December 19, 2014

Interplanetary Patch #7.1: Holiday Cheer for the AI


Happy holidays from all of us at Team Jolly Roger! We're about to disperse for a little while and have a quick break, but before that, we have some little news for you:

Patch #7.1: Holiday Cheer for the AI

We've had loads of good feedback about the AI update last week. Many thanks to everyone reporting bugs and just giving general suggestions!

After doing some testing, we've managed to push out a little patch that should fix a couple of issues that the absolutely massive update brought with it. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to include AI bots for online matches yet. That's definitely coming in the next update, though.

Everything went so nicely, until the AI decided that it wanted to spawn hundreds of weapons on top of each other.
The AI's accuracy has now been reduced to a more human level. Some of us felt a bit bittersweet about that, so we compiled a little tribute to the AI's craziest shots.

You can go give the game a little spin and see if it works nicely. Here's a proper changelog:

Interplanetary Patch 0.7.5435_EAC_7.1
  • Shot difficulty now affects AI accuracy, which has also been generally lowered
  • Weapon damage to cities increased
  • Player turn status markers re-implemented
  • Victory screen bug fixes
  • Event log performance issues fixed
  • Action phase simulation accuracy increased (less zigzag movements for shots and the chance of appearing to go through the planets is minimized)
  • Timeout for AI calculations added, fixing AI getting lost in thought
  • Missile bug fixed
  • AI turn message spam fixed

Happy holidays, everyone! Remember to eat a lot and play many, many games! See you next year!

Interplanetary is available on Steam Early Access.

December 11, 2014

Interplanetary Update #7: The AI

Kept you waiting, huh?

Wham. That is all.

Well, not really. The AI is just the glorious tip of the iceberg of all the features we're putting out this update! It's a huge, huge splash of pure wonderfulness. Details to follow:

Update #7: The AI

The single most requested feature we've been asked for has been the single player AI. The second most requested thing has been to fix all those annoying issues with online play. Finally, after long and arduous work, we've managed to deliver and fix both of these issues! Must be some of that holiday spirit magic.

We're so happy to at last be able to add AI bots for the players to use in Single Player mode. Bear in mind, though, that the AI is still in development, even though we release it now to the public. It works pretty nicely, but there are no difficulty levels yet and there's a whole bunch of testing to be done. Looking forward to hearing your feedback!

Pretty spiffy.

With the help of the AI, people with connection difficulties can now also have some Interplanetary fun. Although, they probably could have it anyway now, since we also went and fixed the networking! All the previous connection issues should now be gone and mobile networks (in addition to all kinds of other connection types) are now supported. There's a bit of a downside to this, however, as we had to temporarily disable LAN features due to the new networking structure. LAN will be back, though, so no worries.

To help us with bug hunting and game design, we've added an optional and anonymous Game Analytics data collector. It collects non personally identifiable bug reports, hardware configurations and gameplay data, such as session length and most popular weapons. All this helps us a huge amount at identifying problems in the game. You can choose in-game whether or not you want to participate in this.

As if that's not enough, we've redone a lot of the UI. It's still a work in progress, but things should work more fluidly and look a bit prettier. There are also some bug fixes and minor changes included, but you can check out the full changelog to get a better idea on what's different:

Also, lasers got their act together and look nicer too.

Interplanetary Version 0.7.5394_EAC_7
  • Simple Single Player mode with early AI bots added.
  • Networking overhauled.
    • All previous online connectivity issues should be fixed!
    • Mobile broadband connections (and all other kinds of obscure things) now supported.
    • LAN multiplayer temporarily disabled due to new network structure.
    • Player turn status markers temporarily disabled. Will be back soon.
  • UI overhauled.
    • Menu UI graphics redone.
    • Menus streamlined.
    • Main Menu background modified.
  • Planet selection added.
  • Player avatars added.
  • Fixed the turn-processing freezing Laser bug (again!) Should be gone now.
  • Laser animation changed to a nicer one.
  • Optional game analytics added.
  • Loading screens added.
  • New music added.
  • Minor sound tweaks.

Interplanetary should automatically update once you open Steam. Fun times with the AI! The schedule for the next update is not determined yet, but we have some new features and fixes in store.

Interplanetary is available on Steam Early Access.

October 1, 2014

Interplanetary Update #6.6: Patching it Up

Can't see anything anymore!

Greetings, Interplanetarists! We come bearing glad tidings.

To ease the wait until the next proper update (it'll be a doozy!), we decided to put out a little patch to fix some big annoyances.

First of all, we've begun a great networking overhaul, one that should fix a huge amount of the current problems with online play. While the results are still a couple of updates away, today's patch contains an important network fix, sort of as a teaser of things to come: the turn processing fix!

There's nothing quite as aggravating as having your game crash in between turns because of some random reason. That random reason turned out to be lasers. Due to some hitbox weirdness, a laser blast would sometimes not reach the planet surface at all, causing the game being confused and calculating the attack forever. This should now be fixed.

Lasers, nature's little troublemakers.

Next on our list of fixes is something many of you have been waiting for: the structure graphic/intel fix.

A while ago we made an experimental intel system change that allowed players to see the locations of enemy structures, but not any of the details. This turned out to be pretty unpopular, so we're hereby changing it back! As of this patch, all the city graphics and building graphics will be hidden unless the player has enough intel to see them. Because of this change, we also made a couple of balance tweaks, mainly having to do with beefing up the targetable weapons and nerfing defense buildings to account for this added layer of defense.

That's all the big changes now, but do check out the detailed changelog for every little thing.

Interplanetary Version 0.6.4981_EAC_6.6
  • Fixed online games crashing at turn processing due to Laser weirdness
  • City and Building graphics are now visible only if the player has enough intel
  • Camera now centers on the player planet when entering Targeting View
  • Material production upgrades changed to consume Planet Material
  • Cities now get destroyed when population reaches 0, as opposed to 1/6 of maximum
  • Sun gravity increased
  • Laser effects made slightly more visible
  • Defense building Visibility increased
  • Railgun Visibility slightly decreased
  • Missile Population damage increased
  • Laser Population damage increased
  • Defense Energy consumption increased
  • Upgradeable Intel amount for Data Security Hub decreased
  • Upgradeable Counterintel amount for Telescope Array decreased

 And what better way to celebrate the patch than...



The previous Whack-a-Dev turned out to be so cozy, we thought of having a home-broadcast again. So, catch the whacking stream on our Twitch channel and join the discussion in the chat. Just like the previous time, a couple of us will be playing a match or two of Interplanetary and chatting around, answering the questions you post in the chat.

And, as always, for every dev you manage to defeat we release free Interplanetary Steam keys into the world. You can follow the giveaway at our Twitter and Vkontakte pages.

Blast you soon and blast you hard!

Interplanetary is available on Steam Early Access.

August 1, 2014

Interplanetary Update #6: Building Upgrades



Once again, we a delivering a fresh Interplanetary update with some new and interesting stuff. Nevermind the shortness of the changelog, it's pure business! Let's look into it.

What's New?

Good news for all of those sick and tired of waiting for long turn-processing. With the latest action phase optimization, turn-processing should go a lot faster! Down with the waiting!

To add some depth to the building phase, we are introducing a Building Upgrade Mechanic. This is what all that tweaking in the last update was building up towards.

Each structure now has two upgrade slots on their info window. Clicking on them allows you to buy upgrades that will boost the stats of the building. Want some more "oomph" to your railgun? Buy some damage boosts or AOE upgrades!

Be careful, though; once you fill the upgrade slots, you won't be able to add any more upgrades to that building or delete the ones you've added. Specialize accordingly.




For starters, there will only be a couple of basic upgrades available and just two slots for each for each structure, so play around with them and let us know what you think! We'll be waiting for your suggestions for future upgrades or system changes. The upgrades will get more diverse further on and most of them will be tied to the tech-tree.

Interplanetary Version 0.6.4390_EAC_6.5


  • Building Upgrade mechanics added
  • Turn-Processing time greatly improved


That's about it for this time! Check out the update and don't forget to let us know what you think.

As for the Whack-a-Dev, everything so far seems to be on schedule and you can expect it on August 9th, 6pm GMT/11am PDT. In the meantime you can learn to use the new upgrades efficiently and blast us into oblivion when the time comes! Looking forward to it!

Interplanetary is available on Steam Early Access

July 11, 2014

Interplanetary Update #5: Loads of Data

Featuring a cameo appearance by everyone's favorite blue sun.
Once again, it's time to send a new update out into the big world. Good luck out there, try not to break down immediately! Like that ever happens, heh...

Features

This time we've updated in a couple of small features that serve as a base for something a bit bigger that's coming in the future.


First we have a new window for interacting with buildings. When clicking on a building, you'll now be greeted with a lot more info than previously. The functionality remains the same currently, but you can now easily see the numerical values of building health, visibility and production, for example. Makes it a bit easier to utilize advanced strategies.

If that's not enough data for you, we're now introducing the Interplanetary Codex. It's an ever-growing in-game database of all things Interplanetary. You'll be able to use it to dig deep into building stats, for example, or just read about the real life functionality of railguns. More entries will be coming with time, so stay on the lookout!

Since we're opening the hood a little bit and letting you in on the number crunching, feel free to comment on any values that you feel should be different. We obviously appreciate outside opinions; why be in Early Access otherwise?
                       
Aah, more reasons to showcase the awesome 2D art.
These are the main features introduced in the update, but there are still plenty of smaller things and tweaks in there. Check out the changelog for more!

Interplanetary Version 0.5.4183_EAC_6
  • Codex
  • New Building Window
  • Misleading city lights removed from planet surface
  • Balance changes
    • Railgun damage increased
    • Asteroid Diversion damage increased
    • Weapon targeting angles decreased
    • Projectile minimum targeting velocity decreased
    • Planet speeds increased
    • Non-player planet sizes increased
    • Solar Laser distance from the sun decreased and standardized
    • Missile homing range decreased
    • Kinetic Defense range decreased
    • Shield Defense range slightly decreased
    • Mine visibility decreased
    • Defense visibility decreased
    • Science requirement for some technologies increased
    • Build Energy costs increased for Mines, Defenses and Intel buildings
In Other News


You remember Whack-a-Dev, right? That's the event where members of Team Jolly Roger host games of Interplanetary and duke it out against the players. This Saturday we're changing it up a little bit with a surprise guest: the Interplanetary AI! We're letting the players to have a little sneak peek, by letting the AI do the battling for us, under our supervision.

Do note that the AI is still early in development and this is its first time in real action. The final implementation of the feature is still far away. Check out the Steam Announcement for more info!



June 19, 2014

Interplanetary Update #4: Lobby Chat, Trading Cards and So Many Planets!

 
The beautiful Noxious

The time has come again for Interplanetary update! This time you're up for some graphical additions, a new place for chatting and something to trade. So, let's get to it.

What's new?

You might have guessed from the update title that the biggest news on the block is the newly installed lobby chat. Now you can chat not only in the game, but also in the game room lobby.

On the graphics side: another planet has been added for you to play with - the beautiful and warm Noxious. In addition to that, there are plenty of new non-player planets and suns. It makes this the official debut appearance of the famous Blue Sun.

And for dessert - Steam trading cards for Interplanetary are now ready to be traded any time!

Gotta catch 'em all!


Interplanetary Version 0.4.4061_EAC_5
  • Lobby Chat
  • New Player Planet: Noxious
  • New Planets and Suns
  • Steam Trading Cards, Badges and Emoticons
  • Defense Building Visibility Decreased

That is all for this time. Enjoy the updated Interplanetary and don't forget to leave your comments and opinions in the survey form!

Interplanetary is available on Steam Early Access.

June 2, 2014

Interplanetary Update: Sounds and Shapes

Cities, now 100% more lively!
Update time! Today we bring you a couple of small, but interesting changes.

The most obvious update is the inclusion of actual graphics for cities and buildings. This changes the intel system quite a bit, since we've decided to let players see the structure graphics regardless of their intelligence points. They just won't be able to see any details, such as the exact type of the building or its condition. Targetable weapons should now be much more useful and we've done slight changes to their values to accommodate for that. Tell us what you think!

Another visible, or rather audible, change is new music. We've added a couple of extra pieces to increase variety. You can expect many more in future updates.

Interplanetary Version 0.3.4027_EAC_4

  • New graphics for cities, buildings and ruins
  • Different craters for different weapon impact points
  • Additional music for build phase and action phase
  • Targetable weapons damage reduced
  • Shield Defense doesn't block missiles anymore
  • Sound effect fixes
  • Networking host migration fixes

Sure, you could fire blindly, but that little dot there may well be a kinetic defense.
That's all the changes for this week. We had to skip Whack-a-Dev last week due to scheduling problems, but we'd still appreciate it if you tried out the new changes and gave us some feedback!

Interplanetary is now available on Steam Early Access!

May 16, 2014

Interplanetary Update: Pretty Things and Other Tweaks

Looks pretty dry, but it's full of interesting landscapes!

Here we go with another Interplanetary update! This time we're focusing more on graphical details, but there are some small, hopefully interesting, balance adjustments there also.


What's New?

Let's get right into it, shall we? Here's the rough changelog for this week's update:


Interplanetary Version 0.2.3983_eac3
  • New Planet Texture
    • New player planet added: The Shredded Dune
  • Explosions!
    • Redone explosions for "normal" weapons to be more visible from far away and prettier to look up close.
    • Different color smoke for shots that land in water.
  • Sun Graphical Improvements
  • Various New Particle Effects
  • Keyboard Zoom Added
    • "E" and "Q" can be used to zoom in and out
  • Balance Tweaks
    • Damage increased for Missile, Laser and Solar Laser
    • Damage reduced for Railgun and Asteroid Diversion
    • Firing cost reduced for Missiles and Lasers
    • Activation cost increased for Shield Defense
    • Accuracy and range increased for Kinetic Defense
    • Build cost decreased for Kinetic Defense
    • Build and firing costs increased for Superweapons
    • Science cost increased for Superweapons
    • Population boost increased for "Arcologies" tech.
    • Planet material drain decreased
This should help a bit...

Whack-a-Dev Part II

Along with the update, as usual, we've scheduled a "Whack-a-Dev" Day for this Saturday!

On Saturday May 17th, starting from 3:00pm GMT/8:00am PDT, we will be hosting games to challenge you in the craft of interplanetary warfare! Here's what we have planned for you this time:

  • Whack the devs!
    • Now's your chance to prove your superiority! Beat the devs at their own game and become a folk hero!
  • Steam Key giveaways!
    • We'll be tweeting Steam Keys for Interplanetary every time someone manages to beat one of us! 
  • Streamers!
    • Enter Elysium and Rushlock will be joining us this Saturday to stream some of their matches. You can either join the streams to spectate or play the game and get the chance to appear there yourself.
  • Socialize with the community!
...but sometimes railgun just doesn't care.

Hopefully you can all join us to blast those planets into oblivion! This will also be a great chance to try out some of the new tweaks in the game and see how they affect your general strategy.

May 2, 2014

Interplanetary Update: In-Game Chat


Here it is, the first proper feature update to Interplanetary! The main feature this time is something that's been requested a lot.

Update #1: In-Game Chat

As you may have guessed already, that feature is the much requested in-game chat. Now you can also bash your enemies verbally! Do try to behave, though.

An example of friendly, proper behavior.

Here's the full changelog for the update:

Interplanetary Version 0.1.3960

  • In-game chat
  • Indicators to show which players have ended their turns
  • Building unlocks in Techtree now have simple descriptions
  • Added a simple reminder when trying to end turn with no active research
  • New player planet texture: Jungle
  • Small changes to UI graphics
  • Changed the version number scheme

Have fun cursing your opponents to oblivion (but seriously, avoid nasty words, there could be kids playing!) Also, don't forget to take part in our first "Whack-a-Dev" this Saturday. It'll be the true baptism by fire for the chat system!

May 1, 2014

Interplanetary Whack-a-Dev Days and Update Info


Hey, everyone! Having fun with Interplanetary?

Since the game is currently multiplayer only, it needs a strong community to stay alive and well. To help bring all the players together, we've planned something we hope everyone is happy to take part in.

Interplanetary Whack-a-Dev Day!

Fanfare! Starting this Saturday at 3:00pm GMT, we're kicking off the first Interplanetary Whack-a-Dev Day. We're planning on making this a semi-regular event, timing it with new updates to the game. Here's what we have planned for this Saturday:

  • Whack the devs!
    • Team Jolly Roger will be hosting games of Interplanetary! If you have a beef with any of the devs, now's the time to get out there and break their planets!
  • Steam Key giveaways!
    • We'll be tweeting Steam Keys for Interplanetary every time someone manages to beat one of us!
  • Screenshot Competition!
    • Share screenshots to Interplanetary's community hub, with the text "Whack-a-Dev" in their description. The one with the highest voted screenshot at the end of the day wins a little prize.
  • Streaming!
    • Enter Elysium and Rushlock will be joining us this Saturday to stream some of their matches. You can either join the streams to spectate or play the game and get the chance to appear there yourself.
With screenshots like this, we have high hopes for the competition!

In Other News: Patches and Updates

As you may have noticed, we released an online connectivity patch for Interplanetary this Tuesday. If you previously had some problems connecting to other players, they should hopefully be fixed now. Here's a proper changelog of the major things in the patch:

Interplanetary Version 0.0.3922
  • Online connections more stable 
    • UPnP settings added 
    • Port selection option added
  • Passwords added to online games 
  • Defeated players' orbits are now greyed out 
  • Minor fixes to the tutorial
We're also planning on giving Interplanetary a proper feature update this Friday. Among the features we're hoping to add is in-game chat, a popular request by the players. 

Hopefully, we can finish implementing the chat until Friday so you can also bash us devs verbally, if you want! Hopefully, you don't want to.

April 18, 2014

Interplanetary Released to Steam Early Access!


It's here! Interplanetary has now been released on Steam as an Early Access title. If you're ready for some interplanetary warfare, you can go get the game here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/278910

What a ride! We'd like to thank everyone who took part in the alpha code testing phase. Your feedback has been valuable and we hope you'll follow us onto the next step of Interplanetary's journey!

Since Interplanetary is in Early Access, we will keep developing it while you can play it, taking advantage of Steam's features. Don't forget to send us your critique, bug reports and ideas so we can keep making the game better and better.

You can still use our survey to report your experiences or simply go to the Interplanetary Discussion Board on Steam.

As a final note, don't forget to check out our Facebook and Twitter these days. We may have some additional surprises in store for you! You can also join us at QuakeNet #Interplanetary for matchmaking or casual chatting.

Thank you! Let's all have fun blasting each other to bits!

April 15, 2014

Interplanetary Arrives to Steam Early Access This Friday!


Surprise! It's finally time to move to the next level: the Steam Early Access version of Interplanetary will be released April 18th, which is this Friday!

We decided that going Early Access was a natural continuation of Interplanetary's journey, as we've already had close collaboration with its players during development. By continuing on to Steam, we'll be able to reach a much wider audience than ever before, which helps the development a huge amount.

Like usual, buying the Early Access version at a reduced price will also give you all the future updates until the game is finished and you'll be able to better influence the direction of the game through your feedback.

New Features

For the Early Access release, we've prepared an exciting new feature: Superweapons. These are unlockable through the Tech Tree and will wreak serious havoc with your enemy's planet.

This planet's going to have a bad time.
Currently, we've implemented two superweapons:

  • Asteroid Diversion
    • Diverts a group of asteroids towards the enemy planet, causing massive damage. Works similarly to the railgun, except that the starting point is the asteroid field at the edge of the planetary system and you'll be shooting a cluster of space boulders instead of one small shot.
  • Solar Laser
    • An accurate and powerful weapon, the Solar Laser is fired from it's own orbit close to the sun. Unlike with normal lasers, it can shoot to any direction, unless there are other celestial objects blocking its line of sight.

These weapons are pretty devastating, so make sure you get them before your opponent does!

In addition to superweapons, we've been doing a lot of smaller updates all across the board. Some of the major ones include the ability to have hotseat matches with up to 4 players and many graphical and UI-fixes. There are also plenty of balance adjustments, so make sure to weigh in with your opinions.

Time to get hyped!

Hop onto www.interplanetarygame.com and join our mailing list for timely updates.

March 18, 2014

Interplanetary Alpha Update: New Features


It's finally here: a huge alpha update, full of interesting new features and fixes to test drive! Might also be the final alpha update that will be available with a code, if there are no massive issues with it. We're steadily rolling out towards the beta version and we have something different in store for that.

Anyways, here's a little list of all the major features in this one:

  • Intel Mechanics
    • You now need to build Intelligence structures to be able to see your enemy's structures; however it's also possible to hide your activity by building counter intelligence structures.
  • Tech Tree
    • An experimental, simplified tech tree lets you unlock buildings and gain additional bonuses.
  • Construction Yards
    • Structures are now functional only the turn after they're placed on the map.
  • Ruins
    • Destroyed buildings leave behind ruins
  • Networking Fixes
    • Better stability for matches with more than two players

Unfortunately, online play still doesn't work properly for people using a mobile connection, but we're working on fixing that for later. 

The update can be downloaded for Windows, Mac or Linux from interplanetarygame.com using the alpha code. If you don't have a code, you can ping us at Facebook or Twitter and we'll get you one. 

February 26, 2014

Inside Interplanetary: Releasing a Public Alpha


Netcode! What have you done to my planet!?
Good evening, friends! Game Design Sasu, here! We're gearing up for a new alpha update, at the moment. It's looking quite nice, but there are still many interesting bugs to weed out. In addition to that, there seem to be multiple kinds of flu hanging around the TJR ecosystem. We're falling one by one!

In the meantime, I thought I could write something helpful for fellow indie devs. I already talked about this before on our IndieDB forums, but it was deemed useful enough to dedicate a blog post to it.

Today I'm going to talk about our experiences with giving out test versions of Interplanetary.

Preparation

There really is no substitute for a proper user testing. Everyone will eventually grow blind to the problems with their game, so fresh people are needed to give some perspective. We had had a couple of small testing sessions with our friends and relatives, but we needed more and variable data. Reaching out to gamers of the Internet was the answer.

Before sending out your alpha to the masses, consider why you want to do that. Do you need testers, publicity or just people to play your game with you? Our main priority was to get useful feedback, so we took that into account when building the testable version.

We had to make sure to give the testers the features we wanted them to test. The targeting system especially was something we wanted to get a lot of feedback on. This also meant that some of the more irrelevant features would need to be polished not to drag too much attention to them, or simply left out altogether. We didn't want people to just comment: "the planet graphics suck" and leave. When giving feedback, it's easy to grab into the most obvious thing and ignore the others.

Seriously, try to iron out the distractions.
To gather the feedback, we created a survey with SurveyMonkey and put a link to it in-game. Looking back on it, we should've also given the link to each tester when contacting them for the first time - surprisingly many missed the in-game survey link and later asked how to provide feedback.

When creating a survey, it's important to think of the right questions to ask; most people won't bother writing out their life stories. You need to make the survey very easy and to the point. Try to add some very specific questions to steer the testers to concentrate on things you need comments on. The current version of our survey works well enough. People have a chance to comment on many different things, but they aren't forced to fill out every space to submit.

This system worked well until we reached over 100 answers. The free version won't show more than that, so we needed to pay a fee to access the rest.

Distribution

How to actually go about distributing the alpha version to the testers depends on many things. Interplanetary's first alpha version was a very incomplete game, filled with all kinds of issues. To say that we were hesitant putting it out there would be putting it mildly. Ease of access is the key of getting people to test a game which doesn't have an established reputation, but we still decided against simply sharing download links or using the Unity Web Player (doesn't really work out in Interplanetary's case anyway.)

This is when the idea of alpha keys came along. We would announce the alpha testing and ask hopeful testers to contact us to receive a code they can use at our website for a download link. This way there was less room for misconceptions, as we could explain to each individual tester the situation with the game. No one would just stumble across it, thinking it was the final product. We could also draw out the more serious testers; even if the process of obtaining the code is rather painless it's still a step that gets us into contact with the people most interested in the game.

For convenience, we mostly used our Twitter and Facebook to share the codes. We could then use these networks to easily communicate with the testers afterwards.

We also made code cards for live events. Spent some fun nights sticking codes on them.
The whole "system" worked manually: a person would contact us, ask for a code and we would give it to them along with instructions. An automatic system of some kind might have saved a lot of time, but I personally prefer direct contact, so it's easier to answer to questions and such. There was a period when I really wished we had a robot for this, though: the day we were noticed by RockPaperShotgun was absolutely insane! I had to spend days answering all the code requests we were getting.

Once Interplanetary landed to Steam Greenlight, we changed the system a little bit. Partially for the convenience for the users and partially for my sanity, we decided to build a special Greenlight Alpha with a direct link to it on the page. This version was less experimental than the earlier ones and the aim was to make it also work as a sort of a very early demo; a tight package with the main features polished well enough. Being in Greenlight, people would also more easily understand that it's an incomplete version. A playable version, along with screenshots, videos and description, worked well to give people a full idea on what the game was to be and also show that Interplanetary is not a mere concept. Never underestimate the power of screenshots and videos, though: no one would have bothered to download the alpha, even if it's completely free, if we hadn't given them a peek to get them interested first.

A certain website even took the Greenlight Alpha without asking and ported it for Wondows.
As of today, the PC version has been downloaded from the Greenlight page 3,513 times and the Mac version 225 times. We received 34,251 "Yes"-votes during the campaign, so not nearly everyone found their way to the download link, which is probably partially because we couldn't place the link in the main description by the way Greenlight works. We had to make a separate news announcement on the page, but they are not particularly eye catching. We should've pointed this out in the main description.

For the Greenlight Alpha, we opted to use Mediafire to host the game files. Considering the popularity of Interplanetary's Greenlight campaign, this was a good decision: having to pay about 20 cents a download on our server, would've cost us a lot. The only drawback here was that the URL pointed to Mediafire, which isn't quite as "cool" as hosting the files on your very own space. We paid for the service, however, so the link was direct and there was minimum hassle for the players.

External file hosting sometimes makes you evil.
We were and are still giving out alpha codes to people, since the Greenlight Alpha was the only version distributed by a direct link. The latter updates would require a code. This seemed to work quite well and caused relatively little confusion.

Conclusion

I can really recommend using an alpha code system for everyone. We've received tons of good comments and followers because of it. Semi-regularly updating the alpha version also gives you nice mile stones for development. It can sometimes be quite a chore to handle the code requests, but typically the flow is steady enough to manage. We still get a couple of  inquiries every day, but whenever there's media coverage or something else, the amount skyrockets.

Starting to run out of codes real soon, actually, so give us a holler and we'll get you yours! There's at least one more alpha update on the horizon, so expect that!

February 11, 2014

Interplanetary Wiki Launch and Networking Fixes


Like a bolt out of the blue, it's Interplanetary Wiki! Curse has been gracious enough to offer us a space on their Gamepedia and now we have our very own space for all knowledge on Interplanetary. Being a wiki, anyone can add to it and they should! So to all you wiki enthusiasts: go have a field day! Just keep in mind the usual rules of conduct.

Can't wait to see what kind of things will start popping up there! Of course, we may join in periodically to add in some super secret information...

What about the Game?

While the wiki is a pretty awesome thing, I'm sure you're curious about how Interplanetary is progressing. We are still planning on rolling out with an alpha update within the coming weeks and we haven't forgotten about you Linux users either! I'd say that the big thing causing us trouble, at the moment, is networking.

A common problem reported to us has been the non-functional "Start Game"-button in the Online Lobby. We've found the problem, and while the fix hasn't been implemented, it is possible to work around it by restarting your computer and trying again. The problem is connected to the way the game chooses a random port to use in the online game, and if the port isn't free, the game won't start. By restarting your computer, the game chooses a new, hopefully free port.

Frustration!

We were actually working on updating the alpha over a month ago, but while adding the new features, we noticed that our online game just didn't support them well enough. Back to the drawing board, then! For now, we're working on adding support for the upcoming features, in addition to fixing some of the other things. As some of you may have noticed, Defenses aren't very reliable in online games; this is not by design!

Other things that we're fixing include the addition of host migration, accurate victory screens and better data synchronization between players.

It's been a doozy, but solving the issues with networking will surely make things easier for everyone. Expect an update in the coming weeks, but be patient! There's still a lot to work out.

January 15, 2014

Interplanetary's Greenlight Stats


Hi, everyone! Game design fellow Sasu, here! Interplanetary's Greenlight campaign is over and development continues. It's a very busy time for the whole team, implementing some new features and shining up the game here and there. We've had a lot of very useful feedback and we're working hard on getting the best ideas in the game.

We've been meaning to release a new update for the alpha version for a while now, but we've encountered some pretty substantial networking problems. Hopefully, we'll have time to work them out sooner than later and put out something new for everyone to play. The Intel System and Tech Tree would really need some outside testing!

For now, I figured that we could talk some more about the mysteries of Greenlight, mainly all the stats that become available for you once you start your campaign. I'm sure many other indie developers are thinking about getting on there, so why not open up the process even more?

Miscellaneous Greenlight Mumblings

I've already gone through the basics of the Greenlight process in an earlier blog post. This time, let's concentrate more on some interesting details.

Interplanetary was Greenlit on January 7th, along with 49 other games. Valve informed us on this by e-mail and the process of applying the game for sale on Steam continues. It's basically some paperwork that needs to be done (and actually finishing developing the game).

Even though the game is through, the Greenlight page still remains. This is good, since we can keep using the page to inform its followers of game updates and other news.

One of the most interesting aspects of the campaign were all the beautiful stats we got to analyze. It was quite thrilling to see our rank rise to top 100 and eventually to #4.


This is what the main box looks like now. There also used to be a number showing our progress towards top 100 and eventually our rank among all the games on Greenlight.


It's also possible to compare your progress with the average progress of the current top 50 games. This gives a good context to the values and something to strive for. After all, the games tend to be Greenlit in big batches of 50 or 100, so once you reach the average, your chances are pretty good.


According to the averages, "yes" and "no"-votes usually go pretty much 50/50. I suppose even "no"-votes are better than no votes.


Again, a good chance to make some comparisons to other items and get an idea on what numbers you are aiming for. The comparison lines change periodically and sometimes you encounter some pretty insane graphs looking down on you and making you feel discouraged. Who's laughing now, red line?


A graph also lets you look back on your ups and downs during the campaign. October was when we first started working on our Greenlight page and the big jump signifies the moment we finally made the page public. Interestingly, there was quite a big jump again, once the Steam Holiday Sales were over.

Pretty nifty, huh? The page still receives new views and comments daily, although it's nowhere near as active as it used to be.

I hope this was enlightening for some of you aspiring Greenlighters. If you have time to dedicate on all the preparation, I definitely recommend going for it. Even if we hadn't passed, we still would've had our community grow and received a lot of good feedback.

January 8, 2014

Interplanetary has been Greenlit! Huzzah!


We did it! Huge thanks to everyone who took the time to check out the game and voted for it!

Now that our pathway to Steam is finally open, we can continue to concentrate on finishing the game. Interplanetary is steadily approaching it's beta state, but there's still a lot to do.

As you may know, you can also help by trying out the current alpha version of the game and giving out some feedback. Once you have an alpha code (available by pinging us on Twitter or Facebook), you can move out over to www.interplanetarygame.com and grab the test version!

Thanks again, everyone! We literally couldn't have managed this far without you!