Hi Everyone,

Here's some new stuff we hope you will like! :)

Proving Grounds:
If you have ever wanted to see how your ship would do against the local Arena ship, wish no longer because you can now have a simulated battle vs arena ships to test out your designs with no risk to life and limb.


New Map! (Hexor)
This new 110 territory map is hex based. It is a much more traditional strategic map but it turns out to be quite fun to play as well! It is only available in Sandbox Mode.


Engine Boost Changes:
We are experimenting with a new boost system that requires 20% boost fuel to start boosting. This is in response to user input that players were holding the boost button down indefinitely in battle because they were overwhelmed or just forgot. This lead to the boost never recharging.

Now what will happen is once the boost pool is empty, it will instantly start filling, but boost cannot re-engage until it is 20% full (only takes a couple of seconds) So if you are holding the boost key too long now, you will get repeated boosts as the pool fills to 20% then drains then fills etc... 20% is about the required boost to actually get the ship moving and it doesn't take too long to fill.

Some had suggested just to let the boost pool totally fill once drained even if the key was pressed, but not to start a new boost until the boost button was released and pressed again. We experimented with this as well, but it felt like a bug to have a full boost bar and no boost happening.

This change is experimental. Give it a few days and see how it feels. Personally we like it, but we want to hear your thoughts as well.


Here is the complete list of changes/fixes/additions.

• Relations hit added with a transport owner when it is destroyed.
  
• Relations hit added with faction leader when capital transport destroyed.
  
• Fix for rare case where player is second last in faction and the faction leader gets zombified thus forcing the player into role as faction leader and starting own faction.
  
• Fixed case where you could be moving while the assign starbase menu was active, causing potential weirdness.
  
• Fixed case where strike craft needs 1 blueprint to level up to level 6, but 2 are currently spawned in the level and picking up the second blueprint erroneously says the strike craft is now level 7
  
• Fixed zombified faction member phone call creating non exitable menu after zombie faction destroyed.
  
• Fixed issue where a player base couldn't be built if the zombie war meter filled while the player was a member of another faction.
  
• Added sort captains by distance on the faction info pane. Makes easier to find joiners and get to them quicker when you run a faction.
  
• Fixed case where battlewagon would fire missiles at targets out of range when another viable target was in range, but the lock was still on the out of range target.
  
• Changed: New engine boost mechanic where if you hold down boost it will now regen up to 20% before starting to boost again. Initiating boost now requires 20% boost juice, but if you hold the boost button all the time, it will now do something each time the boost recharges to 20% instead of just staying drained until you release the boost button.
  
• Added Proving Grounds to all Arenas. This lets you test our your own mothership build vs the Arena ship you would usually pilot in a simulation.
  
• Fixed outdated hangar tutorial image from before the big v0.8 upgrade to the new strike craft system.
  
• The weapon group HUD now has text to show what the icons mean, so people can find battle wagon mode more easily if they missed it in the tutorial.
  
• Text and translation updates
  
• Reworked the objective coloring system so that green objectives are things to do, and grey ones are completed so it is consistent throughout the flow.
  
• Added new 110 territory hex based map called Hexor. Can be found in the sandbox options.
  
• The infection balls the zombies shoot now have warning effects on them to show bio hazard.
  
• Fixed the broken alpha mask on the zoom scope.
  
• The being chased line on the map is now more scary so it is harder to ignore.
  
• In VR mode, the cursors now lock to the slide bar they are sliding so you don't need to be a surgeon to use them.
  
• Fixed VR restore defaults button not saving settings.
  
• Improved method for adjusting the VR menu position with motion controls.

Thanks for playing!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi Everyone,

Here's some new stuff we hope you will like! :)

Proving Grounds:
If you have ever wanted to see how your ship would do against the local Arena ship, wish no longer because you can now have a simulated battle vs arena ships to test out your designs with no risk to life and limb.


New Map! (Hexor)
This new 110 territory map is hex based. It is a much more traditional strategic map but it turns out to be quite fun to play as well! It is only available in Sandbox Mode.


Engine Boost Changes:
We are experimenting with a new boost system that requires 20% boost fuel to start boosting. This is in response to user input that players were holding the boost button down indefinitely in battle because they were overwhelmed or just forgot. This lead to the boost never recharging.

Now what will happen is once the boost pool is empty, it will instantly start filling, but boost cannot re-engage until it is 20% full (only takes a couple of seconds) So if you are holding the boost key too long now, you will get repeated boosts as the pool fills to 20% then drains then fills etc... 20% is about the required boost to actually get the ship moving and it doesn't take too long to fill.

Some had suggested just to let the boost pool totally fill once drained even if the key was pressed, but not to start a new boost until the boost button was released and pressed again. We experimented with this as well, but it felt like a bug to have a full boost bar and no boost happening.

This change is experimental. Give it a few days and see how it feels. Personally we like it, but we want to hear your thoughts as well.


Here is the complete list of changes/fixes/additions.

• Relations hit added with a transport owner when it is destroyed.
  
• Relations hit added with faction leader when capital transport destroyed.
  
• Fix for rare case where player is second last in faction and the faction leader gets zombified thus forcing the player into role as faction leader and starting own faction.
  
• Fixed case where you could be moving while the assign starbase menu was active, causing potential weirdness.
  
• Fixed case where strike craft needs 1 blueprint to level up to level 6, but 2 are currently spawned in the level and picking up the second blueprint erroneously says the strike craft is now level 7
  
• Fixed zombified faction member phone call creating non exitable menu after zombie faction destroyed.
  
• Fixed issue where a player base couldn't be built if the zombie war meter filled while the player was a member of another faction.
  
• Added sort captains by distance on the faction info pane. Makes easier to find joiners and get to them quicker when you run a faction.
  
• Fixed case where battlewagon would fire missiles at targets out of range when another viable target was in range, but the lock was still on the out of range target.
  
• Changed: New engine boost mechanic where if you hold down boost it will now regen up to 20% before starting to boost again. Initiating boost now requires 20% boost juice, but if you hold the boost button all the time, it will now do something each time the boost recharges to 20% instead of just staying drained until you release the boost button.
  
• Added Proving Grounds to all Arenas. This lets you test our your own mothership build vs the Arena ship you would usually pilot in a simulation.
  
• Fixed outdated hangar tutorial image from before the big v0.8 upgrade to the new strike craft system.
  
• The weapon group HUD now has text to show what the icons mean, so people can find battle wagon mode more easily if they missed it in the tutorial.
  
• Text and translation updates
  
• Reworked the objective coloring system so that green objectives are things to do, and grey ones are completed so it is consistent throughout the flow.
  
• Added new 110 territory hex based map called Hexor. Can be found in the sandbox options.
  
• The infection balls the zombies shoot now have warning effects on them to show bio hazard.
  
• Fixed the broken alpha mask on the zoom scope.
  
• The being chased line on the map is now more scary so it is harder to ignore.
  
• In VR mode, the cursors now lock to the slide bar they are sliding so you don't need to be a surgeon to use them.
  
• Fixed VR restore defaults button not saving settings.
  
• Improved method for adjusting the VR menu position with motion controls.

Thanks for playing!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi All,

Just a quick note, Traditional and Simplified Chinese are now active language options as of v1.001.

There are no other changes in this new version aside from the addition of the two new languages.

We are not able to read either of these new languages, so there may be a few translation issues at first, but please let us know if you find any, and we will collect them and have them fixed promptly.

We are currently taking some personal time until January. We have finished up with the launch PR campaign and now have a bit of time to relax over the holidays and get our heads back on straight.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi All,

Just a quick note, Traditional and Simplified Chinese are now active language options as of v1.001.

There are no other changes in this new version aside from the addition of the two new languages.

We are not able to read either of these new languages, so there may be a few translation issues at first, but please let us know if you find any, and we will collect them and have them fixed promptly.

We are currently taking some personal time until January. We have finished up with the launch PR campaign and now have a bit of time to relax over the holidays and get our heads back on straight.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi All,

Release day has finally arrived!

Early Access has been a great learning experience for us and we are so thankful for all of you who came along with us for the ride, sharing your ideas and support.

SPAZ 2 has been a long haul. 18 months in Early Access, and 18 months as Coming Soon prior to that. So 3 years now we have been on the Steam forums daily taking input on the game, sharing progress, and leaning on you all for support. We feel like we received a massive education in that time. All together SPAZ 2 was in development for 62 months. 62 crazy months.

Going forward, we plan to continue to support SPAZ 2. In the short term, we have a Chinese translation almost ready as well as tools to allow players to localize SPAZ 2 themselves into their language of choice. We also want to create a system to make the sandbox tuning files conveniently sharable on workshop.

Beyond that, we are hoping the community continues to grow and shares their ideas so we can continue to tune and tweak.

So for the Early Access crew, thank you for letting us get to know you and for sharing your ideas. You helped keep us going. It was hard sometimes, but we always had you counting on us and believing in us. We couldn't have done this alone.

For new players, thank you for joining us! We gave it our all with SPAZ 2. We worked harder than we ever thought we could and in the end we think we did it, by some miracle :)

For those on the fence. We have added a robust demo that works on flat screen and VR. Give it a try. Your saves will carry over to the full game, and there are the first couple of hours of gameplay in there.

Thank you all!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi All,

Release day has finally arrived!

Early Access has been a great learning experience for us and we are so thankful for all of you who came along with us for the ride, sharing your ideas and support.

SPAZ 2 has been a long haul. 18 months in Early Access, and 18 months as Coming Soon prior to that. So 3 years now we have been on the Steam forums daily taking input on the game, sharing progress, and leaning on you all for support. We feel like we received a massive education in that time. All together SPAZ 2 was in development for 62 months. 62 crazy months.

Going forward, we plan to continue to support SPAZ 2. In the short term, we have a Chinese translation almost ready as well as tools to allow players to localize SPAZ 2 themselves into their language of choice. We also want to create a system to make the sandbox tuning files conveniently sharable on workshop.

Beyond that, we are hoping the community continues to grow and shares their ideas so we can continue to tune and tweak.

So for the Early Access crew, thank you for letting us get to know you and for sharing your ideas. You helped keep us going. It was hard sometimes, but we always had you counting on us and believing in us. We couldn't have done this alone.

For new players, thank you for joining us! We gave it our all with SPAZ 2. We worked harder than we ever thought we could and in the end we think we did it, by some miracle :)

For those on the fence. We have added a robust demo that works on flat screen and VR. Give it a try. Your saves will carry over to the full game, and there are the first couple of hours of gameplay in there.

Thank you all!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi Everyone,

We just wanted to give you all a heads up that we will be leaving Early Access on November 7, 2017.

Code lockdown has gone really well and the buglists for 1.0 are clear, so it is time to give SPAZ 2 its final 2 weeks in the oven before release.

The release should simply be us changing the version number to 1.0 on Novermber 7th, assuming no more critical issues arise. Thanks for your patience with the lockdown. We feel it is the best practice for a clean release.

We want to thank everyone who has been there with us over the last 17 months of Early Access. It has been great sharing ideas each day and SPAZ 2 is so much better for it. We really appreciate you all!

Andrew (Blorf) and Richard (Narlak)

Hi Everyone,

We just wanted to give you all a heads up that we will be leaving Early Access on November 7, 2017.

Code lockdown has gone really well and the buglists for 1.0 are clear, so it is time to give SPAZ 2 its final 2 weeks in the oven before release.

The release should simply be us changing the version number to 1.0 on Novermber 7th, assuming no more critical issues arise. Thanks for your patience with the lockdown. We feel it is the best practice for a clean release.

We want to thank everyone who has been there with us over the last 17 months of Early Access. It has been great sharing ideas each day and SPAZ 2 is so much better for it. We really appreciate you all!

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,

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)