Let’s face it, guys. If it wasn’t for Apple releasing the iPhone back in 2007 and opening the App Store back in 2008, Fishlabs would most likely no longer be around today. And to this day, iOS is by far the most important and successful market for us. We understand that many of you won’t be affected directly by the newly added iPhone 5 optimization of Galaxy on Fire 2 – Supernova and hence might be quite a bit disappointed by our decision to add a number of new features right away, rather than adding them afterwards in the course of another update. We also understand that those among you, who’ve not yet moved over to the HD version of GOF2, might not be too fond of our decision to stick to our plans of releasing all three versions of the new expansion pack simultaneously, despite the fact that only the Full HD and HD versions had to be re-submitted. Though all of these things don’t seem to be connected to one another, the matter turns out to be more complex than it might appear at first. If all had gone according to plan, we would have launched the add-on prior to the release of the iPhone 5 and then added the additional features with another update that would have gone live at the same day that Apple’s new smartphone hit the market.[full] But as so often in life, things turned out quite a bit different than expected and now we really need to do everything we can to make our title appear as appealing as possible on the new device right from the start. The better it looks and performs on the iPhone 5, the higher is the chance that we‘re going to get a lot of media coverage as well as an international feature upon release – and these things can indeed be crucial factors that decide whether a new title becomes a success or a failure.

The Gator Custom bursts through the Shima system with all guns blazing in Fishlabs' upcoming sci-fi epic GOF2 HD - Supernova.

After all, a new iOS device is always destined to turn the market upside down and hence it is particularly important for a company like Fishlabs to be ahead of the curve and support such devices from day one. And it’ll also become more and more important for us to pursue our cross-platform strategy and support all relevant models of the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch equally. Releasing the SD version of Supernova prior to the HD and Full HD version, as some of our fans suggested, wouldn’t make a lot of sense at all for us, because it would take away a lot of buzz and would make the title appear way smaller than it actually is, if we’d first present our biggest and most important release of the year in a version that’s not at all tailored to the specifications and capabilities of the hottest smartphones and tablets on the market. If we want Supernova to become a success and get the notification it deserves, we’ve gotta kick it off with a bang and show it to the world in all its glory… and that’s simply not gonna happen if we release the slightly dated SD version first and then put out the state-of-the-art HD version later on. This being said, we really hope that you understand our situation and are still looking forward to the release of Supernova, which will hopefully not be that far away anymore.

To ensure a perfect sci-fi gaming experience on the iPhone 5, all elements of the touch screen navigation have been re-adjusted for the 4" Retina Display of Apple's new smartphone bestseller.

Of course, we’re still gonna stick to the release of our bi-weekly developer diaries, despite the fact that we’ve already run through all of the topics we originally wanted to discuss. So today we’ll introduce some of the new iPhone 5 features to you, such as the full support of the native 1136 by 640 pixel resolution of the new Apple smartphone’s 4” Retina Display. As you can see above, the game will look pretty neat on the iPhone 5’s bigger screen and all control elements have been re-adjusted in order to ensure a perfect gaming experience.

The new motion blur effect makes the boost look even cooler than before in GOF2 HD. It will not only be available on the iPhone 5 but also on the iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and new iPad.

We’ve also added a new motion blur effect, which will give you a way better feeling of the enormous speed that your ships reaches while its boost is activated. To make sure that this effect can be enjoyed on all devices from the iPhone 4S upwards, we decided to use a so-called radial blur, which is less resource-consuming than a full motion blur effect. In order to create the effect in question, we first have to render the current scenery to a texture and then sample that texture several times around a given centre point in the middle of the image. By making the effect stronger and more prominent towards the image boarders, we’re then able to make it look as if our space craft was passing by asteroids, meteors and cosmic vapours at lightning speed.

The new refraction shaders will make the gamma shield look way cooler in GOF2 HD. Unfortunately, the static screenshots don't really do 'em justice.

Furthermore, we’ve also integrated two additional shaders from the Full HD version of Galaxy on Fire 2 into the HD version, namely refraction shaders and bloom shaders. The former have been created in a similar way as the cloaking device and the gamma shield (see dev diary #8, for example) and can be spotted at several occasions, such as the burning space stations in the Supernova system or absorption animation of the plasma collectors. And the latter are so-called post effect shaders, which are rendered onto the complete scenery on the screen and cause the light areas to shine even stronger than before. Whether or not those two will really end up in the game has not been decided yet, because we won’t be able to test Supernova on an iPhone 5 before its official release on Friday, September 21st. If the game will still perform fine with these additional effects integrated, we’ll keep them in and have them activated right from the start. But if they cause significant frame rate drops, we’ll have to take them out again in order to ensure the best-possible gaming experience. So let’s wait and see if the iPhone 5 will live up to our expectations.

The Groza MK II slams its predecessor in every aspect. However, to get hold of this highly sought-after vessel, you gotta shell out a nice sum of credits.

Here we go, everybody. Thanks for your time and patience. We hope you enjoyed the read and understand our situation a little better now. We’ve got our fingers crossed that this will indeed be the last dev diary before the release of Supernova, but given the recent course of events, we don’t wanna make any false promises or raise false expectations, so please don’t be mad at us if we’ve still got to come up with one more topic two weeks from now.