Flatpak

For Linux, I have created a Flatpak distribution of the game. This is now the recommended way of installing Spaceships on Linux as it provides greater security due to the Flatpak sandbox and it is now easier to update.

The Flatpak distribution is available in my own self-hosted repository. See https://spaceships.me/download/#flatpak for information about how to install the Flatpak.

New version

I have also released version 1.2.1, a week after the release of version 1.2.0. This release doesn’t introduce anything new and exciting, just some bug fixes and improvements to latency when hosting a server.

Versions 1.2.1 and 1.2.0 are compatible with each other both ways.

Changelog

Networking

• The server-side algorithm of managing the player update queues has changed to make the game slightly more responsive, especially on low ping.
• Client-side prediction has been changed to assume that if a player is firing bullets in the last update received by the server, they are also firing bullets now. This in practice reduces bullets spawning ahead of other players which looked very weird.

Other fixes

• Players now always spawn close to each other in the lobby. Previously there was a bug where this didn’t necessarily happen if the minimum player count hasn’t been reached.
• When playing the instant_kill.ron config, the health bar now immediately goes down to zero, with it not being shown half-way for a bit.