Last week we kicked off the series of developer diaries for Supernova, the highly anticipated second add-on for our epic sci-fi shooter Galaxy on Fire 2™ for iPhone and iPad, by giving you some first-hand insight into the design of the new logo. Today we wanna fill you in on the backstory of the new expansion pack and let you know more about the enthralling new adventure that awaits the reckless fighter pilot Keith T. Maxwell in Supernova™! In order to do so, we’ve sent a bunch of questions over to Bernie Duffy from Dublin, Ireland, who is our guest writer for the Galaxy on Fire 2™ – Supernova installment. Bernie studied filmmaking at Purchase College in New York and worked in various capacities in film and theater for over a decade before making the move into games five years ago. He believes himself to be at the fore of a creative mass-migration from the film industry into games. Bernie is also a space-opera nut, which may be reflected in some of the new GOF material. Since he came up with some very detailed answers, the following interview should be a mandatory read for all iOS-pilots! Hope you enjoy it!
Fishlabs: Could you give us a very brief synopsis of the Supernova story? What is the new add-on all about and why would you say that it’s Keith T. Maxwell’s biggest adventure to date?
Bernie Duffy: As the title suggests, this new story involves a cataclysmic stellar event which shakes things up in a Midorian system, displacing millions and creating fresh border tensions with the neighbouring Nivelians. While Keith is engaged in humanitarian missions to extract refugees from the affected areas, he is asked to become an emissary to the Nivelians to negotiate peace and aid. This leads to unexpected intrigues and deceptions, as the sector becomes increasingly hostile in the chaos of the disaster.
This could be Keith’s greatest challenge so far, as besides walking a fine political line, and coping with the deteriorating affects of intense gamma rays, he must now tackle an unknown and powerful stealth enemy intent on making the most of the bad situation.
FL: While Galaxy on Fire 3D focussed on the conflict between the Terrans and the Vossk and Galaxy on Fire 2 set all four factions up against a devious new enemy of unknown origin, the next add-on Supernova will put the long-lasting struggle between the Nivelian Republic and the Midorian rebels into the centre of the attention. Why did you decide to shift the action to the Mido sector this time?
BD: Everybody involved in story development felt that the Midorians needed a fuller explanation. As the youngest and most vulnerable faction in the GOF universe, recently created from the Nivelian Civil War, we wanted to level the playing field for them somewhat, give them a chance to break out and prove themselves. This, however, turned out to be a literal trial by fire… and the verdict is still not out!
The Midorians embody many noble traits which we 21st Century humans would find admirable. They are go-it-aloners, multi-racial and resourceful, out to make their stake on the new frontier. Their freedom means more to them than anything. It is these qualities which endear the born-adventurer Keith to them, and brings him to their aid in their ordeal. But whether Keith succeeds in his efforts is ultimately up to the player.
FL: In Supernova, politics and diplomacy are as much a part of the story as space battles and skirmishes. In what way do you think do these aspects make for a deeper and all the more enthralling back story?
BD: It’s risky introducing political thriller elements into an action game, and by no means do we want to detract from the gameplay. Balance in plot development was key to this new turn, but it is something that we hope players will appreciate in the end. Our hero, Keith, has such a galactic reputation at this stage that it only seemed the next logical step that he should be able to use these credentials as leverage in negotiations between the various factions. Contacts he has made in previous episodes may since have even graduated to positions of greater influence, while his non-aligned status allows him to navigate the disparate corridors of power.
The Supernova storyline should offer an overall insight into how the various frontier societies operate, and how their inter-relations may shape their futures.
FL: Are there any particular mysteries, plot holes or cliffhangers from the previous instalments of the GOF-saga, which Supernova is going to unravel, solve or bring to a conclusion?
BD: Well, I wouldn’t want to reveal too much, but we did look to wrap up some loose ends from the previous episodes. I think I will be cautious with this question and keep my lips sealed until closer to the release date!
FL: Could you tell us a little bit about the characters of Supernova without giving away too much at such an early point of time? Which old friends or foes will the players meet again in the second add-on? And who are the most striking new characters, whose acquaintance they are going to make in Supernova?
BD: Love interest Carla Paolini remains a significant figure, although some strain is beginning to show in her relationship with Keith as their desires for the future begin to diverge. Brent Snocom has risen to the top of Terran Fleet, and acts as an important liaison for Keith. Our favourite multipod, Mkkt Bkkt, has resumed operations somewhere in the galaxy, although finding him will be tricky! Khador is still the wiz of Deep Science, but a new arrival will ruffle his feathers in a big way.
I had a lot of fun introducing two new characters in particular, Thadellonius Moonsprocket and Brillo Lampeter. Mooonsprocket is a kind of bumbling professor from the early 1950’s, modeled on one of the original Doctor Who’s, and is the source of some light-relief in the form of unfortunately timed double entendres. His full-time psychiatrist, Lampeter, is a kind of Bobolan Doctor Watson, who always has to have the last word. Together they travel the galaxy falling further into disrepute from their misadventures, but it is Moonsprocket’s unorthodox methods which will be key to fixing the current cosmic crisis.
Gunant Breh makes a return in a much more important role as his mining operations and even his own family become engulfed by the supernova event. Other movers and shakers of both Nivelian and Midorian factions are introduced as the plot thickens.
FL: Which is your favourite moment in Supernova? Why?
BD: Also a difficult question to answer without giving away too much! I really went for a satisfying ending with this episode, a real wrap up, a get-together, a knees-up! Bringing all the characters together is something that was a lot of fun to write. There’s the bittersweet tinge of tragedy to it all, and there is the ridiculous, but there should be in there a reward for the player who has stayed with these characters for so long. Wait and see, play it for yourself, you’ll see what I mean.
That’s it guys… hope you enjoyed the read! If this interview made you even more curious about Supernova, please let us know in the comments which aspects of the new storyline you find most interesting and which of Supernova’s characters (old or new) you find most likeable! And don’t forget to check back on our blog next week, when we’re going to give you an exclusive sneak peek at the new star systems of Supernova and their distinctive assets, designs and features.
BTW, if you wanna find out more about Bernie and his work, feel free to visit his official homepage at http://bernieduffy.com/ and followhim on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/berniejduffy!
Tags: add-on, Behind-The-Scenes, Characters, dev diary, Developer Diary, Expansion Pack, Fishlabs, Galaxy on Fire 2, Making Of, Official, sci-fi, Science Fiction, Scrip, Shooter, Space, Story, Storyboards, Supernova, trader
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Well I find that my favorite character is most likely Mkkt Bkkt because he is kind of Keith`s informer and a character who is funny and scary at the same time.
Oh ya, Fishlabs the game Galaxy on Fire 2 HD is an awesome game but it freezes in the first 10 seconds of starting the game and then crashes. Please help me I have been trying to contact you guys for a while now. I am starting to hate the game because I have not played the game in over a month now from the last update you did on it!
Never mind I just found out that you did the update
Sorry about that
can`t what on playing the game.
Well I find that my favorite character is most likely Mkkt Bkkt because he is kind of Keith`s informer and a character who is funny and scary at the same time.
Mkkt Bktt is my favorite !!! there is a new civilisation, no ???
hmm i dont see that bigger ships on the drawings
i would realy love it if the new update has freighetrs,
and btw mkkt bkkt is Cool
Hey guys, thanks a lot for the feedback. Yeah, here at the Fishlabs office, Mkkt Bkkt is an alltime fave as well. We just love that grumpy old fella! BTW, does your game still crash or has the bug been fixed with the latest update, tdawg? If it still crashes, please send us a support ticket and our Community Manager Sebastian will help you out right away.
This add on is going to be the greatest, cannot wait!
Good second Dev Diary. Anticipating the sneek peek at new starsystems.
It’s hard not to like Mkkt Bkkt and also like Khador.
When can we expect a more official release than Q2?
It\’s hard not to like Mkkt Bkkt and also like Khador.
When can we expect a more official release than Q2?
Cool story tidbits
, make the next one on ships and weapons! 4 turret compatible battle cruiser!! Make it happen!
What happens to Carla?
Well, I’ll start off saying that I, not without a little self-centered favoritism, must choose Keith as my favorite player. Though it is the player’s responsibility to fulfill the objectives, he still has that “has it all” characteristic about him-where he is brave, resourceful, honorable, etc.
Now, I would like to say that I look forward to this update. I am quite reluctant to offer suggestions/requests for future material, but I will say that I love blueprints, new weapons, and the Void X ships. I would really like to be able to fly the Void Xs. BTW, thanks for the developers’ diary.
Cheers for the nice words, everyone! It’s really cool to see that you’re excited about Supernova!
@Dane: As soon as we can say anything more concrete about it, we’ll let you guys know the definite release date. At this point of time, however, we still got quite a bit of work ahead of us and can’t say for sure when exactly Supernova will be out.
@Tower_Defender: We’ll definitely introduce some of the new ships and weapons to you in the future. It might still take a little, but it’ll definitely be worth the wait!
@Tman1234: That’s a mystery we don’t want to unravel too soon… what do you think? Does she deserve to get rescued from Voids space or should she stay there forever?^^
@tony muller: An introduction of the new blue prints would be pretty cool, I think. But I have to confess that I don’t know too much about the new gadgets and their respective blue prints yet. I’ll get in touch with our game designers soon and see if the new blue prints would make for an interesting dev diary. If so, we’ll surely feature ‘em in one of our upcoming blogs!
Will this Supernova going to change GOF2 storyline tradition?
Like having multiple “DIFFERENT” endings when game progresses?
Example:
“…But whether Keith succeeds in his efforts is ultimately up to the player.”
“…Does she deserve to get rescued from Voids space or should she stay there forever?…”
why would u need more than 1 turrent??
doesnt 1 turrent kill fast enough,
@tony muller u could already get the void X, since version 1.0.0,
u just havnt unlocked it yet…
@Trubo_XL in drawing (possible spoiler alert) Nr 7 and 8 apears to be something similar to the valkery station (possible spoiler alert)
all i would like to see is more pirates (or any other fliying thing)
to shoot out of space in my VoidX fighter, i realy like taking on freighters, couse thats the only thing that stands a chance against me.. could u give all the freighters turrents plz
Among others w’ll also introduce a new breed of space criminals known as the “Most Wanted” in Supernova. These ruthless outlaws are more vicious than any pirate you’ve ever met and their custom-made space ships are heavily armed and particularly hard to take down. We’ve already posted a concept artwork of one of the new “Most Wanted” ships on our official Facebook page. Let’s wait and see if they’ll be easy prey for you as well…
Who would like to be able to add a turret to the Nemesis? I could do without 3 secondary weapon slots but I really want the turret and the 4 primary weapons.
What will happen to Alice in this next chapter?
The Bug was fixed in the last update you did on the game. I just forgot to look at the new update on iTunes. I can`t Stop playing the amazing game and I can`t wait for Galaxy on Fire Supernova!
@Blade_scorpion
Why wouldn’t you want a ship that is compatible with multiple turrets, plus no one is requiring you to use it. I just think it would be pretty awesome just being able to fly into the middle of a massive pirate battle with like four auto turrets firing at random targets while I nerd out and kill anything that in unfortunate enough to be in my line of sight.
Tobi accidentally have away some info he commented about alice even though somone asked about Carla therefore something will happen to alice…
@Blade_Scorpian
Why not have a ship with a bunch of turrets? Just think of the insane firefights and the ridiculous amount of bullets flying out from your ship. It brings a tear to my eye.
I can’t wait for this DLC. I’ve been stockpiling and hoarding everything I could find in expectation of new blueprints. Got at least 200 of each item and weapon by now at the kamo club hahaha.
@tower_defender
couse then ur just flying there and everything explodes whitout u doing anything…
i realy dont like that, could u plz make a new strongest turrent handcontrolable, and keep maximum at 1
o and maby make some more void ships, in the time between u destroying mothership and valkery they could have developed new ships
btw YAY for most wanted, harder targests to shoot down YAY
Tobi, probably a stupid question but will this be released on the iPad at the same time as iPhone? And will it be HD/iPad Retina display ready from the start?
I think what no one has actually thought of is the possible price range of this DLC….
Will the Galaxy on Fire 2 Supernova be a add on because I live where there is no internet connection at my house for my iPod? But if so I can just get my internet the next time I go in town.
To Fishlabs.
@Blade_Scorpian
They could just make it have no primary weapons, 2 missile pods, and 4 turrets. That wouldn’t be too broken
.
I hope they do introduce it.
@tower_defender
this game is about making lots of money and shooting stuff until it explodes
letting a turrent shoot it for u will remove half the purpous of the game..
couse whats next auto missile pads that shoot guided missiles -.- thats just wrong
i think more then one auto turrent ruines the game compleatly
exept for NPC freighters, all of them should have a couple turrents on them to make it more of a chalenge chooting them
I would like to have the option of jettisoning unwanted cargo in favor of more valuable cargo in space. Too many times I have seen valuable cargo and can’t get it because my cargo hold is full.
I would also like to see air to ground missions. We have all these planets but can never explore them.
3rd request, I would like the opportunity to upgrade the Kaamo station. It would be something to spend the millions of credits I have accumulated on.
I love this game and keep playing it well past the storyline. Can’t wait for the next installment. Keep up the good work.
I agree because it is just being kinda lazy, no offense.
One turret is okay but I never use it.
Don`t give`em any ideas Blade_Scorpion.
@ blade scorpion
You play your game your way others can play it there’s, don’t expect fish labs to personalize the game just to your standards, believe it or not other people do want to see multiple turret slots and missile auto turrets
@ blade scorpion
You play your game your way others can play it there\’s, don\’t expect fish labs to personalize the game just to your standards, believe it or not other people do want to see multiple turret slots and missile auto turrets
all im saying is they should not make the strongest turrent a auto turrent, or have both the options self controll and auto turrent, u could do that whit the on and off switch of the turrent
…. well acuarly thats not bad… if that hapeneds i will quit whining about the turrents….. couse then everyone is happy
@Blade Scorpian
Yeah I had that in mind as well, that you could have multiple different turrets on the ship, some being auto and some not. You could simply click on the view changing button or turret changing button to scroll through the different turrets that you have that are manual controlled. The turrets could be placed on certain angles on the ship where 1 turret couldn’t cover every direction.
(But with a ship full of turrets it could
)
Besides I doubt it is overpowered. I play on hard mode *Extreme sometimes* and you die extremely quickly if you don’t know what you are doing, even with the strongest and best armored ships in the game. I doubt more turrets would break any balances there currently are.
@ tower_defender im talking about 1 turrent,not more then 1 that would ruen the game,
and at xtream i still own every ship around XD
Well that’s you and some of us want a ship with multiple. I even have the ship in mind lol.
Maybe a recommissioned commarant (or however you spell it) for battle usage.
Same speed, maneuverability, and speed, however the wings have been slightly modified, so each could carry one turret on top. The redesigned wings could only carry 1 missile pod each. The 3rd turret is at the normal spot on the top of the ship and if they choose a 4th turret could be placed right in front of the turret on top. Cargo space has been diminished from 350 to 75 in order to make room for 14 equipment slots.
And yeah anybody can dominate in any mode as long as they have stealth equipped. I’m just saying that your ship still dies very easily without, so it is hardly overpowered. Heck my commorant blew up after 1 salvo of enemy fire when entering the pirate system and that was with full shield and armor.
I meant to say same speed and armor up top. No edit button
.
Please add char progression skills that improves ship speed damage control etc, look on eve, after all it looks so similar in so many ways anyway push it further gives more long run progression when there is no more quests!!
Thanks
@tower_defender whitout cloack, just got to have a fast ship and flying skills…
(not gona say be pro, couse im not pro, im a dude that played so much i can predict all the paterns of the stations and attacks)
@Hendrik
not a bad idear, the more ur tech level goes up the better ur ship accelerates and has shooting bonus.
maby unlock better tech if u advence in the story line… (or maby not.)
I’d like it if the Mido story were fleshed out a bit in the sense that WHY are the Mido rebelling from the Nivellians? Why such animosity? It’s easy to understand the humans vs Vossk, it’s just a classic sci-fi juxaposition. But the motivation for the Nivellians and Mido to be shooting at each other never seemed to make sense and so far it’s not really compelling either.
Hey guys, thanks a lot for your awesome ideas and suggestions! I’ve forwarded ‘em to our developers and got some feedback on whether some of the features and aspects you mentioned will end up in Supernova or not. Here we got.
- Battle Cruisers: You’ll be able to interact with some of the bigger ships in Supernova in one way or another. How that interaction will look like, well, I guess you’ll find it out soon enough…
- Several Turrets: There are currently no plans for player-controlled ships with more than one turret.
- Missile Auto Turrets: We’ve thought about adding ‘em as well, but the first tests caused quite a bunch of problems, so we decided not to include any missile auto turrets in the next add-on. But maybe they’ll be added in the future…
- More Voids Ships: Sorry, but there won’t be any new Voids ships in Supernova. But there’ll be a lot of other helluva cool vessels… wait and see.
- Bigger Ships: Well, we don’t wanna promise too much yet, but at least here at the Fishlabs headquarters, we’re also quite fond of the idea of flying bigger ships that your usual Veteran or Mantis…
It would be awesome if you included that Vossk missile ship that apeared from time to time in the first GOF!! If I could only remember it´s name!! or a ship like the Draaken also from the first GOF!!
those are some big and strong ships you could include!
Help! I played GOF2 HD for a few days. I do not finish the main story line. I add-on Valkyrie and Kaamo Club.
Now I have to fine 50t crystals to make a drive. Every time I try to find black hole and go through the black hole. I always go back the same place. I do this thing for four days. Please help me to finish the main story line. Thank you.
Yay new dev blog could be here any minute, im glad whit what tobi said,
exept for the no new void ships (not even as upgrade version using blueprints?? )
and the fact that they really are considering rocket turrents….
im not against it but im not 2 happy about it either
Hey, I just realized the unlock deal with the Void X…duh??
Also, I was thinking about the turrets; if you can mount weapons on a ship, why could you not, on nice/expensive turrets, mount your own weapons…say an \"Icarus\"….
-Tony
Cheers, tsaifenglong. Unfortunately, there were some problems with the HD version after the latest update. Hence we’ve just released another update today, which should have fixed the wormhole bug. Please install it and if you still got any troubles, send a ticket to our support team and they’ll help you our right away!
Hey, when do you expect another dev diary?
never mind, i just saw the next one!!
Alice tried to bribe me 2 millions when I entered the void, now what anoles me is that he answers for me and says I should leave before I get tempted, I do want to free her and get those 2 m. I mean what can she do alone when I rescue her
. And after all a true sandbox end game should allow us to do the choices. Because there is nothing more I can do right after she goes there? I think Valkyrie was surprisingly short I did it like in 2 hours and that\’s it?!? It costed the same like the entire game but didn\’t give much game time. Btw what is the black market that\’s in Valkyrie I can\’t find this either…?
Thanks for a great game, now do us that favor and add some char skill progression that effects the ships similar to eve, add drones too and you have a winner both game play wise and end game wise that gives you much more dev time for next content since current exp doesn\’t last long enough!
Thanks for reading
Cheers Henrik! Supernova will be a lot deeper and more complex than its antecessor… we’ve planned to make it at least as big as the main game and the first add-on combined! Besides a huge new story line, it’ll also include quite a lot of new gameplay features, new mission types, new systems, etc…
Valkyrie’s black market is in the Loma system. Each of its three stations is in the hand of a ruthless gang of space pirates, which makes it pretty hard to reach the hangar unless you’re wiling to bribe them. If you land on the stations, however, you’ll be able to sell luxury goods such as Buskat, Organs or Rare Animals for unrivalled prices.