Main Update 10 - Now Live

This update is a combination of a number of hotfixes that addressed a few bugs and added a handful of tweaks that have or requested by players since the 1.0 release last week. Although it contains no major new content this announcement helps to keep everyone informed about the recent hotfixes and also offers the opportunity to let you all know how the launch went and how it has forced overall development plans to change for the foreseeable future. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. I want to be as transparent as possible so you know exactly what is going on. The various changes released since launch can be found below:

Builds 1.014 & 1.015 & 1.016

(15th, 19th & 22nd Oct 2018) Edit: Since the initial release of Main Update 10, two further builds have been released. The changelogs for both updates can be found HERE)

Main Update 10: Full Changelog

Build 1.013 Changelog:

Overview: Game physics engines are usually great but they are only approximations of real physics and sometimes glitch out and do crazy things. Space Bob uses Unity's Physx engine created by Nvidia. Even a power house like Nvidia can't create a physics engine that is 100% accurate and glitch free. Due to this, under extremely rare situations, things can go wrong and Bob can find himself stuck in a wall or falling out of his lander. Thankfully, these situations are so rare that most players will never experience them but they can happen. Build 1.013 includes new tests that either automatically fix these situations or allow the player to resolve them when they happen.

• Reduced the friction in the main ship to allow Bob to walk up slopes properly again.

• The game now continually tests if Bob has become trapped inside another object.

  • When this happens a message will be shown to the player allowing the option to reset Bob's position back to the refinery ship. Resetting Bob's position is not currently automated to ensure that it doesn't happen at the wrong times.

  • When Bob is considered to be potentially trapped he will no longer take damage. This prevents death in these situations.

• Under some extremely rare circumstances Bob could fall out of his lander. The game now detects when this happens and automatically puts him back inside. The player will be unlikely to notice that this even happened.

Build 1.012 Changelog

• Fixed a bug in the tutorial that would allow Bob to grab the grapple gun before he was meant to. This would allow skipping an important part of the tutorial.

• Increased the friction on all surface in the main refinery ship. Bob will no longer slide around so much in there. This also makes stepping on to his repair platform much easier.

• Increased the friction on the conveyor belt and also added a little bounce to it.

• Added missing friction to the tutorial planet surface to match recent changes to friction on rocky planet surfaces.

• Added missing friction to the tutorial planet metal surfaces.

Build 1.011 Changelog

• Fixed a bug that made the Mega Power Cube, found on the second defense station, unresponsive in future games if the player had previously installed it into their ship and then died before reaching the jump-gate.

Build 1.01 Changelog

• Fixed the possibility of duplicate planets spawning or systems generating with less than 4 power cubes. (Tested on 10,000 systems once solved to be sure this time)

• Fixed a bug that allowed navigating back to the main menu with a controller while viewing the game mode select screen.

• Reduced the size of one of the rare Archic equipment spawns that was a tiny bit too large to fit through some doors.

• Changed the collision detection type on Bob to be more robust.

• Fixed a spawn on one planet that could potentially cause a triangle key to spawn inside an upgrade dispenser machine.

• Fixed a bug that could allow air geysers to spawn procedurally on metal planks suspended in the air on a couple of planets.

• Bob's gun aiming laser transparency reduced making it more visible. Requested by Steam user Misery.

1.0 Launch report

First, I must thank everyone who jumped on board and bought the game over the last couple of weeks, streamed it on Twitch, made videos, or helped to share news about the game's release. I've met some amazing people and love you all for your help and support. Space Bob's launch helped us to break through the 1000 player barrier which is awesome but we still have a long way to go to cover the game's 2.5 year development time and costs. Unfortunately, Steam has changed dramatically since the launch of my last game which caused me to significantly underestimate the level of exposure that Steam would bring to Space Bob's release. Now that Steam releases 70+ games a day they simply don't have the same amount of front page space to offer each new game like they did for my last game. We live and learn. This created a much lower level of views, to Bob's store page, than were expected and in turn much lower sales. So, instead of being able to immediately jump in to post release content as planned I'm left with no choice but to spend the foreseeable future working to find new ways to let the gaming community as a whole know that this great little-big game even exists. The good news is that Space Bob generates amazing feedback wherever it's shown but clearly times have changed and I underestimated how much time I needed to spend spreading news about the game prior to release. Instead I'm going to have to do much more of that now and it's going to take up a great deal of my time. I'd much rather spend that time on creating new content for all of you but I don't have much choice if I want to keep my head above water. I'm not looking to get rich here. As long as we can reach the level of sales to keep my bills paid and food on the table I will be a happy chap, but if I were to put all my attention into development alone this is unlikely to happen. So apologies to anyone hoping for new features and content to appear in the next month or two. I don't know how long it's going to take but I need to focus a great deal of my time on fixing the unexpected lack of exposure we've received first. If we get a lucky break, it could all change in a couple of days, but it would be foolish to plan for that. With that said, bug fixes will always take priority over everything else. If you run into any problems be sure to report them and they will be resolved ASAP. Please bear with me while I work on spreading the news about Space Bob's release and any help you can give towards bringing it to the attention of content creators, or simply sharing it with friends and on social media, is massively appreciated.