Ahoy there!

Galcon Legends has launched for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad! Go check it out!

I’m quite happy with this release and I hope you like it! Be sure to spread the word!

Beyond that, I’ve been a bit under the weather this week so I haven’t made much progress on Galcon 2. The update last week was most exciting, but unfortunately so full of bugs almost nobody was able to play on the servers. I’m working on adding coverage testing and a battery of other tests to help get the servers in a more stable state so we can actually start playing on them.

As you can see I’ve still got quite a bit of code to get tested! Once that is done, I think crashes will be much less frequent and over time I’ll be able to eliminate them. I guess I should have listened to myself! I’ve done talks at several conferences about the importance of testing your server code (which I did for iGalcon, Galcon Fusion) – which has resulted in those servers running for months / years without problems. But I haven’t done any testing for the Galcon 2 servers! Ooops!

Cheers!
-Phil

Short version: beta24 is live! Available for Windows, Mac, Linux. (Sorry iOS and Android, I was unable to get these builds together this time!)

I’m really excited about this update. I had a breakthrough a few weeks ago in the Galcon 2 design, and it really got things moving a lot faster now.

I’ve added in a slick server list that will be the gateway to finding games to play. As an added bonus, I’m going to set it up so that modded servers can appear in the official server list to friends. (Not quite sure if that is ready yet, DO contact me if you are interested in trying this out and I’ll get it working sooner!)

I’ve re-built the betting features from scratch so now they never block the game from starting and are MUCH more user-friendly. I think this is going to be a lot funner than the old one.

Another cool feature that is already working is cross-server PMing. So you can “/m someone whatever” from any server and it’ll get to them.

Soon I’m going to be adding in Friends, Clans, and Tournament features. I’m super excited to finally get that stuff together, and having the server list at the front end is really going to facilitate that.

By doing this, it also means I’m shifting where the Galaxy Map appears in the game. I’m going to be moving it from the “front-end” of the game to be more of a core part of the clans system where the clans will be battling over territories. (Still working on those details yet…)

Anyway, all this will come in stages, I just wanted to give you the heads up of where things are going. I’m pretty stoked to get going on this as I’ve got a pretty clear vision as to where I’m going now, and that will help progress get moving again!

Also – so you know – I’ve reset all the progress in the game, so old scores, coins, and purchases are all gone. This is important for balancing out the game, as we’re getting closer to making this an open beta, I need to figure out the best rate of coins earned so the game is fun. (Don’t worry, the coins you paid for in the Kickstarter aren’t “gone” – you’ll get them for real when the game is ready.)

Cheers!
-Phil

P.S. I’m going to be playing online for the next hour or so, please come out and test the game with me!!