We’ve just rolled out an update to Space Food Truck for all our platforms addressing some of the performance issues we’ve been hearing about. Here’s the list of tweaks for 1.2.285.

Changes:

• Fixed memory consumption issue on inventory screen. Should fix the crashes many are reporting on mobile as well as result in notable performance improvement on lower end machines and devices.
• iOS-only: reduced OS requirement to iOS 8.0.

After adding a few different difficulties to Space Food Truck, our simple “quickmatch” solution for online games felt like it needed a little attention. This weekend we’re testing a new solution in our “thar_be_dragons” beta branch: a lobby screen that lets you browse every available game. It’s pretty simple at the moment, you can quickmatch like old times or be picky, but it lays the groundwork for our next big addition: asynchronous play. We’ll also be adding some better “rejoin” functionality soon for players who get lost in space.

Also new this build: 12 new crisis scenarios (3 for each room).

If you want to help us troubleshoot the new lobby this weekend, right-click Space Food Truck in your Steam games library, click Properties, go to the betas tab and switch to “thar_be_dragons” in the dropdown. As always, let us know what you think either by posting in our Steam discussion group or emailing us directly with any issues you run into at bugs@spacefoodtruck.com.

Gameplay

• 12 new crisis scenarios added
• New character chatter added

Improvements

• New online games lobby.

• Fixed an audio bug involving ship SFX in-game stopping
• Fixed an audio SFX volume adjustment bug after leaving a game.
• Fixed various in-game crashes/hangs from playing cards
• Fixed a crashing bug in the event UI if the player tried to take the damage in some scenarios.
• Fixed a crashing bug involving crises expiring that would hang up online games.

Our migration to Unity 5 is done! There were a few bugs that snuck past in the migration over the weekend that we tidied up, and we’ll be sure to fix any more that might spring up later. This build is now on the live branch, so for those that were being super helpful and giving it a go on the beta branch over the weekend, feel free to switch over to the normal build. Thanks so much to those that give the beta a spin this weekend!

Fixes

• Fixed audio clipping bug that would cause some background elements to go mute.
• Fixed a crashing bug in the event UI if the player tried to take the damage in some scenarios.
• Fixed a crashing bug involving crises expiring that would hang up online games.

Things have been quiet on the content front while we lay down some foundational work for Space Food Truck. It’s a bit of a slog now, but in the end we’ll be much more efficient at adding things and fixing bugs. We’ve got lots of cool stuff planned for the future of Space Food Truck, so keep an eye on this news feed!

Part of our overhaul has been upgrading SFT to the latest Unity Engine build. Typically it’s not something I would attempt to do mid-project, but the benefits of not having your environment crash randomly, plus the opportunity to address some bugs in the core engine felt well worth the risk. This transition has not been without a few mind-bending bugs that have made me question causality and the nature of reality. This image pretty well sums it up:

Gameplay

• You can now zoom in/out on the galaxy map with the mouse scroll wheel.

Improvements

• Upgraded SFT project to run on Unity 5 Engine.
• Optimized rendering performance of galaxy map by ~15-20%.
• Event Log is more responsive when closed during ship animations.

Fixes

• Fixed path highlighting bug in galaxy map where some paths would only partially light up.
• Fixed bug where the vent monster could get stuck on the ship after a “spacetime flies” event. (Yikes)

Typically we have a long list of changes in our weekly builds, but this week we’ve spent most of our time planning and info gathering for some pretty large upcoming updates. So not a ton of time for bug fixes or feature adds this week, but we’ll be making up for that soon!

Reviewing the stats for our Dragon Sweat achievement, it looks like only 0.2% of you have been able to conquer that behemoth. A hint: at the start of the game, you’re going to want to focus everyone’s attention on helping the engie. The sooner he can overcome your draw pod situation, the better.

As usual, we’ll be streaming our own playtest this afternoon at 2:30pm ET on Twitch, and giving away a few free copies of SFT. Stop by an ask us anything!

It doesn’t qualify as a list this week, but here’s what’s new:

Fix

• Fixed a bug where the damage output displayed on time fluctuation events were showing the incorrect amount.

Space Food Truck doesn’t partake in any sense of realism. That said, gravitational waves are still awesome. And speaking of waves, we got the Gamma Toaster card animating in this update:

Gameplay-wise the biggest change this week is that the resupply deck doesn’t run out late game. It was a slightly slower week regarding bug fixes and gameplay balance/improvements as we shifted focus to polish up some artwork, animations, and audio. SFT is still in Early Access, and we intend to start wrapping things up in the next several weeks to get ready for 1.0 launch. So if you’ve got bugs, suggestions, or feedback don’t hesitate to leave a comment, tweet at us, post on SFT forums, or send it directly to bugs at spacefoodtruck dot com.

• Resupply deck is now endless.
• Last Resort changed to “Leftovers”, along with new card art.

• Added polish to backgrounds of ship view and zap mart.
• Added animation for gamma toasting cards.
• Added animation for cards that will be destroyed instead of discarded.

• Fixed a bug where backtracking towards a delivery would cause two delivery screens to show up.
• Fixed bug where breakthroughs on Thai Hot could be reduced back to 1 instead of the minimum of 2.
• Asking around on an already revealed or visited planet no longer wastes an Ask Around point.
• Fixed a bug where recipe HUD wouldn’t update ownership HUDs when an ingredient was given to another player.

Gameplay

• Test your skills against 28 new achievements.
• Arrival events are slightly harder, giving less outs for the Engy.
• Captain’s Overdrive works differently: it now fills your FTL to the max capacity and lets you travel.
• Ask Around is now in the starter deck for the Captain
• Backtrack is moved from the Captain’s starter deck to the lab

Fixes

• Fixed text clipping issues with crises events in UI pop ups
• Fixed bug where ‘connect the dots’ or ‘not enough juice’ errors would spring up when selecting ‘done’ during engage actions.
• Fixed bug where dock/punch it buttons would disappear during ‘Spacetime Flies’ FTL Arrival events.
• Fixed hitboxes for selecting crises during diplomabot and in the ship in general.

Improvements

• Steam tradings card support has been added. Collect all 8 and craft your badges!
• Added error message for Captain’s Backtrack, so players can’t add more than the 3 power needed.
• You can click on flipped/researched nodes in lab to peek at the card in addition to hovering over them for some time.
• Added more polished animation for trashing cards in resupply phase.

The Indie of the Year competition on indiedb.com is wrapping up, but there’s still time to vote for Space Food Truck. Voters are also entered for a chance to win some Steam games. So maybe Space Food Truck will win something, or maybe you will! Just click the big button below to make somebody possibly a winner.

The feedback from Space Food Truck’s Early Access is pouring in, and we’ve already got our sights on some big changes. Rolling out as soon as possible: our least popular cards are being retired to make way for some cooler ones.

New in the ZapMart

The Sammich, Footlong Sammich, Echonium, and Enriched Echonium buff your card values if you happened to have sylk or ingredient-type cards in your hand. But that isn’t happening as often as we like. So to improve the usefulness of these cards, their powers are being combined. The new and improved Enriched Echonium will give big bonuses if you have sylk OR ingredients in your hand, making it twice as useful!

The Claw of Duty lets you pull job cards from your discard pod, but it doesn’t really feel stronger than the regular Claw. So to make it worth the purchase price, we’re buffing it to pull any card you want from your discard. And if your pod happens to be empty, it’ll now be worth 2 Power to charge your abilities.

Lastly, two new items are in works! We hate the Prime Accelerator as much as you guys. So we’re removing it from the game completely, and replacing it with a sweet new card called the Unomas Remote. You’ll also soon be able to reach your favorite cards even faster with the powerful and flexible Exchangitron.

New Job Cards

Another issue that’s been brought to our attention: there are a few boring cards in the Scientist’s lab. We agree, so here’s what’s being changed for each character.

The Captain’s Ask Around will no longer have a Power requirement. You’ll get 3 free picks around the galaxy map, so you can save your Power for travel.

The Scientist had plenty of Research cards already, so we’re replacing the one in his lab row with a second copy of his powerful Mimicube card.

If you’re like us, you avoid unlocking the Engie’s third Upgrade Ship card if you can help it. So that’s been replaced with a brand new card called Duct Tape, which can be used to fix any single broken item on the ship for free, no matter how expensive.

We’ve got a few more changes in mind that we’ll be ready to post about soon. Huge thanks to everyone who’s supported us and sent in feedback so far. Let us know what you think of these changes, and keep an eye out for new builds on the way to Space Food Truck’s Early Access!

Space Food Truck Early Access is underway, and the response so far has been amazing! We’re getting a lot of helpful feedback about the various systems at play. But the biggest feature request so far is the ability to seeing what the current player is doing when it’s not your turn in an online game. So today we’re rolling out a WIP solution. A “watch” button has been added next to the current player’s turn icon:

Click this to follow your teammate’s point of view. If they go to the map, you’ll follow; if they go to repair something, you’ll see it, and so on. You won’t be able to see their hand at the bottom of the screen, and some screens (like the inventory) don’t show you everything they’re doing yet, but more networked functionality will be added as we move forward. Our goal is to eventually let you watch everything your teammates are up to.

And if, at any time, you want to deviate from the current player’s screen and plan ahead for your turn, you can click any nav button or toggle the ‘Watch’ button off to resume control and explore the ship on your own.

Patch notes (0.8.132):

Gameplay

• Added first pass of spectator functionality so online players can get a better sense of what the current player is doing.

Fixes

• Fixed bug with galaxy map path rendering that caused visibility issues.