Version 2.5.0 of Galactic Defence Squadron is available now on PC and Nintendo Switch! This update is a fairly small one ahead of a 3.0 version due later on in 2022, mostly it revolves around tidying up existing code so I actually know what is going on but also there is the upgrade from Unreal Engine 4.26 to 4.27! Sure that has done loads of good stuff in the background that I am just not tot
ally aware of.
FULL PATCH NOTES
New Logo. The most important update, the new 4MB Interactive Logo is now present in the game.
Varied laser noises! Something that I have been meaning to do for ages, vary the pitch of the lasers so it is not the exact same “pew pew pew” when you are shooting.
Refactored Blueprints This has been the bulk of the work for this update and almost none of it will benefit the player at this stage. As mentioned above, this work is to make it simpler for me to go back into the game and quickly understand how things are working. There was previously a whole mess of Blueprints that I had not set up brilliant in the first place but these are much tidier now. This will make the extensive work of the 3.0 upgrade much, much easier.
The main targets for improvement were…
– The enemy spawner – Player high score & save game logic – Game over conditions – The main menu
Upgraded from 4.26 to 4.27 Lovely Unreal Engine upgrades.
Version 2.4.0 of Galactic Defence Squadron is available now on PC and Nintendo Switch! This update comprises of a few bug fixes and the upgrading of Unreal Engine from 4.25 to 4.26. Also, the game will be releasing in Japan for the first time! Possibly around the middle of June, depends on how long it takes to get the page approved. So without further ado, here are the list of updates and fixes!
FULL PATCH NOTES
Quitting To Main Menu Music Issue. During a brief couple of seconds before the game kicks off, you can quit back to the Main Menu but then the main game music kicks in! This no longer happens and the game doesn’t start up despite you being on the Main Menu.
Pause Menu ‘Menu’ Button Broke Not sure how or when or why, but it seemed to crash the game if you clicked the ‘Menu’ button. This has been fixed!
Missing Tip! A placeholder tip made its way into the game, basically said something like ‘I should not be here! Something broke!’ and this has now actually been removed.
Misaligned Tutorial Text Some dodgy word wrapping going on here, made it all look funky. No longer!
Boost Is Always Working You could press the ‘Boost trigger’ during the menu and it would start increasing the Heat bar which could then result in you starting to the game with an overheated bar. Not ideal. This no longer happens as the control does not work unless you are actually in the game.
Adding Some Backend Stuff To Detect Console/PC I used to switch over UI info (button names etc) manually but now, thanks to a very simple Blueprint Node, the game does this for me. It will detect if it is running on PC or Switch and change the text appropriately.
Upgraded from 4.25 to 4.26 Lovely Unreal Engine upgrades.
Galactic Defence Squadron was smashed together in just two weeks back in October 2016. It is a great little arcade space shooter featuring some truly excellent music and an endless supply of enemies to destroy. Since then it has sat on the App Store and Google Play in its unoptimised and very rough condition – UNTIL NOW! Over the course of a week or two, I have upgraded the game to Unreal Engine 4.18 and carried out a number of other tweaks to help the game run better. All of these tweaks can be found below in a helpful bullet list format. This also marks the debut of GDS on PC via the Itch.io and Game Jolt stores and it is available for just $1. Not sure what that is in £, like 70p? In any case, it is significantly less than a cup of coffee so there is no reason not too.
Galactic Defence Squadron will probably not receive many other updates outside of bug fixes. It was a small experimental game (expect more of these!) and one which I am quite proud of, it is fun and challenging. So please go and pick it up on either mobile or PC or both if you are feeling very generous.
Update Notes Upgraded to Unreal Engine 4.18
The game was originally built in Unreal Engine 4.14 (I think) so this is a pretty decent update on that front. Unreal Engine has received numerous updates since GDS initial release and plenty of these help the game to run better on both mobile and PC.
Added full Controller and Mouse support
Seeing as the game is now available on Itch.io it seemed like a good idea to add in full controller support. This was incredibly easy to do as it was basically already in there, while testing the game in the UE4 editor I used a controller so it was simply a case of properly assigning buttons. The mouse was similarly easy to add in to the menu sections.
Replaced materials with smaller versions
The models in the game originally used the very fancy but very, very large Automotive Materials that Epic gave away on the UE4 Marketplace. Why on earth past me thought using these on a tiny mobile game would be a good idea is anyones guess. They have now all been replaced with incredibly simple and small materials which has improved the speed of the game immeasurably.
Updated Asteroid models
The asteroids in the game have had new 3D models added with a degree of randomness in their spawning so there is the illusion of a wide variety of asteroid types. There are in fact three types. These too are smaller in terms of file size means further gains in optimisation for the game.
Designed all new ships
Perhaps most excitingly from a personal perspective I have given my Blender skills a bit of an upgrade and created new ships for the player and enemy units. They are certainly not going to be winning any design awards but are a definite improvement over the previous efforts. Most pleasingly they now all have proper UV maps meaning they are lit in a more realistic way.
Added an ‘overheating’ mechanic to the player weapon
In an effort to add some kind of tactical element to the game, the main weapon will now overheat if the fire button is held down too long. It takes a while to do this so you should be able to manage it fairly simply without actually overheating. Should this happen though the gun is unusable for 2-3 seconds. A very simple mechanic to add and one which I have found increased my enjoyment of the game.
