The Rogue Shmup MMO https://www.gangsofspace.com/en <p><em>Gangs of Space</em> was our child and became the prison of our hopes. <em>Gangs of Space</em> was a stroke of madness that arrived one day, or maybe a night, in Tokyo, in the middle of an amusement arcade full of Shmup classics! <em>Gangs of Space</em> has been, indeed, quite an adventure!</p> <p>But it is with much sadness that <strong>we announce today the upcoming end of <em>Gangs of Space</em>.</strong></p> <h2>Closing schedule</h2> <ul> <li> <strong>November 30, 2018:</strong> commercial closure (end of the sale of the support packs on Steam).</li> <li> <strong>May 31, 2019:</strong> official servers and support closed.</li> </ul> <p>And after that? Total blackout? We are trying to find a way to keep the game playable, but we can not guarantee anything and in any case, it will be outside of Steam.</p> <h2>Why close the game?</h2> <p>Maybe one day Erhune will have the courage to write a long post-mortem on the development of <em>Gangs of Space</em>, but until then let’s summarize the main reasons:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>No money!</strong> Even after all these years of work on <em>Gangs of Space</em>, the launch in Early Access and the warm reception of tens of thousands of players, we have never been able to get any money from <em>Gangs of Space</em> for us. Not even a beer or a restaurant… nothing at all! We had made the choice to reinvest everything to self-finance the dev of the game (software, assets, hosting / server, freelance, administration, etc …). How did we manage to keep working for that long without going crazy? Maybe we already were from the beginning?!</li> <li> <strong>No funding!</strong> Since it became clear the game would not make enough revenue with our current marketing reach, we tried to find investors to finance finishing the development of the game and promoting it. It took us a lot of time and energy, but in the end, even with a well advanced game and 70,000 players, it was too risky for them.</li> <li> <strong>No communication!</strong> It’s simple, in 2018 (and also in 2017), to have the mainstream media talk about your game, the norm is that either everyone is ALREADY talking about you, or you will have to pay. So sad when you’re putting everything you have on the line to try to make “different” games that nobody wants to finance.</li> <li> <strong>No more energy!</strong> In the end, all of this consumed our ultimate energy reserves. We will have tried many things behind the scenes, but now we have nothing left in us to keep moving us forward.</li> </ul> <h2>Commercial closure?</h2> <p>Because we do not want to sell a service that you do not really have time to use at your convenience, we prefer to stop the sales of the support packs after this announcement.</p> <p>This allows us to provide another 6 months of service for the last irreducible who still want to enjoy their <em>Gangs of Space</em>.</p> <h2>Thanks</h2> <p>During all these years we met many people without whom this project could not have gone so far and who we wish to thank:</p> <ul> <li>First of all, classic but important: thank you <strong>to our families</strong>! The relatives who supported us all these years without always understanding our determination to finish <em>Gangs of Space</em>, but still supported us with no judgment, no advice, but listening, love, and the good dishes of our mothers which kept us afloat in the darkest times of doubt.</li> <li>Right after, thank <strong>YOU, you our dear 70,000 players!</strong> Whether you spent a few minutes or a few years in our company, you played and participated with determination! Your feedback has been decisive in the evolution of the game. To have made a game that will have you passionate, amused, relaxed, raging, will be our greatest pride forever. <strong>Thank you 70,000 times!</strong> <ul> <li>And thanks to those <strong>active members of the community</strong> who have been especially involved at all levels, wiki, moderation, community pillars, tools, passionate evening streamers, etc … (no names because there are so many of you, but your love will not be forgotten!)</li> </ul> </li> <li> <strong>-oTo-</strong>, our composer who kept with us all these years, and produced an incredible soundtrack that give so much life to the game!</li> <li> <strong>Aganon, Skywilly, Bestio and Seldell</strong>, from the websites <a href="https://www.jeuxonline.info/">Jeuxonline</a>, <a href="https://www.gamesidestory.com/">Game Side Story</a> et <a href="https://www.indiemag.fr/">Indiemag</a>. If all the journalists and the streamers were all like them, there is no doubt the world of gaming would be full with far more original and interesting games!</li> <li>And finally thanks to all people who crossed our road, <strong>all the devs, friends, streamers, visitors on a show, star</strong> (like <strong>Richard Garriot</strong> or <strong>Zun</strong>) who gave us a few minutes or a few hours of their time and contributed, in their own way, of shaping the <em>Gangs of Space</em> we have today.</li> </ul> <h2>Come and sign the Guestbook of Space!</h2> <p>The closing of an MMO is always a special moment. It is the opportunity for the old players to nostalgically recall their best memories. For the occasion, we have opened two “Golden Books” on the forum where you are invited to come and tell what <em>Gangs of Space</em> was for you. Your memories, your anecdotes, even a screenshot?</p> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/t/guest-book-of-gangs-of-space/1397">Guestbook Gangs of Space [english]</a></strong></li> <li><a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/t/livre-dor-de-gangs-of-space/1396">Guestbook Gangs of Space [french]</a></li> </ul> <h2>MINI FAQ</h2> <p><strong>Why not making the game open source?</strong></p> <ul> <li>This is a good question and we have studied this option a lot, but it is a lot of work with a lot of legal issues. For example we are using many assets and tools that we have a commercial license for, but that we do not have the right to redistribute…</li> </ul> <p><strong>Why not sell the game to another company that can take care of it?</strong></p> <ul> <li>An MMO is a very complicated beast to sell, much more than a solo game. The purchasing company would need an inhouse development team with the expertise to continue the development of the game, and be able to provide support, hosting, community management, marketing… So unless your game is very big and you can talk to the big players that already have these people, nobody wants to take the risk of such an investment on their side.</li> </ul> <p><strong>All hope is lost forever?</strong></p> <ul> <li>It is almost certain that neither Erhune nor Grouroux will resume work on <em>Gangs of Space</em> at some point. But if one day a serious team wishes to work on <em>Gangs of Space</em> and shows us that they have the capacity to do it, we would of couese consider the option very seriously.</li> </ul> Mon, 26 Nov 2018 08:51:58 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/169 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/169 <p>Long time no see, fellow <em>Gangs of Space</em> player! Here are some news from the the dev team, 4 months into Early Access.</p> <h1>Yogscast Jingle Jam 2017</h1> <p><em>Gangs of Space</em> is part of the <a href="https://www.humblebundle.com/yogscast-jingle-jam-2017">Yogscast Jingle Jam 2017</a>, a charity bundle by Humble &amp; the Yogscast. Every day until Christmas, they reveal new games for the bundle, and there is already a ton of great stuff to play! <strong>The bundle is sold for $35, and all the proceeds go to charity!</strong></p> <p>If you purchase the bundle, not only you will support good causes, but you will get a ton of games, including our very own <strong>Gangs of Space Yogscast Jingle Jam 2017</strong> pack that contains <strong>a hangar slot, 50.000 Credits, and exclusive skins &amp; titles</strong>.</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/0/02525215f88c70596120ff5828db14a0059b0237.jpg" alt="yogscast_dlc" width="640" height="360"></p> <p>So, what are you waiting for?</p> <h1>Soundtrack</h1> <p>For those who appreciate the work -oTo- has done on the soundtrack of the game, <strong>we have just released the <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/711064/Gangs_of_Space__Soundtrack/">complete <em>Gangs of Space</em> Soundtrack</a> on Steam</strong>.</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/9/9e6697d5fcf839e93ca52fc8356226c93200f0c5.jpg" alt="ost_cover" width="420" height="420"></p> <p>All 17 tracks available in high-quality 320 kbps MP3, playable inside Stream or in any music software!</p> <h1>The future of the game</h1> <p>As you might have seen, the activity on the <em>Gangs of Space</em> Early Access has slowed down considerably recently. The reason for this fact is very simple and unfortunate: <strong>Gangs of Space hasn’t been making enough money for us to pay ourselves to continue working full-time on the game</strong>.</p> <p>All the money from Steam sales is currently being used for the various administrative fees of running a proper company under French law, to rent the game servers &amp; services, and to pay the contractors who kindly worked on the game with only a promise of revshare. We think this is the most fair way to use the money that you, our players, have entrusted to us: first of all, to make sure that the game remains playable; and then to make sure people who took a risk do receive a proper compensation for their work.</p> <p>The unfortunate side-effect of this situation is that we have to take a “proper” job to pay for our living expenses, since we - ourselves - are not making any money from the game. This is obviously having a big impact on how much time and energy we can put into the game. The current plan is to make a proper release in early 2018. We won’t be able to create all the content we wished for the game, but at least we plan on adding a few things, and fulfilling the promises we made to our early supporters.</p> <p>As for the servers, we are allocating all the remaining budget of the game to ensure they will run for as long as possible.</p> <p>We understand these are not the kind of news you wished for, and it is also a disappointment for us. We had dreams of hiring a team to continue working on the game for the years to come. We put literally years of efforts into this project, along with all our savings. But in all likeliness, unless a lot more players discover the game, the game will be released in a state close to the current one.</p> <p>Even though Little Big MMO was our attempt to make a living out of our love for space games, we are proud to have released a game that can proudly stand on its own in the Steam catalog, alongside other games developed by teams 100 times bigger than the two of us. Many players tried the game and found something interesting, new, challenging… So far the biggest complaint we hear is that you want more content, and even though we won’t be able to provide that much of it, that is still a proof that <em>Gangs of Space</em> resonated with many of you.</p> <p>Thank you for joining us in this crazy adventure!</p> <p>Erhune &amp; Grouroux</p> Sun, 10 Dec 2017 23:11:43 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/166 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/166 <p>With the start of the Sixo Vaporis galaxy, we have added 8 new skins. All these skins are linked to special codes that you can activate in your <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/account">account management area</a>. The Skin code hunt is open!</p> <h2>Lord British &amp; Lord Chaos</h2> <p>These two skins are a tribute to <a href="https://uo.com/"><strong>Ultima Online</strong></a> and two of its creators: <a href="https://twitter.com/RichardGarriott"><strong>Richard Garriott</strong></a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/starr_long"><strong>Starr Long</strong></a>. They refer to the two characters they incarnated: Lord British and Lord Blackthorn. So if you meet one of these ships, maybe you have the chance to meet a legend (<a href="https://richardgarriott.com/">Richard Garriott</a> is also an astronaut)!</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/0/0edae74270dd8a1cb69c431a062f6463b02d71dc.jpg" alt="S1-british-chaos" width="580" height="229"></p> <p><strong>How to get this skin:</strong> No idea, but they have codes and can do what they want <img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/images/emoji/twitter/wink.png?v=5" title=":wink:" class="emoji" alt=":wink:"></p> <h2>Drifting Lands</h2> <p><a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/322750/Drifting_Lands/"><strong>Drifting Lands</strong></a> is a <strong>SHMUP Hack’n Slash</strong> graphically superb and with very interesting game mechanics (the auto-warp is inspired by one of their system). And to make this skin, <a href="https://twitter.com/alkemigames">Alkemi Games</a> has agreed to share with us the sources of the Marauder with which we made an original “module”!</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/f/f272ddbf68e9380275f52e69108da088207c69da.jpg" alt="S2-Marauder" width="580" height="229"></p> <p><strong>How to get this skin:</strong> I have heard that there will be code available in the Steam forums of the game…</p> <h2>monsieursapin</h2> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/monsieursapin_"><strong>monsieursapin</strong></a> is a very nice french Streamer who loves to discover games in all styles to his joyful community. It was very fun to make this skin “sapin” which was also the name of the first enemies that we had in the first prototype of Gangs of Space!</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/6/65b6d1e767ccab8bff9d591ead6e9e62f0ed7cfe.jpg" alt="S3-monsieursapin" width="580" height="229"></p> <p><strong>How to get this skin:</strong> Watch it live on his channel <strong><a href="https://www.twitch.tv/monsieursapin">https://www.twitch.tv/monsieursapin</a></strong></p> <h2>Bestio</h2> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/Bestio_"><strong>Bestio</strong></a> is THE streamer of Shmup in France. Big fan of bullets and Hack’n Slash, he fell very early on Gangs of Space and followed us all these years. This skin is like a big thank you to him for his passion of games!</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/5/58f2e3f2d2b2f66767cb589407059fafb211390f.jpg" alt="S4-Bestio" width="580" height="229"></p> <p><strong>How to get this skin</strong>: Watch it live on her channel <strong><a href="https://www.twitch.tv/bestiyo">https://www.twitch.tv/bestiyo</a></strong></p> <h2>IndieMag</h2> <p><a href="https://www.indiemag.fr/">Indiemag.fr</a> is a french website devoted to independent games. He has always followed the evolution of Gangs of Space. <a href="https://twitter.com/_Shynn_">Seldell</a>, one of the creators of the site, is a fervent defender of independent games for years.</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/f/f186f6a32767f01878d0283ab78a70e93c390edc.jpg" alt="S5-IndieMag" width="580" height="229"></p> <p><strong>How to get this skin:</strong> By going to see <a href="https://www.indiemag.fr/news/skin-limage-dindiemag-gangs-space-mmo-shmup">this page</a> maybe</p> <h2>Game Side Story</h2> <p><a href="http://www.gamesidestory.com/"><strong>GameSideStory</strong></a> is the indie press of the video games. For years they have been talking about it with passion and without pressure. This crazy team has already tested over 2013 games, so that they all have a chance to exist. And that, it deserves a special skin!</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/3/335fce33555765b2a72e575a86a137faa5cbbdfc.jpg" alt="S6-GSS" width="580" height="229"></p> <p><strong>How to get this skin:</strong> You need to work on GSS editing, ask <a href="https://twitter.com/Skywilly_GSS">Skywilly</a>!</p> <h2>Isaac</h2> <p><a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/113200/The_Binding_of_Isaac/"><strong>The Binding of Isaac</strong></a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/edmundmcmillen">Edmund McMillen</a> is one of our cult games that has greatly influenced the latest version of Gangs of Space. But all the work of McMillen is incredible and we wanted to pay tribute to him with this very weird skin.</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/6/63611944bd4522efddd5da091dfc90ed9565b957.jpg" alt="S7-Isaac" width="580" height="229"></p> <p><strong>How to get this skin:</strong> no idea, no answer from him for now. :’(</p> <h2>How to use codes?</h2> <p>Log in to your <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/fr/account">account management</a> and enter the code at this location:</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/e/eeedd4d3377a357ab7faad480521aec0639ff0d7.png" alt="My Account - Gangs of Space - Opera" width="487" height="150"></p> Thu, 05 Oct 2017 14:46:39 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/165 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/165 <h2>Death to the permadeath!</h2> <p><em>Gangs of Space</em> has been designed from the beginning to be a permadeath game (even before we introduced the “roguelite” elements like subsystems; our inspiration is taken mostly from old arcade games).</p> <p>Even though we - and many players - like it this way, it is true that losing a ship can be a demoralizing experience for a new player. So today, we’re introducing a <strong>permadeath protection</strong> designed to help beginners without changing the fundamental high-level game for experienced players.</p> <p>From now on, <strong>newly built ships will be equipped by default with a new passive item: the <em>Auto-Warp</em></strong>. This item warps you back automatically to the Motherbase when you would have taken a fatal hit, but it comes with a few drawbacks:</p> <ul> <li>since it is a passive item, you cannot equip another item that would have given you nice passive bonuses;</li> <li>it lowers all Sector Points (SP) and Credit gains by 25%;</li> <li>it prevents you from warping to T5 or T6 systems.</li> </ul> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/f/f880b9c1f11cd497ff13bdaca4c86e10d474e8e7.png" alt="Auto-Warp" width="501" height="227"></p> <p>You can remove this item at any time (and we encourage experienced players to do so!), but it will be destroyed in the process.</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/5/5c601129d589bad5daf39f589ce82e53851ed6a9.png" alt="permadeathswitch" width="299" height="182"></p> <h2>New base skins</h2> <p>To add some visual variety, all ships are now created <strong>randomly with one out of 3 base colors</strong>.</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/4/4d74d7a05e028ea7ea1e0b1874b242ba8b180f83.png" alt="new-skins" width="546" height="353"></p> <p>Of course you can still customize your ship at any time (for free) in the <em>Skin Shop</em>.</p> <h2>10 new music tracks!</h2> <p>Alex, the composer of the soundtrack of <em>Gangs of Space</em>, has been touched by all your positive feedback about his compositions. So he has graced us with 10 more tracks, which triples the amount of music we now have in the game!</p> <p>You can discover these new tracks everywhere, from an alternative Motherbase ambiance to different music for all 6 tiers, and even some music on the death screen! (another good reason to un-equip your <em>Auto-Warp</em>!)</p> <h2>Patch 0.31.11</h2> <p>As usual, all the details of the patch are available <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/t/changelog/198/34">in the changelog</a>.</p> <h2>A wiki full of treasures</h2> <p>Thanks to <a href="https://wiki.gangsofspace.com/Special:ActiveUsers">a growing team of motivated players</a>, the <em>Gangs of Space</em> Wiki is now full of useful information:</p> <p><strong><a href="https://wiki.gangsofspace.com/">wiki.gangsofspace.com</a></strong></p> <p>Items, ships, subsystems, drops, enemies… all there, ready for your eyes!</p> <p>There is still a lot of translation work though, so if you speak another language like Spanish, Russian, Chinese, German, Portuguese… then join the Wiki team on Discord! You will be more than welcome!</p> <h2>A new Conquest: Cinquo Vaporis Galaxy</h2> <p>The Empire has started the construction of a new Motherbase in Cinquo Vaporis Galaxy. Enemy forces have been evaluted to about 17,000,000. Get ready for the cleaning, and maybe the Empire will reward the most valorous of you!</p> <h2>Summary of the previous Conquest</h2> <p><strong>Shark Investor Pack</strong></p> <p>The Imperial Bank has computed dividends for the conquest of <em>Quatro Vaporis Galaxy</em>. Each Share will be awarded dividends of 168 Credits, for a total of <strong>8,400 Credits for the 50 Shares of the <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/670961/Gangs_of_Space__Shark_Investor_Pack/">Shark Investor Pack</a></strong>.</p> <p><strong>Ladders</strong></p> <p>Congratulations to all players that exterminated the Pirnat faction in 1 week, 12 hours, 18 minutes, and 7 seconds.</p> <p>The players and Gangs that will receive Imperial awards for this Conquest are:</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/7b3292bb2d70fdb5c4a83fbd6ebb4c783e8f5da5" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/7/7b3292bb2d70fdb5c4a83fbd6ebb4c783e8f5da5.png" class="lightbox" title="TOP-Galaxy4.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/2X/7/7b3292bb2d70fdb5c4a83fbd6ebb4c783e8f5da5_1_690x281.png" alt="TOP-Galaxy4" width="690" height="281"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">TOP-Galaxy4.png</span><span class="informations">776x317 51.3 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><strong>Souvenir</strong></p> <p>A last glimpse of <em>Quatro Vaporis Galaxy</em> accompanied by a group picture of the winning Gang:</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/6c0c38c8c70adc14f40dcd7fcb82989c071bfe38" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/6/6c0c38c8c70adc14f40dcd7fcb82989c071bfe38.png" class="lightbox" title="photocalm.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/2X/6/6c0c38c8c70adc14f40dcd7fcb82989c071bfe38_1_690x421.png" alt="photocalm" width="690" height="421"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">photocalm.png</span><span class="informations">1055x644 377 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/ce6e2a8f5caf847fe3b2f4985f645bf2caba3d01" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/c/ce6e2a8f5caf847fe3b2f4985f645bf2caba3d01.png" class="lightbox" title="SCfirstbaby2.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/2X/c/ce6e2a8f5caf847fe3b2f4985f645bf2caba3d01_1_682x800.png" alt="SCfirstbaby2" width="682" height="800"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">SCfirstbaby2.png</span><span class="informations">741x869 360 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> Thu, 21 Sep 2017 21:12:12 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/163 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/163 <p>Hello everyone! Here is your now-habitual point on the recent activity in <em>Gangs of Space</em>…</p> <h2>END OF THIRD CONQUEST</h2> <p><em>Galaxy Tertio Vaporis</em> has been conquered in <strong>10 jours, 11 hours, 1 minute et 6 seconds</strong>!</p> <p>On the ladder side:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>DJOKKATAJA</strong> wins the <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/galaxy/tertio-vaporis/grind">TOP GRIND</a> with a very impressive score of 1,174,894 SP. A new record! But <strong>Zed</strong> is just behind… on purpose, maybe?</li> <li>Because on the <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/galaxy/tertio-vaporis/skill">TOP SKILL</a> side, <strong>Zed</strong> improves his previous best score, and reaches almost 33K SP/h! <strong>Jhirin</strong> and <strong>kragnir</strong> beat their previous records too, but it wasn’t enough this time.</li> <li>On the <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/galaxy/tertio-vaporis/gangs">TOP GANG</a>, <strong>8-bit Warriors</strong> get their first victory, pushed by their leader and their very active members. They almost reach the previous record set by <strong>Meta</strong> in the previous Galaxy!</li> </ul> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/30e7c6832672eb68b8d4fddd93718de6b7442fa2" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/3/30e7c6832672eb68b8d4fddd93718de6b7442fa2.png" class="lightbox" title="TOP-Galaxy3.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/2X/3/30e7c6832672eb68b8d4fddd93718de6b7442fa2_1_690x281.png" alt="TOP-Galaxy3" width="690" height="281"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">TOP-Galaxy3.png</span><span class="informations">776x317 53.7 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <h2>SUMMARY</h2> <p>During this Conquest, <strong>we have banned 15 accounts for cheating</strong>. We remind everyone that modifying the game client or the game memory is forbidden by our Terms of Service. It is a question of common sense: let’s keep a pleasant environment for everyone to play and compete in!</p> <p>The <a href="http://wiki.gangsofspace.com">wiki.gangsofspace.com</a> grows bigger and bigger, with new info coming every day, and translations in French and Russian starting to pop in. If you can write decent Chinese, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese, or any other language spoken by a part of the <em>Gangs of Space</em> community, why not contribute to the effort?</p> <p>On the Steam side, we celebrate today our 1 month release anniversary! With 10 versions published during this period, almost one every 3 days! On your side, you’ve left <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/504300/Gangs_of_Space/#app_reviews_hash">216 evaluations, 78% positive</a>. <strong>Thanks a lot!</strong></p> <h2>RECENT PATCHES</h2> <p>We are pushing a lot of small updates these days, of course to fix problems that have been reported to you, but also to improve the way we convey information in the game. We’re very happy to see that the community has stepped in to help newbies understand the game better, but we need to do our part, and make the game more easily understood!</p> <p>We have also worked a ton on “invisible” tasks in the background, including server optimization. If you haven’t tried v0.31.8, you’ll be surprised by how much pleasant the game is to play without all these pesky server lags that plagued us since the release!</p> <p>Today, along with the new Conquest we are releasing v0.31.9 that revamps the ingame ladder interface, and a lot of quality-of-life improvements. Check out all the details in the <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/t/changelog/198/32">changelog</a>!</p> <h2>SHARK INVESTOR PACK</h2> <p>How many dividends will our Shark Investors earn for the conquest of <em>Tertio Vaporis</em>?</p> <p>The latest data from the Imperial Bank shows that <strong>each Share will receive a dividend of 312 Credits</strong>, which means 15,600 Credits for the 50 Shares of the <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/670961/Gangs_of_Space__Shark_Investor_Pack/">Pack Shark Investor</a>.</p> <h2>SOUVENIR</h2> <p>Thanks to <strong>kragnir</strong> for remembering to take a end-of-galaxy souvenir picture, since we couldn’t be there on time to take one. Bye bye <em>Tertio Vaporis</em>!</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/6fc370c9661ecc078cb70258cd7fc6348cc64140" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/6/6fc370c9661ecc078cb70258cd7fc6348cc64140.png" class="lightbox" title="end-Galaxy3.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/2X/6/6fc370c9661ecc078cb70258cd7fc6348cc64140_1_690x580.png" alt="end-Galaxy3" width="690" height="580"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">end-Galaxy3.png</span><span class="informations">811x682 241 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> Sun, 10 Sep 2017 01:52:19 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/161 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/161 <p>Congratulations all, <strong>you have eliminated 15,000,000 Pirnats points in 7 days, 6 hours, 13 minutes and 30 seconds!</strong></p> <h2>OVER THE TOP</h2> <p>Without further ado, let’s examine the top of the ladders:</p> <ul> <li> <p>On the <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/fr/ladder/secundo-vaporis/grind">TOP GRIND</a>, <strong>Zed</strong> sets a new record with 576k SP. Congratulations!</p> </li> <li> <p>On the <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/fr/ladder/secundo-vaporis/skill">TOP SKILL</a> we also find <strong>Zed</strong>. It’s the proof of a great talent! With 27k SP/h, he will be quite the challenger to beat. Will <strong>kragnir</strong>, <strong>Jhirin</strong> or <strong>Brotspinne</strong>, who also show promising results, manage to reach his level?</p> </li> <li> <p>The <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/fr/ladder/secundo-vaporis/gangs">TOP GANG</a>, has been swamped by <strong>Meta</strong> who entered the competition and left no hope to the other Gangs. With 1,484,800 CP, they have annihilated almost 10% of the Pirnat forces all by themselves! Our previous champions <strong>Esports</strong> drop to <span class="hashtag">#4</span>, while the <strong>8-Bit Warriors</strong> show great promises for the future conquests!</p> </li> </ul> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/a9570f63c70de07fca805ed590582f2d84de49cf" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/a/a9570f63c70de07fca805ed590582f2d84de49cf.png" class="lightbox" title="TOP-Galaxy2.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/2X/a/a9570f63c70de07fca805ed590582f2d84de49cf_1_690x281.png" alt="TOP-Galaxy2" width="690" height="281"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">TOP-Galaxy2.png</span><span class="informations">776x317 44.9 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <h2>SUMMARY</h2> <p>We have seen a few cheaters emerge during this Conquest. It is unfortunate to have to spend our very limited time and efforts to prevent them ruining the gaming experience of the community. We want to use the opportunity to reming everyone that <strong>third-party hacking tools and client modifications are against our Terms of Use, and punishable by account ban</strong>. If you have doubt about what’s allowed or not, you can write us privately on <a href="mailto:contact@gangsofspace.com">contact@gangsofspace.com</a> and we’ll clarify the situation.</p> <p>On a more positive note, thanks to the efforts of the <a href="https://discord.gg/JwTKNu5">Discord</a> community, the work on the <a href="https://wiki.gangsofspace.com"><strong>Gangs of Space wiki</strong></a>. Come have a look, and maybe help the writing or translation efforts if you can!</p> <p>And finally on the Steam side, we have reached <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/504300/Gangs_of_Space/#app_reviews_hash"><strong>180 evaluations</strong></a>. Your honest opinion is always appreciated, and can help other players to better understand <em>Gangs of Space</em>!</p> <h2>PATCH 0.31.5</h2> <p>Here are the main changes of the new version, along with the start of the new Conquest:</p> <ul> <li>Collected Credits and blue DNA strands have been re-designed visually to be more readable.</li> <li>Private messages have been re-enabled: use /w </li> <li>Some balancing to the Astrolax class: <ul> <li>The energy cost of <em>S-Link</em> has been adjusted to the one of <em>Y-Link</em>.</li> <li> <em>Structure Wave</em> radius has been greatly increased.</li> <li>The <em>Stolers</em> armaments now also provide a significant passive damage bonus.</li> </ul> </li> <li> <em>Kamikazes Hunter</em> spawns have been limited in T4 and T5 systems.</li> <li>Many bug fixes and various small improvements.</li> </ul> <p>For all gritty details, you can read the <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/t/changelog/198/28">changelog</a> on the forum.</p> <h2>SHARK INVESTOR PACK</h2> <p>“End of Conquest” means “dividends time” for <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/670961/Gangs_of_Space__Shark_Investor_Pack/">Shark Investor Pack</a> owners!</p> <p>The Imperial Bank has computed the total cost of the conquest of <em>Secundo Vaporis Galaxy</em>, and determined that <strong>each Share will receive a dividend of 369 Credits</strong>, meaning 18,450 Credits for the 50 Shares of the Shark Investor Pack. Thank you for financing our glorious Conquests!</p> <p>Also note that the history of your dividends is now visible on your account management page on this very website!</p> <h2>SOUVENIR</h2> <p>A few shots of the last moments in <em>Secundo Vaporis Galaxy</em>. See you in <em>Tertio Vaporis</em>!</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/bcb6dab6d695ac088950a476212043e4ed71acf2" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/b/bcb6dab6d695ac088950a476212043e4ed71acf2.jpg" class="lightbox" title="8.jpg"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/2X/b/bcb6dab6d695ac088950a476212043e4ed71acf2_1_690x628.jpg" alt="8" width="690" height="628"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">8.jpg</span><span class="informations">1185x1080 333 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/09dc41e0de92dbba3c35a67f6ab1874d977cf691" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/0/09dc41e0de92dbba3c35a67f6ab1874d977cf691.jpg" class="lightbox" title="1.jpg"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/2X/0/09dc41e0de92dbba3c35a67f6ab1874d977cf691_1_690x472.jpg" alt="1" width="690" height="472"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">1.jpg</span><span class="informations">1300x891 264 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/94c9dc00b894445c20ad8e0d9e6011d160ddbb23" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/2X/9/94c9dc00b894445c20ad8e0d9e6011d160ddbb23.jpg" class="lightbox" title="5.jpg"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/2X/9/94c9dc00b894445c20ad8e0d9e6011d160ddbb23_1_689x512.jpg" alt="5" width="689" height="512"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">5.jpg</span><span class="informations">1293x960 455 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> Tue, 29 Aug 2017 21:25:43 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/159 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/159 <p>Congratulations to all players and all Gangs: <strong>you conquered the Primor Vaporis Galaxy in 8 days, 7 hours, 36 minutes and 28 seconds!</strong></p> <h2>OVER THE TOP</h2> <p>Let’s have a look at the final ladders:</p> <ul> <li>On the <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/ladder/primor-vaporis/grind">TOP GRIND</a>, we have a new Commander imposing his style: <strong>Touch Me</strong> wins by a fair margin his title and his champion skin, with over 400,000 SP. Congratulations!</li> <li>On the <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/ladder/primor-vaporis/gangs">TOP GANG</a> ! <strong>Esports</strong> get their first victory thank to a flawless teamwork. We say on the game Discord channel that this ladder was very fierce, and not only for the top 10 spots! Congratulations to everyone!</li> <li>And finally, for the new <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/ladder/primor-vaporis/skill">TOP SKILL</a>, <strong>Roix</strong> shows us that experience acquired over years of alpha versions still make him the top dog. With <strong>a peak of over 25k SP/h</strong>, he dominates the ladder by far.</li> </ul> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/697df3950de60ac3bdd5bc2d907007a0d2b09cc2" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/697df3950de60ac3bdd5bc2d907007a0d2b09cc2.png" class="lightbox" title="TOPS.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/697df3950de60ac3bdd5bc2d907007a0d2b09cc2_1_690x287.png" alt="TOPS" width="690" height="287"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">TOPS.png</span><span class="informations">759x316 53.4 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>With this first conquest on Steam Early Access, many new players have joined the ranks of the Empire and are learning all the mechanics of the game very fast. Next Galaxy should turn out very competitive indeed!</p> <h2>STATE OF THE GAME</h2> <p>It is for us a great emotion to see the servers so full of players all the time, for the first time of the existence of the game. From the bottom of our heart: THANK YOU! We’ve spent years working on this game, and seeing so many people enjoying it for real is giving us the energy to move forward with the game.</p> <p>Speaking of moving forward, some words about our next steps.We are globally satisfied with the state of the game, but we have seen <strong>how hard it is for many players to understand the game</strong>, or some parts of it. We plan on putting a lot of efforts over the next weeks to improve the situation, and have already started to work on a FAQ here: <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/faq">https://www.gangsofspace.com/faq</a></p> <p>The <a href="https://discord.gg/JwTKNu5">Discord community</a> has also started to work on a wiki to give more details, with specific numbers for every aspect of the game. Join them if you want to help the effort!</p> <p>Over the past week, we have been having <strong>between 150 and 250 players online almost all the time</strong>. This makes the universe alive, with always something to do. We had to fix a few things on the server side to handle the load. This invisible effort continues every day, and will probably continue all over the duration of the Early Access. Thank you for bearing with the small bugs and slowdowns, and be assured that fixing that is always at high priority on our list.</p> <p>On the Steam side, we’ve passed <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/504300/Gangs_of_Space/#app_reviews_hash"><strong>100+ evaluations</strong></a> with <strong>81% positive</strong>. Don’t hesitate to add your voice to the crowd, that’s how more players will know about <em>Gangs of Space</em>!</p> <h2>PATCH 0.31.4</h2> <p>We have deployed <strong>v0.31.4</strong> along with the opening of the new Galaxy.</p> <p>The main visible change of this version is the complete overhaul of Credit gains. We changed the Conquest rewards in v0.30 a few months ago, and we were a bit too conservative on the gains of the new system. Now that we have more data to back up our design, <strong>we have increased the Credit rewards of conquest quite significantly</strong>, especially in lower Tiers.</p> <p>We also added a feature where <strong>every time you unlock a new ship, you will gain the amount Credits necessary to build this ship</strong>. For example, when you unlock the <em>Gemeter DX</em>, you will now receive 10,000 Credits. <strong>We have applied this retroactively to all already unlocked ships.</strong></p> <p>For more details, you can read the <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/t/changelog/198/27">complete changelog</a>.</p> <h2>SHARE DIVIDENDS</h2> <p>If you bought a <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/670961/Gangs_of_Space__Shark_Investor_Pack/">Shark Investor Pack</a>, now is the time to figure out how many Credits your Shares have produced!</p> <p>After a complex calculation by the Imperial Bank, we have determined that every Share will receive a dividend of 202 Credits.</p> <p>But as a celebration of the first Conquest, and because the lowered Credit gains have impacted the amount of total Credits spent, we have decided to double this amount. You have thus received 404 Credits per Share, which means <strong>20,200 Credits for a 50 Share Investor Pack</strong>.</p> <p>Stay tuned for the next Conquest. Hopefully, with the increase of Credit gains brought by the new patch, dividends might rise even further!</p> <h2>A MMO IS A COMMUNITY BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE</h2> <p>Join the <a href="https://discord.gg/JwTKNu5">Discord</a> or the <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/">forum</a>. We are answering all your questions, and listening to all your suggestions for the future of the game!</p> <h2>SOUVENIR</h2> <p>A last memory of <em>Primor Vaporis</em> before leaving for a new adventure:</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/a8abbb9425140679c4e89020a4d9f403a8fa0826" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/a8abbb9425140679c4e89020a4d9f403a8fa0826.jpg" class="lightbox" title="Final3.jpg"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/a8abbb9425140679c4e89020a4d9f403a8fa0826_1_690x388.jpg" alt="Final3" width="690" height="388"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">Final3.jpg</span><span class="informations">1920x1080 300 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/109e01d4c3fd9cc60eb097cccc030ec28e10fd31" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/109e01d4c3fd9cc60eb097cccc030ec28e10fd31.jpg" class="lightbox" title="Final4.jpg"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/109e01d4c3fd9cc60eb097cccc030ec28e10fd31_1_690x388.jpg" alt="Final4" width="690" height="388"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">Final4.jpg</span><span class="informations">1920x1080 341 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> Sat, 19 Aug 2017 17:28:07 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/156 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/156 <p>It is our great pleasure and honor to finally announce that <strong><em>Gangs of Space</em> will be released on Steam Early Access this Thursday, August 10</strong>!</p> <p><em>Gangs of Space</em> lived many lives and undertook many changes. We hope that the journey was an interesting one to witness, even though it was way longer than everyone could have expected - us included!</p> <p>You can already access the <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/504300/Gangs_of_Space/">Store Page</a>, wishlist the game, and join the <a href="http://steamcommunity.com/app/504300">Steam Community</a> too!</p> <h2>Free to Play &amp; Packages</h2> <p>So… Let’s take a moment to explain the definitive pricing model of <em>Gangs of Space</em>.</p> <p><strong>The game will release as Free to Play</strong>. Everyone will be able to download it on Steam, and access the entierety of the game content (all items, all ships, all enemies, all areas…). The only “limitation” for free account will be inventory &amp; Hangar space: <strong>10 item slots in the Warehouse</strong> and <strong>2 ship slots in the Hangar</strong>. This is very reasonable to discover the whole game.</p> <p>If you want to <strong>support the development of the game</strong>, we will sell 3 packages as Steam DLCs: $10, $30 and $60 (or the equivalent in your country’s currency). These packs will contain <strong>Warehouse &amp; Hangar slots</strong>, exclusive <strong>Skins</strong>, <strong>Credits</strong>, and a few bonuses like titles or the ability to name some content of the game.</p> <p>Here is a visual summary of the content of all 3 packs:</p> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_031/offers-2-ven.png" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_031/offers-2-ven.png" width="520" height="747"> </a> <p>As you can see, we don’t want <em>Gangs of Space</em> to have any Pay-to-Win elements, or become a virtual casino: no powerful exclusive items, and no keys to unlock random loot boxes <img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=5" title=":slight_smile:" class="emoji" alt=":slight_smile:"></p> <h2>Spread the word!</h2> <p>Whether you are a <em>Gangs of Space</em> fanatic or are just having some casual fun from time to time, we hope that the game will continue to bring you some good time.</p> <p>And since the game will be completely free to enjoy, don’t hesitate to send this page to all your friends, and create a Gang together: <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/504300/Gangs_of_Space/"><em>Gangs of Space</em> on Steam</a>.</p> Sat, 05 Aug 2017 16:35:56 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/154 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/154 <p>Unscrew your guns, unplug your shields, clean your warehouses... the Alpha 0.30 session is over.</p> <h2>How it went?</h2> <p>We are very happy with the results of this session. A lot of you came to play, and seemed to enjoy the game quite a lot judging by the insane play times!</p> <p>The competition for the ladders was fierce, and the game was much more pleasant to play than previous versions, in great part because there were always other people to play with. Finally, it felt like a real online game for more than a few hours!</p> <p>We are definitely on track for the Steam release next version, and I think Grouroux and I will be able to sleep a bit better until then!</p> <h2>A few numbers</h2> <ul> <li>Connected players: 490</li> <li>Peak players: 81</li> <li>Average play time: 7 hours per player</li> <li>Ships lost: 1,124</li> <li>Pirnats killed: let me read that right... 1,900,926... well.. that's a lot!</li> <li>Bosses killed:: 879</li> <li>T1, T2, T3 systems conquered: 844</li> <li>T4 systems conquered: 180</li> <li>T5 systems conquered: 36</li> <li>T6 systems conquered: 24</li> <li>Total DNA collected:: 1,594,887,370</li> <li>Total Credits collected: 3,153,863</li> <li>Best crew: level 47</li> </ul> <h2>Your opinion matters a lot!</h2> <p>More than ever, your feedback is important to us, especially fom new players (or those who didn't play for a long time).</p> <ul> <li>What kind of game did you expect BEFORE playing, and AFTER playing? (you can cite other games you find similar...)</li> <li>How smooth was levelling your first ship to level 10?</li> <li>Did you have trouble figuring out some game mechanics? what would you have liked better explaied to you?</li> <li>What did you like and hate most?</li> <li>Did you feel discouraged at some point? did it make you stop playing?</li> </ul> <p>You can answer <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/">in the forum</a>, on <a href="https://discord.gg/MWDG8M8">Discord</a> or even <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/fr/about-us">by e-mail</a> if you are shy. We're reading everything, even if we don't have time to give detailled answers to everyone! Promised!</p> Thu, 29 Jun 2017 18:41:07 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/151 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/151 <p>Congratulations to all players and Gangs: <strong>you exterminated the Pirnat faction of Galaxy Alpha-30 in exactly 4 days, 22 hours, 59 minutes and 32 seconds</strong>! </p> <h2>PLAYER TOP</h2> <p>On the individual side, <strong>Roix get his first title of Champion</strong>! Now, after participating to many Alpha sessions, he can finally backup his very famous "modesty" with some real achievements <img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/images/emoji/emoji_one/wink.png?v=5" title=":wink:" class="emoji" alt=":wink:"></p> <p><strong>Tigibon</strong>, a returning "old" player, came back staight to the <strong>second position</strong>. We checked our records, and it seems he's our longest still-active player!</p> <p><strong>Robokami</strong> reaches <strong>third place</strong>, and proves that <em>Gangs of Space</em> can be mastered to the highest levels even by a new player.</p> <p>At <strong>fourth position</strong>, the leader of HowlingDragons <strong>Ernislav</strong> leads the group of 6 players that fought vaillantly and came pretty close to the podium. With barely 10,000 points between the <span class="hashtag">#5</span> and <span class="hashtag">#10</span>, the competition was really intense!</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/dccf1b4e4a997770b776401849d6bd5ad4e7cc0c.png" width="340" height="232"></p> <h2>GANG TOP</h2> <p>On the Gang side, the fearsome <strong>HowlingDragons</strong> earn their <strong>first place</strong> after a very intense battle against their rivals. Even though they didn't place any player in the player top 3, they showed that for the Gang ladder, it's actually teamwork that prevails. Congratulations to them!</p> <p>Thanks to the good individual performance of their members Tigibon and Robokami, <strong>Les Cochons Volants</strong> reach a very close <strong>second place</strong>. Mark their name, we will probably see them again in future Galaxies!</p> <p>In <strong>third position</strong>, <strong>Supremacy Inc</strong> are pulled by the performance of their most active member Roix.</p> <p>Then, the <strong>thanatonautes</strong> managed to place two members in the individual top, but it wasn't enough to close the gap with the other 3 "big" Gangs and reach the podium. They stop at a very honorable <strong>fourth position</strong>, along with 5 other valliant Gangs.</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/cb7603db3bfde99c2f1aba5591563eddb59b96e7.png" width="340" height="232"></p> <h2>END OF SESSION</h2> <p>We have been a bit caught by surprise by the sudden acceleration of the conquest after a few days, so we have decided to leave this Galaxy <strong>open until Monday, June 26</strong>. </p> <p>For now, the game will continue to be playable normally, and the ladders will continue to update, but no further rewards will be given to top players &amp; Gangs for this session.</p> <h2>REWARDS</h2> <p><strong>We have given the skin rewards</strong> to individual players in the top 10, and to all members in top 10 Gangs. Send us pictures of your most beautiful ships in their new shiny paintings!</p> <p>Title rewards will be coming at the end of the session.</p> <h2>YOUR FEEDBACK IS PRECIOUS TO US!</h2> <p>We've received a ton of very useful feedback from you. Keep it coming! We need to make the next version the best one ever, to storm the world with our Steam release!</p> <p>You can find us on:<br>- <strong><a href="https://discord.gg/MWDG8M8">Discord</a></strong> (along with many helpful players)<br>- <strong><a href="https://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">Twitch</a></strong>, if you want to follow the creation of the game piece by piece<br>- <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/gangsofspace">Twitter</a></strong><br>- <strong><a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/latest">GoS forum</a></strong></p> <p>Thank you all for your participation! It has been great to see you enjoying the game these past few days, and it seems we are on the right track!</p> Thu, 22 Jun 2017 23:00:10 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/149 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/149 <p>Hello everyone,</p> <p>You have probably seen it: the opening of the server for this 0.30 session has been a bit rough. Good news though: thanks to the helpful reports of many players, we've identified the issue quite quickly: it was <strong>Gang invites</strong>. I've disabled them for now, and I'm trying to do a proper fix as fast as possible.</p> <p>Second good news: <strong>since I've disabled the invites, the server has been very stable</strong>. Even on very intense fight systems, we're only reaching 10~15% of a core. We need a lot more players if we want to crash it for real ^^</p> <p>Thank you all for your patience and your participation.</p> <p>Edit (3 a.m.): Gang invites have been re-activated.</p> Fri, 16 Jun 2017 21:17:38 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/147 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/147 <p>I hope you've not forgotten that <strong>the next Alpha session is starting this Friday, June 16</strong>! And it will be open to everyone, so feel free to bring all your friends! </p> <h1>Get unique gifts!</h1> <p>Since this session will probably the last one before our grand release on Steam, we are celebrating by offering <strong>unique commemorative content to all participants</strong>.</p> <p>It is a way for us to say THANK YOU for walking with us for so many years on this long and difficult road called "indie game development".</p> <p>Every player who logs in during the session will be rewarded with a title <em>"I was here before"</em> thay you can opt in to show in game. Keep it to show off in front of the future generations of Gangs-of-Spacers!</p> <p>In addition, we added <strong>unique commemorative skins for Gemeter and Astrolax</strong> ships. You will need to reach level 10 during the session with repectively a <em>Gemeter R</em> and an <em>Astrolax 500mg</em> to unlock them. And of course, you'll get to keep them for all future versions of the game! </p> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/SkinGem030.gif" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/SkinGem030.gif" width="340" height="250"> </a> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/SkinAstro030.gif" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/SkinAstro030.gif" width="340" height="250"> </a> <h1>Conquering the first Galaxy: Alpha-030!</h1> <p>We didn't announce an end date for the session for a very simple reason: for the first time, <strong>we will let you rampage across the Galaxy until the Pirnat faction is totally exterminated</strong>! (Of course, since it's the first time, we might make some adjustements, so that the conquest takes about a week in total.)</p> <p>Then, at the end of the conquest, we will give our first <strong>rewards to the top players and Gangs</strong>:</p> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/table-reward.png" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/table-reward.png" width="362" height="500"> </a> <p>Four special skins (Gemeter and Astrolax), respectively for:<br> - the top player<br> - the 2nd player<br> - the 3rd player<br> - the 4th to 10th players</p> <p>Another four special skins (Gemeter only, but including unique trail colors!), respectively for:<br> - all members of the top Gang<br> - all members of the 2nd Gang<br> - all members of the 3rd Gang<br> - all members of the 4th to 10th Gangs</p> <p>We'll also have corresponding titles for all winners.</p> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/ladder.png" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/ladder.png" width="580" height="250"> </a> <p>So... get ready to conquer!</p> <h1>New conquest system</h1> <p>Good news: <strong>we've improved the conquest system A LOT</strong>!</p> <p>Sectors now contains zones that you must stay inside to conquer. The bigger the zone, the longer it takes, but the more <strong>Sector Points</strong> it will give. Having to stay inside the zone to be efficient leads to new... "interesting"... gameplay situations, shall we say ^^</p> <p>Oh, and of course these zones can have positive or negative effects on your ship, so be careful!</p> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/sectorConquest.gif" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/sectorConquest.gif" width="340" height="250"> </a> <p>This new mechanism makes the game a lot more dynamic (and stressful), and has wide repercussions on many parts of the game. We won't spoil it all here, but suffice to say that it gives an even bigger impact to your skill as a player, which is one of the main goals of <em>Gangs of Space</em>!</p> <video width="100%" height="100%" autoplay="true" loop="true"> <source src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/captureZone.mp4"></source> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/captureZone.mp4" rel="nofollow noopener">https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/captureZone.mp4</a> </video> <h1>Five Pirnat bosses + special items</h1> <p>Finally, they are here, and they are not happy to have been left out for so long!</p> <p>Introducing <strong>a whole family of big nasty Pirnat bosses</strong>:</p> <video width="100%" height="100%" autoplay="true" loop="true"> <source src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/boss.mp4"></source> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/boss.mp4" rel="nofollow noopener">https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/boss.mp4</a> </video> <p>But you have to face them if you want a chance to grab one of these <strong>rare and powerful items with special affixes</strong>:</p> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/special-items.png" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/special-items.png" width="517" height="500"> </a> <h1>Say hello to the complete Gemeter and Astrolax families!</h1> <p>The <em>Astrolax</em> family is now complete with the introduction of the bigger <em>Astrolax 1g</em> and <em>Astrolax 2g</em>.</p> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/Astrolax-news.png" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/Astrolax-news.png" width="518" height="173"> </a> <p>All three Gemeter-class ships have also been completely revamped, will all their subsystems and abilities re-done and re-balanced. Prepare to unlock!</p> <h1>New interfaces</h1> <p>Introducing...</p> <p>An unlock tracker to show what you can unlock using your current ship!</p> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/unlock-objectif.png" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/unlock-objectif.png" width="223" height="176"> </a> <p>A compact mode for the inventory, so you can always keep an eye on your stuff while fighting. Also note the ability to directly recycle items, and send them to your Warehouse without leaving the conquest!</p> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/mini-inventaire.png" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/mini-inventaire.png" width="361" height="221"> </a> <p>A progress report when you come back to the Motherbase after doing some hard work!</p> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/ladder-progress.png" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/ladder-progress.png" width="509" height="328"> </a> <p>Notifications about important stuff happening to you!</p> <a href="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/notifications.png" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://static.gangsofspace.com/news_030/notifications.png" width="580" height="217"> </a> <h1>And much more...</h1> <ul> <li>Replays of your most magnificent deaths that you can upload online with a custom message...</li> <li>Credit rewards when you die.</li> <li>The ability to buy level 10 ships directly in Credits.</li> <li>The ability to cancel warps with the ESC key.</li> <li>More information on your ship information panel.</li> <li>Vastly improved client performance.</li> <li>A ton of rebalancing on items, enemies, abilities...</li> </ul> <h1>And even more...</h1> <p>Here is the <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/t/changelog/198/22">complete changelog</a> of this version if you want even more details.</p> <p>This version is very important to us, since it is the first that we can call "feature complete" (even if there is a ton more we want to add at some point!). So, after you play for a while, tell us: <strong>what do you think need improvement before the Steam release?</strong></p> Wed, 14 Jun 2017 22:13:57 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/144 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/144 <p>It is with great joy (and quite some stress!) that we are announcing that <strong>the next <em>Gangs of Space</em> alpha-test session with start this Friday, June 16, <a href="https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs+of+Space+alpha+0.30&amp;iso=20170616T21&amp;p1=195">19:00 UTC</a></strong>. It will continue until the complete conquest of the test Galaxy (expect a few days).</p> <p>And another good news: this time, <strong>all players with a <em>Gangs of Space</em> account are invited</strong>!</p> <p>The objectives of this test session are: </p> <ul> <li>Test all the game mechanisms, including: bosses, the new conquest system, 2 full ship classes.</li> <li>Try to push the server to its limits!</li> <li>Establish the list of the last modifications necessary before the Steam Early Access release.</li> </ul> <p>Yes, you've read correctly: <strong><em>Gangs of Space</em> on Steam, it's coming soon</strong>! Hopefully, we'll gather all required data on this version, and the next version should be THE ONE! Cross your fingers for a release this Summer!</p> <p>We will publish more details on the changes and content of the version in the next days. And in the meantime, you can always find us on <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">Twitch</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/gangsofspace">Twitter</a>, or on our <a href="https://discord.gg/MWDG8M8">official Discord</a>!</p> Sat, 10 Jun 2017 20:17:53 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/143 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/143 <h2>Alpha-test 0.29 starting Friday, October 7, at 8:00 GMT</h2> <p>So, first of all, the important information you've been all waiting for: the next alpha-test session for <em>Gangs of Space</em> will start on <strong>this Friday, October 7, at 8:00 GMT</strong> (or <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs+of+Space+alpha+0.29&amp;iso=20161007T10&amp;p1=195">in other timezones</a>), for <strong>a duration of 72 hours</strong> this time!</p> <p>The new version 0.29 brings us the <strong>last big features</strong> we wanted for <em>Gangs of Space</em>. After that, it will be a matter of adding back a few old features (bosses, anyone?) and polish, and... well.... it's starting to smell like beta over here!</p> <p>As usual, we will kick-off the test session <a href="http://twitch.tv/gangsofspace">on our Twitch channel</a>.</p> <h2>The race for GREED</h2> <p>We wanted to get rid of the Contract mechanism for a long time. This is now done, and in its stead, welcome <strong>the GREED system</strong>! After level 10, your XP bar will be replaced by a new Greed bar that will fill by picking up blue DNA. Each level on this bar will bring <strong>Credits</strong> and other bonuses.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/a150e193340d82d2703df2558e8fd0115729f3bb" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/a150e193340d82d2703df2558e8fd0115729f3bb.gif" class="lightbox" title="greedup.gif"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/a150e193340d82d2703df2558e8fd0115729f3bb_1_690x43.gif" width="690" height="43"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">greedup.gif</span><span class="informations">909x57 20.3 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>But this is not just a rehash of the regular levelling system. Noooononononoo.... Here are some things you'll have to master:</p> <ul> <li>The greed level <strong>continuously falls by 1% every second</strong>. Don't stop collecting, or you might loose it all!</li> <li>If you leave the system, it will fall back to 0.</li> <li>And if you are hit, you will take an immediate Greed penalty too!</li> </ul> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/c0595f8fe7a831ec028a2061e41f71a76cc99439" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/c0595f8fe7a831ec028a2061e41f71a76cc99439.gif" class="lightbox" title="greeddown.gif"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/c0595f8fe7a831ec028a2061e41f71a76cc99439_1_690x117.gif" width="690" height="117"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">greeddown.gif</span><span class="informations">909x155 220 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>So, what does Greed bring to the table?</p> <ul> <li> <strong>Credits</strong>, tons of them! Important to buy new ships and skins.</li> <li> <strong>Kill Point</strong> bonuses (see the new Conquest system below).</li> <li>DNA drop bonuses, which mean MORE GREED, and faster crew levelling too!</li> </ul> <p>But that's not all... we added another perverse layer on top of that:</p> <h2>The DANGER gauge</h2> <p><strong>The more bullets or enemies around you, the higher the Danger.</strong> And with increasing Danger comes increased DNA drops, and thus... faster levelling, and more Greed potential! These systems affect each other in a way that <strong>gives players who take risks significant advantages</strong> in terms of progression and Conquest potential. </p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/ef3b84680a4ca032d35dca2c89f745281c8e1378.gif" width="319" height="298"></p> <p>Taking risks in a permadeath game? That's always what Gangs of Space has been about!</p> <h2>The goal of the game</h2> <p>We promised it, and now it is done: <em>Gangs of Space</em> is now <strong>one of the first MMO with an ultimate goal, and an "end"</strong>. </p> <p>The common goal of all players is simple: <strong>eliminate all enemy Factions from the Galaxy</strong>. When this is done, the current Galaxy is complete, and we move on to another one!</p> <p>You can now see on the website and in the Motherbase the <strong>current progress</strong> toward this goal, faction by faction. (Of course for now there is only the Pirnat faction to eliminate, but hopefully one day we'll have more!) </p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/072934ccaf149ca3b9801557a043ea4cdbeb8320.png" width="392" height="266"></p> <h2>Conquest Ladders are back!</h2> <p>We always aimed to be a <strong>competitive but without PvP</strong> game. We want the game to be difficult BUT accessible enough for lots of players to spontaneously gather to play together.</p> <p>So, how does the competitive aspect work? Well... that's the role of the <strong>Conquest system</strong>.</p> <p>The basics are still the same: you stay in a hostile sector, enemies spawn, you destroy them, and after some time the sector is conquered. When all the sectors are conquered, the boss appears (well... not yet, but soon!) and after that the system is completed.</p> <p>We iterated on this principle and added subtles redesigns to all various mechanisms that supports the Conquest system. We won't go into all these details here (try to discover them in the game!) but here are the important additions:</p> <ul> <li>Each conquered sector will give <strong>Kill Points</strong> (KP) to all participating players.</li> <li>Each conquered sector will give <strong>Conquest Points</strong> (CP) to the top Gang of this sector.</li> <li>Various bonuses are awarded to add a little strategy element between competing Gangs.</li> </ul> <p>In the Motherbase (and on the website), the <strong>Empire News Network</strong> will display a ladder of players (by KP) and gangs (by CP) for the current Galaxy. And at the end of the season, premanent rewards will be given to the top entries of this ladder.</p> <p>Since these ladders will be reset every Galaxy (we aim at a duration between 5 to 10 days), each player and Gang will have a history of successes that carry over Galaxies.</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/7f97cef982a3e2fd3f204e7bacead231a975593d.png" width="455" height="494"></p> <h2>Gang limit</h2> <p>This is probably a controversial change, but in order to promote a healthy competition between Gangs, we have decided to limit them to <strong>15 members max</strong>. </p> <p>We might introduce an Alliance system later to promote bigger communities, but as far as the laddering experience is concerned, you won't have to find 49 friends in order to be competitive!</p> <h2>New subsystems and achievements</h2> <p>We have taken into account a lot of feedback about progressing through the various ship classes, and have come up with some significant refinements:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>Subsystems are now unlocked once for the whole ship class.</strong> For example: <em>Shield Matrix</em> will be unlocked on a Gemeter R, but then available on a Gemeter SX or DX.</li> <li> <strong>Gemeter subsystems</strong> have been redesigned to never have "bad choices". Instead of trying to come up with dozens of completely different skills (which takes an insane amount of development time, and doesn't significantly improves the player experience), we are introducing <strong>variations</strong> on the most iconic and class-defining subsystems. For example, a Gemeter will now ALWAYS have a Rafale-like subsystem. This seems to be a setback , but in practice it allows far <strong>more viable builds</strong>.</li> </ul> <p><em>(Note that we will apply the same process to the Astrolax family in the next version.)</em></p> <h2>New Tiers</h2> <p>We are introducing <strong>two new difficulty tiers</strong> (T5 and T6) and have significantly increased the difficulty of T4. This is a first step and will be refined later, by the upcoming work on bosses and effect zones.</p> <h2>Space Music</h2> <p>Alex has unleashed his creative power and provided us <strong>the first 6 tracks composed specially for <em>Gangs of Space</em></strong>. We are super-excited to hear about your feedback on this soundtrack! </p> <p><em>(Note that the sound effects are still very... bad. We'll do much better on that.)</em></p> <h2>Reset accounts</h2> <p>For this version too, we need to <strong>measure the speed</strong> at which you, the players, are unlocking Gemeter subsystems, on the speed of levelling (adjusted with the new Danger gauge), on the speed of Conquest, etc.</p> <p>So we had to reset all current alpha data. Hopefully, since we are getting closer to beta, this should be one of the last times!</p> <h2>That's not all!</h2> <p>Of course, we can't be exhaustive here, so if you are curious, you can read <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/t/changelog/198/21">the whole changelog for v0.29</a>.</p> <h2>So... see you this week-end in game to try all this!</h2> Thu, 06 Oct 2016 08:35:32 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/141 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/141 <p>We've been hard at work on the v0.28 of <em>Gangs of Space</em> for 4 weeks now, and it has turned into a much bigger version than we thought.</p> <p>But we are getting close to finishing, and we can already announce the date of the next alpha-test session: <strong>it will be start on <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs+of+Space+v0.28+alpha+test+session&amp;iso=20160818T10&amp;p1=195&amp;ah=23&amp;am=55">Thursday, August 18, 8:00 GMT</a> for a duration of 48 hours</strong>. As usual, we will kick it off on our <a href="http://twitch.tv/gangsofspace">Twitch channel</a>, so if you don't have an access key yet, feel free to come and ask one there!</p> <p>And so... What are the new shiny things this time?</p> <h2>Astrolax</h2> <p>The support-type <strong>Astrolax</strong> are back, with a whole slew of medicine-name-inspired subsystems to heal everyone in a thousand ways!</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/56bad8e29185976f62afb642ab4886b360224496.gif" width="324" height="180"></p> <h2>New Gemeters</h2> <p>Pimp up your old Intel processor... humm... I mean old Gemeter by upgrading to the brand-new SX and DX series, with more arithmetic coprocessors, and more importantly more guns!</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/f7e5024d3909b520054f1638ca9ff5e91e4f5c52.gif" width="324" height="180"></p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/1bb04f064dbb59a9c9c2e0da33e303aaabbebed5.gif" width="324" height="180"></p> <p>To support these new ships, we've completely re-design the <strong>ship builder interface</strong> too:</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/a351928dd66bc6b7c8301e5025a03087d2be359d.gif" width="564" height="391"></p> <h2>Skins</h2> <p>Want to shine in the deep space as a very unique and precious snowflake? The <strong>skin customization workshop</strong> is here for you! For a very modest amount of Credits, your space life can turn into a rainbow of colors!</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/66e1227f05de083f7c1690f9c7d5f7a4edfa7a95.gif" width="611" height="415"></p> <h2>Content Unlock</h2> <p>All this new content is locked behind a slew of tasks you have to perform:<br>- <strong>Advanced ships classes</strong> will require you to level-up basic ones to max-level.<br>- <strong>Subsystems</strong> will require you to kill stuff and collect DNA (among a number of things).<br>- <strong>Skins</strong> will unlock while you unlock the subsystems of each ship class.</p> <p>How much can you unlock during this test session?</p> <h2>Reviewing all the subsystems</h2> <p>We didn't like the many constraints of using active items and skills while juggling with energy and cooldowns. So we've changed everyting at a very deep level, and implemented a bunch of new ways to use energy. The goal is simple: make the game more dynamic, and allow you to use skills and items more often. We need you to tell us what you think of the new system, which is critical for an action-based game like <em>Gangs of Space</em>.</p> <h2>Reset the accounts</h2> <p>Because of all that has changed, and because we need a fresh start to measure how fast players can progress into the game, we have to delete all the ships from the past 2 versions.</p> <p><strong>Of course, this won't affect your amount of Solars (formerly known as Caps) and other pre-order bonuses</strong>. We are not touching the titles and Gangs, either.</p> <p>As explained in our Alpha F.A.Q., we anticipate to have to take these measures from time to time during the Alpha period. But don't worry, such things won't happen anymore when we reach the Beta status!</p> <h2>...and that's not all!</h2> <p>The complete list of changes is available <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/t/changelog/198/20">in the changelog on the forum</a>.</p> <h2>See you this Thurstday or Friday in the game!</h2> Sun, 14 Aug 2016 16:56:53 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/139 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/139 <p>The upcoming version 0.27 is getting ready. <strong>We will be opening the servers for you to test it this Sunday (July 17) at around <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs+of+Space+v0.27+alpha+session&amp;iso=20160717T17&amp;p1=248&amp;ah=23&amp;am=55">8:00 GMT</a> for a duration of 24 hours.</strong></p> <p>As usual, we will kick off the test session on <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">our Twitch devstream</a> where we will be answering questions, receiving your bug reports, giving out access keys, and more generally playing along with you!</p> <p>So... Now that Grouroux has joined Erhune in Tôkyô for 2 months of intense development, what have we been up to?</p> <h1>New enemies</h1> <p>Grouroux is working on "deviant" enemies, which are variants of our dear old Pirnats but with some twists. We won't spoil the surprise, but we're sure they will be responsible of a few additional player deaths! ^_^</p> <h1>Lots of UI and polish</h1> <p>The theme for the previous version and this one has definitely been: <strong>polish</strong>. We are getting closer to a beta release of the game, and we need the user interfaces to be clear and efficient to use, especially during action-packed fights.</p> <p>A few examples of new stuff:</p> <p><em>Haul indicator, tooltip, item level</em><br><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15822262/gos/GoS_027_item_scan.gif" class="lightbox" title="GoS_027_item_scan.gif"><img src="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15822262/gos/GoS_027_item_scan.gif" width="690" height="295"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">GoS_027_item_scan.gif</span><span class="informations">731x313</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><em>New level up window, a new <strong>Subsystems Codex</strong></em><br><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15822262/gos/GoS_027_levelup.gif" class="lightbox" title="GoS_027_levelup.gif"><img src="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15822262/gos/GoS_027_levelup.gif" width="605" height="499"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">GoS_027_levelup.gif</span><span class="informations">671x554</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><em>XP tooltip</em><br><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/33bad22275f2d1f7dc58b24fe57b3884cf616ac7.png" width="271" height="124"></p> <p><em>Sector borders ingame</em><br><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/05d9f23b53ff87fae3041ac456333b131959bf56.png" width="639" height="450"></p> <p><em>New settings window</em><br><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/2d40545eebbaa8be1b7e30e35578948784c5918a.png" width="505" height="476"></p> <p><em>Detailled graphic presets</em><br><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/40ce27f6b1883f189b70566eaa84cd5786368ee2.png" width="504" height="478"></p> <p><em>And finally, by far the most requested feature: a QUIT button!</em><br><img src="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15822262/gos/GoS_027_escape.gif" width="480" height="357"></p> <h1>And much more!</h1> <p>You can see the <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/t/changelog/198/17">Changelog</a> for all the details. And we're still adding stuff there every day!</p> <h1>So... see you this Sunday?</h1> Thu, 14 Jul 2016 14:08:33 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/136 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/136 <p>Who would believe it? We are finally reaching a (quasi) playable version of <em>Gangs of Space</em>!</p> <h1>Visuals</h1> <p>Grouroux has completed the design of all the little <strong>special effects</strong> here and there. They don't seem much, but they allow the player to understand what's going on, so they are actually very important gameplay-wise! And... THEY ARE EVERYWHERE!!!</p> <p>Here are a few examples, from dozens of them:</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/1af1bd691b80fdef9d03bd3df1cae8b1579d8a26.gif" width="360" height="262"><br><em>Resistron X3, a new active item which gives temporary resistances</em></p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/85396bbce335a8fe3d6de49a516cd6bbb2f154f6.gif" width="406" height="318"><br><em>The Nanobot item, ie. a heal</em></p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/bf080395464d1aeb45504a081f140e71da0c165c.gif" width="350" height="260"><br><em>One of the 6 transmuter effects, here energy =&gt; shield</em></p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/9738501082a87ba38b3d7b8219039a952a332bd0.gif" width="381" height="324"><br><em>The Reboot subsystem, that reduces all other cooldowns</em></p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/66c17cb9071ff5aa3ef3d947be3b5b37d971f279.gif" width="483" height="465"><br><em>The level up effect that destroys enemies around</em></p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/a8ebef58b26bca73648ead137073757195cbd1ce.gif" width="297" height="343"><br><em>The impact effect on a Gemeter ship</em></p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/758abfc89314db6ff64cb026c6900e75621fd8d8.png" width="338" height="428"><br><em>The new bullets for the various Gemeter weapons, with some potential debuff effects of the Solid Weakening or Gluons subsystems</em></p> <p>I'm not going over all the items, subsystems, debuff effects, the trails, the wrecks, the drops...</p> <p>Grouroux has also updated some <strong>space structures</strong> that some of you already knew:</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/c608b4154c05aece1d96d33a0aa6f5a9dc5ea4b2" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/c608b4154c05aece1d96d33a0aa6f5a9dc5ea4b2.gif" class="lightbox" title="gates.gif"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/c608b4154c05aece1d96d33a0aa6f5a9dc5ea4b2_1_690x399.gif" width="690" height="399"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">gates.gif</span><span class="informations">806x467 857 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><br><em>Gates</em></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/92ee9e210875ddda913efce5a223c6c25155e1d7" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/92ee9e210875ddda913efce5a223c6c25155e1d7.gif" class="lightbox" title="motherbase.gif"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/92ee9e210875ddda913efce5a223c6c25155e1d7_1_690x370.gif" width="690" height="370"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">motherbase.gif</span><span class="informations">849x456 239 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><br><em>The Motherbase</em></p> <h1>Programming</h1> <p>On my side, I mostly followed Grouroux's work by <strong>implementing all the stuff that "does" these FX</strong>, including the emission, synchronization among the players, the modification depending on various gameplay settings, and so on.</p> <p>I also started writing new <strong>IA blocks</strong> that will be used to implement the behaviours of the <strong>enemy variations</strong>. Grouroux fixed the game design of these variations a few months ago, but we decided to do a first pass of balance with only the basic enemies, before implementing the variations a bit later. Well, at least the code is ready for that!</p> <p>Also, some final touches to a few interfaces, for example the small <strong>warp button</strong> that has been added among the other shortcuts:</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/960eb5a2f3b028c38079b97f8e38d32d78d8104b.png" width="548" height="199"></p> <p>And since I finished all that while Grouroux was still stuggling with his FX, I even implemented the <strong>Trophy</strong> system, which is a way to unlock subsystems for each ship class by performing various actions. This was supposed to be implemented in the next version, but wel... it's already done!</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/d8277db76a1289a56d3b4e903f7ede7e7f53567a.png" width="405" height="370"><br><em>The UI, though, is not done AT ALL...</em></p> <p>And while I was doing all that, Grouroux managed to steal <strong>commit <span class="hashtag">#4000</span></strong> from me. Damn! I was litteraly thinking about what special thing I could commit to celebrate the milestone, and I received this screenshot:</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/9470eb2f7d405e9cc7883eb230534816d9413263" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/9470eb2f7d405e9cc7883eb230534816d9413263.png" class="lightbox" title="rev_4000.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/9470eb2f7d405e9cc7883eb230534816d9413263_1_690x407.png" width="690" height="407"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">rev_4000.png</span><span class="informations">932x550 139 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/0a8fc195779246b5dab24e81867ca3139ab07c47" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/0a8fc195779246b5dab24e81867ca3139ab07c47.png" class="lightbox" title="rev_4000_list.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/0a8fc195779246b5dab24e81867ca3139ab07c47_1_690x363.png" width="690" height="363"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">rev_4000_list.png</span><span class="informations">792x417 45.8 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>Finally, I spent a few days on the <strong>game servers</strong> to update all our scripts, clean the databases, test that all is working (at least in broad stokes...). Which leads us to:</p> <h1>Test sessions!</h1> <p>So, since the game is reaching playable state again, we will finally be able to resume alpha test sessions very soon!</p> <p>As a starter, <strong>this Friday, June 10</strong> during <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">our Twitch devstream</a> (probably around 10:00-ish GMT), we will do a first pre-session with the viewers of our channel. Don't expect a polished experience, this is in order to dig out the main issues. But if you have a gangsofspace.com account (<a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/login-or-register">create one</a>, it's free!), feel free to come by and you'll be welcome on the server!</p> <p>Depending on how this first try goes, we will announce a first "true" series of test sessions (over a few days at least) just afterward.</p> <p>And finally, if you planned to spend your summer time at the beach, cancel all your plans! We announce today that <strong>we will do A TON of test sessions, devstreams, new versions and new content during the months of July and August</strong>. Mark the dates on your calendars!</p> Thu, 09 Jun 2016 09:39:38 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/135 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/135 <p>Woohoo, time sure flies! So, what's up with <em>Gangs of Space</em> since last month?</p> <h1>Visuals</h1> <p>The new enemies can now have a special <strong>"champion" visual effect</strong>. These enemies will be faster, stronger, more dangerous... but more rewarding too.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/3de3383c8c56a73c53cebb537efffd50b265e682" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/3de3383c8c56a73c53cebb537efffd50b265e682.png" class="lightbox" title="v4_champions.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/3de3383c8c56a73c53cebb537efffd50b265e682_1_690x400.png" width="690" height="400"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">v4_champions.png</span><span class="informations">1182x686 506 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>Grouroux also did a pass on updating our <strong>environments</strong>, including the starfields, backgrounds, suns and planets... and most importantly (even if it's not that visible on screenshots) the lightings, which are extremely important for the ambiance and readability of the game!</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/f1fe93a74db7b62a751918f4c21e9f11d3f4792a" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/f1fe93a74db7b62a751918f4c21e9f11d3f4792a.png" class="lightbox" title="v4_planets.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/f1fe93a74db7b62a751918f4c21e9f11d3f4792a_1_511x500.png" width="511" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">v4_planets.png</span><span class="informations">797x779 445 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>We also have a lot of small touches here and there, including a small re-design of the enemy lifebar to display their (eventual) champion attributes, or an update to the trails of the enemies...</p> <h1>Programming</h1> <p>My big task during the past weeks has been the <strong>re-haul of the enemies with the new difficulty progression</strong>. This implied a LOT of changes to the enemy attribute system, which grew 100x in complexity. Where it used to be "1 enemy = 1 value for each characteristic", now all the enemy characteristics can be influenced at spawn time depending on the map tier, the sector level, the champion attributes, the variations in the spawn table... and also at runtime depending on debuffs from the player, or buffs from other enemies or the environment. That brought a lot of changes to the AI and the display engine, but fewwwww.... it's almost done! So far we have all the basic variations for 8 Pirnat enemies, with one more to go (the Pirnat Gunz). When we can test that everything is fine on this front, we'll add the missing 2 variations for each of these 9 enemies. That's.... a lot more content to handle than we expected <img src="/images/emoji/emoji_one/sweat_smile.png?v=2" title=":sweat_smile:" class="emoji" alt=":sweat_smile:"> (and we still have to re-introduce the bosses after that...)</p> <p>Since I was working on the AIs, I also took the opportunity to do some R&amp;D on <strong>obstacle avoidance</strong>. Those who followed my live dev streams last year might remember that I implemented a very crude steering system in order to allow enemies to navigate a bit more naturally in asteroid fields. But now I've managed to implement a much robust system that is integrated at the AI layer, and not only at the physical navigation layer. This doesn't change much for our current open environments, but it finally opens the door for much more varied environments in the future.</p> <p>Aside from the enemies, I also finished the implementation of some missing gameplay elements (<strong>critical hits</strong>, extra item and DNA drop rates) and polished some interfaces (crew XP bars, clearer tooltips for subsystems).</p> <p>Oh, and I almost forgot... I finally implemented a proper <strong>UI for re-binding controls</strong>. There is still work to do to better support controllers bindings, but at least this now looks like a proper <em>Gangs of Space</em> UI and not a ugly default Unity one...</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/0aee23d66ca4ac04f8c3981438d249aab915aadd.png" width="503" height="445"></p> <h1>Misc</h1> <p>Those who read <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com">the forum</a> will also have noticed that I switch it to a <strong>Dark Theme</strong> which is much less straining on the eyes for people who come from <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com">gangsofspace.com</a>.</p> <p>Of course Grouroux is complaining that it's ugly, but that's what you get from letting the developer do the color schemes!</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/1afbc706f79e57c0b22997d59875234f05327699" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/1afbc706f79e57c0b22997d59875234f05327699.png" class="lightbox" title="v4_forum_dark.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/1afbc706f79e57c0b22997d59875234f05327699_1_689x438.png" width="689" height="438"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">v4_forum_dark.png</span><span class="informations">1212x771 60.1 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <hr> <p>As you can see, work is progressing at a good pace, and the game looks more and more playable every day! See you soon for more advancement news!</p> Thu, 12 May 2016 09:48:17 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/132 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/132 <p>April is there... So, how have things advanced since our last status update in January?</p> <h1>Programming</h1> <p>Let's start with my domain: programming. I (Erhune) have managed to sort out all the personal affairs that slowed down my development activity in 2015. I'm now back on <em>Gangs of Space</em> full-time, and work is advancing well!</p> <p>The cleanup work from all the features we removed from the V3 game design is complete, and almost all new features that we announced previously during our V4 presentation are now implemented:</p> <ul> <li><p>feature-wise, we have: <strong>ship levelling, subsystems, new item generation, new universe lifecycle, contracts, a ton of new combat stuff</strong> (including resistances, critical hits, deviation, new effects...)</p></li> <li><p>we are putting the last touches to all the <strong>new interfaces</strong>: the redesigned ship window, the redesigned shortcut bar, the new navigation window, the levelling window, the new item and subsystem tooltips, contract progress and reward windows...</p></li> </ul> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/6afe20fa40a0fdaeb3ca0a043b71084c83f610c6" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/6afe20fa40a0fdaeb3ca0a043b71084c83f610c6.png" class="lightbox" title="new_ui.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/6afe20fa40a0fdaeb3ca0a043b71084c83f610c6_1_690x388.png" width="690" height="388"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">new_ui.png</span><span class="informations">1280x720 150 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><em>(that's an ingame view, unlike previous screenshots which were Photoshop design documents)</em></p> <ul><li>content-wise, we have <strong>one ship</strong> ready (<em>Gemeter R</em>) with <strong>23 different subsystems</strong> (5 hulls, 5 generators, 5 engines, 5 armaments, 3 computers) including <strong>9 different abilities</strong>. We also have <strong>40 items</strong> (4 projectile weapons, 6 light shields, 16 active items, 3 passive items, 11 crews). All these items have variations over 12 levels, and many of them are actually item templates that can generate hundreds of different types of bonuses.</li></ul> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/2637a541c3a8b6c446061ebd60fa099078e3d45e" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/2637a541c3a8b6c446061ebd60fa099078e3d45e.png" class="lightbox" title="new_items.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/2637a541c3a8b6c446061ebd60fa099078e3d45e_1_583x500.png" width="583" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">new_items.png</span><span class="informations">598x512 150 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>There is also a lot of "invisible" work going on server-side. I had to redo the whole <strong>cluster management system</strong> because of the new way the universe expands and shrinks. I also added a ton of <strong>instrumentation and logging</strong> so that we will be able to extract lots of data when we can finally open the alpha to the public, which will enable Grouroux to make informed decisions about game balance. I also used the opportunity of redoing many things to <strong>clean up and refactor</strong> a LOT of stuff that had been on my todo-list for ages.</p> <p>Some of you might also have noticed a lot of features disappearing from the <strong>gangsofspace.com website</strong>: some because they didn't make sense any more (Empire Management, anyone?), some in anticipation of their return (ladders...), some to prepare for better versions to come (Gang Management...).</p> <h1>Visual Design</h1> <p>Grouroux has been on a multiple-month adventure to clean-up our 3-and-a-half-year-old Unity project and upgrade all the graphic stuff to be more cohesive, to use a unified lightning model and good texture quality, and most importantly to remove all useless stuff that has accumulated and was slowing down the software a lot!</p> <p>Since we have redesigned the progression of difficulty in depth, we also needed many more enemy variations. And we haven't yet talked about an upcoming feature that will multiply them even more (hem... <strong>special enemies</strong> anyone?... more details to come in a later post!). So Grouroux asked me to implement a new shader that use the Unity 5 lightning model but allow more color customization without having to design hundreds of textures and materials by hand.</p> <p>Since then, he has been working on enemy variations, and most of the Pirnat ships are now done! Lo and behold!</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/9050c44308583d210dbecb35303cbdc1a6b4ff7d" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/9050c44308583d210dbecb35303cbdc1a6b4ff7d.png" class="lightbox" title="screen1.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/9050c44308583d210dbecb35303cbdc1a6b4ff7d_1_690x385.png" width="690" height="385"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">screen1.png</span><span class="informations">1032x577 313 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><br><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/2f34a717ac57e5a53567f954617c550e14587048" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/2f34a717ac57e5a53567f954617c550e14587048.png" class="lightbox" title="screen2.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/2f34a717ac57e5a53567f954617c550e14587048_1_602x500.png" width="602" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">screen2.png</span><span class="informations">810x672 207 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><br><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/96500fbfe4e488fca501a63ddbaeeaef753f38be" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/96500fbfe4e488fca501a63ddbaeeaef753f38be.png" class="lightbox" title="screen4.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/96500fbfe4e488fca501a63ddbaeeaef753f38be_1_690x361.png" width="690" height="361"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">screen4.png</span><span class="informations">1174x615 279 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><br><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/7e398fd980cfc64a643d8c43e6ce81af1de315cb" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/7e398fd980cfc64a643d8c43e6ce81af1de315cb.png" class="lightbox" title="screen3.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/7e398fd980cfc64a643d8c43e6ce81af1de315cb_1_690x393.png" width="690" height="393"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">screen3.png</span><span class="informations">1117x637 370 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>Now, there are 2 BIG graphic-intensive tasks left on our radar: <strong>map generation</strong> and <strong>special effects</strong>. These will be the focus on our efforts for the weeks to come (come <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">take a peek at the design process!</a>), with a few minor other things (like updated item icons).</p> <h1>Game Design</h1> <p>As told in the <em>Programming</em> section, much of the game design for V4 is done: <strong>difficulty curve, items and subsystems balance, drop tables, contracts</strong>...</p> <p>The only missing part here in order to be able to resume the alpha-test sessions is the <strong>enemy balance</strong> and a few new <strong>enemy behaviours</strong>.</p> <h1>The road from here...</h1> <p>Here is our <strong>tentative roadmap</strong>, in broad strokes:</p> <ol> <li>Finish what's described in this post</li> <li>Test it in private alpha</li> <li>Fix the biggest bugs and balance issues</li> <li>Gather feedback in public alpha</li> <li>Add the last missing features (special enemies, achievements &amp; unlocks, ladders, bosses, tutorial, few missing UI...) while regularly testing them in public alpha</li> <li>Add more content (ships, items, enemy factions)</li> <li>Promote the game to Beta status and release it on Steam Early Access</li> </ol> <p>While development is definitely picking up steam again, we don't have yet a precise idea of the time frame of all these steps. Especially, since the game has considerably changed since the last test sessions, we will need to gather fresh feedback during the test sessions to estimate how far we are from Beta.</p> <p>In any case, keep an eye on <a href="https://twitter.com/gangsofspace">our Twitter</a> or <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">our development channel on Twitch</a> to stay tuned!</p> Sat, 02 Apr 2016 09:03:42 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/130 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/130 <p>2015 is over, and let's be honest: it wasn't the best year for <em>Gangs of Space</em>.</p> <p>We took the decision to remove a lot from the game, and while it was necessary to do so in order for our small 2-person team to be able to complete the game, it wasn't an easy decision to make. Deleting so many months of work was quite mentally taxing, and finding a "new" way wasn't easy. It took us many months to find something we both agreed was manageable for us, while keeping the "spirit" of the game intact (which, ironically, ended up being very close to the initial vision we had back in 2012...).</p> <p>But while the thinking process was successfull, the making process didn't follow. For many personal reasons, the progress was slower than we hoped, and we had to leave you, our dear players, without a playable version for almost a year. This is something we wanted to avoid, but it still happened. <strong>We can only offer our deepest apologies for that, and assure you all that despite the lack of apparent progress, things ARE progressing on our side.</strong></p> <h2>So... it's 2016 now (happy new year everyone!)... what is the current situation?</h2> <p>Grouroux has <strong>finished the game design and graphic design on most of the features and content for next alpha</strong> version. Subsystems, special abilities, dificulty curve, drops, enemies, you name it...</p> <p>I (Erhune) am running a bit behind programming-wise. The good news is that that some of the personal reasons that prevented me from giving my full to the game in 2015 will soon be resolved. <strong>That means that development progress in 2016 will be much faster.</strong> I still cannot make any promises on the date of the next test session, but it is getting closer every week.</p> <p>So thank you, people who <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/buy">preorder the game</a>, who follow the development <a href="https://twitter.com/gangsofspace">on Twitter</a> or <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">on our Twitch channel</a> or just <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/login-or-register">hang in there</a> waiting for the next session. Your continuous support means a lot to us!</p> Thu, 28 Jan 2016 10:42:03 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/128 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/128 <p>The <strong>DevTalk</strong> is back!</p> <p>In this episode #10, Erhune and Grouroux make a point on the progress of the development toward the next alpha version of <em>Gangs of Space</em>, showing some of the <strong>new UI implemented in the game</strong>, and go over the game design documents for the <strong>updated Gemeter ship, including its new weapons, items and subsystems</strong>!</p> <iframe width="520" height="280" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VRscnhLw-9g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br><br> <p>Enjoy the show, and don't forget to <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">follow us on Twitch</a> to see the game being developed under your eyes!</p> Sat, 12 Dec 2015 09:59:21 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/126 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/126 <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">on our Twitch channel</a>, we finished the last bits of UI redisign for <em>Gangs of Space</em>. So this is a perfect time to show you pretty pictures and compare them to the ugly old stuff <img src="/images/emoji/emoji_one/smile.png?v=0" title=":smile:" class="emoji" alt=":smile:"> </p> <h2>Tooltips</h2> <p>They look pretty simple, but they are everywhere. <strong>Tooltips</strong> are where we put useful information when there is no obvious way to fit it always on screen, whether it is about buttons, items, skills... </p> <p>The new format is lighter, more readable, and allow us to better show comparison elements.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/de178819c7897bc6a31c9a28c81dabf07e22e9fc" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/de178819c7897bc6a31c9a28c81dabf07e22e9fc.png" class="lightbox" title="1-tooltips.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/de178819c7897bc6a31c9a28c81dabf07e22e9fc_1_641x500.png" width="641" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">1-tooltips.png</span><span class="informations">837x652 208 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <h2>Ship status</h2> <p>With the new levelling system, we had to show a lot more stuff on this interface (level, subsystems, abilities, crews...). We used the opportunity to replace the old shadowy ship representation by a big full-3d model of the ship that you can rotate around freely.</p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/4ea95a6524e3baca233b70a1d87b2e3dc8ccab8b.png" width="635" height="449"> </p> <h2>General UI</h2> <p>Here goes all the small interfaces that are visible during the main gameplay phase. And with the goal of clearing the top and bottom part of the screen to allow for better visibility of the space around you during the fight (especially on wide monitors that are now very commonplace), we re-designed almost everything except the chat, and moved them in the corners.</p> <p>So you have a new XP/DNA bar on top, the main controls and contract interface on the top left, a round minimap on the top right, and all the ship status on the bottom right.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/5df92b67be8fb6fb54ba4347967c664d419e32bd" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/5df92b67be8fb6fb54ba4347967c664d419e32bd.png" class="lightbox" title="6-general-hud-fight.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/5df92b67be8fb6fb54ba4347967c664d419e32bd_1_690x388.png" width="690" height="388"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">6-general-hud-fight.png</span><span class="informations">1280x720 581 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <h2>Level Up</h2> <p>We needed a new interface to allow you to choose your subsystem after each level up. This interface is small and concise. All details about the subsystems will be on tooltips.</p> <p>This is an interface you will learn to love (or hate) a lot! <img src="/images/emoji/emoji_one/smile.png?v=0" title=":smile:" class="emoji" alt=":smile:"> </p> <p><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/eaad8141969f28e7622591dd10a77a259b51318d.png" width="240" height="279"> </p> <h2>Contracts</h2> <p>The old Contract mechanism is back, but we re-designed it to be something closer to a combo bar than a full-fledged MMO quest system. As with everything with the new <em>Gangs of Space</em>, the goal is: simple, efficient, and action-packed!</p> <p>Contracts will be automatically generated inside Fight Systems, and chaining them without going back to the Motherbase will give you incremental drop and DNA bonuses.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/daa8543d4acc5044651e0fc4453ff3a4fe9970bf" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/daa8543d4acc5044651e0fc4453ff3a4fe9970bf.png" class="lightbox" title="3-contracts.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/daa8543d4acc5044651e0fc4453ff3a4fe9970bf_1_661x500.png" width="661" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">3-contracts.png</span><span class="informations">699x528 152 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <h2>Motherbase</h2> <p>With less game systems in place, the Motherbase interface is quite simplified. On the left, your warehouses (both for you and your Gang). On the right, your ships (and the Ship Builder). </p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/80d594368ad3fab547d15379ab187d88f24e35e1" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/80d594368ad3fab547d15379ab187d88f24e35e1.png" class="lightbox" title="7-motherbase.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/80d594368ad3fab547d15379ab187d88f24e35e1_1_690x230.png" width="690" height="230"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">7-motherbase.png</span><span class="informations">1285x429 348 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <h2>Navigation</h2> <p>One of the main changes in V4 is the removal of the dynamic Universe map. We will now have 2 lists that will display the same information, but in a much simpler form. Less time spent wondering where to go and how to go there, and more shooting stuff!</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/8142afd5321e2c919ee5ac2598503de566291ac3" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/8142afd5321e2c919ee5ac2598503de566291ac3.png" class="lightbox" title="2-acces-systems.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/8142afd5321e2c919ee5ac2598503de566291ac3_1_598x500.png" width="598" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">2-acces-systems.png</span><span class="informations">837x699 154 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <h2>BEFORE//AFTER</h2> <p>And as a conclusion, a series of comparison shots of the new UI with the old one.</p> <p><strong>Tooltips</strong><br><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/811d43e9ec26decb388b258c4658231c2ff8621a" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/811d43e9ec26decb388b258c4658231c2ff8621a.png" class="lightbox" title="1-tooltips-compare.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/811d43e9ec26decb388b258c4658231c2ff8621a_1_404x500.png" width="404" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">1-tooltips-compare.png</span><span class="informations">660x816 192 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p><strong>Ship status</strong><br><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/4c969d61cad0c056e88377ab453be7fc20aee5c6" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/4c969d61cad0c056e88377ab453be7fc20aee5c6.png" class="lightbox" title="4-ship-caracs-compare.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/4c969d61cad0c056e88377ab453be7fc20aee5c6_1_414x500.png" width="414" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">4-ship-caracs-compare.png</span><span class="informations">622x750 140 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p><strong>Navigation</strong><br><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/ad3a0a10706094218bfb7e7da303500d6f14f47a" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/ad3a0a10706094218bfb7e7da303500d6f14f47a.png" class="lightbox" title="2-acces-systems-compare.png"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/ad3a0a10706094218bfb7e7da303500d6f14f47a_1_462x500.png" width="462" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">2-acces-systems-compare.png</span><span class="informations">852x922 195 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p><strong>General fight UI</strong><br><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/b080d70a7662f572a5e5f7a2d3f27d60e057753e" href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/original/1X/b080d70a7662f572a5e5f7a2d3f27d60e057753e.jpg" class="lightbox" title="6-general-hud-fight-compare.jpg"><img src="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/optimized/1X/b080d70a7662f572a5e5f7a2d3f27d60e057753e_1_441x500.jpg" width="441" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">6-general-hud-fight-compare.jpg</span><span class="informations">1294x1464 464 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>What do you think?</p> <h2>And now?</h2> <p>While Erhune implements all these new interfaces in the game <img src="/images/emoji/emoji_one/sweat.png?v=0" title=":sweat:" class="emoji" alt=":sweat:">, Grouroux will focus on more content-centric game design tasks. Like filling lots of spreadsheets with numbers. So go follow <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">our Twitch channel</a> if you don't want to miss this!</p> <p>(You can see the images in their original format <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com/t/ui-redesign/523">on the forum</a>. And give us your opinion while you are at it!)</p> Wed, 28 Oct 2015 09:20:17 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/125 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/125 <p>It has been almost 3 months without news from us... Last time, we announced we would be taking some "free" time to take a few steps back and reflect on <em>Gangs of Space</em>. So... what did we figure out after all this?</p> <h1>One Flew Over the Indie's Nest</h1> <p>We (Erhune &amp; Grouroux) know each other and have been working togther for almost 10 years now. We know fairly well that over long periods, our moods and wills have up and downs. So far, we had been able to manage this pretty well: when one of us was prone to doubt or depression, the other one was there to snap him out of it. But since a few months ago, this arrangement stopped working. Even though we were working a lot, we were unable to make any real progress. Seing this lack of progress, we stopped believing that we could make it, which made the problem even worse.</p> <p>Imaging you're trying to swim across the ocean, and that right in the middle of it, you start doubt. You want to stop everything, because you're tired, because the end seems (and is) so far yet. But at this point, it's absurd to try to go back. You have to keep pushing forward.</p> <p>Outside the most evident everyday-life issues ("How to afford food for today?"), the hardest in this 4-year adventure has always been this permanent fight against ourselves. The longer the project draws, the biggest the obstacles seem. The less energy we have, the more we need it. The less we want, and the more we need to... Step by step, every little block on the road seem a good pretext to abandon, like thristy men in the desert seeing mirages of water at every dune.</p> <p>In order to advance, we have to remember our goal, and keep pushing forward, even when we feel we're going backward or turning around. We are not fighting against the external forces, we are fighting against ourselves, against all these limits we believe are impossible to surpass, against doubt and against this terrible word: "why"?</p> <p>Why, why, why?...</p> <p>Nobody forced us to do this. We chose this challenge ourselves. It was in ourselves for very long, you know, this kind of crazy idea you toy with and that you put back before going back to your "reasonable" life. Those impossible dreams, that you don't dare to reach because it means leaving the little comfort you've built around you.</p> <p>In 2011, we were in Tokyo the day Earth shook, so strongly and so long that a giant wave marched on Japan and brought back with it dozens of thousands of lives. What if we died this day? Or the next day, from a stupid car accident? Or the next year, from a sudden illness? Wouldn't have regretted to not try to do something special with our lives, before it's too late?</p> <p>The next weeks, we decided to quit our jobs, quit our old lives. We knew that a project like <em>Gangs of Space</em> wouldn't change the face of mankind, but that every day, when we looked at ourselves in the mirror, we wouldn't have any regret.</p> <p>It took us all these months of break to remember our reasons, to remember why in spite of the doubts, we have to continue. The road ahead is still long, this wasn't our first "crisis" and this won't be our last, but one thing is sure: we regret nothing!</p> <h1>The Secret Project</h1> <p>So, in order to get <em>Gangs of Space</em> out of our heads for a while in order to break our infernal cycle of fear and doubt, we worked on a small project for a few weeks.</p> <p>The name: <em>MMOTG</em>, for <em>MMO Text Game</em>.</p> <p>This "small" MMO is played only in text mode, in Twitch's chat, and plays quite similarily as a table-top RPG, just with more playes involved <img src="/images/emoji/emoji_one/smile.png?v=0" title=":smile:" class="emoji" alt="smile"> We kept the feature set very simple.</p> <p>After working on <em>Gangs of Space</em> for almost 4 years, it was very refreshing to work on a game which we could kept entirely in our heads and iterate upon quickly, and complete under a reasonable time frame.</p> <p>We organized a small private beta with some pillars of the community of <em>Gangs of Space</em>. This test taught us many things about the game, which we started to improve in a slightly-different v2. But then a big blocking technical issue appeared, and we decided that it was better to turn the page on this project, and get back to <em>Gangs of Space</em>!</p> <h1>Back to GoS</h1> <p>So, for the past few weeks, we've been doing meeting after meeting to put the <em>Gangs of Space</em> project back under control. Our goal : find a plan that seems doable with our limited means, that fits what we initially wanted for the project, and that learns from all our past versions!</p> <p>We have cut quite a lot of features that we introduced in v3 last Fall, and went back to something that's closer to our initial vision of "a nice cooperative MMO shmup" without all the 4X stuff that pushed itself into the project afterward.</p> <p>Of course, 4 years to get back to the intial plan, some people will say that's a bit silly. But this time, we can design all those features from the parts that YOU, the players, have shown are the strengths of the game. And for the "advanced" features (like the <em>Empire vs Empire</em>), we will keep them under a simplified form, because they answer a need that we have identified along the way, and that still exist today.</p> <p>So, we can now announce...</p> <h1>GoS v4 : back to the roots</h1> <p>Without going into the details for each and every feature. These details will be revealed in the upcoming articles and devstreams on <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">our Twitch channel</a>.</p> <h2>Ship progress and unique builds</h2> <p>That was a point that was pretty clear to everyone: since we're split the content of the game over 3 Tiers, there is a problem with the sense of progress in the game. The difficulty ramp works nicely for the enemies and the different map levels, but not really for the player's ship and equipment.</p> <p>So, in order to keep up with our "arcade" principle (and unlike <em>Diablo</em>-like "grinding"), and since permadeath is a very important part of <em>Gangs of Space</em> that we want to keep, we have decided to make the player's ship progress in a rogue-like way similar to <em>The Binding of Isaac</em> or <em>Risk of Rain</em>.</p> <p>We will add <strong>levelling over 10 levels</strong> which will hopefully smoothly bring players from Tier 1 content to Tier 3 content over 2~6 hours, depending on your skill and experience as a player.</p> <p>Each time your ship will gain a level, you will be allowed to choose <strong>one subsystem</strong> among the 3 that will be randomly generated. These subsystems will improve the stats of your ship over a particular aspect: engines for some speed bonuses, computers for skills, etc. The subsystems that will be available for choice will be generated from the pool of subsystem templates that you will have unlocked on this ship class. Some very rare subsystems will even change the gameplay quite drastically (side cannons, dual shots...).</p> <p>Each level 10 ship will then have a unique build that will be the sum of your strategic choices.</p> <h2>DNA and Credits</h2> <p><strong>DNA</strong> will stop being a storable currency, but will become the experience points that will level your ship and/or your crews.</p> <p>Medals will be renamed <strong>Credits</strong> and become the main currency in the game, that you can use to buy things from the (few) NPC vendors and trade with other players.</p> <h2>Free-to-play</h2> <p>The subscription model seemed ideal to us to sustain a "slow" 4X MMO. But we've learned from all of you playing the game that the part that actually work very well in <em>Gangs of Space</em> is it's fast-paced cooperative action. We want to focus on this "immediately fun" aspect of the game, which is very unique and could potentially appeal to many many players. Thus, keeping the subscription is a bad incentive to us, since it makes us want to design a slow game.</p> <p><strong>We have thus decided to change our businedd model to a form of <em>free-to-play</em> that fits more with the fact-paced and accessible aspect ot the game, and the goal to gather a large player community around the game.</strong></p> <p>The new economic model will look pretty close to something you can already experience in MOBAs or a famous tank game <img src="/images/emoji/emoji_one/smile.png?v=0" title=":smile:" class="emoji" alt="smile"></p> <p>We are keeping the concept of <strong>Caps</strong>, which is a currency we've already given to people who pre-order the game. Nothing changes here, not even the concept of <strong>GoS Shares</strong> that we distribute in the Investor Pack. Caps will be exchangeable for other's players' Credits, in order to keep a non-punitive and interesting ingame economy.</p> <p>Caps will be used to buy ship and inventory slots, to unlock the permanent access to ship classes or skins, this kind of things.</p> <p><strong>Let us say it clear and loud: <em>Gangs of Space</em> will NEVER be a pay-to-win game!</strong> We hate with a passion this kind of monetization that you commonly find in "Korean MMOs" and other mobile games. It goes against all our core values. But we feel going <em>free-to-play</em> is a very useful tool to meet a large public if it is done right, and we will try our best to join the Valve-s and the Riot-s of this world that manage to do it well.</p> <p>On a last note, 2 important points:</p> <ul> <li>Players who have already pre-ordered the game keep and will get all that was promised to them. Their special ships will be either special skins, or special variations of some ship class. <strong>If anyone who pre-ordered the game feel betrayed by this change of business model, they can contact us at <a>contact@gangsofspace.com</a> and we will do anything necessary to correct the situation!</strong> </li> <li>The game stays in "closed" alpha for now (accessible only via the waiting list, via pre-order, or via a invitation code from a friend or us). The business model will only be implemented starting from the beta, and more details will be given at this time on how to spend your Caps.</li> </ul> <h2>Access to ship classes</h2> <p>Gemeter and Astrolax will stay the 2 starting ship classes. You will be able to build them for free as much as you want.</p> <p>The other ship classes will need to be unlocked (remember our old permit system? something along these lines...) and then bought in Credits each time you want a new ship.</p> <p>It will also be possible to fully unlock a ship class by spending Caps one time. which will allow them unlimited free construction like the Gemeter and Astrolax classes.</p> <h2>New stats</h2> <p>In order to increase the depth of the action part, we will add a few new stats to items and enemies: 3 <strong>damage types</strong> with the corresponding resistances, and the ability for you or enemies to do <strong>critical hits</strong>.</p> <h2>Crews</h2> <p>Each ship will obtain up to 2 crews during its levelling plase. The base stats of these crews will be low, but after your ship reaches max level, they will be the ones to absorb the DNA you collect in order to gain levels and unlock interesting synergies.</p> <h2>Unlockable content</h2> <p>A number of achievements will allow you to unlock much game content, such as: new ship classes, new skins, new ship subsystems... Every time you will level a new ship, you will probably discover new possibilites!</p> <h2>Reorganization of the Universe</h2> <p>The prodecural generation for the Universe will be removed, along with it's dynamic aspect. Instead, the access to conquest systems will be streamlined into a much simpler system, with "unlimited" conquest maps of each difficulty level available at any time.</p> <p>Note that even if the shape of the Universe will be "fixed", the map themselves will continue to be prodecurally generated!</p> <h2>Empire vs Empire</h2> <p>Ah.... Good ol' <em>Empire vs Empire</em>. This was THE new thing from <em>Gangs of Space</em> v3. And it is still very important to us, since this is the feature that will define <strong>high-level play</strong> (and thus <strong>the goal of the game</strong>). The only problem with it is.... that it's crazy complex to design and implement. If we want to release the game before 2050, we need to do something about it. We have thus decided to stip the feature to it's core.</p> <p>And the core is: <strong>an Empire need to control the 7 Pillars of the Universe to win the current session.</strong></p> <p>So... we are removing the dynamic universe with all its conquest maps, we are removing the planets and their evolution, we are removing the EvE armies and their attack waves. We keep the Pillars. The Gangs will gain <strong>Conquest Points</strong> by conquering sectors in the generic unlimited conquest maps, and spend these points to open a <strong>Gate</strong> to a specific Pillar. The players of this Empire then have a limited time to take control of the Pillar. If they succeed, this Empire takes control of the Pillar, and will be protected for X hours. Its difficulty level will also increase, ensuring that the other Empire will have a harder time conquering it. The Pillar will also confer a global bonus to all the players of the Empire which control it.</p> <p>When all Pillars are controlled by a single Empire, this Empire is crowed as victor, and a new session will start. The players will keep all their ships and items, but the Gangs will loose their Conquest Points (and of course their Pillars if they had one) and be shuffled among the Empires.</p> <p><strong>Gang Bases</strong> won't be buildable any longer, but will be given as rewards to Gangs who own a Pillar when their Empire win the session. Each new victory will evolve the Base.</p> <h2>Difficulty curve</h2> <p>Maps use to be rated from "1 skull" to "7 skulls" for the most difficult ones. We will align that scale more closely to the ships' and items' scale, over 3 Tiers. T1 to T3 maps will allow you to level your ship from level 1 to 10 and drop enough loot to equip yourself. There will be T3+ maps reserved for organized Gangs and players not afraid to loose their ships. And then X1 (X for eXtra), X2, X3... without any limit, for the Pillars and other special areas.</p> <h2>Items</h2> <p>We are keeping the current system more or less. Your ship will need to be level 4 to equip T2 items, and level 7 to equip T3 items. In T3+ or Xn maps, you will drop Tier 3 items with a higher and higher potential quality.</p> <p>On the other hand, we are removing for now all consumable items, and all resources. (We have a few ideas for those, but they will have to wait until after release.)</p> <h2>Conquest and Contracts</h2> <p>When you play solo/co-op, levelling your ship or just playing around with friends, you will play in maps that work pretty similarly from our old "combat maps": when the conquest of all sectors is over, the map is locked and a big boss appears.</p> <p>In addition to this, you will always have a <strong>contract</strong> given to you that will give you an simple additional objective: "kill x enemies" or "conquer x sectors". Fullfilling these contracts will give you Credits and DNA.</p> <h2>Objective number one: content!</h2> <p>This isn't really a new feature, but it's the reason for most of our choices: simplify complex things so that we can finally take some time to work on the game content itself. New playable ship classes, new enemy types, new items... We will finally take the time do create them!</p> <h1>When can we play this?</h1> <p>So, now, the question that everyone that read up to this point will ask: when will be the next test session?</p> <p>Seing the amount of work ahead of us, it is quite difficult to say. So far, we think <strong>it won't be until the beginning 2016</strong> at the earliest.</p> <p>But we can already invite you to the DevTalk #14 that will take place on <strong>Sunday, August 23 at <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=GoS+Devtalk+%2310&amp;iso=20150823T14&amp;p1=195&amp;ah=1">12:00 GMT</a></strong> on <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">our Twitch channel</a>. This time, we will probably spend most of our time answering everyone's questions, so if you want more info or if you have something on your mind, please come and we will do our best to answer you!</p> <p>Thank you for putting up with us and our crazy dreams! Together we can make the best MMO!</p> Fri, 21 Aug 2015 10:02:41 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/123 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/123 <p>In this week's devtalk, we take a look back at our presence at last week's <strong>Tokyo Indie Fest</strong> and talk about a few other cool games that were playable there. </p> <p>In the second part, we announce that we are taking a <strong>short few weeks break</strong> in order to replenish our mental forces, and go over some details on why and what we will be doing during this time (hint: it still involve making games!).</p> <div class="lazyYT" data-youtube-id="rDdlP1E2lX4" data-width="480" data-height="270" data-parameters="feature=oembed&amp;wmode=opaque"></div> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/19f0bf4165925105c10bd12c975eab6e2537dc74" href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/805/c684f6e305063267.jpg" class="lightbox" title="devblog_tif_1.jpg"><img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/_optimized/cf0/5b3/9530bab586_625x500.jpg" width="625" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">devblog_tif_1.jpg</span><span class="informations">1024x819 227 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/bcccd3ac3e0175a24a55c4e22799e7ffbd633cac" href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/806/21b3461ca86ebb78.jpg" class="lightbox" title="devblog_tif_2.jpg"><img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/_optimized/e93/977/522863f7c6_666x500.jpg" width="666" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">devblog_tif_2.jpg</span><span class="informations">1024x768 244 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> Sat, 16 May 2015 15:56:49 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/121 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/121 <p>In this week's DevTalk, we take a look at the <strong>new <em>Empire vs Empire</em> map</strong>, and talk about our upcoming presence at the upcoming <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkkZ1pL3dcw">Tokyo Indie Fes</a> on May 8-10.</p> <iframe width="520" height="280" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wkkZ1pL3dcw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Sun, 03 May 2015 10:06:54 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/118 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/118 <p>In this week's DevTalk, Grouroux shows us around the <strong>new visuals for planets</strong> while we talk about the (small) gameplay changes around them.</p> <iframe width="520" height="280" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M9ZvbRlz1eA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Sat, 11 Apr 2015 10:08:36 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/116 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/116 <p><em>Note: this news was posted on April 1st!</em> <code>;-)</code></p> <p>We have been working for the past 2 months in the greatest secret to make this huge annoucement :</p> <p><strong>We are abandonning the PC/Mac/Linux versions on the game to concentrate only on a handheld version of the game. And not on any console, but on THE best of its category: the GAME BOY!</strong></p> <p>You don't know this but Erhune is not only a terrific programmer but also a proficient electrical engineer. In just two weeks, he managed to create a network module (Wifi+4G) for the Game Boy. All that was left was recoding <em>Gangs of Space</em> on this new platform which is still - unfortunately - unsupported by Unity.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/295a2f80e81fc18a5f34f64108a20038c3a3b002" href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/800/5096ada044c60f04.jpg" class="lightbox" title="gameboy-wifi-4g.jpg"><img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/_optimized/b7b/aa2/1f1ae5cad0_300x231.jpg" width="300" height="231"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">gameboy-wifi-4g.jpg</span><span class="informations">1009x778 122 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>Visually, we have managed to keep the changes minimal. Oh, yeah, of course we had to get rid of the colors, but you will see, we haven't sacrificed much more!</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/7ab73f076eceee9d69a89e2c76791573c14b1746" href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/801/cc25218227900af3.png" class="lightbox" title="gos-TI82.png"><img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/_optimized/c6a/332/2b4f6c73ca_690x391.png" width="690" height="391"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">gos-TI82.png</span><span class="informations">1296x735 106 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/2bf458b7239c61f8ea653abdf29d83f63db7842f" href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/802/87fb34fea6217322.png" class="lightbox" title="gos-ti82-2.png"><img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/_optimized/85e/f0b/decf69e034_690x393.png" width="690" height="393"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">gos-ti82-2.png</span><span class="informations">1294x738 107 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a data-download-href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/4f042cf0f37f56dbf18004505e69132f564ca802" href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/803/e69fa00da6fdafe2.png" class="lightbox" title="ti-82-3.png"><img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/uploads/default/_optimized/eb5/ef6/da94762f8f_690x391.png" width="690" height="391"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">ti-82-3.png</span><span class="informations">1295x734 136 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>Something very important: of course, everyone that pre-ordered <em>Gangs of Space</em> will receive this Game Boy version:</p> <ul> <li>At 10€, you will receive the classical gray cartridge</li> <li>At 10€, you will receive a red cartridge</li> <li>At 10€, you will receive a GOLDEN cartridge!</li> </ul> <p>We hope you will be as excited as we are for this big change!</p> Wed, 01 Apr 2015 10:17:29 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/115 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/115 <p>In this week's DevTalk, we talk about:</p> <ul> <li>our (unexpected) migration to Unity 5 and what it means for the rendering of the game and the schedule of future sessions</li> <li>the recent improvements to the <a href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/t/en-intro-to-the-api/199/14">Gangs of Space API</a> </li> <li>and we confirm our roadmap for the next version (moar <em>Empire vs Empire</em>!)</li> </ul> <iframe width="520" height="280" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hTXjGiuH6II" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Sat, 28 Mar 2015 03:33:32 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/112 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/112 <p>In this week's <strong>Dev Talk #5</strong>, Grouroux and Erhune give their impressions on the <strong>revolt system</strong> that was introduced in v0.24, and come back on one month of tests. They then introduce the new features that they will be working on before the next test session at the end of March / beginning of April:</p> <ul> <li>The remaining of <em>Empire vs Empire</em> with <strong>located armies</strong> </li> <li>The endgame with <strong>the pillars of the Universe</strong> </li> <li>...and new content!</li> </ul> <iframe width="520" height="280" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZCYzAK2jLbs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <br><br> <p>Grouroux will resume almost-daily devstreams <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">on our Twitch channel</a> starting next Monday, see you there to the witness the advancement on these new features!</p> Thu, 05 Mar 2015 15:24:47 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/111 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/111 <p>We have just released <strong>version 0.24</strong> of <em>Gangs of Space</em> (<a href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/t/changelog/198/14">changelog</a>) !</p> <p>This version comes with a warning to all of those who want to conquer or already own a planet: <strong>it is now very important to pay maintenance costs</strong>! If you fail to do so, the revolt level of the planet will keep increasing until this planet stop producing and giving access to technologies. And if all planets of a system reach 100% revolt, this system will declare independance and disappear from the Universe map.</p> <p>In order not to have bad surprises, <b>you can select in your account management page (on the very bottom) a new option <em>"A planet or system of your Gang is revolting"</em> to receive a notification when a planet reaches 70% revolt</b>. You will then have about 7 hours left to avoid the worst.</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/7857eb59a4d8e5e50e8068a4b9a1d959a9ffd837866.png" width="652" height="267"> </p> <p>For more details about v0.24, you can also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGamKp9qqS0">watch our DevTalk #4</a>.</p> Sun, 22 Feb 2015 14:56:42 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/108 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/108 <p>This week again, Erhune and Grouroux welcome you to the <strong>Dev Talk #4</strong> and introduce what happened this week in the current test session, and what is awaiting for you in the new version 0.24 that will be released today.</p> <ul> <li>A review of the new <strong>Universe map</strong> </li> <li> <strong>Empire vs Empire</strong> with some details of the inner workings</li> <li>The upcoming <strong>revolt system</strong> </li> <li>Announcement that <strong>this session will end on Sunday, March 1st</strong> and that the next session will start around the end of March.</li> </ul> <iframe width="520" height="280" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GGamKp9qqS0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>See you next week for the next Dev Talk, which will be recorded live on <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">our Twitch channel</a> next Thursday!</p> Sun, 22 Feb 2015 12:52:26 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/109 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/109 <p><strong>Erhune and Grouroux present the Dev Talk # 3!</strong> As usual, we take stock of what has happened this week and what is in store for you for the next patch of this weekend:</p> <ul> <li>The summary of a week of conquest</li> <li>A new feature on the evening Twitch</li> <li>The revision of the drop rate</li> <li>The new galaxy and map procedural generation</li> <li>The next reset of the universe</li> <li>Enabling EvE (against Empire Empire)</li> </ul> <iframe width="520" height="280" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c6IB1tpgrEk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>Remember that <strong>we stream almost daily on Twitch</strong>, <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">subscribe to our channel</a> to not miss any of our next appointment!</p> Thu, 12 Feb 2015 20:51:21 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/105 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/105 <p>And here come the hour of weekly DevTalk. The program, <strong>Erhune</strong> and <strong>Grouroux</strong> tell us about the development of the game and the current test session.</p> <iframe width="520" height="280" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/39kSc3NWWrg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>To attend the recording of the next DevTalk, subscribe to <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">our channel Twitch</a>! We record on Thursday or Friday morning (GMT + 1). In addition we regularly stream the dev of <em>Gangs of Space</em>.</p> Sun, 08 Feb 2015 21:29:04 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/103 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/103 <p>We are innaugurating a new way to keep you updated on the progress on <em>Gangs of Space</em>: the <strong>weekly Dev Talk</strong>!</p> <p>Every week on Thursay or Friday, both Grouroux (the game designer) and Erhune (the programmer) will have a special segment <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">on our Twitch channel</a> where we will show and explain our progress in the development of <em>Gangs of Space</em>.</p> <iframe width="520" height="280" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8GXp2ogVaYc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <br><br> <p>The first one is a biggie (40 minutes and a dead throat for Erhune!) because it is a <strong>big recap (with visuals!) on the new orientation of the game</strong>. Check it out if you want to get the latest <em>Gangs of Space</em> news, and feel free to check <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace/profile/past_broadcasts">our other live development streams</a>, we do them almost daily!</p> Sat, 31 Jan 2015 09:45:53 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/97 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/97 <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6832e3152ba3e5e94c17a39ba82b3eb96123bb1f0b3.png" class="lightbox" title="greenlit.png"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/687c1f4e6e6c1aca0bce1d7431071e43ff2b6029789_690x99.png" width="690" height="99"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">greenlit.png</span><span class="informations">952x137 65.6 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>What better news to start this new year 2015 on a good foot? <strong><em>Gangs of Space</em> has just been Greenlit, and will thus be available on Steam during this year!</strong></p> <p>This is of course a very emotional moment for us after working on this game for 3 years, and we don't have enough words to thank our awesome community and everyone who supported <em>Gangs of Space</em> one way or the other.</p> <p>We will also use the opportunity to get a quick retrospective on these past 3 years, before astro-projecting ourselves in this new 4th year of development that just started...</p> <h2>2012 - Stone Age</h2> <p>We started the development of <em>Gangs of Space</em> in January 2012, with many wonderful ideas and bad choices. After many tentatives (including a failed Greenlight attempt), we decided to restart from scratch, abandonning Flash for Unity on the way.</p> <p>End of 2012 : 65 players</p> <h2>2013 - Bronze Age</h2> <p>Much work on the graphic aspect of the game. First public Alpha in Septembre. Start of our <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">devstreams on Twitch</a> with our 120h-long <em>Indie Story</em>.</p> <p>End of 2013 : 360 players</p> <h2>2014 - Iron Age</h2> <p>The first year of <em>Gangs of Space</em> as a "real" MMO. Much experiementation, much feedback from the community, much murking and tweaking and fixing and improving... With 8 Alpha Test sessions over 6 months, we were able to collect much data that showed the strong and weak points of the game.</p> <p>We also started to show the game to the public in gaming events. And got our first awards in the process: <strong>Game Design Award</strong> at <em>BitSummit</em> in Kyôto, <strong>Technical Award</strong> at the <em>Indie Stream Fes</em>, or the two <strong>Excellence Award</strong> we got during the <em>Tokyo Game Show</em> from the big media <em>Dengeki Online</em> et <em>4Gamer</em>.</p> <p>And finally, starting in July, we give a lot of consideration on the quality of some aspects of the game, and fixed the orientation we wanted to give to the game considering the size of our 2-person team. Which is a delicate process that gave us a lot of cold sweat, since we don't know yet if our replacement features will be good enough...</p> <p>End of 2014 : 3300 players</p> <h2>2015 - Steam Age</h2> <p>This year again, we hope to organize a lot of Test Sessions to fiddle with every corner of our new features (Empire vs Empire, destruction of the Universe, more progression, procedurally generated Universe...), debug, listen to your feedback, improve... and finally - hopefully - launch a permanently-opened beta on Steam Early Access as soon as we find THE right formula.</p> <h1>Thank you again to every of you for your support, and we wish you an excellent new year!</h1> Thu, 01 Jan 2015 10:56:17 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/95 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/95 <h2>We wish you hall a merry Christmas and a happy new year 2015 !</h2> <iframe width="520" height="280" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/bY443luCZ_Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><em>(thanks to Nicsomatose for the help with the tree!)</em></p> Wed, 24 Dec 2014 15:33:49 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/92 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/92 <p>One month ago, we have announced a series of deep changes in <em>Gangs of Space</em>. It's now time to give some news about our progress on this new road we've outlined.</p> <h2>TODO #1 - Destroy the universe</h2> <p><em>Progress: 21,7%</em></p> <p>The game design phase is now complete, which means we have to re-do most of our <strong>promotional materials</strong> on the website and <a href="http://www.littlebigmmo.com/press/">our presskit</a>. And of course, we have to do all the ingame implementation too, although most of it is not strictly necessary for the first test rounds.</p> <h2>TODO #2 - Empire vs Empire</h2> <p><em>Progress: 84%</em></p> <p>This is the key feature of the new <em>Gangs of Space</em> experience, and thus it has been at the focal of our efforts so far. Most of it is complete: on your Gang management webpage, you can <strong>launch attack waves on the other Empires</strong>, and <strong>defend against them</strong>. And if you are lucky enough to be an Empire Administrator, you have extended abilities to do so, too.</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6557e0cb39ae1ae2b08071c84945dd9d722be4022b9.jpg" width="580" height="384"> <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/65672f57cb7f71a7081f894db4fefb99144bdf10b06.jpg" width="580" height="248"> </p> <p>The remaining parts are mostly the finishing touches: improving the UI, and adding facilitative alerts on all these new events.</p> <h2>TODO #3 - Politics</h2> <p><em>Progress: 79%</em></p> <p>The politics part of the game had 2 major features:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>Transfer of influence</strong> from one Gang to another (a form of "vote" to form Alliances inside an Empire)</li> <li>A web-based <strong>messaging system</strong> (which is not only used for politics, but will play a big part of it)</li> </ul> <p>All of this is done and can already be viewed <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/status/ladders">here</a> and <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/account/messages">here</a> (if you are logged in).</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/657ac7128c19992c353840956e74ca7f62478ce0e1b.jpg" width="580" height="384"> </p> <p>Our view on politics hasn't changed from the start: this is more about people interactions than gameplay features. Our role is just to provide you with the tools to facilitate these interactions.</p> <h2>TODO #4 - Planets</h2> <p><em>Progress: 67%</em></p> <p>Plant are implemented in the game: they <strong>evolve</strong>, they <strong>produce</strong> PP (Production Points) and influence, enter into revolt if you don't pay their <strong>maintenance costs</strong>, you can dock on them to build <strong>constructions</strong> or acquire <strong>technologies</strong>... </p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/658bdd63710c63bada26a939ce156df0edda5aa48e0.jpg" width="580" height="287"> </p> <p>Also, the management interfaces are not designed yet (and thus - of course - not implemented).</p> <h2>TODO #5 - PvE</h2> <p><em>Progress: 60%</em></p> <p>We are talking here about quite a big set of very diverse features. These are the one that are complete (or almost complete):</p> <ul> <li>A new progress of the <strong>difficulty</strong> over 28 "levels" of difficulty</li> <li>A new generation mechanism of <strong>enemy groups</strong> </li> <li>The complete renewal of the <strong>Pirnat faction</strong> </li> <li>A new <strong>drop generation</strong> algorithm</li> </ul> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/659cba9c8bf70b6433859d57aa7a4afffcd288897f7.jpg" width="580" height="421"> <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6602f6d07a68c69ccc7d10f32a7aa4c317fd0479e26.jpg" width="580" height="273"> </p> <p>The big missing things are <strong>missions</strong> and <strong>status</strong> toward factions. And of course adding more of these factions...</p> <h2>TODO #6 - Mining</h2> <p><em>Progress: 5%</em></p> <p>We have designed the new resource system, but... everything else is yet to be done! We might start with a very simple version of mining in order to not delay the tests for too long, and improve that in future versions...</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/661053e9c5e08a5194363195ea5138737967ea8bba7.jpg" width="500" height="147"> </p> <h2>TODO #7 - Procedural generation</h2> <p><em>Progress: 78%</em></p> <p>Most of the mechanisms are implemented, but the various parameters of the algorithms have to be chosen and tweaked until they give results that are consistent with the new feeling of progress we want to give in the game.</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6620921da70505ba27a89741af65b2d7ddb91284c27.jpg" width="580" height="320"> </p> <p>This picture illustrates a template to create a level 1 system. We have to define all the probability curves of all the values, which is not hugely complex but is quite time consuming, since we have to generate a LOT of systems to be sure it feels right!</p> <p>We also have to create more "pieces" that can be used in the creation process: planets, stars, backgrounds, lighting systems...</p> <h2>TODO #8 - Technology</h2> <p><em>Progress: 64%</em></p> <p>Here too the hardest part is finished: game design and implementation.</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6638a69079674063bebee8b22c37a9786b75e418f30.jpg" width="580" height="273"> </p> <p>Now we have to create the "content": the items and ships that will be appropriate for the new difficulty curve. Where we used to have only 1 item in each category ("a Gun") we will now have multiple variations over 3 tiers ("a 3-Way Tier 1 Gun"). And of course each of these will have infinite variations of their characteristics (like the previous research system, without the player being in control of the point allocation).</p> <h2>TODO #9 : Announcing the next test session</h2> <p><em>Progress: 0%</em></p> <p>We are doing our best to try to open a test session in December, but we can't guarantee to make it in time. Many things are still very much in flux, and some things are not designed to the point where we are confident we won't have bad surprises. But we are working on it, as best as we can!</p> <p>In the meantime, feel free to hop on <strong><a href="http://twitch.tv/gangsofspace">our live dev streams on Twitch</a></strong> if you want a see a glimpse of the things to come!</p> <p><em>(and don't forget to</em> <em><a href="http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=234327644">vote for Gangs of Space on Greenlight</a></em> <em>while you are at it! ^^)</em></p> Fri, 28 Nov 2014 06:52:46 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/89 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/89 <p>Recently, we have written quite a lot about our experience showing <em>Gangs of Space</em> at the Tôkyo Game Show, but it has been a few months since we've actually written <strong>about the game itself</strong>. The reason is pretty simple: after the last Alpha Test session in June, we have started a deep analysis of the current state of the game, its strengths and weaknesses, and thought a lot about the direction we wanted the project to go.</p> <p>So... Here are the results of our pondering! This will give you a good idea about what to expect from <em>Gangs of Space</em> in the next months...</p> <h2>The purpose of playing a MMO</h2> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/640d9ae4d9b5b469132949398b6c86833506b918022.jpg" width="600" height="300"> </p> <p>Since we've started to work on <em>Gangs of Space</em> 3 years ago, we've always had difficulties explaining <strong>the goal of the game</strong>. We could explain the different features, their complex and subtle interaction, but when asked "why?", we didn't have a definite answer. Many would say that <strong>this is an intrinsic property of MMOs</strong> and "sandbox" games. But we weren't satisfied with this answer.</p> <p>This issue kept bothering us in the back of our heads, so we went on adding more and more features, thinking that the answer would emerge from the way our players would approach these features. But <strong>this was a classic mistake</strong>: mixing up the means (how to do what I want to do?) and the ends (why do what I'm doing?). We ended up with <strong>a very complex game</strong> that is too much to handle for our 2-person team.</p> <p>So, we took gathered our courage, and searched for <strong>a real goal</strong> in <em>Gangs of Space</em>, which we could use to <strong>reshape the whole game experience</strong>, even if that means putting aside what doesn't directly supports this experience.</p> <h2>The Big Answer</h2> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/64115ad4e72b7bd13df89cac76eff63706802242fbc.jpg" width="600" height="300"> </p> <p>We wanted the goal of <em>Gangs of Space</em> to be "big" enough to fullfill our megalomaniac ambitions (and yours, too!). So we looked for <strong>simple objectives with drastic consequences</strong>.</p> <p>Contrary to 99% of the games where you're asked to save your family, your city, your country, your planet, the Universe and the Rest, <em>Gangs of Space</em> will finally ask you to... <strong>destroy the Universe</strong>!</p> <p>This goal might seem a bit... drastic. But you will meet many obstacles on the road:</p> <p>First, you will need to progress in a completely new way to unlock different types of ships, and fight bigger and stronger enemies. And like before, at some point you will need to <strong>join or create a Gang</strong> to continue to progress and discover new facets of the game.</p> <p>Then, you will need to work on your Gang's influence toward the other Gangs of your Empire, in order to raise to political domination and <strong>reach the rank of Administrator of the Empire</strong>.</p> <p>If you manage to reach and keep this position, you will then have the crushing responsibility of <strong>leading your Empire</strong> toward more conquests, in order to gather more and more resources and <strong>build powerful armies</strong> that you will <strong>send to fight the other Empires</strong> that are also trying to annihilate the Universe first.</p> <p>So... Will you be up to the challenge?</p> <h2>Destroy the Universe!?!</h2> <p>Destroying the Universe means that if certain conditions are fulfilled, the game server will be shut down, the current galaxy deleted, and a new galaxy generated. Then everyone will be able to start afresh on a brand new play field... or almost afresh, because if the Empires will lose their territories, the players themselves will keep their possessions and most importantly their precious experience of the game!</p> <p>The practical details of this feature (what will be the conditions? how difficult will they be to fulfil? what will be kept or deleted from one galaxy to another?) will be very crucial points that we will need to test with top priority during the next wave of Alpha Test sessions.</p> <p>Our goal is that <strong>the History of each galaxy be unique</strong>, in a sense that it will be remembered as in intense race against time with many many comebacks, and where <strong>all the players will have an influence on the outcome</strong>.</p> <p>This is truly <strong>a new way to think about MMOs</strong>. But who said MMOs can't have a story (or a History?) that can loop, so that each time you can enjoy different variations? (Those of you who played <em>Hordes</em> or <em>Star Sonata</em> know what we are talking about!)</p> <p>There is still an undecided point: how can we <strong>reward</strong> those elite players who manage to reach the ultimate goal in a memorable way? We have our little ideas about that, but feel free to suggest anything!</p> <h2>A Dance with Features</h2> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/642f38ade6131d299e2187f346d6692918e9bdce8f3.jpg" width="600" height="300"> </p> <p>In order to realign the game with this new goal, we will have to add and remove many features from <em>Gangs of Space</em>. Here is a summary of the changes we expect to make. But as always, due to our very iterative development process, most of these changes will live or die according to their actual worth when tested "for real".</p> <p><strong>Online Empire vs Empire (our very own little EvE Online!)</strong></p> <p>The first, and probably biggest change will be to add <strong>multiple opposing Empires</strong>. At first, there will be a pre-defined amount of them, but in the long run players will be able to create their own Empire if they manage to gather sufficient political power.</p> <p>These Empires will be the cornerstone of our new approach to PvP. Instead of fighting from player to player (an approach we've tried with mitigated results...), <strong>all the Empires will fight against each other through the systems they own</strong>.</p> <p>In concrete terms, the Empires will - though a form of collective intelligence - conquer systems, develop them, and thus acquire the means to produce armies that they will then send on other Empire's systems in order to annihilate them.</p> <p>All the players, whatever their level of implication in the game (from the newbie who's just doing missions to the seasoned politician who will be pulling the strings behind the scenes, not mentioning all the traders, miners, mercenaries...), will directly or indirectly participate in the creation of these armies, and in the defence of their Empire territory.</p> <p><strong>Imperial politics</strong></p> <p>When you create a Gang, you will have to chose which Empire it will be part of. Players who are not members of any Gang will be able to go and switch between all Empires, but their impact in the Empire War will be much lesser.</p> <p>At the head of each Empire, in control of its armies, will be the <strong>Administrator Gang</strong>. Like currently, this title will be given every week to the Gang which controls the largest territory. However, each Gang will also have the ability to choose another Gang in the same Empire which will benefit from their territory for this calculation. </p> <p>This means that a Gang hoping to get and keep the title of Administrator will probably need allies in its quest of power. The political game won't have any limit...</p> <p><strong>Planets at the heart of war</strong></p> <p>Another big change: we will abandon the construction of space structures by players. Instead, you will need to develop <strong>the planets</strong> that are present in the systems conquered by your Gang and your Empire.</p> <p>These planets are not populated by your Empire, but by NPC factions like the Pirnats or the Vermillons. All the players of the Empire will have access to them, even though the management of the planet will be left in the hands of the Gang that physically controls the sector where the planet is located.</p> <p>Planets will have multiple roles:</p> <ul> <li>Get <strong>missions</strong> that will provide rewards and increase your reputation toward the faction of the planet.</li> <li>Generate <strong>Production Points</strong> which will be used to build EvE armies.</li> <li>Access <strong>new ship and item technologies</strong>, and specific crews.</li> <li>Provide a place for <strong>trading</strong>.</li> </ul> <p>To develop the planets and and improve their commercial offer and production capacity, you will need to meet their needs by accomplishing missions and regularly bringing them various resources.</p> <p>In return, each planet will bring to the Empire part of its production capacity, while the rest will go to the Gang which owns the planet.</p> <p><strong>PvE in a more alive environment</strong></p> <p>Until now, the vast majority of space in <em>Gangs of Space</em> has been pretty... empty. There wasn't much to see in conquered systems.</p> <p>We will improve that and create an Universe that feels much more alive, with numerous NPC minding their own business: delivering goods between planets, patrolling, exploiting resources, attacking each other... You, the player, will be able to attack all these NPC, but that won't be without consequence on your relationships with their faction.</p> <p>Indeed, maintaining a good reputation with these factions will give you access to specific equipments, and special missions.</p> <p>In general, we will re-work the whole "solo" experience so that it will feel more progressive, and so that new players will be more guided when starting the game, until they know enough to participate to the whole Empire War.</p> <p><strong>Oldschool mining</strong></p> <p>Gone also are the automated mineral or gas extractors, which will be replaced by ships specialised in resource exploitation. Mining barges, quantum crushers, gas vessels, refinery platforms, transporters... you will blow the minds of the most hardened <em>Euro Truck Simulator</em> players!</p> <p>But the guardians of these resources might not look kindly upon this pillage...</p> <p><strong>Procedural at every step!</strong></p> <p>Finally, no more map creation live sessions on <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">our official Twitch channel</a>! Introducing the comfort of modern technology... From now on, the systems, spreading of resources, planets, and all the environment will be generated procedurally!</p> <p>This will allow a quasi-infinite variety of systems, which is quite exciting for the explorers among us! This also means that some systems will be strategically more interesting than others, because of their resources, their planets, or even some secret effects...</p> <p><strong>Mega-ships</strong></p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6431f6879cc8ca600420870eef3be17d370b0a60b6a.jpg" width="600" height="300"> </p> <p>We've already talked about them. You want them. We want them. The mega-ships will be on their way! It's still early to talk about them in more details, but this is one of our main medium-term objectives!</p> <p><strong>Say goodbye to these 1,000s of hours of work...</strong></p> <p>You would be surprised by the amount of work we had to "throw away" during the 3 years of development of <em>Gangs of Space</em>. This is unfortunately a necessary process for a project to mature, and this is all the more necessary for a MMO in which we have to try the features "on the field" to see how they work when confronted to many players at the same time.</p> <p>The new direction we are taking with <em>Gangs of Space</em> is of course no exception, so here are the features which will be added on our long list of sacrifices to the Gods of Game Design:</p> <ul> <li>Research and industry</li> <li>Space constructions</li> <li>Contracts and medals</li> <li>Enemy attack waves</li> <li>Combat systems</li> <li>PvP</li> </ul> <p>Some of these features will be recycled in something a bit different, some others might come back later, but for now we will focus on what we feel is the most important: give some sense of progress and a goal to <em>Gangs of Space</em>!</p> <hr> <p>We will make <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace">a English-speaking live on Twitch</a> this Sunday (October 19) at <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs+of+Space+English+livestream&amp;iso=20141019T16&amp;p1=195&amp;ah=2">16:00 GMT+2</a>, so if you have any questions or remarks about all of this, we will be there to answer! And in the meantime, see you <a href="//forum.gangsofspace.com">on the forums</a>!</p> Sat, 18 Oct 2014 18:00:12 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/86 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/86 <p>Fiuuuuuuuu, finally, I am back (and somehow alive) from the 4 days of <strong>Tokyo Game Show</strong>! What an adventure! </p> <p>Of course, preparing for such a big event started quite a while ago. In July to be precise, when Grouroux and I decided to apply for a booth in the Indie Game Area of the Tokyo Game Show. This is a very new section of the show, which actually started last year, and last year they had about 10 indie games on display.</p> <p>In August, they announced that 310 teams actually applied for the section this time, and learned that we were selected among 82 other games. This was already quite a victory! </p> <p>Now, the next step was to decide what we wanted to show, taking into account some basic constraints: we had space for only one demo PC, and no Internet access. Quite the pinch to show an MMO! It is exactly the kind of situation where you have to get creative, and after about 3 weeks of work I had a build of the game that could be played on a local server, on a unique map that contained a bit of everything that you can find in the game (the Motherbase, some conquest, some missions, a boss, some player-built buildings, many ships and items to try...). I even could join this server from my laptop in order to play together with our visitors, when I had to show them the cooperative parts of the game.</p> <p>I'm glossing over the preparations to make and order the flyers, posters, T-shirts... and jump to Thursday 18th on the morning. Bringing 2 suitcases worth of stuff across half of Tokyo and Chiba, we finally arrived at the <strong>Makuhari Messe convention center</strong> at around 8:00 to set up the booth.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/60576262a7afd5ddd330560d59ad93fe69f61698889.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_install_1.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/592d15456615d9afc1a327cb96199a30dd749223d54_375x500.jpg" width="375" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_install_1.jpg</span><span class="informations">1536x2048 877 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/589b4aa900771aa6c25707a0f0876eb6668b5581c91.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_install_2.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/5935e79e0a48ca176da5df1dbfc80aa569c3dd90a93_537x500.jpg" width="537" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_install_2.jpg</span><span class="informations">2940x2736 898 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>We started right away by taking some pictures with <em>The Japan Times</em> for <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2014/09/18/digital/indie-games-get-boost-tokyo-game-show#.VCIbUfmSy-x">an article about indie games in Japan</a> that they had been working on with us for some time now:</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/596b84fa851560f00ac4119b9f809769948375ec368.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_media_1.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/594bb19b8519f9ee4a86694d5225a8a0310f0e648f2_666x500.jpg" width="666" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_media_1.jpg</span><span class="informations">3648x2736 1.34 MB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>The 2 first days of Tokyo Game Show are called <strong>Business Days</strong> and are restricted to game media and people working in the game industry (developers, publishers, schools...). We had quite a few journalists stopping by and showing interest in <em>Gangs of Space</em>:</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/60632aea4dd7a14a387fd3f776ce3b94492bd0e3011.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_media_5.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/595bc6f5884df9592839a2399cb81d59c499055d9f1_375x500.jpg" width="375" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_media_5.jpg</span><span class="informations">1536x2048 751 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/594cc55911529770c3cf4c2bac40b8fae6e15262b30.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_media_2.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/59697885de597e0192ed6ad4697abc19ff757a6afc6_340x500.jpg" width="340" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_media_2.jpg</span><span class="informations">2280x3344 940 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>Including our fellow French TV crew at <a href="http://www.nolife-tv.com/"><em>Nolife</em></a>:</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/597e41336b428590026f099ac1528317a76cd55d281.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_media_5.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/5986ae1ff1057a4a62f80f29593c7f0cec4ec751861_654x500.jpg" width="654" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_media_5.jpg</span><span class="informations">3438x2628 1.21 MB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>During these days, we had the honor of being nominated for both the <a href="http://www.4gamer.net/games/000/G000000/20140920024/">4gamer Awards</a> and the <a href="http://www.4gamer.net/games/000/G000000/20140920024/">Dengeki Online Awards</a>. These are 2 VERY big Japanese magazines, and being chosen by them has been an honor! 4gamer actually wrote <a href="http://www.4gamer.net/games/275/G027540/20140921006/">a very lengthy article</a> about <em>Gangs of Space</em> which has probably been one of the best written about us so far! (but sorry guys, you need to learn Japanese because I'm not gonna translate this huge block of text ^^')</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/633967e1386a70878ae8cd8e102d5e5ecdb8be0464c.jpg" class="lightbox" title="Bx78gyZCUAAC7KE.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/616238c68066da904d22d7bf4906826ce1179f88e0f_690x387.jpg" width="690" height="387"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">Bx78gyZCUAAC7KE.jpg</span><span class="informations">1024x575 49.4 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>The next 2 days of Tokyo Game Show are called <strong>Public Days</strong> and are open to anyone. Just to give you an idea, this year the total attendance was 251,000 people, mostly over the 2 Public Days, so that's A LOT of people!!!</p> <p>In anticipation for the rush, here I am at 8:00 fixing some last-minute bugs when everyone else is still sleeping: (thank you, coffee vending machine! you have been my best buddy of the whole show!)</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/607d050e05b3afb72c4ac737a098314cabfbd2511a6.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_debug.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/59915c498e793ddf979270a314fb24fadcec90f86f3_666x500.jpg" width="666" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_debug.jpg</span><span class="informations">2048x1536 944 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>And heeeeere is coming the Horde of players! </p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/5853b685bb0835f98c29d293f291e95563a17cda7bc.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_crowd_3.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/60028ad9323d0eb63e8929e207dd5e2f33db9e8536e_628x500.jpg" width="628" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_crowd_3.jpg</span><span class="informations">3174x2526 807 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/587c2fd63ce7179f76a69abe893c0f887fb3eae02ed.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_crowd_1.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/601bf604242c2045c2949479f6823e075efc9944ab0_690x443.jpg" width="690" height="443"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_crowd_1.jpg</span><span class="informations">3648x2346 893 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>Actually, compared to the rest of the event in which is was barely possible to walk (reaching the toilets from our booth took me 10 min to cross the ~50m...), the Indie Game Area had a very nice attendance: enough people so that we were busy all the time, but fewt enough so that you could actually take your time talking to people, and that they wouldn't be lining for too long.</p> <p>On Saturday evening, there was an event called <strong>Indie Stream Fes 2014</strong> geared toward indie developers, and with the presence of some big shots like Keiji Inafune or Phil Spencer. We had already been nominated among 9 other games to win one of their awards, and actually were very fortunate to win the <strong>Technical Arts Award</strong> (which is a very nice way to say <em>Erhune, you rock as a programmer, would you marry me?</em> <img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/blush.png" title=":blush:" class="emoji" alt="blush" width="20" height="20"> ). </p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/601b2d6843fddb1454a0799596ef3ded083a6267f80.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_award_1.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/60228c02d56a56a713fd54ef8d8c694d796214ccf82_668x500.jpg" width="668" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_award_1.jpg</span><span class="informations">3588x2682 1.14 MB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>Here are <a href="https://indie-stream.net/isf/isf2014/2014_award/2014_award_winners">all the winners</a>:</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6088dab2093574ab2cbd717d728b266424f93bdce41.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_award_2.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/60341983eba112be3e7ad879bde0746ad01708828f3_666x500.jpg" width="666" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_award_2.jpg</span><span class="informations">2048x1536 783 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>That was insanely cool, but it also meant I almost couldn't enjoy the food, having to present <em>Gangs of Space</em> to another bunch of people who were suddenly interested in the game ^^</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/600b97a95d53c20881d7e05088943c5017373c40bab.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_award_3.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6044593d79786bf91a3eb1af5b2ef931b94309d300b_690x433.jpg" width="690" height="433"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_award_3.jpg</span><span class="informations">3198x2010 719 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>But that makes a nice new decoration for our booth!</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/603f4492fbd487a40975ae0f2a0ab4991819a2bd7d9.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_award_booth_1.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6059f1058c5a9c584770ea98755b91f7a7d1900356c_375x500.jpg" width="375" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_award_booth_1.jpg</span><span class="informations">2736x3648 1.19 MB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/604fd472adefa5f3eb2e3f9024055a57e3309cf25d8.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_award_booth_2.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6064148ec8e9816772ab0afa660306061226e728b98_612x500.jpg" width="612" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_award_booth_2.jpg</span><span class="informations">3354x2736 909 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/586023dbed9fbf077f997e0155de40c806788bc3735.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_crowd_2.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/607c339486260789c5fb9eb7abebaf33588a499f13d_626x500.jpg" width="626" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_crowd_2.jpg</span><span class="informations">2736x2184 900 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>As an award winner, I was also invited to talk a bit at the <a href="http://poriporiclub.blogspot.jp/"><strong>PoriPori☆Club</strong></a> live-streamed show. They are a bunch of high-profile Japanese indies who talk every month about indie games and game development while drinking some beers. On my right is Kimura-san, the developer of the insanely-fun <a href="http://oniongames.jp/">Million Onion Hotel</a>. And on his right, our Beer God, <a href="http://www16.big.or.jp/~zun/">Touhou</a>'s creator ZUN.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/59515b18dcf8b76c7c42f0aca259820a173e3730569.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_poripori_club.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6088d1591a5ea4ec1002f363f767edbbb87f9dcdaf7_690x378.jpg" width="690" height="378"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_poripori_club.jpg</span><span class="informations">3402x1866 904 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>In the end, it was really fun to meet so many interesting people, and I want to thank everyone that came to our booth and tried <em>Gangs of Space</em>, and everyone I talked to during these 4 crazy days. Including, but not limited to:</p> <p>RIKI-san, the crazy creator of indie-NES game <a href="http://kirakira-star-night.riki2riki.com/en/">KIRA KIRA STAR</a>. Check out this guy, he's just too crazy ^^</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/590568c5f7f062d7d1808b6fea296dd52b718016d99.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_friends_1.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6091da0e76a1f5fcc020929aedabaa6069d693e3c97_628x500.jpg" width="628" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_friends_1.jpg</span><span class="informations">3438x2736 1.19 MB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>Kumachom, former <em>PuyoPuyo</em> champion and crazy <em>Ikaruga Double Play</em> player, who came to show his madz dual-stick skillz after making a demonstration on the Alienware booth:</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/5916c37c3a22c991fdc564bf69b08aa0d49137b3ab9.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_friends_2.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/610c0830c4e24455458daa476efcd914c294bf10c2c_666x500.jpg" width="666" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_friends_2.jpg</span><span class="informations">3648x2736 1.27 MB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>Our fellow indie MMO developer Robby Zinchak who also won a well-deserved Technical Award for his <a href="http://8bitmmo.net/">8BitMMO</a> at <a href="http://expo.nikkeibp.co.jp/tgs/2014/exhibition/english/exhibit/sense.html">Sense of Wonder Night</a>.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/59291396ac09ad8b0e67de77962d190b6ed0fb01b22.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_friends_3.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6112bdbd9fd117cf4e3b2d4b0cf88639371e74167a7_375x500.jpg" width="375" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_friends_3.jpg</span><span class="informations">2736x3648 1.25 MB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>And so many thanks to Sony who sponsored all the booths in the Indie Game Area and tried to maintain all of us alive by refilling us with bottles of water, and to our friends who helped me tend the booth while the evil Grouroux was absent:</p> <p>Swordless Zorro cosplayer <a href="https://twitter.com/fabienvauthey">@fabienvauthey</a>:</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/598d07734a9dddad494c6f0dc48fb984b34c031c043.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_staff_1.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/6123b24f45ea9d75b042b23728a4afd69f76d7747df_354x500.jpg" width="354" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_staff_1.jpg</span><span class="informations">2584x3648 1.01 MB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>Mahjong-player extraordinaire <a href="https://twitter.com/polm23">@polm</a>:</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/602c221dae8477977d6d983d5425a5e46b8bcd3ec6e.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_staff_2.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/61350edddc6b7c698c98b9b861c755b1c70e30a95af_375x500.jpg" width="375" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_staff_2.jpg</span><span class="informations">2736x3648 1.16 MB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>And genius T-shirt maker Paprika of <a href="https://www.akibammo.com/">AkibaMMO</a>:</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/599938151a916bb62f20c0bfafba47d3e925654d86e.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_staff_3.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/614c9612e2c4243d091b3f1e721a96f6dafdd7ffc86_383x500.jpg" width="383" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_staff_3.jpg</span><span class="informations">2100x2736 685 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>That's all folks!</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/5887816991817cdac3f93960a5675022047894bff00.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs2014_end.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/61516e16135551ffbf9ef1f70ef1da6389a64d83167_690x485.jpg" width="690" height="485"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs2014_end.jpg</span><span class="informations">3588x2526 1.04 MB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> Wed, 24 Sep 2014 08:29:51 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/82 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/82 <p>Sooooo... The preparations for the <strong>Tokyo Game Show</strong> for the next 4 days are getting to a close! </p> <p>Compiling the TGS build of the game...</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/541461669afc19ad32cd9d9b5505bcd3e6abc42ec52.jpg" width="520" height="292"> </p> <p>Home-made T-shirts for an home-made game ^_^</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/542b874e2323e0009ee2d068c892709b1eb02a6d479.jpg" width="520" height="292"> </p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/543eda4dbd751ccd3817d0b48d2be48b7aa0746a5e3.jpg" width="520" height="322"> </p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/544e948802a9d896a5d6a08b6c0dc25ecff8fb97a25.jpg" width="520" height="288"> </p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/545b7e7408a3bdcb895d8c597fc7dc08347155c72e5.jpg" width="520" height="338"> </p> <p>Flyers !</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/546c73f8becc8df4cf4cfc666bbcc6d71fbbe159947.jpg" class="lightbox" title="tgs_3_flyers.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/573b37d6dc9ba126fff7ece899f522e1182252ba4cb_377x500.jpg" width="377" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs_3_flyers.jpg</span><span class="informations">520x689 133 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div> </p> <p>Poster !</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/5478c7b3293e13c6e7f2cadda385648e921f04acc72.jpg" width="520" height="337"> </p> <p>And not forgetting one thousand million cables to be ready for anything bad that could happen...</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/54880a736a8ba23936729ccccaac5b7fcdde49f066c.jpg" width="520" height="327"> </p> <p>Now we need to fit all that, along with one desktop computer, one 27" screen, 2 laptops, some network gear, business cards, some drinks &amp; food, into a few suitcases and ride the 1-and-a-half-hour train to the Makuhari Messe convention center, and hopefully we should be good!</p> <p>See you there if you plan to attend, or see you soon here for some pictures of the event!</p> <p>PS. It seems that <em>Gangs of Space</em> has been nominated for the <strong>INDIE STREAM AWARDS 2014</strong> so fingers crossed for good news on this side too! We'll have the final verdict on Saturday evening...</p> Wed, 17 Sep 2014 10:16:05 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/80 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/80 <p>This is official now: <em>Gangs of Space</em> will be exhibiting at this year's <strong>Tokyo Game Show</strong>!</p> <p>If you are around Tokyo on <strong>September 18-19</strong> (press only) or <strong>20-21</strong> (public days), come and say hi to Erhune at <strong>booth 3-C1-17 in the Indie Game Area</strong>.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/5354b6700dac92f030e1d0d7a9666095f122bf43dea.png" class="lightbox" title="tgs_header.png"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/54474b77d13a6f01618e0e1578a4bf79d0b2ab3ed06_690x434.png" width="690" height="434"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">tgs_header.png</span><span class="informations">1831x1153 921 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>It's exciting to be part of one of biggest game events in the world, and a bit overwhelming too ^_^'</p> <p>Since we're right in the middle of the development of many new features, we are still not sure about what will make the cut into the version we will be showing there, but in any case we will have flyers to hand over, bullets to fire, enemies to kill, loot to loot, and more...!</p> <p><a href="https://indie-stream.net/news/3311">List of all indie exhibitors at TGS2014</a></p> <p><a href="http://expo.nikkeibp.co.jp/tgs/2014/en/">Official TGS2014 website</a></p> Mon, 01 Sep 2014 15:07:19 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/77 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/77 <p>We have started the Alpha Test Sessions 8 months ago (the <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/fr/news/11">first session</a> was on October 13, 2013!), and during those 13 sessions, we have collected a tremendous amount of feedback, and are much clearer about the strengths and weaknesses of <em>Gangs of Space</em>. Thank you so much everyone for your help! </p> <p><strong>We have decided to end this phase of tests for the time being.</strong></p> <p>We need to take some time to get some perspective on what we've learned, and find the best way to evolve the game with your feedback.</p> <p>We don't have a precise date, but we think that we will start <strong>another series of test sessions during the 4th quarter of 2014</strong>.</p> <p>Until then, we wish you pleasant summer vacations, and we'll keep on communicating here, on the <a href="//forum.gangsofspace.com">forum</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/GangsOfSpace">twitter</a> or <a href="https://www.facebook.com/gangsofspace">facebook</a> !</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/5296e0a11825430f289a42d1a3b32df6f765a8570b9.jpg" width="500" height="375"></p> Thu, 26 Jun 2014 21:33:30 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/74 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/74 <p>It is never too late to write an Alpha session report! So, with our apologies for taking so much time, all our thanks to the participants of this session, and some catch-up for those who didn't!</p> <h2>Technical Heaven</h2> <p>No technical trouble to report during this session.</p> <h2>Back to the features</h2> <p>The new display of <strong>conquest time</strong> seems more understandable to everyone.</p> <p>In the same vein, the new <strong>conquest progress system</strong> fixed most issues of previous versions, by enabling reasonable conquest durations in any circumstances.</p> <p>But now, the lack of diversity of systems to conquer is showing more and more...</p> <hr><p>The new settings for <strong>game resolution</strong> have seen a 100% positive response, by allowing everyone to have a bit more space to put all the various UI elements!</p> <hr><p>Finally, the big one of this session was the <strong>PvP test</strong>. </p> <p>Unfortunately, 3 weeks was not enough time to come up with a decent enough implementation of the feature in order for the test to be meaningful. During this session, it was way too difficult to hit other players because of the way player-to-player hits are currently computed, and this made the fights way too long, or even impossible in some cases.</p> <p>We still think that PvP might be a interesting gameplay element to add to <em>Gangs of Space</em>. We will keep on working on better implementations of this feature, and do further tests to give our final verdict.</p> <p>For the info, the first 2 player kills have been on Grouroux's tab. The first one was JiuZhongBaXian, the leader of <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3401d810a2e5d3081aa496c36f4e35df0f5021dbb86.png" width="20" height="14"> Clementine Space Industries</strong>. The second one was Arsdant, leader of <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/342d5619e240bd538d9e2fafe4020454078d68ec770.png" width="20" height="14"> Thanatonauthes</strong>, which took the first place of the Hero Ladder (by a wide margin!) "thanks" to this death. But then Grouroux met justice, and got killed quite a lot after that!</p> <h2>The Gang Times</h2> <p>The Gang Ladder has been completely thrown all over during this session! A few big Gangs didn't mobilize enough troops to defend their territories, and have fallen quite drastically.</p> <ul> <li> <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3769e14441bed0f64caac4d92c891694da99b50b2c5.png" width="20" height="14"> Foxy Gang</strong> managed to pull off a miracle, and jumped from #7 straight to #1, with a total territory of 6,608 u². A big round of applause to the new <strong>Administrators of the Quadrant</strong>!</li> <li>On the opposite, <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3401d810a2e5d3081aa496c36f4e35df0f5021dbb86.png" width="20" height="14"> Clementine Space Industries</strong> have suffered a lot. They managed to keep rank #2 with 4,702 u² of territory, but lost 1,518 u² because of enemy attacks. Quite hard on them! Let's hope they can raise back and make up for their losses...</li> <li> <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/342d5619e240bd538d9e2fafe4020454078d68ec770.png" width="20" height="14"> Thanatonautes</strong> managed to reach #3 (2,788 u²) by overtaking their lifelong rivals <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/341c44eac552e59cae094837de4ed0cec3c1b79841a.png" width="20" height="14"> Supremacy Inc.!</li> <li>At #4 (2,027 u²), <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/526062f1f55063f5dd8cc7161183548ae6e2bd5c915.png" width="20" height="14"> Kusaribe</strong> make a remarkable entry in the ladder. This is one of the biggest Polish Gangs, and they have the potential to shake the Universe. Be careful, <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3401d810a2e5d3081aa496c36f4e35df0f5021dbb86.png" width="20" height="14"> CSI and Foxy Gang!</li> <li> <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/341c44eac552e59cae094837de4ed0cec3c1b79841a.png" width="20" height="14"> Supremacy Inc.</strong> lost 2 ranks with their 1,834 u², because of a total loss of 1,204 u². This is quite a downer for this old Gang that was used to the top positions!</li> <li>In #6 (1,498 u²), great performance of <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/52770437a688a3bc9818bad85a1ee6ef17b7db11fce.png" width="20" height="14"> Questionable Fatherly Dragons</strong>, entering in the top 10 for the first time!</li> <li>In #7 (1,398 u²), <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/37958b413086126d5062c410f52d5979a72fb16d1f7.png" width="20" height="14"> Rest In Pieces</strong> climb slowly the ladder, by almost doubling up their territory.</li> <li>In #8 (1,237 u²), <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/33915355622e13431cb8b969e87b82e859c00cbf7fb.png" width="20" height="14"> Les Enfants d'Illuvatar</strong> fell down 4 ranks, even though they managed to keep their territory intact.</li> <li>In #9 (1,172 u²), <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3446e9f0e55099bdd5e855dd344243cfa6508c40c9f.png" width="20" height="14"> Les Gentlemen</strong> also lose 4 ranks, even though they lost only 3 u²!?</li> <li>And finally, in #10 (560 u²), <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/5280ed2717d6fbf303f38ded1c6485dea51368efd85.png" width="20" height="14"> Pitigang </strong> managed to snatch the last ladder rank from <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/345b190f3120a265fec7d722798a7687738c6a71993.png" width="20" height="14"> Lazuli.</li> </ul><p>Let's end this section with a few words for those Gangs who left the rankings:</p> <ul> <li>The first "Big Gang" of <em>Gangs of Space</em>, <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/343ac98ab9a5904255ae3e8c586245482e27878e701.png" width="20" height="14"> TMG</strong> has definitely lost its former glory. Here ends their agony which started a few months ago.</li> <li> <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/33857dd3113eb123dbfca7616eeeed9049a62436b68.png" width="20" height="14"> BitGang</strong> which had been the first mostly-English-speaking Gang has now lost most of their territories.</li> <li>And finally, <strong><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/345b190f3120a265fec7d722798a7687738c6a71993.png" width="20" height="14"> Lazuli</strong>, with a territory of 424 u², ends up evicted by <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/5280ed2717d6fbf303f38ded1c6485dea51368efd85.png" width="20" height="14"> Pitigang.</li> </ul><h2>Postmortem of this version</h2> <p><strong>Not good <img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/frowning.png" title=":frowning:" class="emoji" alt="frowning" width="20" height="20"></strong></p> <ul> <li>PvP is not yet "there", in big part because of immaturity of the implementation</li> <li>The Universe doesn't really feel "alive"</li> <li>The difficulty curve of conquest might have been smoothed too much</li> </ul><p><strong>Good <img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/smile.png" title=":smile:" class="emoji" alt="smile" width="20" height="20"></strong> </p> <ul> <li>The concept of PvP</li> <li>Multi-resolution support</li> <li>The new conquest system</li> </ul><h2>Stats, stats, stats!</h2> <p><strong>Fearsome PKs</strong></p> <ul> <li>#1 with 7 kills<ul> <li>didia</li> <li>Skullbot</li> <li>Grouroux</li> </ul> </li> <li> <p>#4 with 3 kills</p> <ul> <li>elfaus</li> <li>arsdant</li> </ul> </li> <li> <p>#6 with 2 kills</p> <ul> <li>privetbenladen</li> <li>Kinder Pingu</li> <li>cpinpon</li> <li>RodZilla</li> </ul> </li> </ul><p><strong>Harvest</strong></p> <ul><li>36,695 Medals <em>(--)</em><ul> <li>15,793 for contracts <em>(--)</em> </li> <li>3,134 for pacifications <em>(---)</em> </li> <li>17,768 for the killboard <em>(++) (thanks Arsdant!) <img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/stuck_out_tongue.png" title=":stuck_out_tongue:" class="emoji" alt="stuck_out_tongue" width="20" height="20"></em> </li> </ul> </li></ul><p><strong>Losses</strong></p> <ul> <li>194 ships destroyed forever <em>(--)</em> </li> <li>6,640 items lost on board <em>(-)</em> </li> </ul><p><strong>Conquest of the Universe</strong></p> <ul> <li>384 sectors conquered by the players <em>(+++)</em> </li> <li>223 reconquered by the enemy forces <em>(+++)</em> </li> <li>223 sectors pacified <em>(---)</em> </li> <li>8 sectors sold <em>(stable)</em> </li> </ul><p><strong>Dead things</strong> </p> <ul> <li>171,630 Pirnats atomized <em>(--)</em> </li> <li>32,397 Asteroids mined <em>(---)</em> </li> <li>24,746 Vermillons liquidated <em>(---)</em> </li> <li>59 Enemy portals closed <em>(+++)</em> </li> </ul><p>And in details:</p> <ul> <li>46,321 Pirnat Wasp</li> <li>37,471 Pirnat Scout</li> <li>31,178 Asteroid S0</li> <li>22,168 Pirnat Scout MKII</li> <li>20,969 Pirnat Spike</li> <li>16,973 Pirnat Miner</li> <li>11,447 Vermillon Hermios</li> <li>9,237 Pirnat Hunter</li> <li>6,033 Vermillon Melenos</li> <li>4,607 Pirnat Hunter MKII</li> <li>4,386 Pirnat Pickelhaube</li> <li>4,255 Vermillon Berthos</li> <li>4,004 Pirnat Miner MKII</li> <li>3,665 Pirnat Drake</li> <li>1,964 Vermillon Berthos Evo</li> <li>1,028 Pirnat Hunter X2</li> <li>880 Asteroid S1</li> <li>741 Vermillon Melenos Evo</li> <li>732 Pirnat Lobstor</li> <li>306 Vermillon Merros</li> <li>251 Asteroid S2</li> <li>69 Asteroid S3</li> <li>59 Enemy Portal</li> <li>19 Asteroid S4</li> <li>6 Pirnat Mega Blade</li> <li>4 Pirnat Giga Blade</li> </ul><p>Which makes...</p> <ul><li>1,515 enemies per player <em>(+)</em> </li></ul><p>And finally, <strong>the players that earned most Medals by their deaths</strong>:</p> <ul> <li>6,104 arsdant - <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/342d5619e240bd538d9e2fafe4020454078d68ec770.png" width="20" height="14"> Thanatonautes </li> <li>1,410 Kakos - <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3401d810a2e5d3081aa496c36f4e35df0f5021dbb86.png" width="20" height="14"> Clementine Space Industries</li> <li>1,104 Melitas - independant</li> <li>969 Kinder Pingu - <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3769e14441bed0f64caac4d92c891694da99b50b2c5.png" width="20" height="14"> Foxy Gang</li> <li>965 Kinder Pingu - <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3769e14441bed0f64caac4d92c891694da99b50b2c5.png" width="20" height="14"> Foxy Gang</li> <li>848 privetbenladen - <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/37958b413086126d5062c410f52d5979a72fb16d1f7.png" width="20" height="14"> Rest In Pieces</li> <li>528 JiuZhongBaXian - <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3401d810a2e5d3081aa496c36f4e35df0f5021dbb86.png" width="20" height="14"> Clementine Space Industries</li> <li>528 didia - <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3769e14441bed0f64caac4d92c891694da99b50b2c5.png" width="20" height="14"> Foxy Gang</li> <li>468 StalkerC - <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3401d810a2e5d3081aa496c36f4e35df0f5021dbb86.png" width="20" height="14"> Clementine Space Industries</li> <li>457 RodZilla - <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/342d5619e240bd538d9e2fafe4020454078d68ec770.png" width="20" height="14"> Thanatonautes </li> </ul> Wed, 25 Jun 2014 20:46:32 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/73 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/73 <p>The announcement of <strong>Player-versus-Player (PvP)</strong> for version 0.19 of <em>Gangs of Space</em> has probably be quite a surprise for many of you. To be honest, that has also been a surprise for us too <img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/sweat_smile.png" title=":sweat_smile:" class="emoji" alt="sweat_smile" width="20" height="20"></p> <p>We have always thought of <em>Gangs of Space</em> as a <strong>collaborative-competitive</strong> game. "I'm not your friend, but let's work together to be more efficient." That was our intent. But since a few versions, we have been feeling that the conquest aspect of the game wasn't "enough" in the current state to provide the long-term fun you'd expect from a subscription MMO. </p> <p>Since the question of PvP has been a recurring question we've got from the community, after many discussions between ourselves, we've concluded that it <strong>MIGHT</strong> be the solution to our current problem of "long-term fun".</p> <h2>So... let's test it!</h2> <p>So, this week-end, version 0.19 of <em>Gangs of Space</em> will be our first PvP-enabled version! </p> <p>Since PvP is a VERY complex feature (for technical reasons of course, but even more so for the game design), we need to give a big disclaimer: <strong>this will be a test, just a test</strong>! </p> <p>Nothing that you will try in version 0.19 will be definitive. There will be bugs, there will be balance issues, there will be some items that won't work as we'd expect. DON'T PANIC. Everything is under control <img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/smile.png" title=":smile:" class="emoji" alt="smile" width="20" height="20"></p> <p>We might test a few different approaches in the next few versions. We might even scrap PvP altogether if it is not satisfactory. But in any case, you will be the witnesses of a very historical event of the life of this game!</p> <h2>In the wild wild space...</h2> <p>In version 0.19, the rules will be simple:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>All conquest systems will be PvP-enabled during the conquest</strong>. This means that the Motherbase, the fight systems, and the already-conquered systems (safe OR under enemy attack) will be always SAFE.</li> <li> <strong>In PvP-enabled systems, your hits will hit everyone. Even yourself!</strong> Bahmut or Aurora pilots will want to be careful with that rule! This also means that you need to be careful not to shoot your fellow Gang members!</li> </ul><p>We know that this <em>full-friendly-fire</em> rule will be controversial. But before swearing that we are completely crazy, think a bit about it: this means that big Gangs will actually have to be more careful than small ones. This means that a single player can completely break a big group, if this group is not well organised. <strong>This makes PvP a matter of organization, synergies between ship classes, and not only of brute force!</strong></p> <p>Also: since you need to be careful with your allies, this means you CAN be careful with strangers too. <strong>PvP-enabled doesn't mean you HAVE to kill everyone on sight.</strong> Making friends will be even more useful than before, and think twice when you plan to attack a lone player: another Gang might decide that this attitude makes you too dangerous to let you live!</p> <h2>Balance</h2> <p>None of the existing ships have been designed by taking PvP into account. Some of them might be overpowered, or useless in PvP context. </p> <p>But there are so many possibilities that we prefer to see how this will turn out before nerfing-out everything.</p> <p>Just remember the lesson you learned in <em>EVE Online</em>: <strong>Never fly a ship you can't afford to loose!</strong> (in PvP areas, at least!)</p> <h2>Space politics</h2> <p>Since no Gang can be guaranteed to dominate all the others, all the time, diplomacy will be even more necessary than before. This gives a place and a role for everyone, even smaller Gangs.</p> <p>By the game of alliances, protection and contracts, any small fight can degenerate into a declaration of war than can light the Galaxy in fire!</p> <p>And once the war is over, once the ships have been torn into pieces and their crews into small DNA molecules, then the time will come to rebuild, trade, reconquest and prepare for the next fight!</p> <h2>What about the buildings?</h2> <p><strong>For version 0.19, the buildings</strong> (bases, extractors, laboratories...) <strong>cannot be destroyed by other players.</strong></p> <p>But in the future, they will have structure and shield points, like player ships. In PvP-enabled systems, they could be destroyed by hostile players.</p> <p>But this also opens a path to new buildings that could have PvP uses: attack turrets, shields, barriers, automatic buffs or debuffs.... What can you imagine?</p> <h2>Ho my PK!</h2> <p>What about <strong>Player Killers (PK)</strong> that will eventually appear in PvP-enabled systems? Let's consider them as a necessary evil. </p> <p>The danger of bad encounters, the frustration of getting killed in a place you thought was empty (did you really check your minimap carefully enough?), the thrill of running away successfully or destroying your aggressor when he doesn't expect it... THAT's life!</p> <h2>Your voice</h2> <p>Don't hesitate to write us your thoughts or questions in the comments. It is a very real opportunity to help us shape the future of <em>Gangs of Space</em>! </p> Fri, 06 Jun 2014 21:17:34 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/69 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/69 <p>Many thanks to everyone that participated in this session, and especially to those who used the opportunity of the availability of the <em>Gemeter Fox</em> to <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/buy">pre-order the game</a>! It's thank to you that we can continue working on the game, so thank you again!</p> <p>Before the report itself, here is a list of interesting things:</p> <ul> <li><strong>The next session (#13) will take place from June 7 to 8, again from 12:00 GMT.</strong></li> <li>We are waiting for <strong><a href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/category/en-gangs-of-space">your feedback and suggestions on the forum</a></strong>.</li> <li>If you missed the session, you can do some catch-up on these following recorded livestreams (in French):<ul> <li><a>Seldell from <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3769e14441bed0f64caac4d92c891694da99b50b2c5.png" width="20" height="14"> Foxy gang</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.twitch.tv/bestiyo/b/529714358">Bestio from <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/37760be197b11872db9773386387a4075006757b373.png" width="20" height="14"> Sac Fighter</a></li> <li> <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/the_skullbot/profile/pastBroadcasts">Skullbot from <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/37886623547fe15af54b2999d3bc0caa9836c771c4a.png" width="20" height="14"> Krauser no Daibouken</a> (15 hours of live over the week-end!!)</li> <li>And at least, <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/342d5619e240bd538d9e2fafe4020454078d68ec770.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Arsdant</strong> created <a href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/t/apprendre-a-jouer-a-gangs-of-space-avec-un-tuto-video/308">a series of video tutorials (in French)</a>. If you stil have some questions about <em>Gangs of Space</em>, you might find your answers there!</li> </ul> </li> </ul><h2>Technical side</h2> <p>The session was pretty smooth on this side. No big server issue. A few UI refresh issues were fixed by the quick deployment of a patched version 0.18.1.</p> <p><em>Abyss</em> ships had a damage bug that allowed them to do exponential damage and potentially one-shot bosses, but the amount of abuse of this bug has been limited. Of course, this bug will be fixed in version 0.19.</p> <p>The availability of <em>Gemeter Hussar</em> has been delayed for some players, but by Sunday everything was fixed on this side.</p> <h2>Back to the features</h2> <p><strong>The two new ship variations</strong> have been largely adopted, by the Polish community for the <em>Gemeter Hussar</em>, and the players with pre-orders for the <em>Gemeter Fox</em>.</p> <p>We don't know yet when new ships will make their arrival in the game, but this time it felt good to see some variation around the Motherbase!</p> <hr><p>Globally, the usage and usefullness of <strong>ship skills</strong> has been well understood. But since their efficiency is largely dependant of the crew level and the power of the equipped weapon, we had a lot of remarks on the relative over-powerfulness or uselessness of some of these skills.</p> <p>Some balancing and small improvements will be required on this feature, but as a whole, the feature has been a success and we will keep it and improve it for the future versions of <em>Gangs of Space</em>.</p> <hr><p>And at last, <strong>the new ship UI</strong> seems to have make almost the unanimity: it's better than before! Of course there are still minor issues, like the increased difficulty to see what's going on below you, and that the inventory window is a bit too big to be kept constantly on screen. We will continue on improving these points, along some other minor things.</p> <h2>Gang News</h2> <p>The bigger Gangs have been pretty quiet this session, even though the defence took way less efforts than during last session. Since most big Gangs already have a territory that is enough to sustain lots of research and production, we've seen them concentrating on the management of their bases rather than new conquests.</p> <p>But below these big installed Gangs, the competition has been fierce:</p> <ul> <li><p>At the top of the ladder, <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3401d810a2e5d3081aa496c36f4e35df0f5021dbb86.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Clementine Space Industries</strong> (6,222 u²) keep their position of <strong>Quadrant Administrators</strong> for the 3rd time in a row, and manage to increase a bit their territory on top of that.</p></li> <li><p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/341c44eac552e59cae094837de4ed0cec3c1b79841a.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Supremacy</strong> (3,038 u²) and the <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/342d5619e240bd538d9e2fafe4020454078d68ec770.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>thanatonautes</strong> (2,417 u²) stay on #2 and #3 position respectively, and increased their territory by almost the same amount (+372 u² et +351 u²). The competition for the #2 spot is still very much active!</p></li> <li><p>For their second session, <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/33915355622e13431cb8b969e87b82e859c00cbf7fb.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Les Enfants d'Illuvatar</strong> (1,237 u²) passed the symbolic bar of 1,000 u², and jump at the #4 spot, leaving the former leaders <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/343ac98ab9a5904255ae3e8c586245482e27878e701.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>TMG</strong> behind them. This is a Gang to keep your eyes on in the near future!</p></li> <li><p>Former rulers of the Alpha, <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/343ac98ab9a5904255ae3e8c586245482e27878e701.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>TMG</strong> (1,187 u²) keep falling down the ladders. Some part of their territory has been lost because of an enemy attack on a <em>TMG</em> system they were governing.</p></li> <li><p>Despite a small increase of 136 u², <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3446e9f0e55099bdd5e855dd344243cfa6508c40c9f.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Les Gentlemen</strong> (1,175 u²) loose one position and get the #6 spot. They only lacked 13 u² to pass <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/343ac98ab9a5904255ae3e8c586245482e27878e701.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>TMG</strong>!</p></li> <li><p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3769e14441bed0f64caac4d92c891694da99b50b2c5.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Foxy Gang</strong> (959 u²) jump directly in the TOP10 at rank #7. Lead by Seldell of <a href="http://www.indiemag.fr/">indiemag.fr</a>, not a member of this Gang spared any effort to conquest anything possible, and prove to the world that they aren't softies! Only 6 ranks more to prove your full worth to the world!</p></li> <li><p>At rank #8, <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/37958b413086126d5062c410f52d5979a72fb16d1f7.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Rest In Pieces</strong> (722 u²) are also new in the TOP10. Zaltais, leader of this Gang, is also the creator of the famous <a href="http://goswatcher.freevar.com/">GoS Watcher</a> website that give you in realtime lots of information about the game!</p></li> <li><p>In #9, <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/33857dd3113eb123dbfca7616eeeed9049a62436b68.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>BitGang</strong> (713 u²) increased their territory, but not enough to keep their previous position. Let's hope that will find again the dynamic of the last sessions, and continue the competition!</p></li> <li><p>And at the #10 position, <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/345b190f3120a265fec7d722798a7687738c6a71993.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Lazuli</strong> (424 u²) lose 2 positions and some territories. Let's hope that Wirow's Gang catch up during next session!</p></li> </ul><p>As expected during last report, <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/34750d24606787921859ae4e52c8cbd889bee041c3c.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>LesLutinsPsychopathes</strong> and <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/34848e03ec09d02d2cb802957ed3f75970cbb815b98.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>BiereChausetteCorp</strong> fell off the rankings because of the arrival of new expansionist Gangs, and because they didn't defend enough their territories from enemy attacks.</p> <h2>Postmortem of v0.18</h2> <p><strong>Not good</strong></p> <ul> <li>Conquests get quite boring after some time, especially when a Gang has "enough" territory</li> <li>The game's lack of "rythm", especially visible during this session</li> <li>The UI is now very cramped with all the new interfaces!</li> </ul><p><strong>Good!</strong></p> <ul> <li>Ship skills</li> <li>New interfaces</li> <li>The integration of new communities (especially English- and Polish-speaking)</li> </ul><h2>Stats, stats, stats!</h2> <p><strong>Harvest</strong></p> <ul><li>54,063 Medals <em>(-)</em><ul> <li>29,805 for contracts <em>(-)</em> </li> <li>13,362 for pacifications <em>(-)</em> </li> <li>10,896 for killboards <em>(--)</em> </li> </ul> </li></ul><p><strong>Losses</strong></p> <ul><li>300 ships lost forever <em>(--)</em><ul><li>8,558 items destroyed on board <em>(--)</em> </li></ul> </li></ul><p><strong>Conquest of the Universe</strong></p> <ul> <li>170 sectors conquered by players <em>(--)</em> </li> <li>41 sectors conquered by enemy forces <em>(---)</em> </li> <li>885 sectors "pacified" <em>(--)</em> </li> <li>9 sectors sold <em>(+)</em> </li> </ul><p><strong>Extermination</strong> </p> <ul> <li>110,009 Asteroid S0</li> <li>54,246 Pirnat Scout</li> <li>49,230 Pirnat Wasp</li> <li>34,470 Vermillon Hermios</li> <li>34,319 Pirnat Scout MKII</li> <li>26,435 Pirnat Spike</li> <li>26,223 Pirnat Miner</li> <li>12,552 Vermillon Melenos</li> <li>11,308 Pirnat Hunter</li> <li>10,008 Vermillon Berthos Evo</li> <li>8,337 Vermillon Berthos</li> <li>8,001 Pirnat Miner MKII</li> <li>7,150 Pirnat Drake</li> <li>6,451 Pirnat Pickelhaube</li> <li>5,259 Pirnat Hunter MKII</li> <li>4,331 Vermillon Melenos Evo</li> <li>3,239 Asteroid S1</li> <li>2,512 Pirnat Hunter X2</li> <li>1,607 Vermillon Merros</li> <li>1,328 Pirnat Lobstor</li> <li>1,098 Asteroid S2</li> <li>276 Asteroid S3</li> <li>76 Asteroid S4</li> <li>26 Enemy Portal</li> <li>24 Pirnat Mega Blade</li> <li>16 Pirnat Giga Blade</li> </ul><p>which is:</p> <ul><li>1,448 enemies per player <em>(-)</em> </li></ul><p><strong>Our most valiant heroes:</strong></p> <ul> <li>2,720 Kyradir - Clementine Space Industries</li> <li>1,356 Yoshi - Blood Rains</li> <li>1,006 MinoThaures - Les Enfants D Illuvatar</li> <li>406 Blitzing Road - Questionable Fatherly Dragons</li> <li>388 Hayamore - Foxy gang</li> <li>377 Serafiel - Vear</li> <li>375 Ollof - Clementine Space Industries</li> <li>307 Blackomen - BitGang</li> <li>273 elfaus - Clementine Space Industries</li> <li>259 Eniotan - Pitigang</li> </ul><h2>In our crystal ball</h2> <p>No forecast in this news, but we are waiting on a big <strong>Road Map</strong> for future version that will be published here in a few days. Just know that we're already working on the big new thing for v0.19... Let's just give you a hint... In 3 letters: <code>P _ _</code></p> Sat, 24 May 2014 20:10:06 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/67 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/67 <p>We thought this update would be a small one. We were wrong! Feature after feature, we now have a whole festival of <strong>new things waiting for you the test session of May 17 12:00 GMT</strong>!</p> <h2>Two new ship variations</h2> <p>On May 10, <a href="http://mmorpg.org.pl/news/zobacz/Event-dla-polak%C3%B3w-w-kosmicznym-MMO-Gangs-of-Space"><strong>we partenered with MMORPG.org.pl</strong></a> and created two new <em>Gemeter</em> variations <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace/c/4227742">during an epic 4h live dev stream</a> all in English! </p> <p><strong>Gemeter Hussar</strong> has been created specially for the Polish community of MMORPG.org.pl, with the help of their readers. Its characteristics and the way to build it are identical to the <em>Imperial Gemeter</em>, but thanks to its unique skin, Polish players will be able to recognize each other, and create powerful Polish-speaking battalions of hussars ready to dominate the universe! <img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/smile.png" title=":smile:" class="emoji" alt="smile" width="20" height="20"></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/359716443dbcdd18574d168ad960d8306984112b406.png" class="lightbox" title="GemeterHussar.png"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1585c1481e84d172163d4ecc1c40f682b24d2f88df5_690x316.png" width="690" height="316"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">GemeterHussar.png</span><span class="informations">982x450 201 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><strong>Gemeter Fox</strong> is a ship we've announced a long time ago. It is a pre-order bonus to <strong><a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/fr/buy">all who pre-order Gangs of Space during the Alpha</a></strong>. This is a <em>Gemeter</em>-class ship, pretty close to the basic <em>Gemeter R</em> ship that is available though research or Medals. Except for its Firefoxy orange-and-blue colors, its main feature are its guns' placement that will make it shoot narrower than its <em>Gemeter R</em> counterpart. It cannot be upgraded through research, but it available for construction for 1000 DNA only in the Motherbase.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3608bc1b5d79c8d6173e3e47edef5d116226cb878ef.png" class="lightbox" title="GemeterFox.png"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/159a63bd3794d252ee17cb4f2a5f9a25151e05dba09_690x358.png" width="690" height="358"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">GemeterFox.png</span><span class="informations">953x495 299 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>And now, what new ships could arrive in the <em>Gangs of Space</em> universe?</p> <h2>A new skill system</h2> <p>A few months ago, <strong>Krayn</strong> (from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/LookingForGames">the webTV "LFG"</a>) suggested to "<em>add spells to diversify the gameplay</em>". We gave the idea lots of thoughts, and have been working since then to adding this new mechanic.</p> <p>The system is pretty simple. Every ship, except <em>Imperial</em> models, will have between 1 and 3 skills. These skills work a bit like active items which would be "embedded" in the ship once for all. To use them, you need to affect them a Crew. The higher the level of the crew (from 1 to 4 stars), the more effective the skill will be.</p> <p>For now, we have implemented 4 skills:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>Rapid Fire</strong> for <em>Gemeters (R, Fox, SX)</em>. It uses energy to fire a burst of fires at high firerate.</li> <li> <strong>Hedgehog</strong> for <em>Abysses (R)</em>. It uses energy to fire 3 volleys of radial shots. These won't get damage multipliers like the regular <em>Abyss</em> shot, but they cover a big part of the screen.</li> <li> <strong>Big One</strong> for <em>Bahmuts (R)</em>. It uses energy to launch a huge missile with boosted damage, explosion, speed and range.</li> <li> <strong>Eraser</strong> for <em>Astrolaxes (R)</em>. It uses energy to instantly erase all enemy shots around it.</li> </ul><p>The <em>Aurora</em> skill is not ready yet, since we want to change a bit the gameplay of this ship before that.</p> <p>Also, higher-level ships (like the <em>Gemeter SX</em>) will have more than 1 skill, so be excited for more skills to arrive in future versions!</p> <h2>Reworking the ship UI</h2> <p>In order to make those new skills easily usable, and also to answer many of your complains and suggestions, we've reworked a number of interfaces:</p> <ul> <li><p>The multi-usage slot bar has been replaced by a more-classic system of shortcuts. They will display the equipped items, up to 4 shortcuts, and up to 3 skills. <br><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/361e033e323a89f126b6e96aeb43da70fc1b6286d43.png" width="468" height="138"></p></li> <li><p>The ship inventory is now divided in 3 parts. From left to right: the former <em>Ship Info</em> panel, the equipment &amp; shortcuts panel, and the former <em>Ship Inventory</em> panel. All items are now managed from here.<br><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3622e488e7a275d0c8b4ba23dc97e55cfcd5ecbbcc5.png" width="589" height="281"></p></li> <li><p>The life bars for players have been made a bit more readable, and now display the energy level in addition to the structure and shield levels (now, you'll know why your Astrolax-friend is not healing you <img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/sweat_smile.png" title=":sweat_smile:" class="emoji" alt="sweat_smile" width="20" height="20"> ). These bars are still optinal, and need to be enabled in the settings (F10).<br><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/363b09bdb16f2af722de373fea081699f2c3ef6a5ee.png" width="189" height="138"></p></li> <li><p>The login screen has been redesigned... well... designed, should we say. No more "programmer art" there!</p></li> <li><p>And at least, all the shortcut icons (on top and bottom of the screen) are now smaller and more easily identifiable.<br><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/364086368149239726d187f0be9f1fb2b962e5846b0.png" width="425" height="52"></p></li> </ul><h2>Patch Notes</h2> <p>But there are a lot more to see, and as with any other patch, you can see the whole list <a href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/t/en-changelog/198/last"><strong>by reading the complete Changelog</strong></a>.</p> <h2>Thanks to the community!</h2> <p>Your feedback is getting more and more constructive, now that you understand the game more and more. Each new session is the occasion to read very instructive messages from all of you, which guide us to change <em>Gangs of Space</em> and make it a better game.</p> <p>Thank you everyone for helping us make <strong>an ambitious and independant MMO</strong> that will give you - we hope - lots of satisfaction and fun!</p> Fri, 16 May 2014 17:52:02 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/65 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/65 <p>Thank to everyone who paticipated in this 11th testing session!</p> <p>Before the report itself, here is a few things of importance:</p> <ul> <li><strong>The next session (#12) will take place from May 17 to 19, starting at 12:00 GMT.</strong></li> <li>We're still very much interested in <strong>your impressions and suggestions</strong>. Please write them <strong><a href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/category/en-gangs-of-space/en-suggestions">on the forum</a></strong>!</li> <li> <a href="http://artofgaming.fr/dossiers/gangs-of-space-rencontre-little-big-mmo/23545/">Artofgaming published a 6-page interview of Grouroux</a>** (in French) about GoS and the origins of the game. If you read French, there is a lot to learn there!</li> <li>Cpinpon added <a href="http://www.jeuxvideo.com/boite-a-idees/00077177-gangs-of-space-pc-boite-a-idees.php">GoS to the idea box of the French website JVC</a>. Anyone can vote there once per day, and if we reach the top of the box, we might get very interesting press coverage on this very big website!</li> </ul><p>At last, <strong>we want to thank all English-speaking participants in last session</strong>. For the first time, we had as many English speakers as French speakers, which is very encouraging the us! Thank you to all for playing together, independently of all language barriers!</p> <h2>DJ Erhune on the Floor.</h2> <p><strong>The game client was published a little bit in advance, and the servers opened just on time</strong>. We had a small nasty bug in the beginning (keyboard shortcuts still active when you were typing in the chat) but it was quickly fixed by a facultative patch. Aside from that, no blocking issue was found during these 48 hours.</p> <p>Fingers crossed for keeping this stability for the next sessions!</p> <h2>A version jammed with new features.</h2> <p>The biggest new feature of this version was of course <strong>enemy attacks on colonized systems</strong>. Every 4 to 48 hours, each player-colonized system could be attacked by enemy gates from which came hords of hostile ships ready to reclaim their lost systems. To stop them, only one solution: destroy the gates as fast as possible!</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/34944e5a63fc711f0edefd811ba1ec182f5ff6ad8c2.png" class="lightbox" title="V0.17-2.png"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1539a4dc6f1f48a988c70227533da6dc4c6f38cfff8_690x388.png" width="690" height="388"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">V0.17-2.png</span><span class="informations">1280x720 708 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>The first attacks were quite fun, but soon we realized that <strong>in its current state, this system was becoming boring quite fast</strong>. Having come to this realization, we decided to show a bit of compassion to the players that couldn't get enough sleep, and deactivated the feature on Synday to avoid useless frustration.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/350481573fa96acdea684bcd197d502cc5fb589b9e7.png" class="lightbox" title="V0.17-3.png"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/154a1759f59a5f7dad570399aabd7afa17cf42664a4_690x388.png" width="690" height="388"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">V0.17-3.png</span><span class="informations">1280x720 917 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <hr><p>Thanks to the new page on the website <strong>listing all the items and sectors for sale in the universe</strong>, the trading between players started to take some form. Let's hope this is only the beginning, and that <em>Gangs of Space</em> economy will soon flourish!</p> <hr><p>Behind the scenes, <strong>we also changed how random item characteristics were computed</strong>. Before that, drops and items from the medal shop didn't obey to the same rules as the items researched by players. They could actually be much better sometimes, which is something we didn't want. We want the research to be THE long-term way to get the best items in the game. </p> <p>So now, with all items obeying the same rules, drops are on average a bit worse than they were before. We still have to see if this will work or not, but what we have now is a good step before we can do more work on the research system.</p> <h2>Gangs, Gangs, Gangs...</h2> <p>Because of the enemy attacks, the Gangs that controlled the most territory were pretty busy defending it. On the other hand, the smaller Gangs could use the opportunity to expand without having to compete too much with the bigger ones. That's why the top of the Gang ladder didn't move much, but much of the action happened on the middle and bottom parts.</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3401d810a2e5d3081aa496c36f4e35df0f5021dbb86.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Clementine Space Industries</strong> (5,620u²) stay the incontested <strong>Administrators of Quadrant Alpha</strong>. Even though they were on the frontlines of enemy attacks, they managed to expand their already huge territory by 120u² without losing too much existing structures.</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/341c44eac552e59cae094837de4ed0cec3c1b79841a.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Supremacy</strong> kept a lower profile and kept their #2 position (2,666u²), but <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/342d5619e240bd538d9e2fafe4020454078d68ec770.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>thanatonautes</strong> in 3rd position (2,066u²) are getting close to them and might break it in the next session!</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/343ac98ab9a5904255ae3e8c586245482e27878e701.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>TMG</strong> didn't come back in activity, and kept 1,322u², even though they would have fallen much further if we didn't disabled the attacks on Sunday.</p> <p><strong>From there, lots of things happened:</strong></p> <ul> <li> <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3446e9f0e55099bdd5e855dd344243cfa6508c40c9f.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Les Gentlemen</strong> are now #5 (1,039u²), breaking through <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/345b190f3120a265fec7d722798a7687738c6a71993.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Lazuli</strong> and <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/3462727662bac7b243fa85c4e15a84455799e48fbfd.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Ascendance</strong> with whom they were in competition in last session.</li> <li>They are followed by 2 new Gangs: <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/33915355622e13431cb8b969e87b82e859c00cbf7fb.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Les Enfants D'Illuvatar</strong> in #6, commanded by BSK who streamed a 36h marathon of the game. He managed to gather around him a very nice and efficient team.</li> <li>They are followed by <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/33857dd3113eb123dbfca7616eeeed9049a62436b68.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>BitGang</strong> in #7 (566u²), the first English-only Gang to enter the ladder. They were very active during the whole session!</li> <li>Then <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/345b190f3120a265fec7d722798a7687738c6a71993.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>Lazuli</strong> gain a position in #8 (452u²) and beat the 2 oldest Gangs in the ladder...</li> <li> <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/34750d24606787921859ae4e52c8cbd889bee041c3c.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>LesLutinsPsychopathes</strong> and <img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/34848e03ec09d02d2cb802957ed3f75970cbb815b98.png" width="20" height="14"><strong>BiereChausetteCorp</strong> are now very close to leave the ladder, being #9 and #10 respectively (434u² and 398u²). If they don't react, their presence will only be known in History books!</li> </ul><p>If you want tons of info and details on the <em>Gangs of Space</em> Gangs and universe, we invite you to have a look at one of the finest websites that use the GoS API. <strong><a href="http://goswatcher.freevar.com/index.php">GoS Watcher</a></strong>, created by Zaltais, is a huge mine of data just waiting for you!</p> <h2>What we made out of it</h2> <p><strong>Not good</strong></p> <ul> <li>Enemy attacks (not yet there...)</li> <li>Access to Nitrogen is too complex</li> <li>Grouroux' accent when he's speaking English</li> </ul><p><strong>Good</strong></p> <ul> <li>The universe looks much nicer when systems are renamed by their governors!</li> <li>Trading is starting to take shape</li> <li>English speakers continuing to play despite Grouroux' accent ^_^</li> </ul><h2>Session stats</h2> <p><strong>Harvest</strong></p> <p> 63,160 Medals <em>(++)</em></p> <ul> <li>31,216 for contracts <em>(++)</em> </li> <li>14,904 for pacifications <em>(++)</em> </li> <li>17,040 for killboard <em>(++)</em> </li> </ul><p><strong>Losses</strong></p> <ul> <li>498 ships lost forever <em>(+++)</em> </li> <li>11,051 items destroyed on board <em>(+++)</em> </li> </ul><p><strong>Conquest of the Universe</strong></p> <ul> <li>250 sectors conquered by players <em>(+)</em> </li> <li>183 sectors reconquered by enemies <em>(+++)</em> </li> <li>1.002 sectors “pacified” <em>(++)</em> </li> <li>7 sectors sold <em>(+)</em> </li> </ul><hr><p><strong>Extermination <img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/smile.png" title=":smile:" class="emoji" alt="smile" width="20" height="20"></strong></p> <ul> <li>139,158 Asteroid S0</li> <li>74,102 Pirnat Scout</li> <li>67,299 Pirnat Wasp</li> <li>46,640 Pirnat Scout MkII</li> <li>43,891 Pirnat Spike</li> <li>36,350 Pirnat Miner</li> <li>29,819 Vermillon Hermios</li> <li>22,573 Pirnat Hunter</li> <li>14,654 Pirnat Pickelhaube</li> <li>10,358 Pirnat Drake</li> <li>10,067 Pirnat Miner MkII</li> <li>9,518 Pirnat Hunter MkII</li> <li>8,767 Vermillon Melenos</li> <li>6,890 Vermillon Berthos Evo</li> <li>5,397 Vermillon Berthos</li> <li>4,173 Asteroid S1</li> <li>3,099 Vermillon Melenos Evo</li> <li>2,818 Pirnat Hunter X2</li> <li>1,503 Pirnat Lobstor</li> <li>1,275 Asteroid S2</li> <li>1,045 Vermillon Merros</li> <li>347 Asteroid S3</li> <li>82 Asteroid S4</li> <li>48 Enemy Portal</li> <li>30 Pirnat Mega Blade</li> <li>14 Pirnat Giga Blade</li> </ul><p>Which makes:</p> <ul><li>1,641 enemies per player <em>(++)</em> </li></ul><p>At least, the top 10 medal wins for our fallen comrades:</p> <ul> <li>3,236 elfaus</li> <li>1,246 Sangoo35</li> <li>1,120 JiuZhongBaXian</li> <li>951 willouu</li> <li>900 Khilas</li> <li>475 zarnes</li> <li>473 Skorpiox</li> <li>453 Eniotan</li> <li>410 Ethinn</li> <li>409 Kakos</li> </ul><h2>In our crystal ball...</h2> <p>For the next version, we will try to add in the game:</p> <ul> <li>The new UI for ships</li> <li>Ship skills</li> <li>The first pre-order gift ship: <em>Gemeter Fox</em> </li> </ul><p>And we'll also try to make a "Road Map" somewhere to explain what we have in mind in the longer run for <em>Gangs of Space</em>.</p> <p>Thank you for reading so far, and see you next Saturday for the 12th Alpha Test Session!</p> Sat, 10 May 2014 11:54:22 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/63 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/63 <p>Testing session #11 is now over. Thank you to all participants!</p> <p>If you have time, please make a small detour by <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com">the forum</a> to leave us your impressions and suggestions !</p> Mon, 28 Apr 2014 12:07:40 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/61 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/61 <p>First of all, we'd like to announce that <strong>the next testing session with take place from April 26 to 28th</strong>. BEWARE! April 26th is a SATURDAY, unlike previous sessions! (see the start time <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=GoS+Alpha+Session+%2311&amp;iso=20140426T14&amp;p1=1264">in all timezones</a>)</p> <p>And if you haven't done it yet, we'd be eager to hear your comments about last session <a href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/t/report-on-the-alpha-test-session-10/241">in the forum</a>. (let's make the English section more alive!)</p> <p>No introduction would be complete without <strong>giving all our thanks to all participants of this Session #10</strong>. Thank you everyone, you rock!</p> <p>And now, the report!</p> <h2>On the technical side</h2> <p>The servers held quite good for our first 48h extended session. We had a few problems with some conquest maps (especially <em>Octet</em> systems...) but altogether, it has been a pretty decent session as far as bugs are concerned.</p> <h2>About the new features</h2> <p>The big new feature was the <strong>Deployable Gates</strong> system. After a few issues fixed by Erhune (and a few other minor things like the opening delay not being respected), the Gangs were able to deploy new gates correctly. And you seemed to like it, considering the number of newly conquered systems! We're pretty happy of the result, but of course this is only the first step and this feature will need more tuning in the future (for example maybe add indicators on the minimap for gate placement points?).</p> <p>As for the <strong>new stats and speed settings for all ships</strong>, we didn't hear much about it. This is not very surprising to us because these are very subtle things, but they are necessary to reach a polished-enough play experience. We are waiting to see if the number of complains of new players about how the game "feel slow" will decline...</p> <p>The new <strong>mini-tutorial</strong> did gather a few positive remarks, and no negative ones. Of course we don;t think it will be enough to teach the basics of the game, but this seemed to be a good first step. </p> <p>One surprise on our side is that no Gang used the new command to <strong>rename systems they govern</strong>. That's probably because we didn't announced it loud and clear, and not that many of you read <a href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/t/en-changelog/198">the changelog</a> (poor Erhune, who spends so much time writing &amp; translating them!). Now that this had been mentioned here, we'll see if this will change in the next session!</p> <h2>A Game of Gangs</h2> <p>Being able to deploy Gates means being able to extend your territory in unlimited quantities. And that, <strong>Clementine Space Industries</strong> realized it, because they ravaged the conquest rankings! Jumping from 2,000 u² to more than 5,500 u², the <strong>CSI</strong> dominated this session and got a wide lead on everyone else. Congratulations to them! As a reward to their vailliant efforts, we have decided to hand them the title of <strong>Administrators of Quadrant Alpha</strong> for the time being. This is only a cosmetic reard for now, since the Administrator right have not been implemented yet, but we want to see if this will be enough motivation for other Gangs to try to catch up to them!</p> <p>The previous champions, <strong>Supremacy Inc</strong>, kept their second position and extend a bit their own territory. They were quite unlucky to bet it all on the conquest of <em>Octet</em> systems, which proved impossible due to a bug in enemy spawns. We apologize to them for that, with the hope that they will take their revenge during next session!</p> <p>Even though old Gangs are still present in the ranking, this session saw the rise of many young Gangs that want their share of the Universe. </p> <ul> <li>7 - <strong>Ascendance</strong> </li> <li>8 - <strong>Les Gentlemen</strong> </li> <li>9 - <strong>Lazuli</strong> </li> </ul><p>We have no doubt that all these Gangs will give all they have in the competition!</p> <p>An interesting entry is the new Gang <strong>Ascendance</strong> which is our first Gang aiming toward the trading of territory, as their explained in <a href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/t/ascendance-contrats-et-recrutement/208">their introductory post</a> in the forum. We hope that they will form a strong basis of the Galactic Trading that will take more and more importance as the game servers get open more and more often.</p> <h2>A small postmortem for v0.16</h2> <p><strong>Not good <img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/frowning.png" title=":frowning:" class="emoji" alt="frowning" width="20" height="20"></strong></p> <ul> <li>Conquest bugs (especially in <em>Octet</em> systems)</li> <li>Putting the local chat channel as the default channel, instead of the <code>/alpha</code> one.</li> <li>Not enough exposure on some new features</li> </ul><p><strong>Good <img src="//forum.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/smile.png" title=":smile:" class="emoji" alt="smile" width="20" height="20"></strong></p> <ul> <li>Conquest, power struggle, and dominating the Universe!!!</li> <li>New ship settings</li> <li>Repartition of players in the Universe</li> </ul><h2>Some stats!</h2> <p><strong>The Harvest</strong></p> <p> 30,314 Medals <em>(strong increase!)</em>, as follows:</p> <ul> <li>17,453 for contracts (++)</li> <li>7,216 for pacification (+)</li> <li>5,645 for killboards (+)</li> </ul><p><strong>Losses</strong></p> <ul> <li>187 ships lost forever <em>(strong decrease)</em> </li> <li>3,975 items destroyed on board <em>(increase)</em> </li> </ul><p><strong>Conquest of the Universe</strong></p> <ul> <li>197 sectors conquered by the players, 20 by the enemy forces</li> <li>545 sectors "pacified"</li> <li>4 sectors sold</li> </ul><p>And</p> <ul> <li>192,548 Pirnats atomized <em>(strong increase)</em> </li> <li>54,966 Asteroids destroyed <em>(strong increase)</em> </li> <li>17,315 Vermillons liquidated <em>(strong increase)</em> </li> </ul><p><strong>Global killboard</strong></p> <ul> <li>52,839 Asteroid S0</li> <li>48,463 Pirnat Scout</li> <li>37,394 Pirnat Wasp</li> <li>24,681 Pirnat Spike</li> <li>23,209 Pirnat Miner</li> <li>22,713 Pirnat Scout MKII</li> <li>10,394 Pirnat Hunter</li> <li>8,075 Vermillon Hermios</li> <li>6,642 Pirnat Pickelhaube</li> <li>6,421 Pirnat Drake</li> <li>6,048 Pirnat Miner MKII</li> <li>4,490 Pirnat Hunter MKII</li> <li>3,378 Vermillon Melenos</li> <li>2,651 Vermillon Berthos</li> <li>1,918 Vermillon Berthos Evo</li> <li>1,595 Asteroid S1</li> <li>1,097 Pirnat Lobstor</li> <li>976 Pirnat Hunter X2</li> <li>974 Vermillon Melenos Evo</li> <li>397 Asteroid S2</li> <li>319 Vermillon Merros</li> <li>103 Asteroid S3</li> <li>32 Asteroid S4</li> <li>13 Pirnat Mega Blade</li> <li>7 Pirnat Giga Blade</li> </ul><p>Which makes...</p> <ul><li>1,291 enemies per player</li></ul><p><strong>And at least, the top 10 medal reward for our valiant fighters lost in combat:</strong></p> <ul> <li>615 yfuu</li> <li>592 arsdant</li> <li>366 RodZilla</li> <li>318 Grouroux <em>(oh, the shame...)</em> </li> <li>292 JiuZhongBaXian</li> <li>283 JiuZhongBaXian</li> <li>245 Eniotan</li> <li>241 Melitas</li> <li>202 Ethinn</li> <li>180 Palgork</li> </ul><h2>Incoming features</h2> <p>This is something we've been mentioning for a long time, but at least! behold! <strong>the enemy forces will stike back in conquered systems</strong>, every few hours or days... You will need organization skills to keep then at bay!</p> <p>At this occasion, we will activate <strong>automated e-mail alerts</strong> when your systems are under attack. This system will evolve in a full-fledged notification system accessible via <a href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/t/en-intro-to-the-api/199">the <em>Gangs of Space</em> API</a> in the future.</p> Mon, 21 Apr 2014 15:17:19 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/59 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/59 <h3>Alpha Test Session #10 is now over. Thank you everyone for participating!</h3> <p>We are eager to read your comments and suggestions <a href="https://forum.gangsofspace.com">on the forum</a>!</p> Sun, 06 Apr 2014 14:44:25 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/57 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/57 <p>Once more, <strong>thank you everyone for your participation</strong>! Your continuous feedback is invaluable for us to shape the future of the game! If you haven't done it yet, please give us your <a href="//forum.gangsofspace.com/category/en-gangs-of-space">impressions in the forum</a>!</p> <p>(Actually, we merged the French and English forums a few days ago, so it feels a lot more lively over there!)</p> <p>We also want to use the opportunity to announce right now that the next session (already number 10! woot!) will take place on:</p> <h3>Sunday, April 6, from 13:00 GMT, for a duration of 48h this time!</h3> <p>(or <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs+of+Space+Alpha+Session+%2310&amp;iso=20140406T14&amp;p1=195">in other timezones</a>)</p> <h2>At last, no crashes this time!</h2> <p>For this session, we had our hosting provider completely change the hardware of our server, since just changing the motherboard and the RAM didn't prevent it from crashing last time. We're very happy, because it seems to have fixed the problem! No crash this time, no serious bug... That was pretty refreshing!</p> <p>We have also been able to finally test the official Mumble server on <code>mumble.gangsofspace.com</code>, and it had a really great ambiance! <em>Gangs of Space</em> is definitely a game where vocal chat shines!</p> <h2>A new issue appears!</h2> <p>The biggest difference between v0.14 and the new v0.15 was the inclusion of fight systems (the ones with the bosses) into the rest of the universe. It makes everything more unified and cohesive. But also a bit slower, since you actually have to "go" at your Contracts' location now. But no one seemed to complain about this, so that's great!</p> <p>But one complain that we got a few times is about the balance between the Contracts and their reward. Before, you could get new Contracts really easily, and many players did a lot of them in one system. Now, to get a new level 2 Contract, you need one Warp, and then 2 Jumps, before being able to come back to the action. This is not good for the pace of the game. We will do something about this, probably by increasing both the "size" and the reward of Contracts.</p> <h2>Here comes a new Challenger</h2> <p>The last session saw the rise of <strong>Supremacy Inc.</strong> and the fall of <strong>TMG</strong>.</p> <p>Who could then expect a new challenger to rise that quickly after that? But it happened, and <strong>Clementine Space Industries</strong> managed to seize the throne from <strong>Supremacy</strong> by a very short advance of 13u². These two Gangs now govern a total of 4,533 u² of territories, which is more than 50% of the current known Universe!</p> <p>We hope to continue to see such intense competition in the future. But meanwhile, congratulation to all <strong>CSI</strong> members who fought with valiance!</p> <h2>What to make of it?</h2> <p><strong>Not good yet</strong></p> <ul> <li>The Universe Map needs to be re-done graphically</li> <li>Balance between Contracts' length and their reward</li> </ul><p><strong>We did it!</strong></p> <ul> <li>No server crash</li> <li>Placement of fight maps in the Universe</li> </ul><h2>Session stats</h2> <p><strong>Harvest:</strong></p> <p> 16,432 Medals <em>(increasing from last time)</em>, spread among:</p> <ul> <li>6,963 for Contracts <em>(increasing)</em> </li> <li>5,555 for Pacifications <em>(increasing)</em> </li> <li>3,914 in the Killboard <em>(decreasing... you should die more often, guys!)</em> </li> </ul><p><strong>Losses:</strong></p> <ul> <li>260 ships lost forever <em>(increasing)</em> </li> <li>3,774 items vanished from this Universe <em>(increasing)</em> </li> </ul><p><strong>Conquest of the Universe:</strong></p> <ul> <li>230 sectors conquered by the players, 52 by the enemies </li> <li>1,525 sectors pacified</li> <li>4 sectors sold</li> <li>111,471 Pirnats atomized</li> <li>27,901 Astéroids destroyed</li> <li>8,794 Vermillons vaporized</li> </ul><p><strong>Enemies killed:</strong></p> <ul> <li>26,644 Asteroid S0</li> <li>25,288 Pirnat Scout</li> <li>25,148 Pirnat Wasp</li> <li>14,928 Pirnat Scout MKII</li> <li>14,081 Pirnat Miner</li> <li>12,465 Pirnat Spike</li> <li>5,603 Pirnat Hunter</li> <li>4,922 Vermillon Hermios</li> <li>4,691 Pirnat Miner MKII</li> <li>3,314 Pirnat Pickelhaube</li> <li>2,561 Pirnat Drake</li> <li>2,129 Pirnat Hunter MKII</li> <li>1,501 Vermillon Melenos</li> <li>1,013 Vermillon Berthos</li> <li>942 Asteroid S1</li> <li>759 Vermillon Berthos Evo</li> <li>680 Pirnat Hunter X2</li> <li>561 Pirnat Lobstor</li> <li>486 Vermillon Melenos Evo</li> <li>239 Asteroid S2</li> <li>113 Vermillon Merros</li> <li>64 Asteroid S3</li> <li>12 Asteroid S4</li> <li>11 Pirnat Mega Blade</li> <li>11 Pirnat Giga Blade</li> </ul><p><strong>...which makes:</strong></p> <p>776 enemies per player!</p> <p><strong>And finally, the 10 players that earned most medals when they lost their ship:</strong></p> <p>2,029 Glarock<br>330 JiuZhongBaXian<br>174 Ricko<br>157 AlBahtaar<br>87 Airis<br>85 Ricko<br>75 Melitas<br>66 Wolynn<br>64 JiuZhongBaXian<br>61 Melitas</p> <h2>In the next episode of <em>Gangs of Space</em>...</h2> <p>We hope that you kept your <strong>Gate Crystals</strong> preciously, since the big new feature for v0.16 might need some of them!</p> Sun, 30 Mar 2014 18:37:06 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/55 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/55 <p>From March 7 to 9, we were at <a href="http://bitsummit.org/">BitSummit in Kyôto</a> in order to show <em>Gangs of Space</em> to the public and the media. At this pour présenter Gangs of Space au public et aux médias.<br>At this occasion, we had the honor to receive the "BitSummit Excellence in Game Design Award"!</p> <blockquote><p><em>All the pictures of this post are available in better resolution in <a href="https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1o8cKb5usorTXI4ejNXRXdTMDg&amp;usp=sharing">this gallery</a>.</em></p></blockquote> <h2>What is BitSummit?</h2> <p>It's a game event dedicated to Japanese independant video games, founded by**James Mielke** with the support of <a href="http://www.q-games.com/"><strong>Q-Games</strong></a> (<a href="http://bitsummit.org/sponsors.html">and many others</a>). This year was the 2nd edition, after a very successful (albeit smaller) one in 2013. A total of more than <a href="http://bitsummit.org/devs.html"><strong>120 indie teams</strong></a> and 5350 visitors attended these very nice 3 days.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/135cdac1a7f68c54e5ec471e7ed9b2df23efff19608.jpg" class="lightbox" title="135cdac1a7f68c54e5ec471e7ed9b2df23efff19608.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/135cdac1a7f68c54e5ec471e7ed9b2df23efff19608.jpg" height="300" width="459"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">135cdac1a7f68c54e5ec471e7ed9b2df23efff19608.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x523</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <h2>Touring the event</h2> <p>In a big event space of the Mikayo Messe, every indie team has one table (or half one for some) that they could organize as they wanted. Since we had no Internet connectivity but still wanted people to have a feel of the MMO part of <em>Gangs of Space</em>, we had decided to bring 3 computers + a server, which was quite a lot to bring by train and subway!</p> <p>With a total of 120 teams, it was quite difficult to see all the games that were exhibited, especially when you had to tend your own booth! </p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/23574c05a8b068a3e44a2d3df2bd3b690162907261d.jpg" class="lightbox" title="23574c05a8b068a3e44a2d3df2bd3b690162907261d.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/23574c05a8b068a3e44a2d3df2bd3b690162907261d.jpg" height="150" width="205"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">23574c05a8b068a3e44a2d3df2bd3b690162907261d.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x585</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1376bfc0eeae9815701679cc33608d264ab5d646c21.jpg" class="lightbox" title="1376bfc0eeae9815701679cc33608d264ab5d646c21.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1376bfc0eeae9815701679cc33608d264ab5d646c21.jpg" height="150" width="200"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">1376bfc0eeae9815701679cc33608d264ab5d646c21.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x601</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>In addition to the dev teams, there was <a href="http://bitsummit.org/speakers.html"><strong>a number of great speakers</strong></a> that gave talks or performed live during the 3 days.</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1390f2bf62c833142cd60a42365a2d911f8d3ea9a15.jpg" class="lightbox" title="1390f2bf62c833142cd60a42365a2d911f8d3ea9a15.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1390f2bf62c833142cd60a42365a2d911f8d3ea9a15.jpg" height="150" width="206"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">1390f2bf62c833142cd60a42365a2d911f8d3ea9a15.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x583</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/140230b4793f16580d5bf8053e6f5fb73c99bdd737c.jpg" class="lightbox" title="140230b4793f16580d5bf8053e6f5fb73c99bdd737c.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/140230b4793f16580d5bf8053e6f5fb73c99bdd737c.jpg" height="150" width="200"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">140230b4793f16580d5bf8053e6f5fb73c99bdd737c.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x600</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>There has been quite a lot of coverage of the event in various media, so you can have a look at <a href="http://indiegames.com/cgi-bin/mt5/mt-search.cgi?search=bitsummit&amp;IncludeBlogs=14&amp;limit=20">the running series of articles on <strong>indiegames.com</strong></a> or <a href="http://merlanfrit.net/Best-of-Bitsummit-MMXIV">our French colleagues of <strong>Merlanfrit</strong></a> to discover some of the best games that were shown.</p> <h2>The Japanese indie scene as of 2014</h2> <p>BitSummit is not representative of the whole indie scene in Japan (by far), but you could basically find 3 types of developers:</p> <p>1/ <strong>Western-but-living-in-Japan developers</strong> (like us ^_^). And especially French ones, for some reason! (or maybe that's just the fact that we recognize ourselves easily thanks to our weird accent when speaking English <img src="//community.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/sweat.png" title=":sweat:" class="emoji" alt="sweat" width="20" height="20">) Most of these people make games that draw inspiration from Japanese games, but keep a distinct feel of "Western indie games". In that sense, <em>Gangs of Space</em> is a pretty representative example.</p> <p>And then, among the Japanese teams:</p> <p>2/ Those coming from the "traditional" <em>doujin</em> scene. This scene is VERY active in Japan (I'm sure most of you have heard of <em>Comiket</em> and its ~550.000 visitors twice a year...), not only for games but also for comics, music, or basically any type of creative work. Most of these people do that as a hobby, but still with a very good quality of work. </p> <p>3/ Japanese teams are starting to adopt the Western model, like Nigoro (<em>La Mulana</em>), Onion Games (<em>Million Onion Hostel</em>) or even Keiji Inafune's Comcept (<em>Mighy No. 9</em>) or Creative Intelligence Arts (<em>Project Phoenix</em>).</p> <p>Personally, I (Erhune) would say that the main difference between the two is whether these creators have the goal of making a living out of their work, or whether they just do it because they love it. Not giving any judgement about it: both approaches are totally respectable, and like I wrote, Japanese <em>doujin</em> makers might produce "just for fun", they still make incredible work (actually, not having to think about any financial returns can lead to pretty amazing unique pieces of creativity!).</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/14988d7790a8cb3a55d8fa43cbb304420ecb9a9770d.jpg" class="lightbox" title="14988d7790a8cb3a55d8fa43cbb304420ecb9a9770d.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/14988d7790a8cb3a55d8fa43cbb304420ecb9a9770d.jpg" height="150" width="200"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">14988d7790a8cb3a55d8fa43cbb304420ecb9a9770d.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x600</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1509327f75e18b7ca33f3b6e1dacdf370873c038dba.jpg" class="lightbox" title="1509327f75e18b7ca33f3b6e1dacdf370873c038dba.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1509327f75e18b7ca33f3b6e1dacdf370873c038dba.jpg" height="150" width="200"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">1509327f75e18b7ca33f3b6e1dacdf370873c038dba.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x600</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/151e50578468cb23e712787c17d61a00a9636fc4891.jpg" class="lightbox" title="151e50578468cb23e712787c17d61a00a9636fc4891.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/151e50578468cb23e712787c17d61a00a9636fc4891.jpg" height="150" width="202"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">151e50578468cb23e712787c17d61a00a9636fc4891.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x594</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1522f61b7e0412195a05ab1a06f48abc851515a5ab9.jpg" class="lightbox" title="1522f61b7e0412195a05ab1a06f48abc851515a5ab9.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1522f61b7e0412195a05ab1a06f48abc851515a5ab9.jpg" height="150" width="200"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">1522f61b7e0412195a05ab1a06f48abc851515a5ab9.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x600</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/153b07cd1110f08eae59c3502e5c6ac9eee7d2efdba.jpg" class="lightbox" title="153b07cd1110f08eae59c3502e5c6ac9eee7d2efdba.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/153b07cd1110f08eae59c3502e5c6ac9eee7d2efdba.jpg" height="150" width="113"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">153b07cd1110f08eae59c3502e5c6ac9eee7d2efdba.jpg</span><span class="informations">600x800</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/154beacf17e2843581bcf0913fa7cf5ae6269299ef7.jpg" class="lightbox" title="154beacf17e2843581bcf0913fa7cf5ae6269299ef7.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/154beacf17e2843581bcf0913fa7cf5ae6269299ef7.jpg" height="150" width="115"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">154beacf17e2843581bcf0913fa7cf5ae6269299ef7.jpg</span><span class="informations">611x800</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/155cecdbd85a57f325abc3662b11910d86a1cee37c3.jpg" class="lightbox" title="155cecdbd85a57f325abc3662b11910d86a1cee37c3.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/155cecdbd85a57f325abc3662b11910d86a1cee37c3.jpg" height="150" width="130"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">155cecdbd85a57f325abc3662b11910d86a1cee37c3.jpg</span><span class="informations">693x800</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/156d1f5da69e3609e8fca2c3fe0e135d7e9ea733555.jpg" class="lightbox" title="156d1f5da69e3609e8fca2c3fe0e135d7e9ea733555.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/156d1f5da69e3609e8fca2c3fe0e135d7e9ea733555.jpg" height="150" width="200"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">156d1f5da69e3609e8fca2c3fe0e135d7e9ea733555.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x600</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/159acbffcbd13e967b0deb0f60a91f7ffdb9a116673.jpg" class="lightbox" title="159acbffcbd13e967b0deb0f60a91f7ffdb9a116673.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/159acbffcbd13e967b0deb0f60a91f7ffdb9a116673.jpg" height="150" width="214"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">159acbffcbd13e967b0deb0f60a91f7ffdb9a116673.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x560</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/157ffd586310d8ff8111d75163e48b3eb51c286c367.jpg" class="lightbox" title="157ffd586310d8ff8111d75163e48b3eb51c286c367.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/157ffd586310d8ff8111d75163e48b3eb51c286c367.jpg" height="150" width="200"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">157ffd586310d8ff8111d75163e48b3eb51c286c367.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x600</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/158d6450f1d50263ec73ce75867268d0bba2b141579.jpg" class="lightbox" title="158d6450f1d50263ec73ce75867268d0bba2b141579.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/158d6450f1d50263ec73ce75867268d0bba2b141579.jpg" height="150" width="204"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">158d6450f1d50263ec73ce75867268d0bba2b141579.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x587</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>But one thing is certain: BitSummit is clearly giving Japanese developers lots of thoughts about the viability of making indie games, and I think that's a huge thing for those whole used to love the creativity of Japanese games!</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/231ecc4405e5f2b858231f7bde0b77a84c2eb2fe131.jpg" class="lightbox" title="231ecc4405e5f2b858231f7bde0b77a84c2eb2fe131.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/231ecc4405e5f2b858231f7bde0b77a84c2eb2fe131.jpg" width="500" height="352"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">231ecc4405e5f2b858231f7bde0b77a84c2eb2fe131.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x563</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <h2>Some more pictures?</h2> <p><strong>Players discovering <em>Gangs of Space</em>...</strong></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1416307e1af02d7a2cb53b59d51da4a5e52454dcce6.jpg" class="lightbox" title="1416307e1af02d7a2cb53b59d51da4a5e52454dcce6.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1416307e1af02d7a2cb53b59d51da4a5e52454dcce6.jpg" height="150" width="115"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">1416307e1af02d7a2cb53b59d51da4a5e52454dcce6.jpg</span><span class="informations">611x800</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/14213711577187812f5f50394deafcedb8a2aed69e0.jpg" class="lightbox" title="14213711577187812f5f50394deafcedb8a2aed69e0.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/14213711577187812f5f50394deafcedb8a2aed69e0.jpg" height="150" width="220"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">14213711577187812f5f50394deafcedb8a2aed69e0.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x545</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/14380bde83ad532f4c377f1380bbba81fd41fac5aea.jpg" class="lightbox" title="14380bde83ad532f4c377f1380bbba81fd41fac5aea.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/14380bde83ad532f4c377f1380bbba81fd41fac5aea.jpg" height="150" width="201"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">14380bde83ad532f4c377f1380bbba81fd41fac5aea.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x598</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/14455f7ea00fbea99ced4dbdbc4742eed8f5182926b.jpg" class="lightbox" title="14455f7ea00fbea99ced4dbdbc4742eed8f5182926b.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/14455f7ea00fbea99ced4dbdbc4742eed8f5182926b.jpg" height="150" width="217"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">14455f7ea00fbea99ced4dbdbc4742eed8f5182926b.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x554</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><strong>Erhune getting his iPad dedicated by Chipzel, of <em>Super Hexagon</em> fame.</strong></p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/145ec1534d93a1db6be2e39f0fc8fdb2011adcca433.jpg" class="lightbox" title="145ec1534d93a1db6be2e39f0fc8fdb2011adcca433.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/145ec1534d93a1db6be2e39f0fc8fdb2011adcca433.jpg" height="150" width="206"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">145ec1534d93a1db6be2e39f0fc8fdb2011adcca433.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x582</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1462a6a6a1730a7ab4b474befea18ec3d6eac5081ea.jpg" class="lightbox" title="1462a6a6a1730a7ab4b474befea18ec3d6eac5081ea.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1462a6a6a1730a7ab4b474befea18ec3d6eac5081ea.jpg" height="150" width="251"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">1462a6a6a1730a7ab4b474befea18ec3d6eac5081ea.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x478</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><strong>ZUN, the doujin God who created the <em>Touhou</em> series, playing <em>Gangs of Space</em>!</strong></p> <p> <div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/14728f4b3438a8c523d9c0f69d09ad35b7c2ffd36bb.jpg" class="lightbox" title="14728f4b3438a8c523d9c0f69d09ad35b7c2ffd36bb.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/14728f4b3438a8c523d9c0f69d09ad35b7c2ffd36bb.jpg" height="150" width="221"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">14728f4b3438a8c523d9c0f69d09ad35b7c2ffd36bb.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x543</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/148e12d5f07041de2bab043d328187429e4c5ab6a4b.jpg" class="lightbox" title="148e12d5f07041de2bab043d328187429e4c5ab6a4b.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/148e12d5f07041de2bab043d328187429e4c5ab6a4b.jpg" height="150" width="214"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">148e12d5f07041de2bab043d328187429e4c5ab6a4b.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x562</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><strong>The awards ceremony.</strong> (yeaaaah that's us on the right~!)</p> <p><div class="lightbox-wrapper"><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1608c513d74a4663ee8900d5bfc17586036ba93e9e5.jpg" class="lightbox" title="1608c513d74a4663ee8900d5bfc17586036ba93e9e5.jpg"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/1608c513d74a4663ee8900d5bfc17586036ba93e9e5.jpg" width="500" height="353"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">1608c513d74a4663ee8900d5bfc17586036ba93e9e5.jpg</span><span class="informations">800x564</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>And because an award is a very particular step in the life of a project, we both would like to give all our thanks to everyone who made this possible: our families, our players, and even each other (wow, working like crazies for more than 2 years and we still haven't killed each other? we're doing great! <img src="//community.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/stuck_out_tongue.png" title=":stuck_out_tongue:" class="emoji" alt="stuck_out_tongue" width="20" height="20"> )</p> Fri, 21 Mar 2014 15:12:22 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/53 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/53 <h2>Beforehands...</h2> <p>Many thanks to all the players that played during this session!</p> <p><strong>As usual, it would help us a lot if you'd <a href="//community.gangsofspace.com/t/report-on-the-alpha-test-session-8/40">share your impressions of the game</a>, and of this test session in particular.</strong></p> <p>If you missed it, here is the <a href="https://communaute.gangsofspace.com/t/les-live-de-la-session-du-23-fevrier-2014/127/6">list of all the livestreams of the session</a> (in French). And if you forgot the changes of this version 0.14, <a href="//community.gangsofspace.com/t/changelog/25/4">here they are</a>!</p> <h2>Hardware issues</h2> <p>Having done a small 1 hour pre-session with a few select alpha testers, we were getting ready for opening the servers, when tragedy struck: a <strong>big hardware issue on the server</strong> prevented us to use it, 10 minutes before the session!</p> <p>The "good" news was that since we already had a similar problem in a previous session (but not on this scale), Erhune has a spare server on hand. It took him some time to install the new version on this space, but finally, after a 1h delay, we could start!</p> <p>(Since then, our hosting provider <strong>moved us to another server</strong> so, hopefully, we won't have such issue again in the future. Fingers crossed...)</p> <h2>Gang of the TOP !</h2> <p><strong>With a total territory of 1805 u², Supremacy Inc takes the lead of the Gang ladder!</strong> The previous leaders, the Gang <strong>TMG</strong>, are now in second position, but <strong>Clementine Space Industries</strong> aren't far from them too!</p> <h2>What worked, and what didn't...</h2> <p><strong>Good</strong></p> <ul> <li>The new boss did his job of frightening you!</li> <li>Conquest in level 2 or 3 systems is difficult but possible.</li> <li>Gates in deep space.</li> <li>Lots of competition on the Gang leaderboard!</li> </ul><p><strong>Not-so-good</strong></p> <ul> <li>The galactic map need some tweaks to make it more obvious what's going on, and where.</li> <li>Not enough small Gangs participate in the conquest system.</li> <li>Players are spread too much between all the fight systems and open conquest systems.</li> </ul><h2>Session stats</h2> <p><strong>Harvest</strong></p> <p> 16,464 Medals<br> - 4,083 for contracts<br> - 2,864 for pacifications<br> - 9,517 for killboards</p> <p><strong>Losses</strong></p> <ul> <li>199 ships lost forever</li> <li>2,924 items destroyed onboard</li> </ul><p><strong>Conquest of the Universe</strong></p> <ul> <li>45 sectors conquered by the players, 34 by the enemies</li> <li>240 sectors pacified</li> <li>4 sectors sold</li> <li>77,473 Pirnats annihilated</li> <li>22,848 Vermillons liquidated</li> <li>20,108 Asteroids vaporized</li> </ul><p><strong>Global killboard</strong></p> <ul> <li>19,206 Asteroid S0</li> <li>17,285 Pirnat Scout</li> <li>17,024 Pirnat Wasp</li> <li>11,498 Pirnat Scout MKII</li> <li>11,132 Vermillon Hermios</li> <li>8,455 Pirnat Spike</li> <li>8,389 Pirnat Miner</li> <li>4,182 Pirnat Hunter</li> <li>3,929 Vermillon Melenos</li> <li>3,416 Vermillon Berthos</li> <li>2,708 Pirnat Miner MKII</li> <li>2,579 Vermillon Berthos Evo</li> <li>2,479 Pirnat Pickelhaube</li> <li>2,346 Pirnat Drake</li> <li>1,903 Pirnat Hunter MKII</li> <li>1,329 Vermillon Melenos Evo</li> <li>763 Pirnat Hunter X2</li> <li>674 Asteroid S1</li> <li>464 Vermillon Merros</li> <li>440 Pirnat Lobstor</li> <li>168 Asteroid S2</li> <li>51 Asteroid S3</li> <li>9 Asteroid S4</li> <li>6 Pirnat Mega Blade (Boss)</li> <li>1 Pirnat Giga Blade (Boss)</li> </ul><p><strong>which makes...</strong></p> <p> 1,863 enemies per player</p> <p><strong>And finally, the killboard ranking:</strong></p> <ol> <li>Khilas 4,221</li> <li>nectata 1,530</li> <li>roix 1,399</li> <li>Songomax 436</li> <li>Nejaa 369</li> <li>Shiroverlord 250</li> <li>roix 238</li> <li>Ricko 169</li> <li>Nejaa 80</li> <li>AntHrqxXx 64</li> </ol><p>Quite impressive compared to the previous session!</p> <h2>Incoming in <em>Gangs of Space</em> </h2> <p>In March 7-9, <strong>we will show <em>Gangs of Space</em> at <a href="http://bitsummit.org">BitSummit</a> in Kyoto</strong>, which is the biggest event for indie games in Japan. This will be our first big occasion to show the game to non-French media, which is exciting (and a bit stressful ^_^')</p> <p>We've also added official support for game controllers in the game. Get your controllers ready, we will need your opinion on the control schemes for each ship class in the next session! (Playing with keyboard &amp; mouse is still the recommended way of playing the game, though!)</p> <p>Aside from this, we will continue in the same direction as announced last time: getting ready for opening the servers permanently.</p> <p>Thank you for reading, and see you during the next test session!</p> Mon, 03 Mar 2014 11:27:03 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/49 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/49 <p>Thanks to all participants!</p> <p>This test has been a bit rough, with some major bugs (including a big one preventing items to be saved under certain circumstances). We will post a detailled review of the session in the next days, and until then we know what we should work on for the next version ^_^&#39;</p> Mon, 24 Feb 2014 07:45:30 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/48 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/48 <h2>Beforehand</h2> <p>Thanks a lot to every participant to the session, including all our new players (hello, Poland!). </p> <p><strong>As always, we invite you to give us our impressions on the gand on the forum:</strong> (let's get this English-speaking forum rolling, baby!)</p> <ul><li><a href="https://community.gangsofspace.com/t/report-on-the-alpha-test-session-7/24">https://community.gangsofspace.com/t/report-on-the-alpha-test-session-7/24</a></li></ul><p><strong>We are also happy to announce that the next test session will be on Sunday, February 23!</strong></p> <p>If you missed this session #7, or if you want to experience it from another point of view, here are a few live recordings:</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace/b/500178171" rel="nofollow">Pre-launch with Erhune and Grouroux</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace/b/500248104" rel="nofollow">Post-launch with Erhune</a></li> <li><a href="https://communaute.gangsofspace.com/t/les-live-de-la-session-du-2-fevrier-2014/97" rel="nofollow">The strems from the community</a></li> </ul><h2>Failing live</h2> <p>For once, we thought we were ready quite on time for this version. What a mistake! After opening the servers, a few huge bugs blow out in our faces: you don't see other players moving, a lot of players cannot warp, some items disappear... <img title=":astonished:" class="emoji" alt="astonished" src="http://community.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/astonished.png" width="64" height="64"></p> <p>Fortunately, since we were live <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace" rel="nofollow">on Twitch</a> with you all, we could get useful information on these bugs very quick, and Erhune managed to fix the most critical bugs and deploy a new version of the game in just an hour. Fewwwwww....! The session can start for real now!</p> <h2>Finally a proper boss!</h2> <p>From all the new features from this version, the one that got the complete thumbs up was the new version of the boss.</p> <p>Not too weak like last time, he surprised more than one player with his debuff bullets (some of you even thought it was a bug <img title=":wink:" class="emoji" alt="wink" src="http://community.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/wink.png" width="64" height="64">). Its new speed limited the efficienty of Bahmut ships, and favorized Gemeter and Astrolax ones. His HP dependant on the number of players made him killable by both small and big groups with a decent difficulty in both cases.</p> <h2>Rise and decline of an Empire</h2> <p>There was quite a lot of change to the Gang ladder this time!</p> <p><strong>Supremacy Inc</strong> reinforced their position as #2 with 1,257 u² of conquested territory. With their sheer number, they might well get #1 in the next session!</p> <p><strong>CSI (Clementine Space Industries)</strong> recruitment strategy before and during the test paid dividents, since this Gang surprised everyone by rising from #10 to #3 with 1,002 u² of territory. Great performance!</p> <p><strong>TMG</strong> are still #1, but for how long? Since they had no conquest this time, they face the very strong possibility of loosing their leadership very soon!</p> <p>Also notable are 2 new Gangs that managed to grow to a quite impressive size in a very short time: <strong>Duck Corporation</strong> and <strong>Chatiment</strong>. Let's keep an eye on them!</p> <p>The fact that the geo-political situation can shift pretty quick make us think we are on the right track! How will that evolve when Gangs will have to defend their bases, which should come pretty soon now?</p> <h2>What worked and what didn't?</h2> <h3>Didn't work as well as expected:</h3> <ul> <li>The vocal chat is pretty buggy and useless in its current form</li> <li>The galactic map needs some enhancements to better understand what's going on</li> <li>Being able to cancel contracts seems very much necessary in the end</li> <li>It's difficult to find the enemies to complete your contract</li> <li>There is no safe zone around gates and beacons</li> </ul><h3>Worked pretty well:</h3> <ul> <li>The server optimizations did marvel on CPU and bandwidth</li> <li>The 40 player limit per fight system seems correct</li> <li>The boss (as mentioned previously)</li> <li>The local chat visible over players</li> <li>The randomized map generation </li> <li>Every player has his favorite ship, and there is no "best" one</li> <li>The smaller Gangs are starting to regroup against the bigger ones</li> </ul><h2>Some stats!</h2> <h3>Harvest</h3> <ul> <li>1,829,103 DNA</li> <li>18,344 Medals<ul> <li>8,551 by pacification</li> <li>7,667 by contracts</li> <li>2,126 by killboard rewards</li> </ul> </li> </ul><h3>Losses</h3> <ul> <li>393 ships lost forever</li> <li>... with 5,217 items on board</li> </ul><h3>Conquest of the Universe</h3> <ul> <li>66 sectors conquested by the players, 5 by the enemies</li> <li>520 sectors pacified in 35 different fight systems</li> <li>42,192 Asteroids explosed</li> <li>140,981 Pirnats annihilated</li> <li>19,166 Vermillons vaporized</li> </ul><h3>General killboard</h3> <ul> <li>158,588 Asteroid S0</li> <li>56,638 Pirnat Scout </li> <li>53,945 Pirnat Wasp </li> <li>37,375 Pirnat Scout MKII</li> <li>34,023 Pirnat Spike </li> <li>27,126 Pirnat Miner </li> <li>16,305 Pirnat Hunter </li> <li>10,156 Pirnat Pickelhaube </li> <li>9,243 Vermillon Hermios </li> <li>8,779 Pirnat Drake </li> <li>8,413 Pirnat Miner MKII</li> <li>8,360 Pirnat Hunter MKII</li> <li>7,247 Vermillon Berthos Evo </li> <li>7,102 Vermillon Melenos </li> <li>5,215 Asteroid S1 </li> <li>4,807 Vermillon Berthos </li> <li>3,444 Vermillon Melenos Evo </li> <li>1,885 Pirnat Lobstor </li> <li>1,452 Asteroid S2 </li> <li>1,294 Vermillon Merros </li> <li>999 Pirnat Hunter X2 </li> <li>560 Turret Gatling </li> <li>334 Asteroid S3 </li> <li>73 Asteroid S4 </li> <li>35 Pirnat Mega Blade (Boss)</li> </ul><p><strong>Which gives us:</strong></p> <ul><li>923 enemies per player!</li></ul><h3>Best death rewards</h3> <p> #1 | Nejaa | 236 medals<br> #2 | JiuZhongBaXian | 174 medals<br> #3 | KyuRyu | 164 medals<br> #4 | Driekiann | 135 medals<br> #5 | Bestio | 96 medals<br> #6 | Glarock | 91 medals<br> #7 | Khilas | 83 medals<br> #8 | Poulililala | 75 medals<br> #9 | d2vil | 62 medals<br> #10 | Valniar | 57 medals</p> <p>That makes this our first player ranking! Soon to be added in the ladders on the website!</p> <h2>The future</h2> <p>Now that we are quite satisfied about the "solo" aspect of <em>Gangs of Space</em> (by that we mean the more casual part of the game, which you don't have to be in a Gang to enjoy), we will move back to the core of the game.</p> <p>The next few updates will thus concentrate on base management, building and deploying gates, system defense, research &amp; industry...</p> <p>We hope that you are as excited as we are about this!</p> Thu, 06 Feb 2014 14:42:31 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/46 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/46 <p>So, here we are! The 7th Gangs of Space Alpha Test session is coming!</p> <p></p><h3>From Sunday, February 2nd 13:00 GMT to Monday, February 3rd 13:00 GMT</h3> <p>(or <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs+of+Space+Alpha+Test+%237&amp;iso=20140202T14&amp;p1=195&amp;ah=23&amp;am=55" rel="nofollow">in other timezones</a>)</p> <p>It will be the first session with a significant number of non-French speaking players. We hope everyone has a good testing time with us, and interact with our small but active French community of very nice players!</p> <p>We also hope that <a href="https://community.gangsofspace.com">the English forum</a> will start to get some activity. If you're curious, you can also have a quick look to <a href="https://communaute.gangsofspace.com" rel="nofollow">the French forum</a> too! (we don't bite, but we make jokes about wine &amp; cheese, be warned!)</p> Fri, 31 Jan 2014 18:24:43 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/43 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/43 <h2>What happened before the test?</h2> <p>The previous test session was on December 8th, just after our <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace/b/484755127" rel="nofollow">120h live streaming marathon</a> called <strong>Indie Story</strong>. That gave us ample time to get some new press for <em>Gangs of Space</em>. Usually, we try to get between 100 and 150 new players for each new session, in order to slowly increase the load on the servers.</p> <p>We were in contact with Krayn, one of the authors of LFG (<a href="http://www.jeuxvideo.com/chroniques-video-looking-for-games.htm" rel="nofollow">a French web-TV dedicated to MMOs on jeuxvideo.com</a>), who tested <em>Gangs of Space</em> and gave us some of his expert advice. So we were very pleasantly surprised when he announced us he'd give some word about <em>Gangs of Space</em> in one of their specials, scheduled for early 2014, just before the 6th session! (<strong><a href="http://www.jeuxvideo.com/chroniques-video/00000448/looking-for-games-lfg-actu-star-citizen-teso-dayz-etc-pc-00118056.htm" class="onebox" rel="nofollow">here's the video, we are at the end of it!</a></strong>).</p> <p>We were very happy to get this coverage, because we really like this program. So we gave them an access key to invite their viewers on the Alpha. Even though their videos have a lot of viewers, we were expecting a very short segment, so we thought it would bring 40-50 new players maybe. But the coverage was longer and better than we expected, and we got more than 500 new players in just a day!</p> <p>At this point, stress was catching up with excitement: of course we're extremely happy to get all those new players, but... will the servers support the load? will the gameplay be interesting with so many players at the same time in one system? </p> <p><div><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/94df284bb996f3eb8d62b82006298843af52d81c5b.png" class="lightbox"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/94df284bb996f3eb8d62b82006298843af52d81c5b.png" width="690" height="179"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">94df284bb996f3eb8d62b82006298843af52d81c5b.png</span><span class="informations">726x189</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div><br><em>January 9 was the release of the video, and January 12 the day of the test.</em></p> <h2>January 12, Pirnapocalypse Day !</h2> <p>Let the numbers speak for themselves:</p> <p><strong>Players and game time</strong></p> <ul> <li>365 different players connected to the server</li> <li>max peak of 132 simultaneous players</li> <li>for a total of 882 hours and 11 minutes of gameplay</li> </ul><p><strong>Havest</strong></p> <ul> <li>2.241.476 DNA</li> <li>16.151 Medals</li> </ul><p><strong>Losses</strong></p> <ul> <li>801 ships destroyed</li> <li>11.206 items lost forever</li> </ul><p><strong>We love the Empire!</strong></p> <ul> <li>549 contracts accomplished</li> <li>967 contracts failed (but still partially paid, I think the Empire is too generous with you!)</li> </ul><p><strong>Conquesting the Universe</strong></p> <ul> <li>78 sectors conquered by the players, 4 by the enemies</li> <li>315 sectors "pacified" in 13 different fight systems</li> <li>123.503 asteroids exploded</li> <li>122.995 Pirnats annihilated</li> <li>13.971 Vermillons vaporized</li> </ul><p><strong>I see dead enemies</strong></p> <ul> <li>118.252 Asteroid S0</li> <li>26.916 Pirnat Wasp</li> <li>22.339 Pirnat Scout</li> <li>20.047 Pirnat Scout MKII</li> <li>14.967 Pirnat Spike</li> <li>10.958 Pirnat Miner</li> <li>8.296 Pirnat Hunter</li> <li>5.410 Pirnat Pickelhaube</li> <li>4.934 Pirnat Hunter MKII</li> <li>4.652 Vermillon Berthos Evo</li> <li>4.262 Pirnat Miner MKII</li> <li>3.846 Pirnat Drake</li> <li>3.845 Asteroid S1</li> <li>3.804 Vermillon Melenos</li> <li>2.421 Vermillon Berthos</li> <li>2.227 Vermillon Melenos Evo</li> <li>1.103 Asteroid S2</li> <li>1.007 Pirnat Lobstor</li> <li>867 Vermillon Merros</li> <li>527 Turret Gatling</li> <li>251 Asteroid S3</li> <li>52 Asteroid S4</li> <li>13 Pirnat Mega Blade (Boss)</li> </ul><p><strong>Which makes...</strong></p> <ul><li>733 enemies per player on average! Not bad!</li></ul><p><strong>So now if you're asked what you did last Sunday, you know how to respond in detail!</strong></p> <p>From this session, we will mostly remember the poor MEGA BLADE, the new Pirnat boss. You were so numerous that he really had no chance to survive, poor one...</p> <ul><li> <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/m/372011" rel="nofollow">Video of one of the first boss kill</a> - Gang TMG</li></ul><p>But rest assured we won't leave it that easy! We already worked on making him a lot nastier::</p> <ul><li><a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace/b/495423601" rel="nofollow">Boss design live with Grouroux on Twitch</a></li></ul><p>For those who want a look at what they missed, he're is a list for the many streamers and Youtubers that make videos of the session: </p> <ul><li><a href="https://communaute.gangsofspace.com/t/gangs-of-space-dans-la-presse-et-ailleurs/18" rel="nofollow">https://communaute.gangsofspace.com/t/gangs-of-space-dans-la-presse-et-ailleurs/18</a></li></ul><p>Thank you so much to all of you who made those videos: : Wirow, arsdant, Galette, Bestio, Nejaa, chateaucoussin2, lanf3ust, Zulu, Krayn</p> <p><strong>You can also have a look at the dev stream for the session start:</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace/b/494654440" rel="nofollow">Pre-test with Erhune</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace/b/494680597" rel="nofollow">Servers opening with Grouroux</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace/b/494726616" rel="nofollow">Erhune takes it back a while after</a></li> </ul><h2>What to learn from this session</h2> <p>Keeping only the most important stuff in mind (because there would be LOOOOOTS of things to say):</p> <p><strong>What went right</strong></p> <ul> <li>In spite of the unexpected number of players, the servers handled well, and the game stayed playable.</li> <li>The game is even more fun with more players!</li> <li>The new players seemed to like the game quite much.</li> <li>Our Twitch live is working well to explain the game, welcome the new players...</li> </ul><p><strong>What went a bit less right</strong></p> <ul> <li>Fight systems are not fun with too many players.</li> <li>A hardware problem on one server at some point, which interrupted the session, but that wasn't something we could do much about.</li> <li>The boss was far too easy.</li> <li>We already knew it, but it can be quite difficult to understand the game as a new player.</li> </ul><p><strong>What we're gonna do</strong></p> <p>In addition to what he had planned for v0.13, we will limit the max number of players per map, open more fight maps at the same time, tweak the boss, add some networking/performance optimizations, add some random generation mechanism to the maps, improve the chat... A lot of big and small things to make the game more comfortable with an increased player count.</p> <h2>And at last</h2> <p>Many many thanks to those who pre-ordered <em>Gangs of Space</em> these last days. Your trust in us to deliver a unique and pleasant game he very much appreciated, and it gives us even more confidence to give it all on this project. Together, we'll do it!</p> <p><strong>We have also decided to announce the next test session for Sunday, February 2nd!</strong> (<a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs+of+Space+Alpha+Test+%237&amp;iso=20140202T14&amp;p1=195&amp;ah=23&amp;am=55" rel="nofollow">other timezones</a>)</p> <p>And until then, <strong><a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace" rel="nofollow">feel free to say hi on our Twitch channel</a>!</strong></p> Tue, 21 Jan 2014 09:56:53 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/42 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/42 <p>2014 has come, which means that <strong> <em>Gangs of Space</em> has been in development for 2 years</strong> now!</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/7552b523940391139c47f0696a5686a0a9904d861b.gif" width="400" height="400"></p> <h2>2012</h2> <p>had been a year of trials and errors, especially due to the decision to redo the game from scratch from Flash to Unity in September 2012.</p> <h2>2013</h2> <p>has been a great and productive year!</p> <p>It's difficult to list everything that was accomplished during this year, but to give you an idea: in January 2013, the game had almost no multi-player, only one system that wasn't even persistent, some enemy sprites were still 2D... In 1 year's time, we arrived to a quite larger universe, maps and minimaps, a conquest system, bases to build and manage, research, lots of content (ships, items, enemies...), missions, fight systems, shops, contracts, trophies... It's starting to look like a real little big MMO!</p> <p>The most significant step has of course been the <strong>opening of the Alpha access in September 2013</strong>, starting the PR, building a community, see what's working and what's not... We are very proud of our current players, of the spirit of help and friendliness you can see in game, on the forums, and on our social networks... Thank you everyone, from the bottom of our hearts! We have learned a lot from you, and we are more determined than ever to make <em>Gang of Space</em> a huge success we can all be proud of!</p> <h2>2014</h2> <p>will be a key year for the game, which should - we hope - graduate from it's Alpha status during the year.</p> <p>The main objective for the beginning of the year is <strong>opening the servers permanently</strong>. This implies a lot of things, but the gist of it is continuing what we started with v0.11 on the fight systems. We can already announce there will be lots of bullets in sight for v0.12, and Grouroux has even mentioned something about... a boss? But those who follow <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace" rel="nofollow">our Twitch channel</a> probably know more about this than me.</p> <p>The other big big job for us for the beginning of the year will be to do <strong>more PR in English</strong>. So far we've focused mainly on the French gaming community, because this is what we know best. But the game itself if available in English, and we know there are gamers all around the world that would enjoy <em>Gangs of Space</em>. So, we'll be expanding significantly our efforts to reach these players too.</p> <p>After these short-term goals, here is the main dish for 2014:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>Content</strong>, more content, and more content again. Enemies, ships, missions, items, and more...</li> <li>The <strong>system defense</strong> part of the game.</li> <li> <strong>Governor rights</strong> and <strong>Administrator rights</strong>. Because dominating the Universe should not ONLY make you look cool!</li> <li>The <strong>API</strong> which will allow any hacker-minded person to access data from the game, and act on the game from the outside. Ladders, custom tools, embeddable widgets... we can't wait to see what you will come up with!</li> <li>Facilitating <strong>understanding the game</strong>. We have a lot of work to do about this: maybe a tutorial, some videos for sure, re-doing some interfaces...</li> </ul><p>But these are only the big points. We also plan to work on the research acquisition system, gate deployment, vocal chat, Twitch integration, multi-resolution support, and a bazillion other things that we will find out about together on the way... </p> <hr><p>What better conclusion for this long news than announcing the date for the next Alpha Test session, then? See you on</p> <h2>Sunday, January 12, 13:00 GMT</h2> <p>(or <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs+of+Space+Alpha+Test+%236&amp;iso=20140112T14&amp;p1=195&amp;ah=23&amp;am=55" rel="nofollow">in other timezones</a>)</p> <p>to take with us the first step for a big new year!</p> Thu, 02 Jan 2014 15:38:26 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/39 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/39 <p>Otsukaresama deshita~! ...as we say here in Japan!</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/7270a3b5cacea260219a58dfdfe40a807306ab2dd2.jpg" width="320" height="239"></p> <p>In spite of a hardware problem on the server and some combat systems that were a bit harder than expected (yes, we look at you, Vermillions!), the <strong>5th Alpha Test session</strong> has given us a lot of useful info about what worked well, and what we should improve from now on.</p> <p>Thanks a lot to all participants, especially those who gave us detailled reports and a lot of interesting remarks! (feel free to continue <a href="https://community.gangsofspace.com">on the forum</a>)!</p> Tue, 10 Dec 2013 09:48:15 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/37 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/37 <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/65ab7b31afc7ac7593463f71a0f3fdfa85388fc835.png" width="500" height="199"></p> <h2>From December 3 to 8, 120h of "reality dev" to watch LIVE!</h2> <p>During these 120 hours, we Erhune &amp; Grouroux, the developers of the game, will be streaming our heroic efforts to release version 0.11 next Sunday, for the new Alpha Test session.</p> <p>Thousands of code lines, 3D everywhere, crazy gamedesign stats, sweat, whole barrels of coffee, commits, reverts, <s>dance and poetry</s>, here is the hard reality you'll be able to witness.</p> <p>This event will allow you to discover <strong>Gangs of Space from the point of view of the creators</strong> and feel the tension building as release is approaching.</p> <p>It will also be a fatastic opportunity to ask us questions directly, or chat about the game!</p> <p>Moreover, we'll have a <strong>small surprise</strong> for everyone that will support us by <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/buy" rel="nofollow">pre-ordering the game</a> during the live!</p> <p>In order not to miss the beginning of the show, you can already <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/gangsofspace" rel="nofollow"><strong>"Follow" our Twitch channel</strong></a>. See you soon!</p> Mon, 02 Dec 2013 16:33:51 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/34 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/34 <p>After Session #4 which was a great success (you all seemed to have lots of fun with the new ships, which is great!), we have decided to hold Alpha Test Session #5 on:</p> <h2>Sunday, December 8th, at 13:00 GMT</h2> <p>(see <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs+of+Space+Alpha+Test+%235&amp;iso=20131208T14&amp;p1=195&amp;ah=23&amp;am=55" rel="nofollow">in other timezones</a>)</p> <p>This time, we will be focusing on the big question: "what to do when my Gang buddies are not online?". We'll introduce a new type of maps (<strong>combat maps</strong>) and a much improved objectives &amp; navigation system. And maybe a few other goodies, who knows <img title=":wink:" class="emoji" alt="wink" src="http://community.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/wink.png" width="64" height="64"></p> Sun, 24 Nov 2013 13:18:59 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/32 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/32 <p>Finally, the next alpha test session is upon us...!</p> <h2>Sunday, November 17, from 13:00 GMT</h2> <p>(or <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs+of+Space+4%C3%A8+session+de+test&amp;iso=20131117T14&amp;p1=195" rel="nofollow">in other timezones</a>)</p> <p>As usual, the session with run for 24 hours, and we will deploy a new version for this test: <strong>version 0.10.0</strong>!</p> <p>The complete changelog will be available on Sunday, but we can already announce 3 new player shops that were teased in the last news:<br>- the <strong>Astrolax</strong> is a support ship, capable of zone heals<br>- the <strong>Abyss</strong> is a sniper ship with some interesting controls...<br>- the <strong>Bahmut</strong> is the new big damage-dealer, with its guided missiles!</p> <p>We'll also be introducing a <strong>Trophy system</strong> to unlock the Imperial variants of these ships, so you can unlock them without having to do some long and complicated research process (of course, the research on these new ships and their equipments will <em>also</em> be available!).</p> <p>So, see you on Sunday, space cowboys!</p> Fri, 15 Nov 2013 14:48:52 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/27 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/27 <p>With the 3rd test session over (thanks to all who passed by!), we have decided to take a small-ish break in the weekly test rhythm to reflect on what we learned thanks from these sessions, and make some changes to things that are not working as good as we wanted (especially the structure of the Universe). </p> <p>But don't worry, we're thrilled with the response of the players so far, and veeeeery happy to see that you, kind players, are enjoying the game as we envisioned it. And we are kind of enjoying it ourselves too, which is also a very positive sign <img title=":smile:" class="emoji" alt="smile" src="http://community.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/smile.png" width="64" height="64"></p> <p>So no announce of the next session yet, but we'll make up for the delay by trying to introduce a few <strong>immediately-accessible new content in the next version</strong>. Want a hint?</p> <p><img src="https://gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/19a3eeaf0e1b6fc0392b6a79a81f7f2a547c68791e_690x433.png" width="500" height="314"></p> <hr><p>On an unrelated note, I'll be giving a quick talk tonight at <strong>Picotachi-7</strong> at <a href="http://www.picopicocafe.com/?" rel="nofollow">PicoPico Cafe</a>, so if by any chance any of you is around Tokyo tonight, feel free to drop by (it's a very nice &amp; relaxed event, and free to attend!).</p> <p><div><a href="http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/files/1/picotachi_7.png" class="lightbox"><img src="http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/files/1/picotachi_7.png" width="500" height="438"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">picotachi_7.png</span><span class="informations">640x560</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> Fri, 08 Nov 2013 03:45:33 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/26 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/26 <p>We're getting used to this, aren't we? So, without further ado, we'd like to introduce the <strong>3rd Gangs of Space alpha test session</strong> for...</p> <h2>Sunday, October 27th, 12:00 GMT!!</h2> <p>(Or <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs+of+Space+3rd+test+session&amp;iso=20131027T12" rel="nofollow">in other timezones</a>...)</p> <p>This test session will be live for 24 hours, and we'll deploy a new version introducting the following changes:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>Gang shops</strong> (which work even when you're offline)</li> <li>Many many more <strong>Gang rights</strong> to restrict a bit these all-messy Gang members <img title=":smile:" class="emoji" alt="smile" src="http://community.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/smile.png" width="64" height="64"> </li> <li>The first researcheable ship, the <strong>Gemeter S</strong> (formerly Gemeter-and-that's-it) is now much easier to research.</li> <li>Gangs need only <strong>1 sector</strong> to deploy a base in systems, which will change quite a bit the conquest balance!</li> </ul><p>The previous version 0.8.3 deployed last week also introduced the following changes, which will be improved again this week:</p> <ul> <li>The ability to <strong>sell or buy sectors</strong> between Gangs.</li> <li>Gang-wide <strong>DNA reserve</strong>, which can be restricted to some Gang members, and allow you to store your sales profits (whether sector sales or item sales in your Gang shops)</li> </ul><p>But that's not all, and we hope to see you this Sunday to discover the complete list <img title=":smile:" class="emoji" alt="smile" src="http://community.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/smile.png" width="64" height="64"></p> <p><div><a href="//gos-discourse-en.s3.amazonaws.com/6890cd12fe7934b2f038107a248c7997de8959651.gif" class="lightbox"><img src="//gos-discourse-en.s3.amazonaws.com/28da8ff2bf239fb9e347138d7ffb81031b4779e48_431x500.gif" width="215" height="250"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">thinking-cap.gif</span><span class="informations">550x637 38.6 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> Fri, 25 Oct 2013 18:11:32 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/19 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/19 <h2>Thank you all for your participation!</h2> <p>Thanks to you, the second <em>Gangs of Space</em> alpha test session was a great success! (And like last week's, there was no major issue! Yay!)</p> <p>The big thing in this session has obviously been <strong>the conquest of Akira-I</strong>, a system with a higher difficuly than the previous test session's LMR-I and -II. And we weren't wrong in our difficulty estimation, judging by the new space junk: 111 ships sacrificed for the glory of the Empire!</p> <p>Don't think only the players had a hard time with this one...</p> <p><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/447dc09ca820f7469fdda75c59756485ad0db16436.png" width="390" height="15"></p> <p>Conquering the level 1 and 2 sectors was pretty simple, but sectors 3 asked for many rival Gangs to join forces:</p> <p><div><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/421e2f59e5ba5d989cf9e4b75dbdd5aea6d19d04a7.png" class="lightbox"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/421e2f59e5ba5d989cf9e4b75dbdd5aea6d19d04a7.png" width="494" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">421e2f59e5ba5d989cf9e4b75dbdd5aea6d19d04a7.png</span><span class="informations">520x526</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>In the end, the <strong>Lutins Psycopathes</strong> managed to get in front of their rivals <strong>Bière Chaussette Corp.</strong> and <strong>Space Cowboys</strong> at the last second, and got appointed as Governors for their second system in a row. Congratulations to them!</p> <p><div><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/45b2c7c48a22de748845a3f5e1a4f66ae378f66ee5.png" class="lightbox"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/45b2c7c48a22de748845a3f5e1a4f66ae378f66ee5.png" width="690" height="360"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">45b2c7c48a22de748845a3f5e1a4f66ae378f66ee5.png</span><span class="informations">1202x628</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <hr><p>And during all of this, some players got addicted to mining, and mining, and mining.....</p> <p> <div><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/4330668b20d20e32a149cf3e00b591e89877749d76.png" class="lightbox"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/4330668b20d20e32a149cf3e00b591e89877749d76.png" width="690" height="388"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">4330668b20d20e32a149cf3e00b591e89877749d76.png</span><span class="informations">1280x720</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <hr><p>P.S. Thanks also to Skywilly from <a href="http://www.gamesidestory.com/" rel="nofollow">Game Side Story</a> for his streaming of a part of the test session on <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/skywilly/c/3114063" rel="nofollow">his Twitch</a>!</p> Tue, 22 Oct 2013 16:28:45 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/18 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/18 <p><div><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/37e0b518a044461862db1d10a8c64067ed71fb2b6d.jpg" class="lightbox"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/37e0b518a044461862db1d10a8c64067ed71fb2b6d.jpg" width="690" height="223"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">37e0b518a044461862db1d10a8c64067ed71fb2b6d.jpg</span><span class="informations">1280x415</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>Be ready dear space hunters, because the second <em>Gangs of Space</em> testing session is coming fast! Let's meet again for 24 hours on...</p> <h2>Sunday, October 20th, from 12:00 GMT</h2> <p>(Time in other timezones <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs%20of%20Space%20alpha%20test%20session%202&amp;iso=20131020T14&amp;p1=195" rel="nofollow">here</a>)</p> <p>We have a new version in the pipe that will bring many small (and not-so-small) improvements to the game!</p> <p><strong>For this session, we will follow a pre-determined program:</strong> </p> <ol> <li>Open only one hostile system: Akira-I</li> <li>If it is conquerred fully, open the next one (a very hard one!): Octet-I</li> <li>The previously conquerred systems LMR-I and LMR-II will receive an enemy attack at some point</li> <li>The servers will be opened for 24 hours, so you will have some time to develop your existing (and new) bases</li> </ol><p><strong>As always, a few recommendations:</strong> </p> <ul> <li>Create a Gang and it's flag (or join one), it's way more fun!</li> <li>If you find a bug, you have a reporting tool just at hands:</li> </ul><p><a href="https://wiki.gangsofspace.com/fr/uploads/bug-report.png" target="_blank"><img src="https://wiki.gangsofspace.com/fr/uploads/bug-report.png" alt="" width="308" height="106"></a></p> Fri, 18 Oct 2013 17:40:15 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/15 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/15 <h2>Thank you everyone!</h2> <p>I think we can safely say this first "large-scale" testing session was a huge success! We went way over our expectations of maximum concurrent players, there was no game-breaking bug, the servers didn't sweat, and more than 2 complete level 1 systems have been conquered in the first 6 hours of the test (after that, the developers fell into sleep, because of the timezone difference &gt; </p><p>It was pretty magical for Grouroux and I to see the game mechanics we've imagined together, staring at our screens, finally coming to life in front of our eyes, and to realize that even though some parts of the gameplay are still a big rough around the edges, a kind of magic started to emerge from the game...</p> <p><div><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/36f09a806dbd96943d1ecfb1cb5265032efbc4342d.png" class="lightbox"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/36f09a806dbd96943d1ecfb1cb5265032efbc4342d.png" width="690" height="456"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">36f09a806dbd96943d1ecfb1cb5265032efbc4342d.png</span><span class="informations">891x589</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p><div><a href="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/350b1e28a1f9e37f68ebba1a2feb42ff9e7a3f8d8f.png" class="lightbox"><img src="//gos-discourse-fr.s3.amazonaws.com/350b1e28a1f9e37f68ebba1a2feb42ff9e7a3f8d8f.png" width="690" height="479"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">350b1e28a1f9e37f68ebba1a2feb42ff9e7a3f8d8f.png</span><span class="informations">792x550</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>Thank you to all those who reported bugs, to <em>VinceKun</em> who streamed and commented the whole session on Twitch, to those who organized Gangs to compete for conquest, and in general to all those who came and participated with fun and good laughs (even though 48 ships were destroyed during the course of the test <img title=":smile:" class="emoji" alt="smile" src="http://community.gangsofspace.com/plugins/emoji/images/smile.png" width="64" height="64">)</p> <p>We hope to see you again for the next test session (date not decided yet), because all this newly conquered territory need to be defended, now!</p> Mon, 14 Oct 2013 17:27:45 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/13 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/13 <p>Finally, we are announcing <strong>the first "big" test session for the new Gangs of Space alpha</strong>! </p> <p><a href="https://wiki.gangsofspace.com/fr/uploads/gate-open.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://wiki.gangsofspace.com/fr/uploads/gate-open.jpg" alt="" width="422" height="343"></a></p> <p>For this occasion, we are inviting everyone with a Gangs of Space account to party hard on the game servers <strong>this Sunday, October 13, starting from 2 p.m. French time</strong> (<a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Gangs%20of%20Space%20alpha%20test%20session&amp;iso=20131013T14&amp;p1=195" rel="nofollow">time in other time zones</a>).</p> <p>Since we are expecting a majority of French players this time (yeah, we've been slacking off a bit on your English communication, I know...), we've centralized all the info for this testing session <a href="https://communaute.gangsofspace.com/t/ouverture-du-serveur-imminente/19" rel="nofollow">on this topic on the French forum</a>.</p> <p>It's not perfect (because we don't really have the time required to do it properly in two different languages) but you can post there during the test to communicate (in English or Klingon or whatever language of your choice!) with your fellow testers.</p> <p>Hopefully see you very soon ingame!</p> Thu, 10 Oct 2013 18:48:57 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/11 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/11 <p>So, just a quick report from last weeks events. </p> <p><strong>Tokyo Game Show</strong> was lots of fun to hang out around some awesome fellow indie developers (and get my brain blown away by some games shown at <strong>Sense of Wonder Night</strong>). </p> <p><a href="http://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/nl/articles/1309/25/news106.html" rel="nofollow">Indie Stream</a> was very very crowded, which proved that the indie community in Japan is really growing strong. After discussing with some doujin-game developers I know, I set up my laptop on a small corner of a table to show <em>Gangs of Space</em> to the public, and the game was well-received by those who stopped by (thanks, everyone!). </p> <p><div><a href="//gos-discourse-en.s3.amazonaws.com/2b51d6a3f9507b904ef93d3e6d47bf6d2e1bd9934.jpg" class="lightbox"><img src="//gos-discourse-en.s3.amazonaws.com/15f3e256d53d08eeb86c2ff7de979afec2d553de3_375x500.jpg" width="375" height="500"><div class="meta"> <span class="filename">Indie_Stream_small.jpg</span><span class="informations">1224x1632 524 KB</span><span class="expand"></span> </div></a></div></p> <p>Now that the new website is... well... usable (let's not say "finished"), I'm back to the game itself, trying to fix the few major remaining bugs before we do our first testing session.</p> Tue, 01 Oct 2013 18:09:28 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/9 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/9 <p>This year&#39;s <em>Tokyo Game Show</em> is approaching fast, and since I&#39;ll be attending I thought I&#39;ll give a shoutout to anyone that would be interested to meet-up and talk about <em>Gangs of Space</em> (or their own indie game, for my fellow indie developers!).</p> <p>My tentative planning of attendance is:<br> - <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/371194659674725/">Tokyo Indie Underground</a> on Wednesday 18th<br> - TGS itself and especially <a href="http://expo.nikkeibp.co.jp/tgs/2013/en/business/sown/presentation.html">Sense of Wonder Night</a> on Friday 20th<br> - <a href="http://www.indiegame-fest.com/">Indie Game Fest</a> on either Saturday 21st or Sunday 22nd<br> - <a href="http://www.playism.tv/blog/?p=613">Indie Stream</a> on Sunday 22nd</p> <p>If you want to grab a beer (or a coffee, depending on the time) and talk or attend together, you can just <a href="https://twitter.com/Erhune">tweet me</a>!</p> Wed, 18 Sep 2013 08:13:04 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/5 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/5 <p>We just released version 0.8.0 to our alpha testers, and are now working hard on preparing for a &quot;bigger&quot; test community. And that includes a big <em>redo the website</em> task that is now being rolled out, as you can see.</p> <p>We still have a LOT of content to write, especially about presenting the game to new players, but we are starting to feel the pressure of having to put the game in front of many more eyes, which is a GOOD pressure to have!</p> Tue, 17 Sep 2013 08:50:21 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/3 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/3 <p>Starting from the newly released version 0.8.0, we will try to do more focused test-play sessions. So for the time being, the game server will not be accessible full-time, but will be open from at specific times in order to gather groups of players to start play-testing more toroughly the multiplayer parts of the game.</p> <p>There is no date or time decided yet (we have to first iron out a few blocking bugs on version 0.8.0), but stay tuned for more info!</p> <p>(Did you know we have a <a href="https://www.gangsofspace.dev/en/rss">RSS feed</a> to follow the news? You can also check the official <a href="https://twitter.com/GangsOfSpace">@GangsOfSpace</a> twitter, which I should update more often…)</p> Tue, 17 Sep 2013 08:49:43 +0000 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/4 https://www.gangsofspace.com/en/news/4

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