So I think the launch went quite well! Nothing caught fire, we had a good time streaming on the Steam page, and reviews are looking good.

I'm now mopping up, making notes of things to fix, and answering questions.

The one thing that didn't go well was YouTube. It's the main way people find this game, and I know a lot of you have found it through Stuff+ or more recently EnterElysium, Frazzz, or GamingFTL.

Before the launch, I did my best to contact more YouTubers who do construction-type games, but it's just really hard to get through to them. I know that YouTubers receive literally hundreds of emails a day from devs and marketing people, so my attempts just got lost in the noise.

I also know that they may listen to their viewers. So if you're a regular viewer of a channel, here is something very helpful you can do for me: post a comment, or send a tweet, asking them to play Airships: Conquer the Skies. If they can see there's an audience for the game, they may have a look.

In the meantime, I'll be over here making the game better. :)

After five years of development, Airships: Conquer the Skies is out!

It started as a quick prototype inspired by FTL and Cortex Command, and was rapidly met with a lot of interest. So I... kind of kept working at it, and along the way it acquired a community, mod support, a soundtrack, landships, tentacles, and more.

And speaking of this community, I am immensely grateful for it. You've helped me with finding bugs, making suggestions, creating mods, but seeing people enjoy the game has also just been a huge morale booster.

So, what's next? Well, because no software is ever bug-free, I'm sure there will be a whole bunch of patches. I also ask you to be patient with me - if a lot of people buy the game, a lot of people will have questions at the same time.

There's still some bits of content I'd like to add, too. Beyond that, I have plans and prototypes for the next game...

It's the day before the release!

I've pushed some final fixes and improvements over the last few days: editor performance, better support for saving and loading files with Chinese letters in, and updated missions. The 1.0 version will not really be any different gameplay-wise, but it *will* feature five new tracks by Curtis Schweitzer.

So now I'm running around getting the house in order for the launch. The launch trailer's cut and ready, I have sent out emails and press keys, and I'm about to revamp the store page description.

The Call for GIFs has concluded, and you can see the winners here. (Steam doesn't much like large GIFs, which is why I didn't embed them here.)

See you on the other side!

Version dev 10.1 is out! This is the last few features I managed to squeeze in before the release. From now until the 16th it's going to be bugfixes and maybe some work on the tutorial.

That said, I would be very grateful if you could try this one out, especially the new multiplayer features, and let me know if there's any problems.

So, new multiplayer features:



You can now collectively decide on what speed MP conquest should run at. If all players agree to pause the game, the game is paused.

And you can now edit ships in MP. There's three new little buttons for ship/landship/building editing. The state of the editor gets preserved and the design autosaved when you leave it, so you can work on ships alongside doing other things.

With the game gearing up for release, I’d like to show people all the cool things about it. For this, I’ve put a GIF creation tool in the game’s replay system. So when you replay a combat, you can hit the GIF button and record a short animation.



Now it’s a question of finding some cool-looking GIFs, and this is something you can help me with.

Anything that shows off the game, the details, the combat, the designs - modded or not. Make them, share them in places, link me to them. Of those I get sent in the next week, the creators of the three I like best will get a custom coat of arms and a sticker, and the very best one will also get a gold-print Airships T-shirt.


To create a GIF, select “Replay” from the main menu.



Pick a combat to replay.



You can play back the combat, and move the camera freely using the usual WASD/Arrow Keys/Right Drag to move and Scroll Wheel/+- to zoom.



You can click on the playback bar to move forwards and backwards.



To make a GIF, get the playback and camera to where you want to start.



Click the GIF button.



Click the OK button. The combat will start playing back again. It won’t be moving at full speed, but that’s just because it’s recording the GIF - the GIF will play back normally.

You can move the camera during recording but note that a moving camera may be confusing to viewers.

Hit the Escape key to finish recording. A 3-6 second GIF or so is good. If it’s too long, the file will be too big.

The file will be saved automatically to the Desktop.


Share them on Steam, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Imgur, etc. The purpose of this exercise is to let people know about the game and get new players.

Message me with the things you’ve posted, and you’ll be added to the giveaway. Note who gets rewards will be entirely at my discretion. Void where prohibited. Note that I may re-use your GIFs in other places to promote the game.

The Call For GIFs ends at midnight GMT on Monday, August 13.

OK, but what’s a custom coat of arms? Well, you can register a coat of arms for yourself in the game. The custom arms means I’ll draw a custom symbol of your choice - a heraldic charge - for you and link it with your account. Only you will be able to use it. (And yes, obviously, nothing obscene or awful, and nothing that someone else already has.)

Here’s some examples:







So yeah, no super-fancy pixel art, but it’s all yours, and yours alone - and a grant of arms is the traditional reward for a service rendered.

I am happy to announce that Airships: Conquer the Skies will be released on August 16, 2018.

It's been five years of development, nearly all of it with public builds available, going from a ship construction prototype with weirdly greenish-tinged wood to its current state, with multiplayer, dragons, landships, and well, more ship design.

Today also marks the release of dev 10, the final major pre-release version, featuring conquest multiplayer, a tech tree, and graphical improvements.



Here's a bunch of the cool stuff the game now contains:

• Explosions
  
• Free-form ship design where you're not limited to some fixed layout
  
• Historically authentic heraldry
  
• Dragon taming
  
• Giant sky squid that eat your crew
  
• Grappling hooks
  
• Giant land-walkers
  
• An in-game editor for challenge missions
  
• A combat replay system that lets you re-enter the fight on either side
  
• Multiplayer map conquest
  
• Extensive modding support with more than a hundred mods, adding a huge number of extra modules and other things
  
• Explosions

From now until release, I'll be concentrating on improving conquest mode and the game tutorial. After, I will of course continue supporting the game with bug fixes, balance patches, and user interface improvements.

Oh, are you a member of the press or a streamer? Would you like to know more? Are you going to gamescom? Drop me a line.

New beta release, fixing various bugs and balance issues, getting translations up to date, and adding Korean!



Release date announcement tomorrow.

Oh, and I've set up a Developer Page on Steam now. So if you follow that, I'll see a number go up and you'll see future projects I work on.

#dontforgettolikefollowandsubscribeguys

There is now a public beta version of Airships dev 10. You can opt into it by going into the game properties in Steam, selecting the betas tab, and choosing "dev10beta".

It adds a lot of new things, including strategic conquest multiplayer and research. I'll be going over those in detail when it leaves beta.

For now, do try it out, and let me know about any bugs, crashes, or balance issues you encounter. We're coming up to the 1.0 release.



Edit: Did an update, beta 3, that fixed some crashes and desyncs.

• Fixed a lighting error on turrets.
  
• You can now use the arrow keys and cursor to change the insertion point in text fields.
  
• Uploading ships to Steam now gives you the fixed list of tags, and auto-generates cost tags.
  
• Clearer indicator for which modules are disconnected.
  
• Mac Steam integration once again works, in a limited fashion. You can subscribe to workshop items but you can't publish them.

With the new graphical options now available, I'm re-doing the AI ship designs for v10. Each opponent empire will have a specific design style that is visually distinct and has certain strengths and weaknesses. Here are some screenshots:











In other good news, I think I have convinced Kaspersky Antivirus to stop issuing false positives for the game!