Galcon 2 – beta23 – All rewards ready to ship! Many interface updates.
Hey, beta23 is available to backers for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. iOS builds coming via TestFlight shortly.
I’m VERY excited to announce that we’ve FINALLY gotten ALL the stuff in to begin shipping for all the $100+ tiers! I’ll be sending out surveys via Kickstarter shortly to get your current shipping information so we can get these to you ASAP! Here’s a pic of the mess in our house right now!
And a closeup of the boxes! I can’t for you to see these in person!
I’ve done a HUGE overhaul of how chat works, so it should be much slicker on iOS / Android. The interface now lets you hide chat completely, which is especially useful for phones. I’ve worked on the keyboard appear / disappear stuff, so it should be a better experience on mobile devices. The changes should also make it work better on the desktop too – less interference with box selection. I’ve also overhauled how number keys are handled so that percentage changes are registered more readily. I hope this fixes many of the things people have complained about with the chat system.
I’ve also done a major cleanup on the game settings / options. This resulted in a ton of changes to the user interface code, which I think makes the game work much more consistently given the various options. It’s pretty hard to make the game work when there are some 24 different combinations of how players might select the options to work together.
I’ve also done a fair amount of performance work on the game, so it should actually run more smoothly, especially on mobile devices. I’m now downscaling for phones so that much less memory is used and I made a few other tweaks to increase performance. I’ve also re-worked how the timer tracks frame changes in the game, so there should be less of a stuttering feel when a frame is skipped or delayed.
On the miscellaneous department, I’ve also done some heavy re-working of the touch detection code, so fast swipes should be detected more accurately on mobile devices as well as on the desktop. I’ve also cleaned up the audio engine, so there are now cross-fades between tracks and smooth volume adjustments. I’ve also done a small mountain of fixes to the servers. The lobby should be much less buggy than the last update.
For everyone curious about the progress of Galcon Legends, the game is nearly 100% complete. I was hoping to release it before the holiday season, but I ran out of time. So I’m going to have to put the release off until after the holidays. I did a ton of work on polishing little details in this game, which resulted in many of the improvements you’re seeing listed for Galcon 2 above.
I’ll be hanging out on the servers for a while – so let’s play for a bit!
Thanks!
-Phil