Announcement - Game Changes & Bug FixesFri, 20 January 2023
I’m Damon from Creative Storm Entertainment. Not to be confused with CreativeForge Games. A bit about myself: I'm the designer/developer of the Age of Gladiators and Raiders! Forsaken Earth series, as well as being a co-designer/developer on Deadwater Saloon.
As Gambit Games is no more, I’ve been asked by CreativeForge to come in and help fix some of the bugs and make improvements to the game. Note that I am actually a fan of the game as well and have played the campaign to completion twice now (50+ hours on Steam), with 72% of achievements earned (a couple elude me like Purple Heart – I guess I just can’t stand seeing my crew members die).
One thing to note is that I have not played the sandbox mode as of yet, but plan on doing so soon. I understand there are some game breaking bugs there.
My strategy is to be transparent and push out series of smaller, but more frequent updates instead of larger and potentially more game-breaking ones. To my knowledge, the game hasn't received a patch since June of 2022. I intend to change that. In doing so, I'm likely going to forego some of the previously-promised visual changes (ocean color and foam, for example) and focus instead on what I think are more important gameplay impediments that need fixing.
I can't promise I'll get all the bugs fixed right away, but I'll listen and do my best.
These are some of the changes I have come up with from my gameplay: Add a Pause button
Save system is still broken (slots disappear when using scroll bar)
Saves do not work sometimes during missions – I intend to identify and fix this.
Panel showing which planes are on deck at any given time (fighter, dive, torpedo) – I grew weary of counting how many of each plane type I had before planning airstrikes and think a quick UI addition can fix this problem.
Show how many (planes on deck/planes required for mission) in launch rollover (instead of just how many planes required) – there have been too many times I’ve rolled one too many torpedo bombers and clogged up the deck during mission critical times.
Health status UI bar on carrier (sections damaged / sections critical)
Remove air strike not finding any targets – this one drives me crazy. If I recon an area and plan an airstrike, I find it frustrating when there are no targets found during the strike.
Save attack cards – I would like to explore the ability to save a particular attack and use it again instead of having to remember which cards make for my most effective attacks.
Remove random injuring of crew members (I find it aggravating when my crew members slip on wet decks and get critically injured)
Faster airplane movement on decks – not sure about this one but would like to explore it a bit more.
Add quick save notification – when I hit the f5 key, I sometimes am unsure if it actually saved.
Duplicate ship abilities can be used – not sure if this will be too game-breaking and overpowering or not, but I would like to maybe consider bringing too or more of the same escort ships on a mission and being able to use their abilities even while the other one is on countdown. I suspect this one won’t be viable though.)
Add Save message after successful save on the save/load screen
Check sandbox mode for any bugs
Review tutorial
Add periodic auto-saves to the game, say every 24 hours or so.
Some of these may not be viable, but I wanted to run them past the community.
As mentioned before, I want to forego some of the aesthetic changes and focus on the game-breaking problems as well as some of the above quality of life changes first.
Thanks!