Nightadmin | Night Node Software

Steaming work

Posted on 30 July, 2014 by Nightadmin

We have finally been able to upload a version of Orbital Gear on Steam that we feel we can actually be kind of proud to show to members of the gaming press. In doing so we also emailed all the people whose email we have found and sent them keys so they can test the game and hopefully write a review of the game. You can find the press release that we sent here (or at least some version of it) if you are interested.

The office has been hot as in Gehennas furnaces of fire and brimstone, but so has the rest of the city. Even when we today had a close call with monsoon season here, the rain was so temporary the streets where covered in steam as soon as the sun came back. Hard to find symbolism there…

Joxe and Crylar have been the main champions this week with fixing everything in Orbital Gear to a working state, hopefully we’re not too late to have some members of the press catching up on the biggest news in gaming this part of the century (or something like that).

We had a visit here in the office from some friends yesterday and they brought cake. Totally the wrong time to take a break, but well deserved. We sort of felt like deserters (get it) but quickly got over it. The cake is not a lie, and if you ever want someone to stop what they’re doing, bring them cake.

That’s all for now. Next week we’re going to release Orbital Gear for the world to judge.

Ice cream Tuesday!

Posted on 22 July, 2014 by Nightadmin

We’ll, the same as before, I guess, all work and an overall overheated office. We’re basically working round the clock to meet the set deadline for Orbital Gear. It will be released on the 7th of August (in the US of A) and probably at some time close to midnight here in Sweden. So we might as well start preparing for an all-nighter in about two weeks. Then again we’ll probably be so jacked up on adrenaline around then so that won’t matter.

It’s hot as hell here in the office and about 25 percent worse outside so we decided to go and get ice cream. It almost melted on the way from the store back to the office, however we did get about 5 ice creams each.

I’ve been managing and fixing the Steam store page, which feels pretty much like walking around a minefield (I can imagine that walking around a minefield is about an infinite amount worse, but you get my point). Everything says Publish now, making me feel like I might accidently end up publishing the game for sale right away. We seem to manage at the time though.

Joxe has been the champion this week as sole programmer left in the office. He has been working hard to fix a new beta build, which should be up if not today, then at least tomorrow. Linux user will be especially pleased to know that we will upload a Linux build.

All work and no play

Posted on 15 July, 2014 by Nightadmin

Well, actually there has been lots of playing since we’re testing Orbital Gear every day. New improvements all the time, and new bugs at the same time. But Morbus and Mowhammer are testing away and Binarin is bug spraying the game constantly!

We have so far been working from left to right on the SCRUM board. As you can see we have made a lot of progress, but it’s still hectic. The release of Orbital Gear has been pushed to the seventh of august, which is later than our original plan. This was however to be expected, since we’re quite new on the whole Steam thing.

Crylar was working really hard on the graphical assets for the steam page, and now it looks really awesome. Now he can go back to finishing up the rest of Orbital Gear! We also had to push the game cards to sometime further along, but it will be done, hopefully before release. If not we’ll make sure it’s released with the first major patch!

Joxe used his black magic computer skills to get the bandwidth needed down by almost 90%. This is really good news since the latest builds of Orbital Gear has been really, really lag ridden!

Steelbeak has made some new barriers. Earlier we had to use platforms as barriers, while they did what they were supposed to, with the new ones it’s more in line with the rest of the maps. You can judge for yourself:

This week we had a meeting with the guy that will make our trailer. We all had the same idea so the expectations for it is really high right now. Since we’re a small studio with a very limited budget on marketing it will hopefully help us getting noticed more, which we really need now that we have a final release date.

The new build is on its way, this time with a working Linux client. It hasn’t been a total priority with all the stress around the release on Steam, but we’re working on it!

Linux client in testing

Posted on 1 July, 2014 by Nightadmin

We have been working with finishing Orbital Gear for Steam this whole time, and as an unfortunate consequence the Linux version of Orbital Gear has been delayed. However, we have now been testing the Linux client and it seems to be working, so if nothing breaks during the next patch we will definitly have a linux client available for the final run of the beta.

We also took the time to recycle all the soda cans in the office and bought snacks with the cash we recieved. Now that’s a good system!

For the time being we also have a new member of the team. Meet Texas Chili, our new business developer/marketing director/programmer and lead game designer:

Progress this week

Posted on 27 June, 2014 by Nightadmin

So another week has passed us by. We’re still working on Orbital Gear, which will be released on steam within a month (according to our recent estimates). Everyone is working hard for the final product, and we’ve added a few more mechs that players will be able to chose from. You can check them out here:

Joxe is working on the network code, and everything seems to be working at the moment, apart from heavy lag. This has been expected though, since it has yet to be optimized.
Crylar is working on a new map for Orbital Warfare, as well as implementing some new buildings, so that the teams get different looks.

We’re loosely planning our next project as well, drafting up some ideas, and even though it’s not yet decided exactly what game we’ll be doing next we can tell you that the ideas are amazing.

New Computers and SCRUM

Posted on 18 June, 2014 by Nightadmin

We have recieved some new computers from Alina Systems in Uppsala! The computers are awesome, and will really help out with the final production of Orbital Gear. Working with double screen is absolutely the way to go!

We have been able to finish some more things with this newfound productivity, amongst all things are a new mech, so that players will be able to configure how they want their mech to look when playing Orbital Gear.

In other news we put up a physical SCRUM board in the office. Right now there are more posts in the Task area, but they are moving with a good pace to the Testing and Done area.

All in all, we are increasing our productivity for the final sprint towards the release of Orbital Gear on Steam!

Birdie and the Orbital Gear tournament

Posted on 5 June, 2014 by Nightadmin

We had our first expo at Birdie, a local LAN-party here in Uppsala with about 1400 visitors annually. We set up four computers with Orbital Gear playing and as soon as the expo opened we had a bunch of visitors asking about Orbital Gear and about us. We had a steady rush of visitors the whole time.
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We also sent everyone at Birdie a Beta key for Orbital Gear, and about 10 percent of all who visited activated an account, which at least we see as a success. Walking around the different parts where people had set up their computers we saw some matches of Orbital Gear being played which made us really proud as well.

We also presented Orbital Gear on stage, but as soon as Morbus was about to take the microphone and start talking about it, the power died for the whole stage. Eventually it was fixed, but within 45 minutes three computers had crashed and been exchanged so we decided to stop having people play on stage. Apparently the problems with the computers was something that happened throughout the whole time at Birdie. IMG_20140529_194603

Unfortunately, since there was problems with the computers, we couldn’t have the finals of the tournament on stage, but we met a production company called Unisl who helped us with sending the finals on BirdieTv, the stream that showed the finals of games such as Starcraft, Dota2 and lol. Mowhammer and Crylar where commentators of the match and the whole thing looked really professional. We’ll make sure to upload the stream as soon as possible.

All in all the whole thing was a success and we are really satisfied with the whole thing.

Gravity is more attractive than you’d think

Posted on 24 April, 2014 by Nightadmin

So we went and bought the latest edition of the Swedish PC Gamer, wherein Orbital Gear was featured.

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The article, writen by Mats Nylund, was a great read, especially since it was writen in such a positive tone!

Crylar is working on some cool new features such as the ghost planet and some cool explosions/implosions. He’s quite overwhelmed with work at the moment with maps and everything else that needs to be finished, but hopefully we’ll be able to get someone to help him out soon.

Apart from that development is still coming along nicely. No real update on when the beta is ready, but most features are working now, which means that it shouldn’t be many days away now.

Orbital Gear has been Greenlit!

Posted on 17 April, 2014 by Nightadmin

We are happy to announce that Orbital Gear Has been Greenlit for release on Steam!
This has been a huge milestone for us, and we are really excited to see how Orbital Gear will be recieved.

We are still working on the beta, but it shouldn’t be long now. Remember to sign up here!

Steam Greenlight and development news

Posted on 9 April, 2014 by Nightadmin

So our Steam Greenlight is going pretty well. We are currently at place 5 out of 1637 articles on Greenlight. In total we have about 10000 yes votes for Orbital Gear, which is really good. Hopefully we will be Greenlit soon and then we will add achievements and trading cards for Steam.

As of now all development is directed towards getting the beta version ready for testing, as we have to find bugs and other errors so that the game can be released in time. Remember to sign up for the beta at orbitalgear.com.

We’ve also been testing some utilities and tweaking the weapons, now some of the utilities will actually work. Again, these are just some of the things being fixed for the beta.

We also bought Shader Forge, a Unity asset that according to Crylar is pretty darn awesome. Now we’ll have more control over graphics and ability to make cool effects and it will basically make everything else much easier. Crylar has just about started to get the feel of it, but since all focus is on the beta at the moment, we’ll be able to see the results of Shader Forge in a few weeks.