Blogs - Jumpdrive-Studios

Huge thank you to our players and especially our awesome Discord community! Thanks to your input we keep making XO better!

We are also on sale for the Steam Summer Sale!

Buy XO on Steam today!

New Ships:
Please welcome the Empire Occupier, our first carrier! You may have seen gunboats from time to time - those Empire ships without jumpdrives? The Occupier can carry up to six of those through jump. It is also able to repair damaged boats, making it a highly valuable ship. Like the Empire Auxiliary, repair takes time and requires ore.



Also new in 1.42 is the Empire Sleeper ship! The Sleeper acts as a farmship of sorts for the Empire. Sleeper ships can put up to six passengers aboard into stasis so they do not consume resources. It takes time, ore and water to put passengers in and out of stasis, and if the Sleeper is disabled, all passengers in stasis will be immediately lost.



We also completed work on a number of new ship abilities! Look for them to arrive in 1.43 and beyond! There are functional ‘test’ versions of several of these new ships in the game right now, but they can only be purchased at the (very rare) shipyard trade events right now...

Balance:
Event timers are extended by two days if the event crosses sectors

Plotting a jump now only uses active ships for calculating jump times.

Features/QOL improvements:


- We are working on improving how ships deal with the range of their weapons. This is an ongoing bit of work that will spill into the next version.
- Passengers aboard ships are now colored per their own faction relations with the Pact.
- Ships with a single mining laser no longer autotarget and destroy mines in range while on berzerk. Ships with multiple weapons retain this ability.
- Range rings now show when hovering (paused) a shieldship that has its shield(s) disabled by ion torpedoes.
- Every single event in the game was overhauled to reduce the number of initial messages on hail, in some cases adding questions or additional options. We removed almost all of the combat timers, allowing for longer battles to play out. And we added more variety and some more randomness to quite a few events too!
- On top of that we added a number of new events!
- Sector nodes were made much more visible.
- The starmap plotting line was finally made 3D! This fixed an issue where the dotted plotting line broke away if you rotated the starmap.
- Repair ships now show an ore-starved icon if they run out of ore while repairing.
- Repair ships also now display a progress bar when hovered. The bar fills for each point of hull / armor restored.
- Boarding parties can now be launched by the type of boarding party (e.g. Marines, Pirates, etc)
- Ships that are scouting no longer disappear from your fleet list and formation editor; instead their icon is greyed out.
- We cleaned up more of the contextual actions for transferring crew between ships. We use several words to describe the same action: crew, maroon, evacuate, rescue, crew transfer. They’re all the same action, but we use different words to help you understand things like the state of the target, and what kinds of passengers you have aboard the selected ship.
- We added some additional hover tips for things like hovering a plan when you don’t have enough ore to replicate it.
- Your fleet now stays a little closer together after jump even if you’re not using formations.
- The way we delete save files when we detect a version mismatch was improved.
- You can now attack your own shuttles, should the desire strike you.
- Scanning a mine now shows its damage and range.
- In trade, weapons of the same type now always have different values.
- Hovering non-equippable weapons no longer displays the red ‘nope’ cursor (since they can be stored in any slot), but instead adds a tooltip warning the player.
- Hovering empty slots no longer shows trade tooltips.
- Multi-selected ships now all display an animation when an action such as Abort is selected, and when ROE changes.
- Explosions are now located on the area of the ship that is damaged. This is purely visual; we do not model ship damage at that level.
- Abandoned and disabled states were added to event conditions, so, for example, fleet events no longer select disabled or abandoned ships when an active ship is needed.
Internally I continued to do work on the event creation pipeline and expanded the automated tests for events.
- The lowest resolution the game now supports is 1024x768. (Our recommended resolution is 2560x1920).

Buy XO on Steam today!

-end-

Weekly update:

Weapons can now be salvaged from disabled ships! This has been one of our most requested features. This will be released after 1.41 with brand new salvage ships (I haven’t modeled them yet).

I was able to complete all of the jumpgate events and even redid the victory event. This was the last content hurdle to releasing version 1.41!

The last item remaining for 1.41: a refactor of the plotted course line display. Right now it’s visually broken in the new sector system when you rotate the starmap. It’s also the last remaining non-3d asset in the game.

We also added some QOL improvements for crew stasis.

Ships now mine ore properly even after certain formation moves, and civilian ships no longer inherit warship commands when part of a multiselected ship order like attack or support.

A lot of balance was done on events, and I continued to trim and tighten up other events.

This week:

• 1.41a beta testing has been very smooth, with just a couple of minor issues. Testing is open to anyone with a Steam key. A few more bits of content remain until we can release it.

• Lots of work was done to differentiate and balance Jumpgate events. Some of that work involved more work on the event pipeline.

• Continued event balancing, trimming dialog, and removing most combat timers.

• It's now easier for me to track lifeboats in events - I had been using some jiggery pokery that wasn't cutting it. Sounds small, but this has far-reaching impacts.

• (1.42) Any ship type can now be given the ability to launch boarding parties. Partly this is for modding support, but mostly this is to make Jumpgate events more interesting.

• (1.42) When the player aborts the packaging of a cargo item the resources used are now returned.

• (1.42) We can now launch and recall gunboats from carriers programmatically.

• Trade and repair nodes can now be specified by sector.

• Several issues with carriers and gunboats were fixed.

• Several minor but annoying multiselect-related bugs were also fixed.

• I continued to expand and improve the event creation pipeline, adding more functions and improving error checking.

We haven't made a lot of updates here, but we're very active in development. Here's our latest trailer!

XO is headed to Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight on this month! We'll have a couple early bird tiers, and first day backer rewards so make sure and mark your calenders - or you can sign up for our mailing list and we'll send you an email Eepurl.com

XO is now up on Square Enix Collective! The game will go through a 4 week long feedback period where the community votes and leaves comments.

Please take a minute to check out our pitch, leave a comment or vote for the game. And if you like the idea, share the page with your friends!

- Corey Warning
@coreywarning

The dust has settled from this year's GDC. I sorted every business card I swapped, followed up with new friends, and discussed (in great detail) the feedback I received for XO with the rest of the team. Looking back on the past week, I started thinking about what went well, some mistakes that were made, and how to plan for the next big con. Here's what I learned:

Planning ahead:

Before leaving for San Fransisco, I researched everything I could find on the Game Developers Conference. Postmortems, tips on networking & pitching your game, and what parties I needed to attend. It helped me set a certain expectation for the week to come, but I learned the most from just showing up and experiencing as many different parts of the convention as I could.

For my first year I went with the basic expo pass. My main goal for the week was to show XO to as many people as possible, gain valuable feedback from players and other developers, and check out some unique booth setups for inspiration (we'll be out there showcasing our game soon!)

I'm glad I wore comfortable shoes (a tip I read in almost every pre-GDC article out there). I did make the mistake of overpacking my backpack on day 1, however... as cool as it would have been to Streetpass all day, I didn't need my 3DS on me at all times. Since I didn't know if I'd be able to make it back to the place I was staying between events, I brought a fresh shirt, a light jacket, gum, and deodorant to freshen up before hitting the parties. That was a good call. I also packed a couple pens so I could write notes on the business cards I got. I made sure to jot down a few keywords about the people I met right away since my stack of cards piled up quickly.

I ended up staying with a friend who lived about 30-40 minutes away by public transportation. I also had a couple friends staying at the same place. While it was amazing to have free lodging available, I ended up running late every single day. We only had 1 spare key, so all of us needed to leave and arrive together. It's hard to get a group up and moving on time, especially if your schedules are different, so next time I'll want to stay closer and make sure I'm able to come and go as I please. I've heard that the hostels nearby are extremely fun, but get booked up quickly. I'd like to try that next year.

Also, BART and MUNI are 2 separate things – and you have to put your card in the reader as you exit, or your pass gets voided and you'll be charged for a full trip across town. I learned that one the hard way...

Practice your pitch:

This is, without a doubt, the most important thing I did to prepare for GDC. Let's start with the elevator pitch. Here's what we started with:

“XO is a sci-fi RTS game with procedural and rogue-like elements.”

This doesn't really tell you anything about the game. There's plenty of procedural mechanics out there, and lots of rogue-likes, RTS, & sci-fi games. Nothing here stands out or catches your attention. After several iterations, we went with this:

“XO is a hard sci-fi game where you command a ragtag fleet of starships against an unbeatable enemy. You'll be evacuating refugees, scrounging for resources, and assembling your fleet from one jump-point to the next. Your goal is to save what's left of humanity.”

This hooked the listener almost every time, and usually led to a full demo run-through on my laptop. While I was showcasing the game, I made sure to share details on what's happening on-screen. Allowing room for questions and feedback is important, and I tried to stop and let others ask questions or share their thoughts as much as possible. The goal was to make my pitch into a conversation rather than a speech.

Along with the elevator pitch, I spent a lot of time working to make all of my talking points concise. I had answers ready for questions like, “what kind of game is this” - “what makes it unique/different” - “so it's just like 'THAT OTHER GAME?'” By roleplaying these scenarios with my team, I felt confident and avoided those deer-in-headlights moments when you're hit with a question you don't know how to answer. Role-playing can feel pretty silly, but I promise it's worth it.

Showing off your game:

It's easy to let imposter syndrome sink in on day 1 at GDC. It was much bigger than I anticipated – packed with folks from every corner of the game industry, and almost everyone has their own project that they're just as excited to pitch. However, after meeting other devs, I started to realize that I wasn't the only one feeling my way through each day. While it's true that most attendees have their own agenda, in my experiences devs were just as excited to try XO and share their thoughts as they were to show me their own game.

Since we didn't have a booth, or scheduled demo space anywhere around the convention, I had to improvise with some guerrilla marketing. We spent 2 weeks building a scripted demo that I could run through in about 10-15 minutes, and if I couldn't get to my Macbook (if it was too crowded, noisy, or an inappropriate situation) I had screenshots and videos loaded in my phone so I could easily show the art style and vibe of the game.

My personal opinion is to not force these kind of opportunities. I just made sure I was showing up to events that allowed me a chance to set up shop. The free mixers and meet-ups were perfect for this, and by changing my desktop wallpaper to an interesting screenshot from the game, I also managed to pull some people in while charging my laptop in the hallway between expo floors. On that note: make sure you're fully charged! After playing my game in front of people for about an hour, I noticed my battery was completely zapped. Next year I'll remember to bring a spare. After the first day, I remembered to exit the game and put my computer to sleep whenever I wasn't actively showing the demo, which got me through the other nights.

Meeting with press/publishers/etc:

Here's where things could have gone better... I should have been contacting press very early on. As I've heard from several sources, everyone gets booked up quickly. I could have tried waving down those with the red “PRESS” flags walking by, but as I mentioned above, I try not to force these things. At the end of the day, I actually met more press during random encounters than by reaching out via twitter and e-mail ahead of time. This leads to another great point:

Go with friends:

If you don't know a group of people that are attending GDC, I would suggest finding other devs to meet up with before heading out. I feel that this should be just as important as contacting press, or setting up meetings with publishers. I was very lucky in this instance – there's a great community called Portland Indie Game Squad here in town, and several members were at GDC all week. We had a Twitter group message going at all times, I played games with friends, and was introduced to twice as many people as I would have been if I was flying solo. This was the 2nd or 3rd GDC for some of my friends, so tagging along with them was extremely helpful throughout the week.

The parties:

Go to Wild Rumpus. Go to Pow x4 (it will be 5 next year). Go to IGF awards. If you get invited to a party and don't have any plans, go. I'd also recommend checking out GameLoading: Rise of the Indies, a great documentary about indie game culture and some of the hot issues surrounding the industry at the moment. I missed out on Lost Levels, and after hearing so many good things about it, I won't make that mistake again.

Every party that required purchasing a ticket ended up being worth the price. I wouldn't freak out if you miss something here and there... I RSVP'd to as many events as I could a few weeks out, but couldn't make it to even half of the ones I put in my calendar, or simply couldn't get an invite. I tried to take as many pictures as possible, tagged my tweets accordingly, and mingled my ass off. I also learned a long time ago not to get too drunk at these things. Don't forget to drink water, and don't burp in people's faces (this actually happened to me a couple times...)

Even though I had never been to GDC before, and I'm not familiar with the San Francsisco area, I had the bright idea to organize a /r/gamedev subreddit meetup close to Moscone Center. While The Eventbrite page had 200 reservations, only about 10 people showed up. I believe this was due to the venue being about 2 miles from GDC (something that could have been avoided with earlier planning and a small budget) and confusion over which day it was happening. I switched the date from Thursday to Wednesday a week before the event to avoid a conflicting party, which didn't matter in the end since Lost Levels announced their party right after I pulled the trigger. Luckily, I met a handful of very talented people which made the trek out to Zeitgeist worth my time.

Now that my initiation is complete, I can't wait until GDC 2016... and most likely every year to follow. It's also got me very excited for some of the other events we're planning on attending: iFEST, PAX Prime, Bit Bash, IndieCade, and Indie Game Con right here in Oregon are all on the horizon!

- Corey Warning
@coreywarning

This blog was originally posted on Feb 27, 2015

Well, by we I mean me. We've been in crunch mode all week over here at Jumpdrive Studios, and I'm happy to report that I'll be bringing along our very first playable demo of XO! If you see me there, flag me down and try out the game. I'll also be on Twitter as much as possible, so if you'd like to meet up that's a good place to reach me.

This will be my first year attending GDC (cue butterflies). To kick it off, I've organized a /r/gamedev meetup on Wednesday afternoon (with the aid of a few helpful redditors and the Zeitgeist staff). The reddit community has been such a great resource for my team and me over the last couple years, and I can't wait to meet some fellow reddit loving, game-makers in person.

See you in San Francisco!

- Corey Warning
@coreywarning

What a weekend...
We were happy to sponsor Portland's GGJ site at the Art Institute with PIGsquad. Friday night was technically our first public appearance, where we announced the launch of our new company, and our first project: XO, to the local community of game-makers and game-enthusiasts.

There were over 100 jammers on site, all bringing their own talent and ideas to the table one-by-one. After each rapid-fire introduction, everyone started forming into groups for the weekend. I teamed up with Justin Baldwin and Yori Kvitchko from SleepNinja Games (another indie game studio right here in Portland) and Andrew Pomeroy.

We were up past 5am on Saturday night, and the result was a 2-4 player co-op game called Umbilicus: Descent Team Delta. You can download it free on the Global Game Jam site, along with all the other great games made over the weekend. (I would highly recommend checking out Shitty Voltron and He & Us)

- Corey: @coreywarning
Photo credit: Ben Snortum
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