MMO

Infinity: Battlescape #HO

The-Force #91 Abr '16

Weekly Update 2 15-2-2016

Our focus remains on releasing our prototype to Developer Access backers as soon as possible. Over the last week we've wrapped up most of the remaining issues with account management and authorization. A basic server browser has been implemented though at release we're most likely only going to have a single server available which will be located on the east coast of the U.S. There's still a fair amount of work left to be done on installation/deployment/patching and worst case if we can't get it solid enough by the end of the month we're probably just going to make the game available via a zip file and release manual patches until the deployment code is ready. That being said you will still require a valid I-Novae account with a Developer Access+ pledge to login and play the game.

On the art side Dan and Jan continue to work on getting the WIP SFC bomber integrated into the prototype. Even in its current early form we think it's coming together quite nicely. Kristian is nearly done with a new set of upgraded planetary textures and has also been working on concept art for a new asteroid mining facility. The general idea is that it's a large 10km+ asteroid that has had its center hollowed out as the miners slowly move toward the perimeter. We'll post the concept art as soon as it's ready.

The-Force #92 Abr '16

Weekly Update 3 22-2-2016

Time for another weekly update! This last week everybody has been working as hard as they can to get the prototype ready for release by the end of the month for our Developer Access backers. Nearly everything is wrapped up however we still have some issues remaining with SSL certificates, some new toolchain bugs that popped up, and a lot of testing left to do. As mentioned last week we may not have our launcher with automatic patching ready for initial launch in which case we'll be providing .zip files until it's ready.

As of this evening we've imported all of our backer data into our production website. We've also assigned badges on the forums and delivered access to the private forums for our Developer Access backers. This of course only applies to people who have already created an I-Novae account on our website. If you haven't created an account yet please do so. If you pledged with a different email than the one you used to create your I-Novae account you will need to link them. This feature still requires a bit more testing but it should be available within the next few days. Lastly please keep in mind that the current forums badges are temporary. Once our artists have time we'll remake them into something with a lot more awesome.

A number of you have expressed interest in upgrading your pledge so that you can be a part of Developer Access. Unfortunately we don't have that capability ready just yet but after we release the prototype it will become our first priority. We're all super excited about releasing the prototype, this next week is going to be a busy one, but it'll be worth it in the end and we look forward to seeing all of our Developer Access backers in the game soon!

The-Force #93 Abr '16

Weekly Update 5 14-3-2016

I think I forgot to post last weeks update but here's 5 anyway

Hey all time for another weekly update. On the engineering side we've primarily been focused on bug fixing, more website improvements, and working on our new installation/deployment platform - none of which is particularly exciting to talk about unless you're a programmer. What is exciting to talk about however is ships and weapons! The art team has been hard at work concepting and creating rough 3D mockups for all of our new ships as well as their fixed direction and turret based weapons. The first revision of these will be completed on Wednesday.

As I mentioned a bit last week our goal is to get rough un-textured meshes into the game as soon as possible so we can begin iterating on major gameplay systems. Sometime shortly after this coming Wednesday we'll begin integrating these 3D mockups into the prototype starting with the smaller ships, like the interceptor, and working our way up to the capital ships. While it won't be pretty we want to begin getting a feel for the mass/controls of the ships, cockpit visibility, weapon placement, balancing, and relative sizes.

Currently capital ships haven't been implemented in any playable form so there will be some amount of extra work to get our first capital ship up and running. Once that's complete we'll begin integrating 3D mockups for our weapon systems. This will also be quite a bit of work to implement in its first iteration as we only have a simple fixed-direction blaster type weapon currently implemented and both turrets and missiles will require their own targeting AI. That being said it's going to be a lot of fun to watch as the game starts taking shape!

The-Force #94 Abr '16

Weekly Update 6 22-3-2016

I'm accidentally posting this one day late but better late than never I suppose :p. With another week behind us we've got quite a few screen shots to show off. Our art team is in the process of wrapping up the concept art for all of the ships. They still have a bit left to do for land bases, space stations, and weapons however the ships are definitely the most important part of the game. This week we'd like to show off the new concept art for the SFC Interceptor.

For those of you who will receive access to the Mercenary Operative Interceptor we also have a comparison between the two starting with the SFC Interceptor:

And here is the SFC Mercenary Operative Interceptor:

The colored trim on the sides of the Mercenary Operative Interceptor are going to glow though that may not be obvious in the drawing. To round out the concept art for the interceptor we also have some pictures of the cockpit.

The canopy will raise upward to allow the pilot to enter the cockpit. The HUD will contain most of the flight instruments and is projected onto the glass of the helmet. You will also notice that the interceptor cockpit, unlike the bomber, doesn't contain many instrument panels as the majority of redundant systems have been removed in favor of reducing weight.

On the engineering side this last week primarily consisted of fixing bugs in the prototype and additional work on our installation/patching system. We've finally fixed the infamous cockpit flickering bug as well as a crash in the server browser caused by an empty list. Our Developer Access game server was abruptly restarted courtesy of Windows Update and was unavailable for a few hours. This coming week we'll be doing some more bug fixing as well as making improvements to our network code. Next week we'll begin integrating the new 3d rough mockups for all of our ships.

Speaking of which I shall leave you with one more screen shot for the week - a size comparison of the rough mockups for all of our ships. From left to right we have the bomber, corvette, destroyer, cruiser, and carrier.

The-Force #95 Abr '16

Weekly Update 7 28-3-2016

This week has primarily been a continuation of the work started last week consisting of bug fixes, concept art for our new ships, and rough mockup meshes for the new ships. We've also been spending a lot of time this last week going back over all of our materials to make sure that they have proper brightness and contrast.

Part of the reason Infinity: Battlescape looks so good is that it's using a technique called Physically Based Rendering (PBR). This means that we do a lot of fancy math stuff to ensure that our simulation adheres to the real world laws of physics, such as the law of conservation of energy, which results in a more photo-realistic looking game. This changes the way our artists have to think about creating materials relative to how they have traditionally produced game assets and so we reviewed everything to make sure that our art is cohesive and to ensure everybody is building assets the best way possible.

A problem that we've known about for a while has to do with how we handle High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering. Unlike most (all?) other games we're using realistic quantities of light. The difference in lighting environments between space and atmospheric flight is enormous. Unfortunately that creates some rather challenging problems for us. Without getting too technical we're losing a lot of contrast when a ship is exposed to high quantities of light and it's making it difficult for our artists to properly author their textures. Originally this was going to be fixed in the polish phase of the game but due to its impact on our art team it looks like we'll have to address it sooner rather than later.

This week we've started integrating the rough 3D mockups of the new ships into the prototype. We're looking forward to releasing a patch soon to begin collecting feedback from those of you who have pledged Developer Access as we're confident they will require a lot of iteration between now the release of the final game!

The-Force #96 Abr '16

Weekly Update 8 4-4-2016

This week the discussion has primarily centered around bases. To recap our current plan is to have 3 different types of bases - small space stations, large space stations, and land bases. Small space stations and land bases will only be able to spawn interceptors, bombers, and corvettes whereas large space stations can also spawn capital ships. This makes large space stations particularly important strategically. Since we are only in the concept art stage at the moment we've been debating how to build and connect the 3D pieces of geometry that will come together to form a base.

Our idea is to build a set of reusable and interchangeable modules that allow us to put together bases that look unique but are in fact just a re-organization of the same set of assets. This will allow us to introduce more variety in gameplay while reducing the production burden on the art team. Another issue we have to work out is how will ships spawn and dock with the various bases. We need to have two different types of hangars - those for small to medium ships and those for capital ships. We're currently thinking of using modern ports as a model for capital ships. Essentially there will be long "piers" that capital ships will pull up next to and attach via pseudo-rigid tubes and cables. Small to medium sized ships will land/spawn within hangar bays which contain an elevator system similar to modern aircraft carriers.

Land bases will contain landing pads with an elevator system similar to the one described above for space stations. We also want bases to have additional destructible buildings/modules, such as air traffic control towers and power plants, that affect the efficiency of the base. For example if a landing pad or hangar is destroyed it will no longer be able to spawn ships until it gets repaired. If a power plant is destroyed the rate of repair will be reduced. Bases will automatically (slowly) repair themselves unless destroyed beyond a certain threshold.

In other news the corvette has been fully integrated into the prototype and we're hoping to release a new patch within a few days! It still needs a lot of work and currently is no match for a bomber in combat. We're integrating it to get a feel for its size, controls, and the utility of its cockpit. There's a number of changes we already want to make to it but we want to give all of you with Developer Access a chance to begin playing around with it before we start radically altering it. The mockup of the interceptor is still under construction and we still need to build our capital ship flight system before we can integrate any of the capital ship mockups. This will be our focus over the next couple of weeks.

The-Force #97 Abr '16

Weekly Update 9 11-4-2016

A new weekly update to go along with our release of a new update for the game (Developer Access backers only)! We were unable to release our v0.1.3.0 patch yesterday due to a partial outage at our data center however everything was all sorted out today and we released the patch without any problems. The major new feature for v0.1.3.0 is the addition of a playable mockup of the corvette. It's big, less maneuverable, and has a very different flight model than the bomber which has already resulted in a number of pilots slamming into planets at fatal speeds. Of course this is only the initial implementation so we'll be iterating on it quite a bit over the coming months. You can read more information about what's changed in the v0.1.3.0 patch notes here. Below is a short video of some of our Developer Access backers playing around with the new corvette in all of its gray, untextured glory:

Now that the corvette has been integrated the next ship to get mocked up is the interceptor, which we expect to go pretty quickly. Following that will be additional weapon systems. Currently the only weapon available is a generic forward facing blaster which gets old pretty quick and is nowhere near being representative of the gameplay we're going after. We want to get some additional weapon types mocked up before we begin integrating capital ships so that we can start testing real gameplay - which should also make our videos much more interesting to watch.

As I've mentioned before our goal is to have all of the major gameplay components mocked up in some form within ₂ months. That'll give us approximately 5 months to get core gameplay reasonably well polished before the game becomes available to our Alpha backers. We also want to have the final art for the smaller ships (interceptor, bomber, and corvette) pretty well nailed down by the time we ship the Alpha. This will give our art team a good chunk of time to focus on the capital ships, stations, land bases, particle effects, and general polish as we push toward Beta and then gold release during 2017.

The-Force #98 Abr '16

Weekly Update 10 18-4-2016

This week we were hoping to release a patch with the new interceptor for our Developer Access backers however it got held up by unfinished work on a new input mapper that has taken longer than expected. For those of you who have access to the prototype you probably have noticed that you've only been able to play with a mouse and keyboard. The new input mapper will allow you to use game controllers and simple joysticks (we haven't tested it yet with HOTAS so your mileage may vary). This work should be wrapped up shortly and we expect to release the new patch soon.

The focus of the week has been a combination of iterating on our ship designs and discussing missile mechanics. In a modern fighter jet missiles are actually quite large relative to the size of the plane. For example a Dassault Rafale can carry up to 14 missiles which is quite a lot compared to most other aircraft. While we don't want to be fully constrained by realism we do want our weapons to be balanced around concepts that are at least somewhat plausible. Availability of missiles will be limited and we're currently debating whether or not an interceptor should have internal or external launchers. In the case of bombers and larger spacecraft they will be internal but interceptors pose a unique challenge due to a much smaller, heavily angled hull.

(A visualization of a blue external launcher and a violet missile.)

External launchers can potentially take one of two forms. The first is as a magazine fed rectangular box that attaches to the hull on a hardpoint as shown above. The second, which you commonly see today, is one or more missiles attached to the hull individually or as a member of a pod composed of tubes containing 1 missile each:

(A visualization of externally mounted missiles.)

This is something we're likely going to play around with over the next few months as it has a significant impact on how the design of the interceptor will be finalized. As mentioned above bombers will use magazine fed internal launchers as visualized below:

(A visualization of a bomber with magazine fed internal launchers.)

A significant amount of rework is going into the corvette. Based on feedback and our own experiences playing around with the current mock-up we're redoing large portions of both the hull and the cockpit which you can see below:

((WIP) Revision 2 of the corvette.)

We don't have a specific timeline for when we're going to integrate the mock-up for the next version of the corvette but it'll likely be within a few weeks. After the next patch with the interceptor we want to focus on improving our net code a bit before we move onto weapons. We've also started on the 3D mesh work for the next version of the bomber so that should be ready within a few weeks as well.

Xeros_Grey #99 Abr '16

La estetica de naves y estructuras me gusta mucho, es muy pro-homeworld

The-Force #100 Abr '16

Aquí algunos videos creados por la gente con acceso al prototipo. Hay poca accion porque en el prototipo el netcode aun es muy malo y es practicamente imposible destruir otra nave si que esta se este quieta. Tampoco han incluido el sistema de armas por lo que solo hay un disparo basico.

The-Force #101 Abr '16

Weekly Update 11 25-4-2016

Last week's update mentioned that the patch with the interceptor was right around the corner. At the time we sincerely thought that was the case but supporting game pads and joysticks ended up being a deeper rabbit hole than we had initially anticipated and it took all week to get the new code stable. Fortunately it's now finished and we've begun doing the integration work for the new interceptor mockup which is quite exciting. Due to its maneuverability we expect there won't be nearly as many people accidentally liquefying themselves by flying into mountains at speeds of 2 km/s like there was when we introduced the corvette.

An interceptor with a prototype of external missile pods

Speaking of the corvette our second iteration is coming along nicely. We've reduced its length from 115m to _82m which will make it a bit easier to fly. We're also redesigning its cockpit to increase visibility. As the largest non-capital ship in the game the corvette will perform a role similar to a modern tank. With heavy armor and heavy weaponry including independently targeting turrets it will make its presence known in a battlescape.

The corvette is the only non-capital ship with turrets

This week we've also put some significant work into updating the game launcher and web backend as we get ready to begin internal testing of our new installation/patching system. Our goal is to have it ready in time for the patch after next. At the moment updates to the game are coming once every few weeks. We'd like to significantly increase the frequency of our updates and this new patching system will be essential for reducing the size of your downloads as well as the amount of money we're paying for bandwidth. It's also part of the foundation for what we hope will one day become a Software Development Kit (SDK) for modders.

The completed prototype of the NPC hauler

Last but not least we have a new render, shown above, of the completed prototype of our NPC hauler. To refresh everyone's memory haulers will be spawned at factories every couple of minutes to deliver raw materials to the nearest base/space station. If the hauler successfully makes it then those raw materials are turned into credits evenly distributed among the members of that team for purchasing better ships and weapons. Therefore each team will have supply lines that can be disrupted by enemy forces either temporarily by destroying individual haulers or more permanently by destroying factories.

clethaw #102 Abr '16 Azote Ruso

Muy interesante, veremos las fechas que van dando y si las cumplen.

7 días después

The-Force #103 May '16

Weekly Update 12 2-5-2016

We're happy to announce that today we released patch v0.1.4.0 to all of our Developer Access backers. It contains numerous improvements and tweaks to the game. Most notably it has our new input mapper with support for gamepads and joysticks, a more realistic atmospheric flight model, the second iteration of the corvette, and most importantly the new interceptor! We've been getting some questions from Alpha backers about when the game will be available to play. The Alpha release is currently scheduled for October 29th, 2016.

Mockup of the interceptor cockpit

Over the next few weeks our engineering focus is going to shift from integrating ships and gameplay tweaks to taking care of some low level plumbing before we dive into weapons. Specifically we need to make some improvements to our core networking layer such as removing the last remnants of our trusted client code, which prevents hacking, and improving latency compensation. On top of that we still need to get our pledge upgrade system built for those of you who are looking to get in on the action sooner rather than later.

Revision 2 of the corvette cockpit

The art team's primary focus will be on space stations, land bases, and factories. These are large, complicated assets that will take a lot of time to complete. They will also continue work on revising the bomber, interceptor, and corvette as needed based on playtesting feedback. Looking back, full development began on February 1st and in the 3 months since then we're pretty happy with our progress. There's a lot that still needs to be done for the Alpha but we've worked through the initial ramp-up and reached a good cadence.

Revision 3 of the bomber

7 días después

The-Force #104 May '16

Weekly Update 13 10-5-2016

Hey everyone time for another update. This last week has been a continuation of the work started the previous week. On the engineering side we're primarily working on low level net code and infrastructure. As far as gameplay is concerned one of the most important areas of improvement we need to make is to our latency interpolation and client-side prediction (which hides latency). This ensures that, as long as you aren't trying to cheat, if you see your bullets hitting an enemy ship on your screen the server will also see your bullets hitting the enemy ship. Needless to say when this doesn't work well it can be quite frustrating. There's also some minor bug fixes that will be rolled out in the next patch.

(Completed concept art of a factory)

On the art side we're wrapping up the last few remaining pieces of concept art as well as continuing to iterate on the 3d mockups of the bomber, corvette, and interceptor. As mentioned last week we've also started work on the space station, land base, and factory. These are large assets and will take a lot of time before they reach a completed state so we'll be slowly rolling them out piece by piece as development progresses.

(Additional improvements to iteration 3 of the bomber)

That's it for this week. A major goal for us is to get to the point where we can release one or more new patches to the game every week. Once we get there we'll have a lot of these boring (but important) infrastructure systems out of the way and we'll be able to focus more on gameplay.

The-Force #105 May '16

Weekly Update 14 16-5-2016

This week we deviated slightly from our aforementioned focus on networking to revisit our physics engine. The two are actually closely intertwined as networking physics is one of the most difficult parts of, well, networking. For the last forever we've been using a physics library that is quite old and no longer actively maintained. For a couple of years now we've been meaning to replace it and just didn't have the time to properly evaluate other options.

After looking at Bullet and PhysX along with a number of lesser known physics engines we've decided that Bullet will probably serve our needs the best. Over the last week we've laid the groundwork for this change but we won't actually do the Bullet integration until sometime after we finish the current round of improvements to networking.

(Concept art for sections of space station)

On the art side we have a bunch of screen shots that may not make a whole lot of sense but are actually quite important. We don't have the resources to build a lot of variation into our larger structures such as space stations, land bases, and factories. Instead we're trying to design a modular system whereby pre-made sections of architecture can be arbitrarily combined to create the perception of multiple unique structures.

(Concept art showing how pieces of architecture can fit together)

These screen shots show how we're planning on achieving that goal. We've also started building the 3d mockups for factories based on the finalized concept art released last week. More screen shots to come as these concepts get realized in (rough) 3d!

The-Force #106 May '16

Weekly Update 15 25-5-2016

This week's update comes with new screen shots of 3d mockups for various space station pieces.

Various space station pieces (WIP)

The art team continues to iterate on space station, land base, and factory meshes. There's a lot of trial and error involved in seeing how various pieces fit together both aesthetically and functionally. So far we're pretty pleased with our ability to reuse and recombine large pieces of architecture in ways that creates what appears to be completely unique structures.

A space station composed of large reusable parts

Work continues on improving our physics engine. It has become a bit more complicated than we had anticipated due to lack of 64-bit precision in some physics libraries and poor GPU support in others. We've concluded that we'll probably have to write our own physics engine at some point in the future after Infinity: Battlescape ships to retail due to the unique requirements of our technology.

A smaller, uniquely different space station made from reusable parts

We're also beginning to wrap up work on our new installation system and the next version of our I-Novae launcher. At first glance not a whole lot will be different between the current installer and the next one. Our launcher UI is going to get a serious upgrade and it will be able to auto-update so that you don't have to manually download new versions of the game from our website. Under the hood everything is completely different as we lay the foundation for our future optimized patching system and mod distribution.

Concept art for a base interior

7 días después

The-Force #107 May '16

Weekly Update 16 31-5-2016

Hey all time for another weekly update. A number of large projects are beginning to wrap up. For starters updating the physics code is about done. We've completed a shallow integration of PhysX and it will be fully supported once they finish work on double precision. Originally we were going to use Bullet, which already supports double precision, however Bullet doesn't have multi-threading and its GPU support leaves much to be desired. Unfortunately those of you with AMD cards won't get any GPU acceleration with PhysX however its CPU implementation will still run better than any of the alternatives that we've tried - which are all CPU-only anyway.

Different architectural pieces of a planetary factory

The new installation and patching system is ready for internal testing by the team however there's still some work to be done with the launcher and in our web backend for uploading and publishing new patches. The backend integration also includes the groundwork for a big website update we want to do at some point. The first phase will be the aforementioned installer/patching support. This will be followed by a page that will allow people to upgrade their pledges and then finally the entire web portal will be updated. A new profile page which shows you your purchases/pledges, account information, and how to download the game will be the central focus of the website update.

A mockup of the land base hangar bay with 2 corvettes parked inside

On the art side things are really starting to come together for our space stations, land bases, and planetary factories. There's still a bit of design work left to be done on the land bases however the mockups for the factories and space stations are now being integrated into the game. We'll probably have 1 more patch, which may not include these new assets, using the old installation system before we switch to the new installation system along with a major update.

Major pieces of space station architecture

Scheduling-wise we're going to continue to work on low level infrastructure, primarily the website and game networking, for the month of June. In July we want to refocus back toward iterating heavily on gameplay as we begin a big 4 month push to get the Alpha out by the end of October. This will start with implementing additional weapons and beginning work on the game UI. For Alpha we want to have all major game systems mocked up, a working UI, and all of the cockpits close to being completed. Needless to say it's going to be a busy summer and fall!

7 días después

The-Force #108 Jun '16

Weekly Update 17 7-6-2016

Time for another weekly update! The team has been primarily working on the same stuff that has been occupying its time for the last 2 weeks. On the art side work continues on the new space stations and land bases. As mentioned before these are big, complicated assets and are going to take some time to get integrated into the prototype.

Some new corvette cockpit concept art

We're also working diligently to get the next patch released which will include upgraded physics and a new multi-threaded game loop. This is all pretty complicated code so there's been an uptick in bugs that we're working on getting stable before we ship the next version.

That's pretty much it for last week which also included a holiday here in the U.S. Once we get this patch out there will be more to discuss!

The-Force #109 Jun '16

Weekly Update 18 13-6-2016

Time for another weekly update! This week we're happy to say we're done with physics. We've primarily been working on bug fixes and preparing our next patch. Previously we had mentioned that our next patch wouldn't contain any new content. Due to the amount of time that's passed between now and our previous patch we felt that would be a bit underwhelming so we decided to push it back a little bit so we can include the new factory and space station placeholders. We also wrote all of the backend code for uploading, verifying, and distributing patches through our new installation system. The last step before that's ready is to finish integration with our launcher - which is getting a major overhaul both in its UI and its internals.

A section of a land base

On the art side the majority of the geometry placeholders are complete. There's still some work to be done on the land base and once we start iterating on weapons we'll likely have some additional mockups to create, both for weapon geometry as well as particle effects, but at the moment we think we're in a pretty good spot with regard to the look and feel of our ships and structures. From this point onward we're going to begin focusing on getting assets retail ready starting with cockpits and assets with a form that isn't affected much by gameplay such as the hauler.

The ground view of a land base

Once the patch is released our focus will shift back toward improving the networking layer, particularly our hit detection and latency compensation, which got delayed by the improvements to our physics subsystem. Sometime in July, after the networking improvements are finished, we will pivot back toward iterating heavily on gameplay starting with weapons. Mockups for our HUD and the game UI/menu system will also be produced. We will be focusing all of our energy on getting the major gameplay systems implemented in time for our Alpha release at the end of October.

A small hangar bay in a land base

As far as graphics are concerned we need to make some improvements to our decal and particle system rendering. On our forums we've discussed D3D12 and Vulkan quite a bit however it currently looks like it's unlikely we'll get to any significant graphics or optimization work until sometime in 2017.

7 días después

The-Force #110 Jun '16

Weekly Update 19 21-06-2016

Another week another update. Unfortunately this last week I (Keith) ended up falling quite ill for nearly the entire week which has delayed our patch and the work on completing the new launcher. I rarely get sick but when I do it usually takes me out pretty good. Fortunately I'm about 90% recovered now and I expect within another day or 2 I'll be completely back to normal so we can finish up this patch.

Concept for a land based defensive cannon

While I was writhing in agony Flavien was busy finishing up the integration of the new space station mockups. So far we're quite pleased with the result and once we move onto building the shippable space station assets we think they're going to be absolutely stunning.

Filling in the details of the interceptor cockpit

Speaking of shippable assets we mentioned last week that we had started work on finalizing the cockpits. Currently the focus is on the interceptor and the corvette, with that effort being split between Dan and Jan, while Kristian is still finishing up some work on the land base mockups. We're trying to strike a balance in our art style between 70's/80's sci-fi industrial and the advanced technology a civilization would have far into the future. Pilots will have an advanced augmented reality (AR) HUD built into their helmets capable of displaying mission critical information however cockpits will retain many retro switches, buttons, gauges, and levers for redundancy in case of system failure.

The work in progress corvette cockpit

Once we complete the geometry pass and are able to start work on textures/materials these images will really start to come alive. We're going to continue the well-used, rusted look of our Star Fold Confederacy ships as was shown with the Hellion in our Kickstarter video. We want our ships to have character!

The-Force #111 Jun '16

Weekly Update 20 28-6-2016

Hey all it's weekly update time. This last week we pushed hard to get the new patch out however at the 11th hour we ran into a handful of blockers that delayed it. Specifically we realized that our build system was a bit of a mess. The new patching system just handles distribution, installation, and of course patching. What it doesn't handle is the generation of deployment packages.

Panoramic image of the new fighter cockpit

Up to this point we've been using the same build system that we were using for the Kickstarter. Back then we didn't need to produce new builds very often and since we were short on time the build system was constructed as "good enough under duress". Since then it has devolved into an arcane system of scripts and manually copying around files that really only Flavien fully understood and it took him hours to produce a new build - which is a big part of why, up till now, we haven't released patches very often.

Panoramic image of the new corvette cockpit

We spent the weekend constructing a proper, fully automated build system which is nearly complete. Due to this coming weekend being a holiday in the U.S. there's a good chance that we'll push the patch back to next week even if it's ready by the end of this week so that we have all hands on deck in case something goes wrong. We're going to be upgrading a lot of infrastructure for the next patch.

Panoramic image of the new bomber cockpit

On the art side work continues on finishing up the land base mockups and the cockpits for the smaller ships. The geometry work on the cockpits is coming along nicely and we're looking forward to getting to the texturing phase soon. This is particularly exciting because we're getting tired of everything being bland, boring gray geometry. You can checkout the panoramic views of the new cockpits by clicking the images above or following the links below:

9 días después

The-Force #112 Jul '16

Weekly Updae 21 7-7-2016

Last week's update was delayed by the holiday here in the U.S. but better late than never! For starters we're working on wrapping up the patch we've been talking about for the last few weeks. All of the bug fixes and new content we wanted to get into it have been completed and now it's just a matter of rolling out the new patching system and the website updates. We ran into a few hiccups caused by some Microsoft updates to our development tools but we've been implementing a workaround that should be sorted out soon.

Completed land base placeholders

On the art side things continue to move along at a good pace. Our land base placeholders have been completed and we've begun texturing our cockpits. Bland, gray geometry is finally starting to look like something you would want to fly.

OMG there's colors!

For those of you who are interested in the nitty gritty details of how we're texturing our ships you can read a post by one of our artists detailing the process. Now that it's July our focus, after releasing the patch, will be on finally finishing up the improvements to our networking layer and releasing the new pledge upgrade system. August until the end of October we'll be crunching on gameplay and hopefully dramatically increasing the frequency of our patches.

Experimenting with materials for ship plating

The-Force #113 Jul '16

Weekly Update 22 11-7-2016

Due to the holiday last weekend this was a short week so it's already time for another weekly update! Unfortunately a shorter week means less stuff to talk about. On the engineering side you can summarize our entire effort as working on getting the forever patch released. I mentioned last week that a recent update to Microsoft's development tools broke our build. At the time of the last weekly update it looked like it would be resolved in about a day but unfortunately the snowball effect that is so common in software development caused the effort required to resolve the problem to "snowball" into taking up the entire rest of the week.

Capital ship turret placeholders.

The good news is that we actually found a number of unrelated bugs in the game/engine that we were able to fix (hence the aforementioned snowball) and final testing on the new build will begin tomorrow. If all goes well we'll get back to finishing up the last bit of the new launcher and then releasing this dang patch.

Interceptor cockpit UV progress. Green = complete.

On the art side work continues on texturing and materials. Jan has made good progress on the interceptor cockpit, Dan is finishing up the geometry decal pass for the bomber cockpit, and Kristian is working on the exterior for the hauler. Hopefully we'll have some prettier images to show off soon.

The-Force #114 Jul '16

Weekly Update 23 14-7-2016

Hey all time for another update. This week we finally moved past issues caused by an update from Microsoft to our dev tools that broke our build a few weeks ago and began final testing for our next patch. Unfortunately we found a couple of show stoppers in the deployment code which have now been fixed. Deployment, installation, and uninstallation using the new patching system are working well however we have a bit more testing left to do for upgrades before we're ready to release the next patch.

An updated size comparison for large stuff

A number of smaller issues within the game and engine code have also been fixed. On the art side work continues on finalizing geometry as well as textures and materials. This is going to take a while and the next couple of weeks are budgeted for completing the first 2 ships - the interceptor and the (NPC) hauler. These first ships will go a bit slower than the ships that come after because we're currently experimenting with the look and feel as well as some new techniques that will be reused for the rest of our assets.

An updated size comparison for medium stuff

As we look toward the Alpha the art team needs to complete texturing for all of our small ships which include the interceptor, bomber, and corvette. In a couple of weeks they also need to begin the UI mockups for the HUD and in-game menu system as well as skinning the launcher. On the engineering side once we ship this next patch we'll get back to the networking upgrades and the pledge upgrade system followed by incremental patching. Major gameplay iteration will likely resume sometime in August.

An updated size comparison for small stuff

7 días después

The-Force #115 Jul '16

Weekly Update 24 26-7-2016

It's time for another weekly update. This last week has been a pretty hectic one as we pushed hard to get the forever patch ready for release. Today we started the first phase of rolling out the new patch by updating our web infrastructure. On the surface you probably haven't noticed anything different because the update primarily applies to stuff going on behind the scenes. Over the next few days we'll begin slowly rolling out the patch to Developer Access backers who happen to be in Discord and if everything goes smoothly that will be followed by the general release of the new patch to all Developer Access backers.

Updated WIP shot of the interceptor cockpit

Aside from that Flavien has started work on the new networking code and our artists continue work on getting our first set of production ready assets completed. Jan is getting close to finishing up the interceptor cockpit, Dan is doing the final geometry pass on space station architecture, and Kristian has finished up his civilian/industrial material experimentation and will be starting on getting the hauler production ready.

Another WIP shot of the interceptor cockpit

As we have mentioned before the plan is that by the end of August we'll begin iterating heavily on gameplay again. The first order of business will be mocking up all of our weapons followed by additional game mechanics such as radar, resource management, etc.

7 días después

The-Force #116 Ago '16

Weekly Update 25 2-8-2016

Hey everybody a lot has been going on over the last week. We finally released the (previously) forever patch on Tuesday to our Developer Access backers. There's been a couple of hiccups, which we expected there would be due to the size and complexity of the patch, however it overall seems to have gone well. For those of you who are interested you can read more about what's new in the patch here.

A WIP shot of the interceptor cockpit

This week we'll be fixing the bugs that have popped up since we released the patch while shifting our focus to our August TODO list. As mentioned before this primarily consists of low level networking improvements that will include better hit detection, adding the ability to upgrade your pledge, and incremental patching. On the art side we've nearly finished our material library for industrial spacecraft and buildings. The interceptor cockpit is really coming together though it'll likely require a little bit of additional polish after we make some graphics improvements next year.

The WIP interceptor cockpit from another angle

Overall the team is looking forward to getting back to iterating on core gameplay in early September after we wrap up these last couple tasks that will form the foundation of everything that comes next. Once incremental patching is completed we also hope to ramp up the frequency of our patches. That's about it until next week!

7 días después

The-Force #117 Ago '16

Weekly Update 26 9-8-2016

Hey everybody it's time for another weekly update. Over the last week we've primarily been fixing bugs that have popped up since the release of the last patch. There is an ongoing issue with our game server regularly crashing, which seems to be caused by our overhaul of physics, as well as some issues with the new patching system and launcher. We expect most of these to be sorted out soon. Aside from that Flavien has started working on the improvements we need to make to our networking code and I have started building our pledge upgrade platform along with some additional website improvements. Those of you who are regulars on our forums have probably noticed that we also upgraded our forums software to the latest version.

WIP texturing the bomber cockpit

On the art side we're happy to announce that texturing the interceptor cockpit has been more or less completed. There's some polish that will need to be added later on once we have time to address some graphics improvements. We also need to spend more time defining the functionality of the cockpits such as what gets rendered on the multi-function displays. In the meantime work has moved onto the bomber cockpit which as you can see is coming along nicely.

Another shot of the WIP bomber cockpit

There's also a lot of work going on with station geometry and the NPC hauler. We hope to have some new screen shots within a couple of weeks. Along with numerous bug fixes our next patch, which is probably at least another week away from release, should include the land base placeholders and the new cockpits.

The-Force #118 Ago '16

Weekly Update 27 15-8-2016

Time for that weekly update! For those of you who haven't noticed we updated our company website today (https://inovaestudios.com). This was the first step in building our new pledging platform. The biggest changes are in how logging in/out are handled as well as a skeleton framework for account management - which is where you'll go to upgrade your pledge(s) among other things. Login/logout on the Battlescape page is still using the old system which may not even work. It'll be properly updated soon.

WIP bomber cockpit

In other news we're working on releasing another patch at the end of this next week. It'll primarily contain bug fixes but we're also planning on including the land base placeholders and possibly the factories as well. A small number of people are reporting issues with the new installer and another update for that will be forthcoming.

WIP bomber cockpit (this is in our editor, NOT the game)

On the art front we're finishing up the materials for the bomber cockpit and the NPC hauler. Major gameplay iteration is still scheduled to begin early next month - the exact start date will depend on how quickly we finish the networking code improvements.

The-Force #119 Ago '16

Weekly Update 28 22-8-2016

Hey all time for another weekly update. When I announced last weekend that we were hoping to release the next patch this week I didn't realize that Flavien's new computer was arriving soon and it took him a couple of days to reinstall everything and transfer all of his data. Needless to say that meant we weren't able to finish everything for the patch but it's nearly ready. Alongside that our pledge upgrade system is coming along nicely. Accepting payments via credit card and/or Bitcoin is completed and all that remains is integrating PayPal. This also lays the foundation for being able to accept new pledges for the game directly from our website later on.

Initial material pass on the NPC hauler

On the art side the big news is the release of new screen shots showing the initial material pass on the NPC hauler. There's still quite a bit of polish left to do but so far we're pretty pleased with the results. This is the first ship we're getting production ready so it's taken a bit longer as we've experimented with some new techniques and built up a library of reusable textures. Aside from that the finishing touches are getting put on the bomber cockpit and we'll be moving onto the corvette cockpit within a few days.

Another screen shot of the initial material pass on the NPC hauler

After the new pledging system is complete I'll be getting back to finishing up some outstanding issues with the launcher and new installer as well as adding support for incremental patching. Once the next patch is out Flavien will finish up his networking improvements and, as we've mentioned before, sometime next month the both of us should be hopping back onto iterating on core gameplay. That's all for this week!

9 días después

The-Force #120 Sep '16

Weekly Update 29 30-8-2016

Hey all it’s peanut butter weekly update time. During the last week work continued on what is quickly becoming Forever Patch 2.0. The reason for that is due to running into some unexpected problems with networking. Our networking code was originally conceived back in 2007 for the Infinity Combat Prototype. It has been left largely untouched since then whereas the rest of the engine has evolved quite a bit. For our Kickstarter, due to a lack of time, we threw everything together pretty quickly which meant a lot of our game logic ended up running on the client and we knew we’d have to pay a price for that later on. We figured it was a good tradeoff since we had no idea if our Kickstarter would succeed. Needless to say that bill has come due.

The initial material pass on the corvette cockpit

For those of you who either don’t know or don’t care about game networking allow me to summarize client-side game logic as being really, really bad. It makes the game easy for hackers to, well, hack and cause general unpleasantness for everyone but themselves. Obviously for a multiplayer game like Infinity: Battlescape this would be catastrophic so it’s of the utmost importance that we spend however much time is necessary to properly update our networking code.

The full geometry view of the corvette cockpit

Our pledge upgrade system is coming along nicely. Credit card, bitcoin, and PayPal payment integration is now complete. We have some additional work to do for processing chargebacks followed by a legal review of our pledge upgrade Terms of Service but after that we’ll be ready to roll it out. On the art side the bomber cockpit is finished and work has begun on the corvette cockpit. The NPC hauler continues to come together nicely and we should have some more screen shots of it over the coming weeks!

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