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

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #66

 

 

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

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. I’m happy to report that Flavien has finished moving into his new apartment and is now getting back into the swing of things. On my end I finished the initial implementation of our D3D12 renderer. There seems to be an incredibly odd driver bug on NVIDIA hardware, or at least on my NVIDIA hardware, that makes it impossible to run certain types of compute shaders. In a cruel twist of irony the majority of our UI code happens to be compute shaders written in a way that causes this bug to rear its ugly head so, for now, I can’t get our new UI up and running with the D3D12 renderer. Thus, I’m moving forward with the rest of the UI code cleanup, polish, and testing with only our D3D11 renderer. At some point in the future I’ll have to validate it against our D3D12 renderer once the driver bug has been fixed.

 

 

Pre-rendered image of the hauler docking with a land base

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side Kristian has gone on vacation to take advantage of the short but sweet northern European summer so not much new to report from him until he returns. Aside from that Dan is continuing his work on the destroyer while Jan is still working on materials for the various station pieces.

 

 

Editor shot of more WIP station materials

 

 

 

 

Now that Flavien has returned we’re working on getting back on track for finishing up the merge of the new networking code and releasing the next patch. Shortly thereafter we’ll do another free-play weekend for Alpha backers. Obviously we didn’t expect his move was going to be so disruptive but we’re going to push through it and work on releasing the Alpha as soon as we can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #67

 

 

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

 

 

 

Hey all it’s time for your weekly update. Now that Flavien has been back for a full week and Kristian has returned from vacation the pace of development has regained its momentum. On the coding side we’ve merged the camera system with the new networking code along with a number of improvements to the ship control scheme. We can now fly around in the game with the new networking code however the combat systems still need to be re-implemented. Several bugs with our UI path rendering were squashed and we’re nearly ready to begin work on fonts/text.

 

 

WIP material pass for a station piece

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side Jan has started work on the materials for 3 more station pieces. Kristian is working on the secondary modules for land bases. He’s also produced a short pre-rendered video of the command center which we’re working on releasing soon. Dan has been playing around with some different designs for the destroyer engines.

 

 

Prototype of an engine for the destroyer

 

 

 

 

Overall the primary focus remains on finishing the merger of the new networking code, wrapping up our multi-threading performance improvements, and releasing the next patch. Once that’s complete we’ll have some Alpha backer free play weekends as our full attention shifts to releasing the Alpha build. That’s it for this week!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #68

 

 

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

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. On the coding side the last week has been pretty productive. Flavien made a good amount of progress on merging the rest of the game with the new networking code. At this point most of the game has been ported except for planets – which is obviously a rather important omission. The reason planets haven’t ported yet is because one last big technical challenge remains.

 

 

In-editor materials for a station pylon

 

 

 

 

 

Previously, before Flavien embarked on rewriting our networking code, all of the collision detection was done on the client. This was pretty straightforward because a player can only ever be near a single planet at any given moment in time so the game only generates geometry for planetary terrain patches that are visible. Unfortunately, as is customary to prevent cheating, we had to move all collision detection to the server during a multiplayer game. The problem is that the server must handle many players, we want to support hundreds, who are all traveling extremely fast around any number of planets. This means the server must constantly regenerate highly detailed geometry for the surfaces of multiple planets just in case something happens to run into it. It gets even worse once you add bullets into the mix.

 

 

In-editor materials for a station strut

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, before we can finish merging the new networking code and release the next patch we need to resolve this last problem. We have several ideas for how we can address it however it’s going to be tricky and will take some time. Aside from that a good amount of progress has also been made on the new UI. Getting the path rendering code production ready is nearly complete and, assuming all goes well with benchmarking, work will finally begin soon on text rendering.

 

 

In-editor materials for a station hex tower

 

 

 

 

Lastly the art team is still hard at work on the destroyer, land base, and station materials. Kristian took some time to create a new pre-rendered video of the land base command center alongside the NPC hauler which we hope you’ll enjoy. That’s all for this week, until next time!

 

[video=youtube;zxezMq3ja8U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxezMq3ja8U&feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

 

 

In-editor materials for all 3 station pieces

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #69

 

 

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

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. This week has been more or less a continuation of the previous week. Flavien spent some time polishing up various game systems changed by the new networking code. He also put more work into our new control scheme which will be unveiled in the next patch. On my end I spent half of the week polishing up GPU memory management with the UI and some new code for benchmarking GPU rendering performance. The second half of the week I had to take care of several administrative tasks along with the fact that this weekend was the big July 4th holiday weekend here in the U.S.

 

 

Pre-rendered image of the land base service tower

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side Kristian has completed the land base service tower, pictured above, and continues his work on the remaining sections of the land base. Jan has textured some more pieces of station, many of them are support structures that aren’t particularly exciting, while Dan continues his effort on the destroyer.

 

 

Editor shot of more WIP station materials

 

 

 

That’s all for this week’s update. It’s a bit of a short one due to the holiday on my end but we should have more to talk about next week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #70

 

 

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

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. Due to the holiday here in the U.S. last week was a short one for myself. I spent a good chunk of it writing new GPU benchmarking code and then using it on the UI path rendering. Running in debug mode with unoptimized shaders the initial results are what I hoped they would be – 500 to 750 fps with a GTX 1080 at a 1080p resolution for simple full screen shapes. This should translate to at least 200 fps on moderate hardware though I still need to see how many shapes can be drawn before performance begins to significantly degrade. At the high-end of 4k resolution I get around 200 fps. This is approaching the performance danger zone given that it’s only a simple scene being rendered with a GTX 1080 however it’s unlikely anyone will be running the game at 4k without a seriously powerful GPU anyhow. Lastly our algorithm scales extremely well for shapes that don’t cover a lot of pixels so since our UI won’t actually take up a lot of screen space even at 4k we should see decent frame rates in practice. Another benefit of the new UI code is that we can decouple its render rate from that of the game. What this means is we can render the UI at 60 fps whereas the rest of the game could be running at 120 fps so that UI rendering has a minimal impact on the smoothness of the game itself. Finally, in the case of extremely low-end hardware, we could render the UI at quarter or even half resolution and composite it into the final picture. I also found two bugs while doing the benchmarking, one is already fixed, and I’m currently working on resolving what is hopefully the final bug before I move on to more exciting things.

 

 

A pre-rendered shot of land base repair infrastructure

 

 

 

 

 

Flavien spent the majority of his week working on improving the threading of our game update logic. As we’ve mentioned before this will be an incremental process but he’s nearly finished with the most significant step. Once completed he’ll get back to resolving our last remaining major technical hurdle – the server-side planetary collision detection we described in a previous update. After that the focus will be on releasing the next patch and returning to gameplay iteration.

 

 

Editor shot of more WIP station materials

 

 

 

The art team continues its work on a number of large projects. This includes the final geometry and materials for the land base, the material pass for space station pieces, and the final geometry pass for the destroyer. It’s probably going to be at least 2 months before all of that is wrapped up but once we release the next patch we’ll try to get as much of that content into the game as possible. Lastly, we’ve been receiving reports over the previous few weeks that some people are experiencing problems with Facebook login. We haven’t changed anything on our end with Facebook in months, maybe years, so my assumption is that something changed on Facebook’s side. As soon as I finish fixing this last UI bug I’ll do another polish pass on our website and backend infrastructure and for those of you experiencing problems we appreciate your patience. 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 #71

 

 

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

 

 

 

Hey all it’s time for your weekly update. This week, despite running into some issues with our new multi-threaded game update code, Flavien has made significant progress towards our next patch. While there’s still a lot of work to do on server-side collision detection of objects with planets the rest of the game is working well with the new networking code. We’re looking forward to getting it into the hands of players to put it through a proper stress test. In other news while testing the new path rendering code at 4k I found some new bugs. Unfortunately, this then lead to a vicious cycle of fix a bug, find a bug. The good news is I recently broke the cycle, the last known bug is fixed, and I’ll soon start fixing some website issues including Facebook login. After that I’ll be moving onto the process of building the initial mockup for the game UI.

 

 

A crazy shape originally rendered at 4k using our new path rendering

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side good progress continues to be made on the destroyer, station materials, and land base. In a week or 2 we’ll begin integrating all of the new artwork from the last few months into the game as we prepare for the next patch. We’ve accumulated quite a bit of new stuff so this is probably going to take one of our artists the better part of a week to complete.

 

 

Reusable living quarters greeble for space stations and land bases

 

 

 

hat’s all for this week. While the server-side planetary collision detection still remains a major blocker with plenty of R&D unknowns the light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to come into view. We’re looking forward to putting this patch behind us and shifting our focus toward completing the Alpha.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #72

 

 

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

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. On the engineering side Flavien spent a good portion of last week working on some issues with networking error detection that he discovered. These center around problems with how our the new networking code was integrated with our physics library. On my end I fixed a number of issues with using Facebook for account login and creation. Facebook changed some things on their end which broke our integration. If anyone using Facebook for login is still experiencing problems with our website or the game please let us know. I’ve also started work on gradient support for path rendering as well as building the rest of our UI subsystems.

 

 

Pre-rendered image of another portion of the land base

 

 

 

 

 

We spent time this week discussing some design elements of the gameplay surrounding capital ships. The central question is how quickly should we give players access to capital ships? At the moment our core design restricts access until a player accumulates enough money to purchase a capital ship. It was proposed that we possibly add an additional XP requirement to prevent new players from blowing all of their money on a capital ship and then immediately dying due to inexperience. This could also be a form of griefing since money will be distributed evenly amongst members of a team – the smaller a team the more a person could, either intentionally or accidentally, waste the resources of their team by buying expensive ships and immediately dying.

 

 

WIP rear geometry for the destroyer

 

 

 

On the art side the usual work continues on station materials, the land base, and the destroyer. The new assets from the last few months are now being integrated into the game in preparation for our next patch. Due to the aforementioned networking error correction issues we don’t have a firm date just yet but we’ll let everyone know as soon as we can provide one with confidence. 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 #73

 

 

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

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. On the engineering side Flavien continues to wrestle with some networking issues. During testing of the new networking code he ran into some more error correction problems which have been consuming a lot of time. Fortunately it’s not all doom and gloom as he’s also been making a number of improvements to various game systems including weapon hard points and energy management. On my end I’ve started testing combinations of complex shapes with the new UI rendering code. Unsurprisingly I found more bugs however I got those sorted out fairly quickly. I then moved onto colors which have been coming along nicely. Thus far I’ve completed support for solid colors and linear gradients. Radial gradients are almost finished and I expect to be moving on to the UI event system and text rendering soon.

 

 

Pre-rendered image of the primary hangar structure

 

 

 

 

 

Not much new to report on the art side this week. They continue to work on the station materials, land base, and destroyer geometry. As I’ve mentioned before these are some big projects and we don’t expect they’ll start wrapping them up until September. The good news is once they’re finished that will represent the bulk of our assets. We’ll still have a couple capital ships, some animations, and a bunch of weapon effects but beyond that it’ll mostly be polishing.

 

 

Station trim greebles

 

 

 

Due to the networking issues that Flavien has run into we aren’t ready yet to provide a firm timeline for when we’ll release the next patch. Our expectation is that by the end of this week the only blockers remaining will be error correction bugs and the server side planet collision detection. We’re working diligently to get it out as soon as possible and we greatly appreciate everyone's patience!

 

 

 

 

Playing around with colors and gradients with UI rendering

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #74

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. Unfortunately, last week Flavien was still caught up trying to fix some bugs with our new networking code. The issue revolves around a problem in motion interpolation that is causing jittering. For example if two ships are flying at the exact same velocity, meaning relative to each other there is no motion, they will perceive each other as jumping around slightly. This problem did not manifest itself in Flavien’s R&D tests so it’s proving to be quite tricky to figure out.

 

 

Pre-rendered image of the land base hangar building

 

 

 

 

 

On my end the implementation of colors and gradients in the path rendering has been completed. Insofar as the Alpha is concerned all R&D on path rendering is finished – though I still have some things such as stroking, post-processing, and arbitrary clipping that will likely need to be supported for final release. Path rendering has been fully integrated into the UI system and I’m currently working on building some additional low-level UI subsystems for styling before I start on text rendering.

 

 

A piece of station geometry in the editor

 

 

 

Not much new to mention on the art side as work continues on the land base, station materials, and the destroyer. Due to the unexpected amount of time it’s taking to resolve the last few remaining issues with the new networking code the next patch probably won’t be released until at least early September. As we’ve mentioned before the networking is critical for a good multiplayer experience so it’s something we’re taking as much time as is needed to get it right. As always we appreciate everyone’s patience and we’re working diligently to get the next patch out as soon as possible. That’s it for the last week, until next time!

 

 

 

 

Another in-editor piece of station geometry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #75

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. Last week Flavien was out of town on vacation so not much new to report for him other than he’s back to working on that pesky jitter bug with the new networking code. On my end I finished all of the low level UI subsystems I was working on last week and started on text layout and rendering. Text layout can be quite complicated however our needs are fairly simple at the moment so I’m hoping it doesn’t take more than a few days for a minimum viable product. Once text is finished I need to add support for input events from the mouse and keyboard, implement a number of common widgets such as buttons and text boxes, add support for SVG parsing, and finish UI version 1 with an optimization and polish pass before I integrate it into the game. It’s unlikely the new UI system will be ready in time for the next patch however our goal is to get it into the game shortly thereafter.

 

 

WIP geometry for the destroyer

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side things continue to move along nicely. Kristian finished the land base hangar and is nearly done with the power plant. While the exterior of the hangar looks pretty good the interior is still in a semi-finished state. The reason for this is we haven’t determined how we’re going to spawn new ships yet. Depending on available time we will either have them just fade into view or, if we have enough time (not looking likely to be honest), we’ll build an animated elevator system. Jan continues to power through texturing the station pieces, there’s a lot of them, and Dan has made some good progress on the destroyer.

 

 

WIP station plating in-editor

 

 

 

The biggest blocker at the moment is the aforementioned networking jitter bug. Once that gets resolved we hope to move toward the next patch fairly quickly however we still need to finish up server side planet collision detection. As we’ve mentioned before Flavien has made a number of modifications to the game code while integrating the new networking so the next patch will be more than just new plumbing. That’s it for now, until next time!

 

 

 

 

Pre-rendered image of the WIP land base power plant

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

An update from I-NovaeFlavien 

 

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

 

Quote

 

After next patch we'll be adding more gameplay features for the alpha, especially related to weapons and HUD. Including the resources system and capital ships.

 

For planets, there will be many more planets and moons. The number isn't set in stone exactly but we do have multiple ideas for new planet types. There will be no dynamic solar system physics, but we're studying the possibility of spawning the planets along their orbits at various times, when the game starts. However once the game is running, planets won't move.

 

 

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #76

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. Flavien has made some progress on the remaining networking issues however it isn’t completely resolved yet. With game networking there are significant challenges around compensating for latency and synchronizing game state – particularly when it comes physics simulations. To summarize the difficulty at a high level, games use lots of fancy math to estimate where everything is supposed to be and then subtly correct errors when an authoritative update from the server is received. Throughout this process there are many places where additional, small errors can accumulate within these mathematical computations. In most/all other games this small accumulated error has no discernable effect on gameplay as it results in the position of an object being off by a few millimeters or less. In Infinity: Battlescape objects are moving at speeds of thousands of kilometers a second and at such high velocities what would be a millimeter or less of error in other games becomes many meters for us. This is what was causing the stuttering we previously described and Flavien has implemented a fix that reduces it to a point that’s “good enough” for now.

 

 

WIP pre-rendered shots of the land base power plant

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, there’s still an issue remaining with physics updates that causes collision detections to have a slight delay. Once Flavien gets that sorted out he’ll get back to server-side planetary collision detection and after that we’ll finally be able to release the next patch. On my end I spent half of last week out of town traveling to a couple of weddings around various parts of the country. Fortunately, before I left, I made some significant progress on UI support for text. As expected text layout is quite complicated. Due to our international playerbase we want to be able to support different languages, many of which have special layout considerations depending on line breaks and how characters should be merged or replaced due to ordering. While macOS and iOS provide Application Programming Interfaces (API’s) to handle just about any sort of text need you could possibly think of, the API’s available on Windows aren’t quite as thorough. This means I must fill in the gaps with my own layout engine. The good news is that our near-term text needs are relatively simple and I’m only adding support for the things we absolutely require. The initial implementation is nearly finished and I’ll add more advanced features as they are needed.

 

 

More in-editor station pieces

 

 

 

 

There’s not much new to report on the art side. Work continues on the land base, station materials, and destroyer. All of that should be wrapping up in about a month or so, at which point we’ll move onto the remaining 2 capital ships and weapon special effects. 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 #77

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Hey everyone, it’s time for your weekly update. After our last update a group of community members expressed interest in helping us tackle the problem of stuttering in the networking code. Flavien spent some time building a small example application which was made available on our forums. We’d like to thank everyone who participated in the ensuing debate. Some interesting solutions were proposed and we’ll be testing a number of them to see if anything helps eliminate the problem under real-world conditions. As it stands right now we’ve decided to (mostly) move beyond the stuttering and Flavien has spent the majority of his time this week working on wrapping up the remaining networking loose ends as he prepares to start on server-side planetary collision detection – the last major blocker for the next patch (that we’re currently aware of).

 

 

Pre-rendered image of the WIP land base communications building

 

 

 

 

 

 

On my end I’ve made good progress on text layout – the UI can now render full paragraphs of text with different types of paragraph alignment and text wrapping. Before I’m finished with text v1 there’s still a couple of features left including paragraph overflow trimming, justification, whitespace trimming, OpenType features such as ligatures, and text decorations such as under/overlines and strikethrough’s. Of these I think overflow trimming and justification are likely to be the most difficult but we shall see. As I mentioned last week, once I’m done with text I’ll move onto the I/O event system, scrolling, hit testing, and then integration into the game. For those of you with Developer Access who accidentally discovered that the Esc key immediately exits the game, you’ll be delighted to hear the plan for the first screen made with the new UI is for a proper in-game menu which you will bring up with the Esc key!

 

 

WIP UI including a stackpanel with a 10px margin, radial gradient background, 2 buttons, and a text block with word wrapping

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side everything is continuing along with the usual set of work items. Kristian is working on the land base communications structure, Jan is still powering through station materials, and Dan has made more progress on the destroyer final geometry. As for scheduling we obviously took a big hit in August with the unexpected networking issues we ran into with stuttering. If the problem with server-side planetary collision detection doesn’t take more than a week or 2 we should be on track for a September release of the next patch. After that the expectation is that the new UI will be ready for integration into the game and our focus will shift full steam ahead towards the Alpha. Our hope is that the big investments we’ve made over the last year in systems we’ve previously neglected such as networking, physics, UI, threading, etc will begin to pay us back as we move through the Alpha and beyond.

 

 

 

WIP destroyer geometry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

I-Novae Flavien  CTO/President & Cofounder

 

original post source: https://forums.inovaestudios.com/t/weekly-update-77/5785/29

 

 

The next patch is mostly an architectural / networking update; some of the new gameplay will be in ( new warp drive, radial menu etc.. ) but for most of it it'll be largely identical to the old build.

 

The next patch after that will contain most of the new gameplay, like resources and new weapons. Then we'll iterate on it mostly to polish and fix bugs. Then we''ll be ready for alpha.

 

Until alpha we're only planning to add the asteroid ( seen at the end of the KS campaign ). Assets for new planets aren't in the works yet. We need a planet editor to do more advanced planets, so it's likely to come after alpha, and the last planets after beta.

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #78

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Hey everyone, it’s time for your weekly update. Flavien has continued his work wrapping up the last few systems that needed to be integrated with the new networking code. He completed our property replication system, which allows us to specify how important values are synchronized between clients and the server, and he rewrote weapons which now use a hardpoint system for placement on a ship. Previously, a single weapon was hard coded into the game for all playable ships but the new hardpoint system, which allows classes of weaponry to be mounted on a specific point on a ship, will provide the foundation for allowing players to reconfigure their weapon loadouts in the future.

 

 

Pre-rendered WIP land base layouts

 

 

 

 

 

On my end I completed support for advanced OpenType features with text rendering such as ligatures, subscripts, postscripts, etc. For Latin languages, many of these features aren’t used very often but they become particularly important when drawing text for Asian languages. The biggest outstanding item for text rendering is paragraph trimming, which is appending an ellipsis (…) to the end of the last line of a paragraph when its text doesn’t fit within the allowed space. I’ve made a good amount of progress on it so far and hope to have it wrapped up soon. Once that’s complete I’ll be moving onto the items outlined last week such as I/O events, hit testing, etc.

 

 

More in-editor station materials

 

 

 

 

Not much new to report on the art side. It’s the usual land base, station materials, and destroyer geometry. Much of it should be getting wrapped up by early October. Moving forward this week Flavien has a couple of smaller items to finish off with networking and then he’ll resume work on server-side planetary collision detection. As we’ve mentioned before this is the last remaining blocker for the next patch. If he can get it sorted out within the next 1 to 2.5 weeks we should be in good shape to release the next patch in late September. That's all for this update, until next time!

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #79

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. Last week we mentioned that Flavien was going to be resuming work on server-side collision detection. In the end he decided to put a bit more time into a variety of gameplay systems including the HUD, cameras, controls, etc and server-side collision won’t be addressed until next week. This could push the next patch back by a week or 2 but the extra layer of polish will hopefully make the additional wait worthwhile. On my end I spent the early part of last week working on finishing up text trimming. That effort got sidetracked by some website problems that popped up requiring my immediate attention. The rest of the week was consumed by stuff regarding the coming birth of my first child.

 

 

Pre-rendered image of land base defensive towers with placeholder weapons

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side work continues on the usual: land base, station materials, and destroyer geometry. As we’ve mentioned before those should be wrapping up over the next few weeks and then work will start on the final geometry pass for the carrier and the cruiser. Once the next patch gets released work will begin on different types of weapons and the art team will also be spending some time on weapon effects.

 

 

More in-editor station materials

 

 

 

 

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 #80

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Ladies and gentlemen, here’s your weekly update! We have some exciting stuff to show off this week. Flavien performed a 400 “player” stress test of the game with the new networking code using simple AI bots in a simulated “massive space battle”. The initial results were quite encouraging and I believe are best summarized in Flavien’s own words:

 

“man, I just tested a 400 ships battle. this is insane. totally insane. once we have weapons in and polish it this is gonna be big. hard to hold back to not tell the world yet ^^. made massive improvements to the camera system too. it's starting to look like a professional product. the feeling of movement in the interceptor is pretty awesome. I hope I can get it right for the other ships too cause I'm mostly testing/tuning the interceptro so far. now the big question: once I add weapons/projectiles, can we still handle those big battles? we must find a way to it's just too awesome. no other game has such a feeling IMO.”

 

 

A simulated 400 player massive space battle

 

 

 

 

 

Can you feel the excitement!? I hope so because we’re legitimately excited. These screen shots don’t really do it justice but we aren’t planning on releasing any new video until after we ship the Alpha (I already blew his cover by telling the world). Naturally, this leads to the question of when will the next patch be ready so those of you with access can try it out for yourselves? Originally, the next patch was going to be nothing more than a direct port of the game to the new networking code however, over the last month, it has evolved into new networking code combined with a Whole Bunch of Stuff™. Flavien has assured me that he will be finished working on the Whole Bunch of Stuff by Wednesday and then will start on the server-side planetary collision detection – for real this time :wink:. Unfortunately, I caught the funk a week ago Monday and was sick for most of the week so not much new to report on my end.

 

 

We've added a mockup of the space whale bobblehead to the cockpit

 

 

 

 

That’s all for this week. In our next update I’ll talk about how everything we’ve been working on over the last ~8 months is finally starting to come together and while the extra wait has been painful we’re optimistic it’ll pay dividends over the long run.

 

 

One last screen shot of a simulated massive space battle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #81

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. This week’s effort has primarily been focused on polishing things up for the next patch, fixing some crash bugs that have popped up, finishing the initial implementation of capital ship controls, and working on server-side planetary collision detection. The most exciting part of the last 2 weeks has been watching investments we made a year ago begin to pay off.

 

 

A massive space battle with lots of shooting

 

 

 

 

 

To back up a bit, when we launched our Kickstarter we hadn’t touched our networking code since the release of the Infinity Combat Prototype (ICP) back in 2007. In fact, we hadn’t done much of anything with our technology beyond working on the planetary tech since 2007 because high quality real-time planets rendered to scale are extremely difficult. For the prototype we showed off in the Kickstarter we hacked together a quick demo in about 6 months. Since we didn’t know if our Kickstarter would succeed every engineering decision made with the prototype favored a quick pace of development over runtime speed, quality, and security.

 

 

Another screen shot of a massive space battle and the space whale bobblehead mockup

 

 

 

 

Summer of 2016 is when we first began to realize that we were going to have to start addressing these issues sooner rather than later – starting with physics. Once the physics upgrade was completed we knew we had 2 major items remaining: networking, for both security and performance, and full-engine multithreading, which is required to be able to support 100’s of players. Full-engine multi-threading was started last November, our last patch was in January, and the new networking code was started in earnest in February. Unfortunately, finishing the new networking code and the full-engine multi-threading ended up taking significantly longer than we had anticipated, however, with the next patch right around the corner these investments are now starting to pay big dividends.

 

 

A destroyer in chaotic battle

 

 

 

 

Over the last two weeks we’ve been able to implement, within a handful of hours, game systems that previously would have taken multiple days. While it’s unlikely we’ll be able to make up all of the lost time our expectation is that the game will quickly start to take shape over the coming months. As we push toward the release of the Alpha our goal is to get to the point where we are releasing a new patch at least once every week. As the game starts to get more mature we want to combine these weekly patch releases with a large weekly playtest. To that end Flavien has started work on server-side planetary collision detection and our fingers are crossed that it doesn’t take too long to resolve. As we’ve mentioned before this is the last major blocker and once he’s finished we should be able to release the next patch shortly thereafter.

 

 

Pre-rendered image of land base connection pieces

 

 

 

 

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 #82

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update! This week’s major milestone was getting the whole team playing the game with the new networking code. These internal playtests went smoothly as expected and, while there are still some finishing touches to be made later, the new networking code provided a solid experience. To push things a little further we then spawned 200 simple bots that just fly around shooting like crazy. At 4k resolution with Extreme detail enabled on a computer with a GTX 1080, an Intel 6700k, and 32gb of RAM the game was averaging about 30fps. Overall this is encouraging, even though planets weren’t enabled in the test, because we still have a tremendous amount of optimization work left to do. The game scaled gracefully by decreasing resolution and/or level of detail such that each machine we tested with was also averaging roughly 30fps with 200+ “players”.

 

 

An interceptor on the Blue team firing away

 

 

 

 

 

On the art side Kristian has finished the land base. He’s now working on putting together different land base layouts to create a palette from which land base configurations will be selected during the beginning of a match. Jan is nearly done with the bulk of the work on the space station materials however decals and fine details will still need to be added later. Dan continues his work on the destroyer and work on the remaining capital ships should be getting started within a few weeks.

 

 

The cockpit view of a large space battle

 

 

 

 

With everything looking good from our playtests last week the only remaining blocker, as we’ve mentioned before, is the server-side planetary collision detection. We still don’t have a good estimate for how long that could take but we’re hoping within a few weeks. Aside from all of that we also upgraded our forums and rolled out some minor updates to the website. That’s it for this week, until next time!

 

 

Some interceptors from the Red team spawning in a hangar bay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #83

 

 

Originally posted by IINovaeFlavien CTO/President & Cofounder - source link

 

 

 

 

Hey everybody, Flavien here, taking stead of Keith for the weekly update as he’s busy with the arrival of his first child.

 

As you know, we’ve been busy working on the next major patch for quite a while now. I’m happy to report that progress has been going pretty smoothly recently and that we’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel. This new version has taken a lot of development time, but includes some pretty heavy and fundamental architectural changes, especially in terms of networking, which will allow us to scale up to these hundreds-of-ships-at-once battles. In terms of gameplay it’s still pretty bare-bones, but we should be in a good state to iterate quickly towards an alpha release at the end of the year.

 

 

Battle test in atmosphere

 

 

 

 

 

For now, ETA for this new patch for dev-tier / stellar+ level backers is some time around next week. Planetary physics collisions is almost resolved ( I still need to implement some server-side code and do some stress test, but the algorithm is already functional ) but we’ll need a few additional days to implement some missing features and do a polish / bug fixes pass ( for instance I need to rework atmospheric flight mechanics and add back some thruster sound effects ). Keith has also recently been upgrading the website and installer dependencies.

 

 

External view can now be rotated around the ship

 

 

 

The art team has also started to gear up for the next patch, that will include a first basic version of capital ships ( with placeholder art and control scheme ). Some assets that have been in the works in the past months are being integrated into the project, including the new space station, factory and military base pieces.

 

 

Flying a Destroyer around a planet

 

 

 

 

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more information about the new patch next week. I’ll probably do a streaming session as soon as it’s out, assuming the server is stable. See you !

 

-Flavien

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

Weekly Update #84

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. It’s been another busy week here at I-Novae Studios. We had another playtest this last weekend, this time with planets reintegrated for the first time in months. Overall everything went smoothly and Flavien believes he may have already come up with a viable solution for server-side planetary collision detection. We found a couple of new bugs but nothing we can’t fix within a few days. In fact, the test went so well we’re pleased to announce that, as long as we don’t run into any last-minute blockers, we’ll be releasing the next patch this Saturday, the 21st of October.

 

 

A massive space battle over a planet!

 

 

 

 

 

Needless to say – this patch is a significant update – it contains months of work from both the art and the engineering teams. To summarize some of the changes: we’ve rewritten nearly our entire networking stack, added mockups for all of the capital ships, applied materials to most of the smaller ships and installations (still WIP), improved multi-threaded performance, added scorekeeping, implemented a basic in-game UI mockup, improved the flight model, implemented a basic damage model, added placeholders for simple voice commands, mocked up cockpit bobbleheads (no physics simulation yet), tested massive space battles, etc.

 

 

Staying close to my wingman as he fires at the enemy

 

 

 

 

Assuming everything goes smoothly this weekend with the patch we’ll announce our next Alpha backer “free play” weekend within a week or 2. We’re looking forward to stress testing the new networking code with Developer Access and then Alpha backers. This patch has been a long time coming, we greatly appreciate everyone’s patience, and after the next Alpha “free play” weekend we’ll be pivoting in a big way towards releasing the Alpha as soon as we can!

 

 

Catching some sun while flying around a planet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

[JonnyƦedhed]

Patch 0.2.0.0 - Schedule and Stream

 

 

Originally posted by: INovaeFlavien  CTO/President & Cofounder  Source link

 

 

Patch Schedule

 

As you know, 0.2.0.0 is around the corner and will be available to dev-access tier backers ( Stellar supporters and above )

 

 

EDIT:

The live stream will likely be now on Sunday 22nd October

 

7 PM GMT

9 PM CEST ( center europe time )

3 PM EDT ( US east time )

 

The game server will go down Saturday until this date / time, at which point it’ll go back up online ( assuming we did not encounter any blocker ).

 

The patch download itself should be made available in the launcher around 2 hours before these times, to let people download / install it before it goes live. The patch size will be around 2.3 GB.

 

Discord will be the go-to place if you want to chat / comment:

https://forums.inovaestudios.com/t/unofficial-infinity-community-discord-server/1081

[JonnyƦedhed]

Patch 0.2.0.0 - Schedule and Stream

 

 

INovaeFlavien CTO/President & Cofounder  is wrapping up some last minute bugs. Said its looking pretty good overall. 

 

 

 

Check in with the link below for latest patch and live stream time update:

 

https://forums.inovaestudios.com/t/patch-0-2-0-0-schedule-and-stream/6077/33

 

EDIT:

The live stream will likely be now on Sunday 22nd October

[JonnyƦedhed]

Infinity Battlescape Patch 0.2.0.0 features

 

 

By Planet Explorer (Youtube)

 

 

[JonnyƦedhed]

Patch update  0.2.1.0    

 

 

Spacebattlemix

 

By SpaceJay - on the Inovae forums -  source

 

 

 

Patch 0.2.x.x - Feedback thread

https://forums.inovaestudios.com/t/patch-0-2-0-0-feedback-thread/6095

 

 

Pledge upgrade: https://inovaestudios.com/Account#products