We’re back with another dev update, but first some exciting news. Spies & Soldiers is going to be part of…
…STEAM NEXT FEST!
We’ll have a shiny new demo available to play, some fancy live streams throughout the event, and Spies & Soldiers will be featured alongside many other amazing new games. The festival runs from June 16 – 22, so we’re currently hard at work polishing the game and implementing a few new features in time for the launch.
Meanwhile, a new update to the Steam build went live last week, featuring the ability to save practice games, a few bug fixes, and a big overhaul of the screen display system that means the game is looking crisper than ever. You can try it out over on the playtest on Steam.
Lastly, we have an upcoming event at Pixel Bar in Melbourne which is looking super cool. Come along for a beverage and a chance to go head-to-head against local opponents. Details can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/PixelbarAus/posts/1908340306008475
And now let’s check in on what the team has been up to…
JIM
Now that the generated art for spy portraits is working, Jim has been hammering away at getting the portrait generator working for soldiers as well. This turns out to be much more fiddly as the soldier portraits feature groups of figures, so they need to look good as both a generated figure and an overall unit. It’s been rewarding though, as it utilizes some of the more complex features of the generator to give the soldiers a unified feel, while still having variety.
Jim is also mocking up concept art and UX designs for the new home screen, but there’ll be more on that in a future post!
Aside from art duties, Jim has been keeping us on track, working towards the demo build for the Steam Next Fest. It’s been great for us to have a concrete deadline to work towards, but it’s always tough balancing which features will make the cut, as we want to fit in as many awesome new things as possible.
BEN
Ben has primarily been developing a new home screen from the ground up, with a much more dynamic and visually engaging design that will hopefully catch people’s attention from the first moments of the game. This involves a lot of iteration, creating prototype layouts with different types of interactivity to see which styles are the most responsive.
When Ben has a spare moment, it’s spent working alongside the other team members, helping support their work with the systems he developed, such as Jim’s art generator and Luis’s work on the new campaign map system.
LUIS
During the week we stumbled across the previously unnoticed Steam notification system, and as such we pivoted to implementing this alongside the current email notification system. Luis has been getting the feature working in game which means any turn/match notifications will be available in Steam. He has also continued work on the maps for the new single player campaign, but a small roadblock requires Ben, master of the map generator, to jump in so they can puzzle it out together.
Meanwhile, in preparation for the Pixel Bar event, Luis produced some physical spy tokens, laser cut from wood! These are unbelievably cool, each featuring a unique generated spy on the front and a game key on the back. There is currently only a limited number as they take quite a while to etch. Come along to the event, and maybe you can score one!
MADDY
Maddy has mostly been getting the store page ready for the Next Festival, as well as organizing the Pixel Bar event. They’ve also been looking into strategy game streamers so we can get some cool collaborations going in the future. Let us know if you have any fave streamers we should get in touch with!
COMMUNITY
In amongst the development work we’ve been interacting with other dev communities and found some really lovely corners of the internet. We’re keen to engage with our own community a bit more, so after a few wobbly test streams we are now ready to try some regular dev twitch streams starting next Monday morning. The weekly play sessions have also taken off and it is wonderful to have a bunch of people playing the game and chatting in Discord. They happen every Sunday at 8pm, both AEST and EST.
We’ll have one more update before the Steam Next Fest starts on June 16, in the meantime it’s full STEAM ahead 😉
To keep up with the latest updates you can follow Ghostbat Games on Twitter or join the Spies & Soldiers Discord server. And as always wishlists are super appreciated!