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.

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)

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.

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.

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.