Infinity: Battlescape (with seamless planetary transitions) *FUNDED 300k+*

[JonnyƦedhed]

2016 Retrospective

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

Hey everyone here’s our first update of 2017 – the 2016 retrospective! Last year was quite the year for us and this is a big update so hold onto your butts. As soon as the Kickstarter finished at the end of 2015 Flavien and I started getting the prototype ready for release. The beginning of 2016 was particularly hectic for us as we set up our hosting infrastructure, imported Kickstarter data, set up an IndieGoGo campaign for ongoing crowdfunding, and built the first version of our launcher - all while getting contracts sorted out. Our artists officially started work on February 1st and we released the Battlescape prototype to our Developer Access+ backers a few weeks later on February 28th.

 

 

A squadron of Developer Access+ players in the prototype

 

 

 

 

 

The initial response from Developer Access+ backers was overwhelmingly positive and you can view many of the beautiful screen shots they’ve taken on our forums. While the release of the prototype represented a small but important milestone there was little time for celebration. We immediately began iterating on flight mechanics, adding support for joysticks and other input devices, and integrating 3D mockups for our small ships, cockpits, factories, etc.

 

As we moved into the summer we realized we were going to have to spend some more time on low level game systems. When the Kickstarter prototype was created we were rushing to get it finished by November 2015 and had to cut some corners. The most notable of those was the networking. Unfortunately solid networking is absolutely critical for a pleasant experience with a multiplayer game and the difficulty in properly implementing it matches its importance.

 

 

Land base

 

 

 

 

 

After making some progress with our new networking system we realized our physics code was also in severe need of an update. We had been using the same physics backend for at least 5 years and needless to say much has changed over such a long period of time. Thus, we spent a few weeks updating the game to work with modern physics engines such as PhysX and Bullet. During this period we also released our new deployment/installation framework which, while currently in its infancy, will be central to our plans for modding and community management after the game ships to retail.

 

The I-Novae Engine as it is today was started by Flavien back in 2004 as a hobby project. This was one year after consumer grade dual core processors first became available. To that end the I-Novae Engine was originally designed to be single-threaded. What this means is that if you have a CPU with multiple cores, as you almost certainly do, our engine would only use one of those cores for most of its work while the other cores remained largely idle. As autumn rolled around we decided, given our performance targets of Infinity: Battlescape, it was finally time to upgrade the entire engine to be properly multi-threaded so that it makes use of all available CPU compute power.

 

 

Backer screen shot of a lone mountain

 

 

 

 

 

While working on the multi-threading update we released our pledge upgrade system, something we promised during the Kickstarter campaign, which will become the foundation for our own crowdfunding and digital sales platform. Unfortunately in October we had to announce the Alpha release would be delayed until early 2017 - however we’ll be offering a free weekend of play for all Alpha backers sometime in the near future. As 2016 came to a close we started on the last series of networking improvements and our new UI system.

 

Most of what has been mentioned so far pertains to the engineering side of game development but our art team has been quite busy all throughout the year as well. Final geometry has been completed for all of our small ships and cockpits. The NPC hauler has been fully completed including both materials and geometry. Materials for the small ship cockpits have been completed though additional tweaks will be required once we begin adding cockpit instruments. Significant progress has been made on final station geometry and our art team is currently more or less on schedule to get everything completed within the original estimated timeframe.

 

 

 

Backer screen shot of a lone mountain

 

 

 

 

 

So where does that leave us for 2017? Given how long this update is I’ll get into most of that next week. What I can say for now is that we’re working on releasing our next patch at the end of this week. It will mostly be a content update though it will also include plenty of bug fixes. If everything goes smoothly we’ll announce the date of the free Alpha playtest weekend shortly thereafter. That’s it for our 2016 retrospective, we look forward to continuing our weekly updates throughout 2017!

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Patch: 0.1.7.0 ( Saturday, 14 January 2017 )  Source: Patch update and notes thread

 

 

Game Content

 

Interceptor, bomber and corvette geometry pass done (untextured) including level of details. Added placeholder lights on the hull too

Revamped cockpit lights for interceptor, bomber and corvette

Horizontal bar removed from Interceptor cockpit frame (experimental)

Added glass material to all cockpits

Space stations geometry pass done. Utilizes proper level of details. Generic placeholder texture

Added Eupraxia ring station in orbit of Rethe Prime (the gas giant); moved Thalys station to Cinder's orbit

Reworked geometry and lighting in hangar and garage bays for space stations

Revamped lights on the hauler (near Arcadia station)

 

Game Fixes

 

Cockpit lights are now disabled when the ship is powered off (including 'mood' lights)

Mouse cursor is now restricted to window area (experimental performance fix)

Better default GPU adapter selection on multi-GPU systems like laptops: defaults to AMD or NVidia video card instead of Intel's

Crash fixes related to 3D sounds

 

Gameplay Features & Tweaks

 

Slightly reduced camera near clipping plane to avoid clipping with the interceptor cockpit frame

Changed third-party camera viewpoints for interceptor and corvette to be a bit closer

Respawn location is now randomized in various space stations, upon restart/death/suicide (F9)

Deployment system

 

Fixed OpenAL dependency, should now be properly set up during the installation process

Fixed various bugs and issues with the launcher and installer

 

Misc

 

Log files should no longer have exclusive read access

Ring's asteroid field is back

Reduced size of some of the HUD indicators such as velocity

 

Known issues

 

Performance: stuttering every second or so on some systems

Interceptor: Z-fighting on cockpit frame

Interceptor: some side thrusters are incorrectly placed

Random client crash with projectiles when a ship is dying

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Procedurally generated in-game screen shots

 

All WIP from the latest development build.  (build 0.1.7.0)

 

 

kindly Shared by - SpaceJay - on the I-Novae forums (link)

 

 

 

All bodies in a solar system roughly the size of ours @1:1 scale, is what's currently planned.

 

 

Radiuses:

 

Rethe Prime (Gas Giant): 78000 Km

Sarake (Earth like): 6360 Km

Aresthia (Mars like): 5000 Km

Cinder (Volcanic): 3850 Km

 

*more to follow*

 

Multiply by 2 for diameters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(4k)

 

(4k)

 

 

 

 

(4k)

 

 

 

 

(4k)

 

 

 

 

(4k)

 

 

 

 

(4k)

 

(4k)

 

 

 

 

(4k)

 

 

 

 

(4k)

 

 

 

 

(4k)

 

 

 

 

(4k)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com
 

[JonnyƦedhed]

The 2017 Roadmap

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

Hey everyone this week’s update is all about our plans for 2017. Obviously, our biggest goal for the year is shipping Infinity: Battlescape to retail. This was originally estimated to be in September but because we’re likely going to be 4-6 months late with releasing the Alpha there’s a good chance the final release of the game could slip into early 2018. Fortunately, we’ve been judicious with expenditures (in no small part due to sacrifices made by team members) so financially we’re able to cover the delay with some extra room to spare.

 

Our near-term focus is of course on releasing the Alpha. This will consist of finishing up the networking, new UI system, and creating initial implementations for all major gameplay systems. Last October we promised that we would offer a free play weekend for Alpha backers to make up for the delay. We’re excited to announce that the release of our latest patch has gone smoothly and we’ll be making the game available to Alpha backers on Friday, February 27th at 2pm EST through Monday, February 30th at 2pm EST. Please keep in mind that since the Alpha isn’t ready yet this will be a build of the prototype and many parts of the game will be unfinished or even non-existent.

 

 

Approaching a small outpost  

 

 

 

 

 

After the Alpha is released and as we look toward the Beta there is a major problem we must address – marketing. Nobody on the team has much experience with marketing and if anything over the last year and a half we’ve all learned that we’d prefer to avoid bothering with it. Unfortunately, marketing is critically important to the success of Infinity: Battlescape so it’s something we’re going to have to master once the game begins to mature.

 

For starters, the easiest way for us to begin marketing the game better is to empower you, our fans, to go out and spread the word about why you love Infinity: Battlescape. The cornerstone of our strategy for accomplishing this is video. We obviously don’t have a lot of resources to build something incredibly elaborate however it’s still something we’re going to invest quite a bit of time into. Most of this effort will be concentrated on the ability to record and play back gaming sessions - similar to Blizzard’s Overwatch. In fact part of the reason the networking has been taking so long is that Flavien has already spent a considerable amount of time on the playback system.

 

 

 

Inside the hangar bay of a station  

 

 

 

 

 

Another way for us to empower our fans is to make sharing snippets of video as easy as possible. Experienced streamers are still going to work with specialized streaming software however we want to make it effortless for less dedicated users to quickly share short videos with their friends. Our plan for accomplishing this is to create a hot key for toggling video recording on/off as well as a hot key for recording quick 5 second videos for posting to Twitter or as a gif on forums. We want to integrate support for YouTube so that the game can automatically upload these videos for you in the background. Our video recorder will make use of dedicated hardware on your CPU or GPU so it should have a minimal impact on framerate.

 

We’ve discussed the possibility of attending one of the PAX conferences this year. The most likely candidates are PAX West and PAX South. Through our research we’ve arrived at an estimated cost of ~$10k which is quite significant for a small company like us. If we see a large enough bump in sales after the Alpha is released we’ll attend one of those conferences. Otherwise we’ll save our pennies and look at attending PAX in 2018 after the game ships to retail.

 

 

 

On approach to a large station

 

 

 

 

 

Rounding out our marketing strategy is improving our website, search engine optimization, getting better with Google analytics, developing an ad campaign through various social media platforms, and of course releasing the game on Steam. A common question we get is when will the game be available on Steam? Due to the mechanics of their review system we don’t want to release Infinity: Battlescape on Early Access until sometime after we ship the Beta.

 

You can summarize 2016 as the year we invested in the foundation of what we believe will make Infinity: Battlescape a successful game that we can support for years to come. This year will be the year we bring it all together to craft a great gameplay experience. It’s going to be a hell of an effort, the struggle is real, but we’re confident that, with your support, we’ll deliver an experience that’s truly special.

 

 

 

A large station orbiting a gas giant  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #46

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

Hey everyone it’s time for our first regular weekly update of 2017. It’s been a busy week with the release of another patch as we prepare for our Alpha backer free-play weekend. Unfortunately, last week I accidentally misreported the dates. 

 

The Alpha free-play weekend will start this Friday, January 27th, at 2pm EST and continue until Monday, January 30th, at 2pm EST. 

 

To download and install the game visit https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape at 2pm EST and click the DOWNLOAD button. You must be an Alpha backer. If you're not an Alpha backer and you would like to upgrade you can do so here. Please keep in mind that this is not an Alpha build of the game, it’s a prototype, and there’s a good chance some of you may run into problems. Representatives of the company will be monitoring our public Discord server and the forums to quickly assist anyone who runs into problems with playing the game.

 

 

Alpha map test for factory geometry

 

 

 

 

 

Along with the patch Flavien has made significant progress on optimizing our networking code for bandwidth. It’s now at a point where we feel confident that a player with an average home broadband connection should have enough bandwidth to host a 150-200 player server. Whether or not their computer is powerful enough to handle that many players is of course another matter entirely. I’ve also made quite a bit of progress on the new UI system which now draws colored boxes. Exciting I know but there’s a lot that goes into it and it’s a major milestone.

 

 

The NPC hauler

 

 

 

 

 

station windows, the initial geometry pass for our cockpit bobble heads, and final factory geometry. Lastly, I’m going to try to get a few more improvements to our installation runtime completed before the start of the Alpha free-play weekend. That’s it for this week, we’re looking forward to seeing all of you Alpha backers in the game over the weekend!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

 

Regarding Infinity: Battlescape  (free fly weekend coming up)

 

 

Infinity: Battlescape are holding a free fly weekend for alpha backers is this weekend (alpha backer level or higher).  Check out the details in the latest newsletter:  

 

https://forums.inovaestudios.com/t/weekly-update-46/4767

 

The news letter has all the links your need.  Including the official Discord channel.  Also there is the unofficial Discord channel which is: 

 

https://discord.gg/0ZdJkZXn7z4Rt5jt

 

Just contact the I:B devs on either discord channel and they will set you up I'm sure for a session with them.  

 

 

 

[JonnyƦedhed]

Reminder: Alpha backers receive access to Infinity: Battlescape tomorrow at 2pm EST

 

 

 

 

For more information about how to install and play the game please visit our FAQ. Members of the team will be available on the forums and in our public Discord channel for those of you who run into problems or have questions. Thank you all for your patience and support, we'll see you in the game!

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #47

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

Hey everyone it's time for another weekly update. This last weekend we had our Alpha backer free-play weekend. Overall it went quite well though we do apologize to those of you who experienced problems - particularly our Chinese users who couldn't play due to issues with handling Chinese characters. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, our server held up respectably with only a single crash in the very beginning which was quickly resolved, and we now have a long list of bugs to fix! For those of you who weren't able to participate here's a video recorded by one of our players:

 

 

https://vimeo.com/201536542

 

Fan made video highlights from the free fly weekend.

 

 

Obviously this last week our time was primarily devoted to ensuring everything was running smoothly for Alpha backers. Moving forward we're going to spend all of the next week working on fixing those new bugs. After that we'll resume work on our previous tasks - the new networking code and the UI. On the art side everything continues humming along nicely. Kristian is working on final geometry for factories, Jan is working on concepts for the bobble heads, and Dan is finishing up the station windows.

 

 

Player screen shot from the Alpha backer weekend

 

 

 

 

 

 

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who participated over the weekend. We're working diligently to release the Alpha and as soon as the networking and UI code gets finished we'll begin iterating on gameplay again. Everything should start coming together pretty quickly at that point as we implement weapons, capital ships, the resource system, in-game chat, etc. Your patience is greatly appreciated and this weekend has only reinforced our confidence that once we're finished this game is really going to be something special!

 

 

 

Fighting it out during the Alpha backer weekend

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com
 

[JonnyƦedhed]

A kickstarter backer - fan made video.

 

Joystick and 4K G-sync Test @60fps

 

Kindly made and shared by SpaceJay on the I-Novae forums - link

 

https://vimeo.com/202842641

 

 

 

- - - - - - Updated - - - - - -

 

 

 

 

Weekly Update #48

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

Hey everyone time for another weekly update. On the programming side this week we have fixed a number of bugs and while making some significant performance improvements. Most notably we improved the performance of our physics interpolation calculations by 70% and we've nailed down some problems with random stutters that could affect users while moving the mouse. With the exception of the stuttering these are all CPU improvements so if you're GPU bound, meaning the game runs slow because your GPU isn't very powerful, you won't notice any difference in frame rate after we roll out the next patch.

 

 

 

WIP space whale bobble head concept (for the cockpit)

 

 

 

 

 

The primary focus of course is still on finishing up the networking and completing the new UI system. The foundation for the UI is working pretty well at this point and I've started work on the R&D for something called path rendering. Traditionally game UI's are created using raster/bitmap images however now that more and more people are using 4k displays we have to build our UI with extremely high resolution images or else it will look blurry. There is, however, another option - we can create our UI with resolution independent vector art and a technique called path rendering. Of course there's a reason most games use images, it's a helluva lot easier, but we believe that in the end we'll be able to provide a superior experience with path rendering and it'll be worth the extra effort - especially for modders.

 

 

WIP station windows

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side the team is working on some multi-week projects. Kristian continues building and optimizing the final geometry for factories. Jan is working on some great concepts for the space whale bobble head which invoked a lot of lively discussion at our last team meeting. We're thinking of making it an SFC space whale with a bit of cyber punk but that could change. At the moment it just looks like a glowing whale. Dan is finishing up his work on station windows which is really breathing life into our station pieces. Over the next few months there's a lot of large, multi-week art projects as we build land bases and capital ships. Once that's complete we'll finally be able to start on materials so we can show all of you something other than boring solid color geometry.

 

 

 

Building factory geometry

 

 

That's it for this week's update. Everyone on the team is pushing hard to get back to iterating on gameplay as soon as possible. Networking and UI are big systems but once they get sorted out we should be able to hit the ground running!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com
 

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #49

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hey everyone time for another weekly update. You may recall that in the previous weeks update we mentioned we'd spent a lot of time on optimization. Originally we intended to only spend a week on it but there were a few outstanding issues we still wanted to address and that ended up taking up most of this week. Fortunately that effort was not without merit as we've improved the performance of a key system by 400%. On top of that we're working on releasing a new patch soon including these optimizations, some new content, as well as a number of bug fixes.

 

 

 

WIP factory geometry

 

 

 

 

On the UI side I ran into what appears to be a bug in NVIDIA's Vulkan driver which stopped my R&D effort dead in its tracks. I pivoted into building the D3D11 backend for our new rendering system, something I was going to have to do at some point anyway, and I should be able to resume work on the UI R&D shortly. The optimization effort was primarily spearheaded by Flavien and now that it's complete (for the time being) he'll be getting back to finishing up the networking. Our goal was to get back to iterating on gameplay by March but given that it's already halfway through February it's possible it might not happen until mid-March depending on how long the rest of the UI and networking stuff takes. Once we do get back to iterating on gameplay we expect to progress to the Alpha release fairly quickly.

 

 

A concept drawing of the googly eyed asteroid bobble head (for the cockpit dash)

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side work continues on some large multi-week efforts I had mentioned previously. Specifically the mockups for the bobble heads, the station windows, and the factory geometry. After those items are finished we still have final geometry for land bases and capital ships before we start on materials and texturing.

 

 

 

Googly eyed asteroid concepts (for the cockpit dash)

 

 

That's it for this week. Bear with us as we finish up these last couple of major technical hurdles and then it'll be onto all of the exciting stuff!

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #50

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hey everyone it's that time of the week again, here's your Infinity: Battlescape weekly update. This has been one of those nose to the grindstone weeks where everyone is working diligently on fairly large projects. Our recent optimization pass is finished for now and we released a new patch that's been showing around a 20% improvement in frames per second (FPS) on average. Flavien is back on networking which we hope will be wrapped up within a few weeks. Once he's done with it there'll still be some optimization work left but we're going to defer that until Beta or later so we can get back to gameplay.

 

 

Pre-rendered shot of the factory nuclear reactor

 

 

 

 

Work on the UI is coming along nicely. The implementation of our new async D3D11 renderer is more or less complete, though a lot of testing remains, and the blocking issue with Vulkan that I previously mentioned has been resolved. This means that the UI R&D is back on track in both Vulkan and D3D11. As we've mentioned before Vulkan won't be supported at launch, we're just laying the groundwork for a future upgrade of the entire engine sometime after the game ships to retail. Hopefully I'll have some screen shots of the new UI system within a week or 2 - the exact time frame will most likely depend on how long it takes to implement support for text.

 

 

WIP placeholder for the googly eyed asteroid bobble head (for the cockpit dash)

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side Dan will soon begin work on final geometry for the destroyer. Jan is wrapping up the placeholder for the googly eyed asteroid bobble head, seen above, and once he finishes the placeholder for the space whale he'll begin work on final geometry for planetary bases. Kristian is about halfway done with the final geometry for all of the various structures associated with factories and it'll take him a few more weeks to finish all of it.

 

 

 

More station windows

 

 

That's about it for this update. Due to everyone working on large projects we aren't quite sure when the next patch will be, probably sometime in March, but the good news is that it should be a large update containing the new networking and/or the new UI as well as bobble heads (most likely without the bobble).

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #51

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hey everyone it's time for your regularly scheduled update. This week everybody continues their work on large, multi-week projects. Flavien has made some good progress on networking and has completed his initial implementation of our new client-side prediction code. To summarize, this means that the server is able to compensate for latency so that when it looks like you shot something on your screen the server actually agrees with you. This is obviously extremely important for a solid dogfighting experience. There's still quite a bit of work left to be done as he needs to merge his test code with the game's code and once that's working move onto server-side collision detection with planets - a difficult problem.

 

 

Pre-rendered image of the command center of a factory

 

 

 

 

I ran into what I'll refer to as an unexpected patch of deep mud while working on the path rendering R&D for the UI which has slowed me down over the last few days. The paper I'm using is dependent on some big-data and scientific computing algorithms that are readily available on NVIDIA hardware but not AMD hardware. I have to convert them to be cross-platform which is time consuming, error-prone, and tedious but once I finish getting through it I'm optimistic about wrapping up the rest of the initial path rendering code soon. I'll still have to take care of font rendering and a few other things but at least I should be able to start showing screen shots.

 

 

WIP placeholder for the space whale bobble head (for the cockpit dash)

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side Kristian continues to work on the factory which is composed of many large, complicated structures. Once Jan finishes with the space whale bobble head placeholder, which is already looking pretty good, he'll be helping Kristian finish up the factory before they both move onto the land base. Dan is starting on the final geometry pass for the destroyer which is likely to be the first capital ship we implement in the game.

 

That's it for this week, until next time!

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #52

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeFlavien CTO/President & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hi everybody, this is Flavien. Keith is away on a trip for a bit more than a week so today and next week I'll handle the weekly updates.

 

On my plate this week, more work on networking and.. physics. I've found a "stuttering" issue in the way we currently handle our multi-threaded physics and spent a few days fixing it. Unfortunately it half-broke my networking prototype, so I had to redo a bunch of stuff that was working last week. Speaking of networking prototype, I feel that I should elaborate on what the state of networking is, as Keith only mentionned a few words about it in the past weeks.

 

When I started working on the new networking model, I created a new independent prototype ( surprisingly called "networking experiment" ) which recreates some of the gameplay.. in 2D. It is client-server based just like the real game, but the top-down 2D view allows a much easier understanding of what's going on in terms of networking updates and physics. Although the view is in 2D, the actual simulation remains 3D. In this prototype I already implemented client side prediction, lag compensation, smooth actors paths interpolation and bandwidth compression. I also downloaded a small utility called "clumsy" which allows to simulate various latencies, packet drops and other typical failures. I've also tested the new prototype in real conditions between EU & US under a 150 ms ping.

 

The results so far are very encouraging, and much better than the currently available build. However, because it remains a prototype, it's still going to take time before the code is cleaned and "plugged in" ( basically a huge copy/paste ) into the new code branch. Once this is done, I'll still have to do some work on server-side collisions ( especially with the planets ), as everything is now mostly server-sided. Then the next step is to resume work on gameplay, which will include the new resource system, new weapons, controls/flight changes and maybe an initial implementation for capital ships.

 

 

Factory hangar module WIP

 

 

 

 

Needless to say, the alpha release is not going to happen any time soon; we're probably at least 2 months away, if not 3, from that happening. To be honnest this is pretty disapointing to me as I was anticipating faster progress. Also on a private note, I am going to relocate to a new but cheaper place in Brussels some time in April, which is probably going to cut a good week of work at a critical timing. I apologize for that.

 

Keith is still working on the new user interface code. He's been in "shader hell" for a week now, and from what he told me he had to convert a dozen of shaders ( from which 2 or 3 are massive, and very complicated ) from the paper he's been using. Before he left for his trip he finished that work, so when he's back he'll resume work on the font rendering. We're using a "path" rendering system for the GUI ( a big word to say we can rasterize curves ) in the hopes that it'll bring a higher quality than what most games are utilizing ( bitmaps ) which do not work well with anti aliasing and zooming. As we can use "vector art" directly, we should get really good anti aliasing and high text quality at various resolutions and screen sizes.

 

 

Corvette render with ambient occlusion

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side, Jan has imported the new bobbleheads as assets to the editor, so they're now ready to be used in game. I'm not sure when we'll have time to make a new build; we'll have to experiment with springs for the bobblehead physics ( probably around beta ), so in a first step the bobblehead will likely be a static 3D model standing somewhere in the cockpit. Jan has also been producing a bunch of short video clips of our 3 main ships ( interceptor, bomber and corvette ) and started to help Kristian on the factory assets like level-of-detail experiments.

 

 

 

A factory module in the editor

 

 

 

 

 

Kristian is still busy on the factory assets, modelling and texturing modules as he goes. Some of the modules will have an in-game function and be destructible in game ( the nuclear reactor provides energy to the factory; the gun tower defenses; the sensor tower allows to detect incoming hostiles, etc.. ). We are hoping to model a "destroyed" state of those modules when their hitpoints reach zero, but we'll probably lack time to do that before beta, so in the alpha version we'll simply swap those models with some kind of placeholder dirt/blast material.

 

Finally, Dan's making good progress on the global shape and plating on the destroyer, but it's still to early to show anything yet :slight_smile: That's all I have for now, I'll bring you more news next week,

 

-Flavien

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #53

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeFlavien CTO/President & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hey Everybody, Flavien again for this week's update as Keith is still away for a few days. This week's been a bit slower than last week, but I'm wrapping up the networking tests. The last piece missing is bandwidth compression which was broken some time ago and which I need to reimplement. I've also spent a few hours playing with some minimalistic A.I. for missiles and auto-aiming turrets ( which will mostly be used on the corvette, capital ships and defense buildings ). It seems to work pretty well so far, despite having to solve a quartic equation (!) to anticipate where to aim projectiles at, ahead of the movement of the target's. Who said programmers don't need to be mathematicians ?

 

 

Factory concept art with HUD

 

 

 

 

Jan finished to render the small ships promotional clips, but still need to edit the final videos. Meanwhile he's also helping Dan on the destroyer design. Hopefully we'll have something to show you in the next update.

 

 

Space station in game prototype

 

 

 

 

 

Kristian is working on more factory module assets. He completed the biggest / most complex ones so far, but there's still a handful of smaller / simpler modules that need to be done. You can see in the following pic some of these modules.

 

 

 

Factory modules

 

 

See you next week with another update from Keith !

 

-Flavien

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #54

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeFlavien CTO/President & Cofounder  - source link

 

 

 

 

Hey everybody. Flavien again for the last update until Keith his back ( I was mistaken last week, his return flight is actually.. today, so he can't do the update this week either ).

 

On the technical side, I was able to wrap up the last networking tests. Everything seems to behave pretty well even under relatively bad networking conditions ( packet drops, lag of 200+ milliseconds etc.. ). I've started the integration step to the real game, however while doing so I detected more physics-related issues; in particular we seem to have a major performance issue where space stations ( which are composed of millions of triangles ) cause collision detection slowdowns despite being millions of kilometers away from where dynamic entities are.

 

 

 

Another factory concept from Kristian

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking at the code it seems to be an issue with our 3rd-party physics library (ODE) taking a slow code path instead of the optimized one. I already have a fix in mind, so it shouldn't take more than an afternoon to fix. In other news, bandwidth compression has been reimplemented and I've continued playing with some basic A.I. for missiles and auto-turrets.

 

Not much to report on the art side as everybody is busy continuing their work from last week; Kristian is wrapping up the factory buildings, while Dan and Jan have been working on the destroyer. They're refining the global shapes and plating, here's a WIP paintover ( lacking details since they're not that far yet ):

 

 

 

Destroyer shape paintover

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Destroyer underside paintover

 

 

 

 

 

 

See you next week !

 

-Flavien

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com
 

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #55

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hey everyone time for a slightly late weekly update. I (Keith) am back writing the weekly update - I was out of town visiting family for ~2.5 weeks and Flavien had taken over in my absence. Most notable for this week we've released a new video showing off a networking simulation with 300 players in a "massive space battle" firing streams of blue bullets. It may not look like much but the simulation represents the culmination of Flavien's work on the new networking code, particularly latency compensation with physics simulation, and he's now going to begin merging the new code into the game.

 

 

Pre-rendered image of a factory

 

 

 

 

Now that I'm back I'm resuming my work on the UI. The core path rendering R&D is nearly finished however there's a lot of work remaining on font rendering, text layout, styling, keyboard/mouse input, animation, and optimization. On the art side Jan and Dan are still working on the geometry pass for the first capital ship to be integrated into the game - the destroyer. Kristian has started on the materials for the factory and we hope to have some pretty new screen shots of that sometime in the near future.

 

 

WIP engine prototype for the destroyer

 

 

 

 

 

The big task over the next week we'll be addressing is updating our scheduling. Needless to say the networking and UI systems have taken much longer than we initially anticipated for a variety of reasons that will probably be a blog post for another day. This means at a minimum we're looking at another 2-3 months before we can ship the Alpha. The good news is that these 2 systems are the last major R&D unknowns we have scheduled and once completed we'll be getting back to focusing purely on gameplay with the occasional diversion for art team internal tools. To make up for the additional delay we're considering the possibility of having 1 or more Alpha player weekends like we did in January.

 

That's all for this update. I'll talk more about the next patch and scheduling next week after I have more time to finish getting reacquainted with life.

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #56

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hey everyone time for another weekly update. As I mentioned last week I'm going to go more into scheduling with this update. At the moment the new networking code is being merged into the game. This is the single most important blocker for the release of the Alpha and once it's finished Flavien will resume work on core gameplay. I'm continuing my work on the UI and once that's complete I'll join Flavien with finishing up the Alpha gameplay and making some additional improvements to the launcher, installation runtime, website, and payment platform.

 

 

Concept ideas for final carrier geometry

 

 

 

 

 

Like we said last week it's going to be at least 2-3 months before we're able to release the Alpha and we'll have one or two, maybe even three more Alpha free-play weekends to make up for the delay. The first of these will occur after we finish integrating the new networking code into the game. This process could take around a month as the networking affects every single part of the game and we have to tear down the game to build it back up. Any intermediate patch would essentially be a version of the game that would appear to be a significant regression from what we currently have though in reality that would be because non-upgraded systems would be disabled.

 

 

WIP materials for the factory

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the next patch is released and the new networking code is verified to be working smoothly we expect that Alpha gameplay will begin to rapidly take shape. This will include the implementation of the resource system, capital ships, teams, radar/sensors, turrets, and new weapon systems. After the release of the Alpha rapid iteration of gameplay should continue into Beta. We will be holding multiple Beta free-play weekends during the Alpha, like we've done for Alpha backers, to help make up for delays in their access to the game. At the moment, depending on how much time we need for polish during the Beta, we're probably looking at the game going gold sometime in the summer/fall of 2018. From that point we expect to be supporting the game and releasing additional content for a significant amount of time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com
 

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #57

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hey everyone time for your weekly update. The big debate this week has centered around the design for the final geometry of the carrier. The decision is between a long carrier or a stubby fat one due to centripetal force at the edges. Technically speaking we can just choose whatever we think looks the best and make up fake reasons for it but we do try to stick to designs that are at least somewhat plausible in relation to real life. Feel free to join the debate and give your opinion on our forums. As far as the rest of the art team is concerned Kristian continues his work on materials for the factory and Dan is still working on the final geometry for the destroyer.

 

 

Different basic hull shapes for the final carrier geometry

 

 

 

 

On the engineering side Flavien continues to integrate the new networking code into the game - which is necessary for our next patch. I've finished the initial R&D implementation of path rendering, which we'll be using for our UI, and I'm currently testing it with a multitude of different geometries to fix any lingering bugs that may be hiding. Once that's complete the next step will be to finish implementing the UI within an R&D sandbox before finally integrating it into the game (similar to how we did the new networking code).

 

 

WIP materials for the factory

 

 

That's it for this week. There's a few more things to wrap up and then we should start to have a whole lot more to talk about!

 

 

 

 

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #58

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hey everyone it's time for your weekly update. On the engineering side this week has more or less been a continuation of last week - merging the new networking code into the game and finalizing the new UI rendering code in preparation for adding support for text, layout, etc.

 

 

WIP final geometry for the destroyer

 

 

 

 

On the art side Jan and Dan continue their work on the final geometry pass for the destroyer. You can see an early work in progress screenshot above. Jan has also been doing some material work experimenting with different ways to do armored plating.

 

 

Different layers combined to create armored plating

 

 

 

Kristian is finishing up the last few things with factory materials and then he'll be moving onto the final geometry pass for land bases. That's all for this week. Updates will likely be a bit on the short side until we finish getting the new networking code merged into the game. After that we'll release a patch and have plenty of new things to talk about!

 

 

Examples of detail textures used to compose armored plating

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #59

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hey everyone here's your weekly update. On the engineering side Flavien has integrated support for Steam. We probably aren't going to release the game on Steam until the Beta begins but most of the work for doing so is now complete. I was continuing my work on the UI when I ran into some crazy memory corruption issues. Those ended up taking a few days to fully resolve however in the process I've greatly improved our tools for tracking memory allocations. That means if/when a memory corruption issue pops up again in the future it shouldn't take as long to find the source of the problem.

 

 

WIP destroyer comparison with non-capital ships

 

 

 

 

On the art side Dan continues his work on the final geometry pass for the destroyer which is coming along nicely. Originally Jan was going to help him but we decided to move Jan over to doing the final material pass for stations. Kristian has finished up the material pass for the factory and is working on the final geometry for the land base.

 

 

Pre-rendered image of the WIP destroyer

 

 

 

That's all for this week. Now that the Steam integration is finished Flavien is moving back to completing the merger of the new networking code into the game. Depending on whether or not we run into any unforseen issues it could take another couple of weeks as a number of game systems have to be rewritten during the merger.

 

 

Pre-rendered shot of the engines of the WIP destroyer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #60

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hey everyone it's time for your weekly update. Flavien has been busy continuing his work on merging the new network code. A number of low level systems have been completed however there's still quite a bit of work left to be done. Unfortunately on my end I had to take care of a bunch of administrative things last week and, aside from some bug fixes, I didn't get a chance to do much coding.

 

 

Planetary orbital defense cannon

 

 

 

 

On the art side Kristian continues his work on planetary bases, Jan on texturing space stations, and Dan the final geometry pass for the destroyer. Planetary buildings have a modular design that ultimately connect to a central command center like spokes on a wheel. There was a fair amount of discussion surrounding how the ground around these buildings will be constructed. Smooth parts of a planet at the micro level still tend to be quite lumpy. When constructing buildings in real-life heavy equipment is used to make the ground level but in our case, due to technical limitations, we can't do that at the moment. Instead all of the buildings in our planetary bases will be on base plates to provide a level surface. We discussed the possibility of having little roads and industrial vehicles driving around but ultimately concluded we won't have the resources to implement what would ultimately be an aesthetic feature.

 

 

WIP station texturing

 

 

 

Another challenge we've encountered is with regard to large chunks of geometry - most notably the station pieces. As far as we're aware our stations will be some of the largest ever included in a game. It's quite difficult to provide interesting micro and macro detail on every centimeter of a square kilometer of station surface area. You can see an example of the challenge above. If you were zoomed in close to the station you would see a lot of small detail but from far away the piece looks bland and repetitive. There's a good chance this is going to be an ongoing issue and it's something we will continue experimenting with. That's all for this week, until next time!

 

 

Another shot of WIP station texturing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #61

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hey everyone time for your weekly update. Last week Flavien and I switched places regarding available coding time. Flavien was busy getting ready to move into a new apartment which took up most of his time. I, however, was able to fix the last outstanding bugs with path rendering (that I'm currently aware of). There's one remaining rendering feature concerning large shapes that I have to finish before I can start final testing and code cleanup but that shouldn't take too long. After that it will be onto adding support for font rendering, text layout, and finally integration into the game.

 

 

WIP land base structure

 

 

 

 

On the art side Kristian continues his work on final land base geometry and Jan on the station material pass. Dan spent last week producing some short videos of extremely high quality 360 degree renders of the interceptor, corvette, and bomber. There's still some on-going post-production work but we hope to release them in the next weekly update. Unfortunately they don't include materials since we didn't want to spend the time it would take to rebuild all of our materials in 3rd party rendering applications. That being said the detail work of the geometry really comes through and we're looking forward to showing them to everyone.

 

 

Work continues on the station materials

 

 

 

More information on the state of the new networking code should come once Flavien gets everything sorted out with his new apartment. The networking code represents our largest blocker, it was our biggest risk item, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and once we get past it we expect we'll be able to move quickly on the rest of the Alpha to-do list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #62

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hey everyone it's time for your weekly update. On the engineering side we've ported the camera system to the new networking code and added support for the name pools that will be used to choose names for NPC ships, space stations, and land bases. For those of you who pledged reward tiers that allow you to submit a name we'll probably end up creating a custom page on our website where you can submit your name(s). Aside from that Flavien is still working through some stuff with his new apartment and I had another week where I was heavily focused on administrative tasks.

 

 

Pre-rendered shot of the land base command center

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side we have some new videos for your viewing pleasure! They are simple turntable animations showing off the geometric detail we've put into our smaller ships:

 

Interceptor:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIWMkOr6syg

 

 

Bomber:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG94hXRofys

 

 

Corvette:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=15&v=HkozH7AiB_w

 

 

In parallel to creating these videos Kristian is continuing his work on the land base final geometry pass and Jan is still focused on station materials. That's all for this week, until next time!

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com
 

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #63

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

Hey everyone time for your weekly update. On the engineering side we've been working on a couple of different things. For starters the large shape support for UI rendering has entered the final testing phase. Once complete there'll be a code cleanup phase before work starts on font rendering. In parallel to that work continues on merging the new networking code into the game. The system for recording matches for playback has been ported over along with some threading improvements. Flavien still has another week or 2 before he gets fully settled into his new apartment, there were some unexpected issues which were wreaking havoc on his schedule, but that should all be resolved soon.

 

 

Initial material pass on the land base command center

 

 

 

 

On the art side Kristian has started on the material pass for the land base command center - pictured above. Once completed he'll move onto other "modules" such as hangars, power plants, radar, and orbital defense. Each of these provide specific services for a land base and when destroyed affect its ability to function. For example if a hangar is destroyed it can no longer spawn ships. When a land base module is damaged it will slowly repair itself unless it has been damaged beyond a certain threshold, i.e. if it loses 80% of its health or more it can no longer repair itself. Power plants will affect the rate at which a land base is able to repair itself among other things so it's critical they are protected. Jan has been out of town for the last week but once he gets back he'll resume work on station materials.

 

 

Another shot of the initial material pass on the land base command center

 

 

 

That's all for this week. Once Flavien finishes moving into his new apartment we hope to progress quickly toward finishing the merging of the new networking code and releasing the next patch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #64

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

 

Hey all it’s time for your weekly update. As I mentioned last week Flavien is now moving into his new apartment and will be without internet access until next week. I’ve combined code cleanup with the final testing for the UI path rendering which I hope to have wrapped up soon. Once that’s all finished I’ll move onto font rendering which is the last step before I can begin building UI widgets. You may recall from a weekly update a few months ago that the new UI code supports Vulkan in addition to D3D11. After working with Vulkan for the last few months I’ve reached the conclusion that it isn’t mature enough yet for our purposes and I’ve decided to replace it with D3D12.

 

 

Initial material pass on the land base command center

 

 

 

 

 

Why do Vulkan and D3D12 matter? They contain special new optimizations that are particularly relevant to how we generate and render procedural planets. Obviously procedural planets are a cornerstone of Infinity: Battlescape and we want to be able to take full advantage of these performance enhancements at some point in the future. For now the majority of the game will continue to run on our legacy renderer, including our procedural planet generation, but sometime after the game ships to retail we’ll move everything over to the new rendering system so we can fully realize all available compute power.

 

 

A view of an orbiting space station

 

 

 

 

On the art side things continue to move along at a good pace. Jan recently returned from being out of town for a week and is resuming his work on station materials. Kristian is working on the support modules for the land base which includes power generators, orbital defense, communications, etc. Lastly Dan is focused on the final geometry pass for the destroyer. Capital ships are something we haven’t really discussed much yet. Flavien already has an idea for how he wants to implement the initial control scheme and it will be a high priority item after we release the next patch.

 

 

 

A piece of space station geometry

 

 

 

 

That’s it for this week. Once Flavien gets back and finishes merging the new network code we’ll get that next patch out and move on to more exciting things!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #65

 

 

Originally posted by I-NovaeKeith CEO & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. I would like to start off apologizing if anyone was confused by our update last week concerning Windows 7 support. I mentioned that we were integrating a D3D12 backend into our new multi-threaded renderer, which is what the new UI system is being built on top of, and some people interpreted that as meaning the game would only be able to run on Windows 10. I would like to clear up any confusion and state that Infinity: Battlescape will be supported on Windows 7 via D3D11 at least until Microsoft drops extended support (currently January 14th, 2020). That being said I do encourage anyone still running Windows 7 to heavily consider upgrading to Windows 10. It’s a much better OS, there are numerous security and performance enhancements, and since our entire team is running Windows 10 the bulk of our testing will be on Windows 10.

 

 

Another pre-rendered shot of the land base CoC

 

 

 

 

 

On my end during the last week I was able to more or less complete our D3D12 renderer. There’s still about another day’s worth of work to get it running with our new UI system but that should be all. After that it’s back to finishing up the code cleanup pass on the UI and moving onto text rendering. As mentioned before Flavien has been without internet access all week while he moved into his new apartment so I don’t have anything new to report from him. Hopefully he’s been catching up on his sleep.

 

 

More station pieces in-editor

 

 

 

 

There's not much new to report on the art side this week – everybody has been working on the usual things which includes the land base, destroyer, and station textures. The art team is currently way ahead of the engineering team so they aren’t always working full weeks which allows us to save money. That’s it for this update, until next time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Infinity: Battlescape website: https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

 

Infinity: Battlescape forums: https://forums.inovaestudios.com