I’d hoped to have more cool stuff to show off from my 3d training tangent, but I’ve spent the past week refining that same old Blank Man model and rig. The past two days have been devoted to this one flippin’ shoulder, which is apparently a very tricky part of the anatomy to get right. This model went from “I’ll make a formless blob in the shape of a man and move on” to “I’ll make a person with good edgeflow I can base all my people-shaped models on”. I’ve deleted his hands and shoulders 3 or 4 times each, but I’ve learned a ton buckling down and trying to get it all right.

I believe asynchronous play is coming to Space Food Truck this month, after which I think we’ll do some game design again. I think I remember how to do that.

After a month or so of major overhaul to Space Food Truck‘s networking functionality, we’ve just released a convenient rejoin feature for online games! Now if a player is disconnected mid-turn, they’ll have a full 60 seconds to pick up exactly where they left off. There’s no longer a need for anyone to exit and rehost, or to retake the beginning of your turn to catch up. A popup will appear on the main menu after you’ve disconnected, or you can click “rejoin” in the “Find Online Game” screen.

Of course, this feature is just the first big hurdle we needed to clear on our way toward full asynchronous support. Soon it’ll be much easier to find a crew for a pick-up game of SFT online, and you’ll have the option of taking your turns whenever it’s convenient for you.

It’s been a bit of a slog in 3d learning land the past week or so. My plan was to make a super simple mesh, rig it up, and try a little animation. But there was some ambition creep, my simple mesh got fingers and articulations, I experimented and improved my tutorial rig a little, and I spent all yesterday trying to figure out what the best low poly topology for fingers would look like. I have absolutely nothing cool to show for all that, but I learned a lot!

Next I’ll finally have something to animate with, and I might try scrapping this mesh to see if I can refit this rig to a character with different proportions.

I wasn’t at all excited about learning Blender at the start of all this, but it really does do everything Maya did for me. Some things worse, but a lot of things better.

Slowly getting more comfortable with the Blender 3d software. Just finished exploring their UV unwrapping tools and some bump mapping workflows. By the time Alex has asychronous play ready for Space Food Truck, I’m hoping to be pretty decent at this!

Alex is still plugging away at the asynchronous update for Space Food Truck, which gives me a few months to learn some new 3d software for future projects. My very limited 3d experience has been in Maya, but we feel like Blender might be a safer bet for us going forward, seeing as it’s free and pretty powerful. The learning curve switching over has been steep, but I’m starting to get the hang of it and its million shortcut keys.

I’ll try to get back in the habit of regular blog updates and post some screenshots of my experiments.

You may have noticed we’ve been pretty quiet here and on social media lately, and that’s because we’re concentrating. But that shouldn’t get in the way of our usual progress reports, so here’s what we’ve been up to!

Alex is squashing bugs and getting the framework up and running for Space Food Truck‘s asynchronous update, which will help users find an online match more easily and will probably take a while. And since I have a bit more time on my hands than I know what to do with, I’m taking the opportunity to bone up on my 3D art skills. You might remember back in Tilt to Live 2 we had the 3D arrow and the 3D brimstone weapon… and that was about it. I’d learned a ton about rigging and animation and stuff, but forgot most of it for never having used it. This time I’m aiming to stick with it, so we can make whatever kind of games we want going forward.

Once the async update is ready, we’ve got all kinds of new card content and gametypes we want to do for SFT. So if new content is what you’re waiting for, keep an eye on this blog!

Alex and I talk a little about what we did last week and what’s next for Space Food Truck. Then we return to the land of Dragon Sweat for our weekly SFT key giveaway.

You can watch the previous episodes here on our YouTube, or come say hi on Twitch next time we stream, Fridays at 2:30pm ET.

Alex and I return to Space Food Truck‘s Dragon Sweat difficulty, which less than 1% of our players have overcome. We are not the 1%… YET.

You can watch the previous episodes here on our YouTube, or come say hi on Twitch next time we stream, Fridays at 2:30pm ET.

Our first content update has just arrived for Space Food Truck, spicing things up with the new Dragon Sweat difficulty. If you played our Dragon Sweat beta over the weekend, you may want to right-click SFT in your games library, click properties, go to the betas tab, and opt out of betas now.

Rather than piling on the damage and calling it a day, Dragon Sweat adds a unique event on the first turn of the game designed to change the way you approach certain decisions. A manufacturer’s recall on your ship’s engine states it will rupture in “just about exactly 90 turns”, and any spacetime fluctuations you encounter on your adventure can reduce that timer. Your entire crew will need to bring their A game if you’re hoping to bring home the new “Dragon Slayer” achievements.

Here’s what else is new today:

Gameplay

• Crises now deal half damage in Mild Mode
• New difficulty added: Dragon Sweat
• Added 2 new achievements for beating Dragon Sweat.

Improvements

• 15 new planet names and descriptions added
• 10 customer reviews were added to the game over screen.
• Added a saucy new difficulty UI screen.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug for save files that would get corrupted when illegal hands would be drawn. They should now be recoverable.
• Fixed a bug where “Full House” achievement wouldn’t trigger when using power glove.
• Fixed a bug where players could get around the hand max in various ways causing issues with game stability. In some cases, like fast track, if you’re researching and there’s no room, the card will go to the top of the draw pile instead.

And we aren’t finished with Space Food Truck yet! Stay tuned for news on what’s next, and let us know what you’d like to see in the comments or on our discussion board.

In this week’s episode, Alex and I tackle our second revision to the experts-only Dragon Sweat difficulty for Space Food Truck. In our original pass, the Leftover cards were all Vexyls and there was weeping and gnashing of teeth. You can watch the previous episodes here on our YouTube, or come say hi on Twitch next time we stream, Fridays at 2:30pm ET.