In the past four months we’ve shed light on almost every aspect of our upcoming sci-fi epic Galaxy on Fire 2 – Supernova for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Among others, we’ve filled you in on the soon-to-be-released add-on’s extensive storyline, introduced the new characters and spaceships to you and giving you exclusive sneak peeks of a broad variety of power-ups and weapons systems. And we also took a closer look on a whole lot of other assets and features, such as sound recording, logo design and new gameplay modes. If you’ve read our bi-weekly dev diaries carefully, you’ll most likely know almost as much about the Supernova expansion as we do! But nevertheless there might still be quite a few things that you’d like to get additional information about. So instead of picking the topic for today’s dev diary ourselves, we decided to give you the chance to ask us all Supernova-related questions you might come up with. Thanks a lot for your comments and emails, everybody! Here we go![full]

The gamma shield is only one of the handy new gadgets that Khador invented in Galaxy on Fire 2 - Supernova for iPhone and iPad.

TwistTECK: What do the new characters look like? And will there be any new tools and gadgets designed by the Deep Science team?

Fishlabs: In Supernova there’ll be a whole lot of new characters, such as the muddle-headed Professor Moonsprocket, his Bobolan psychiatrist Brillo Lampeter, the dutiful Captain Squand or the stark-and-stiff Commander Trunt. In terms of art style and appearance, they’ll pretty much look like the older GOF characters you’re already familiar with.

Khador and the rest of Deep Science team do of course play an important role in the new add-on as well. Though they haven’t designed a new ship in the time after the Valkyrie add-on, they’ve at least come up with a number of pretty cool and extremely handy gadgets and power-ups, one of which is the gamma shield you see in the screenshot above. There are also some other cool inventions, but I’m not gonna reveal ‘em yet, because they play a crucial role in the storyline and hence it would be best if you’d discover them yourselves as soon as GOF2 – Supernova is out.

At Gamescom 2012 in Cologne, the GOF fans were already able to play a special "shoot 'em up" version of Supernova on the Mac.

Cheesenium: When will the Mac and PC’s Full HD version of Galaxy on Fire 2 get the Valkyrie and Supernova expansions?

Fishlabs: Supernova for the Mac will be released on the same day as the SD version for older iOS devices and the HD version for iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and the new iPad. The title is scheduled to be released in September, but a concrete release date has not yet been set.

At this point of time, we unfortunately can’t say too much about the PC versions of Valkyrie and Supernova, because we first have to see how the main game will perform on that platform. But if the title becomes a success and sells a reasonable amount of copies, the PC gamers will most likely not have to wait too long before they can lay their hands on the add-ons as well.

The majestic Blue Fyre seen through the plasma ring of the Mimung Blaster -- one of the most powerful new weapons in the upcoming Supernova expansion.

Dale: I would love to have some frontal pictures of the new ships especially the Blue Fyre and Gryphon.

Fishlabs: Some of the new ships, like the Bloodstar and the Amboss, have already been shown in all their beauty in our previous dev diaries. Among others, you’ll find a kick-ass action shot of the Amboss in #9, a cool screen cap of the Gryphon in #8 and a lot of spectacular footage of the Bloodstar in #7. As for the Blue Fyre, well, I’d suggest you’d just take a look at the screenshot above…

Do you have what it takes to save the Mido-Sector from the ravishing fires of a dying star?

Ilikepie: How did you come up with the idea of a supernova to be in the storyline? I know you wanted to explain the Midorians a little better, which I think is a good idea, but then you somehow find a way to add in a supernova, which is amazingly AWESOME!

Fishlabs: When we started working on the new add-on, we knew right away that we had to come up with a hazard that was bigger and more threatening than anything the players had to face before. After all, most players had already spend quite a few hours with the main game and the first expansion prior to their engagement with Supernova and hence they’d most likely burst into the new add-on with a pretty strong ship and tons of cash at their disposal. Right from the start, a devastating supernova seemed to be exactly what we were looking for, because what could be more drastic and destructive than a dying star that’s about to annihilate the whole Midorian sector!?

But also in terms of character development, a catastrophe of epic proportions came in quite handy for us, because we wanted our protagonist Keith T. Maxwell to undergo a certain kind of change of heart in the new expansion pack. In Supernova he’s no longer just a gun for hire who offers his services to the highest bidder, but rather has he evolved to become a true hero who takes part in the risky evacuation missions by his own conviction and not because someone’ written him a big paycheck.

And last but not least there’s yet another reason why we put the supernova into the centre of the attention of the new expansion pack, namely that it caters for quite a lot of new gameplay features and situations — such as lethal gamma rays which make it impossible for the player to roam an orbit forever or evacuation mission in which the player has to save refugees from the area of conflict.

If you want to save the galaxy from its impending doom by the hands of devious fiends on the one hand and the destructive forces of nature on the other, you gotta equip some kick-ass weapons and keep your finger on the trigger.

Well guys, here we go. I hope you had some fun with our twelfth developer diary for GOF2 – Supernova. Unfortunately, we were by far not able to answer all questions in the course of this blog, but don’t worry. If your question hasn’t been answered yet, just write it down in the comments and we’ll surely get back at you right away!