menu)

Located here: C:\Users\MinMax\AppData\LocalLow\MinMax Games\SPAZ 2\Cloud\Tunables
Just rename MyTunables to something else and it will appear in the game modes menu. The hope is to someday set these via workshop, but there is no reason people can't share them themselves for now.



Saved the best for last. It is finally here! The giant map! Not much more to say than that. Go, explore, have a new adventure.

Well there is a tiny bit more to say. So the new map is huge and has 1 week of testing. We think it all works, but it is huge and has 1 week of testing. If you see anomalies, please let us know. Did we mention that it is huge and has 1 week of testing?

• Fixed issue with controller input scaling with frame rate. Now rates are constant like with the mouse.
  
• Fixed issue where if you press escape on the select difficulty menu while already in a game it would revert to the galaxy creation screen.
  
• Zombies should respawn with a full compliment of 0 star parts. on hard zombies do 33% bonus damage now (offsets their poor parts) on insane 2x.
  
• Fixed a bug where in rare cases a save could become corrupted due to a loading timing issue and subsequent save. Sprung up in V 0.9.0.
  
• Fixed sound persistence issue where too many looping audio sounds were active on the starmap after loading from a combat instance. Got some CPU back on starmap.
  
• Ai captains start with more real parts.
  
• In inventory level the firing arcs are now easier to test since guns will always fire instead of only firing if they can hit something.
  
• Zombies get strike craft at zombie starbases. Keeps them threat relevant.
  
• Zombies levelup more aggressively. To keep them closer to the top of the heap.
  
• Zombies wont attack transports on easy and normal, but will on hard and insane.
  
• Fixed capital transports returning to parent station after they are attacked.
  
• Fixed Join my faction and kick from faction not appearing when an Ai captain is in battle
  
• Bandit hive interaction text show when they are blocked by battle to avoid confusion as to why the fight button is inactive.
  
• Fixed demand surrender not showing why the option is disabled in some cases.
  
• Fix for beeping warning sound going off when a missile wants to fire in battlwagon mode.
  
• Added a frame limiter for then Vsync off. 30,60,90,120,144 selectable.
  
• Fixed it such that games with zombies deactivated will not spawn zombie roids in missions.

We expect a few hotfixes to come out as a result of all the changes in this build, but we are on deck to get them out as quickly as possible.

While I am working on script optimization, and an endless mode for the zombie infection, Richard will be exploring our big stretch goal, VR. He will likely make a separate post talking about that in the near future.

Long term the major goals left are VR, Voice Acting and Localization. Beyond that there is the ongoing support of the new systems, bug fixing, tuning, and the addition of features as they are needed or just sound really cool.

Thanks again for your support and great ideas!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)