Infinity: Battlescape News

Well, it's been a while since the last update. Not exactly surprising, but since we are gearing up for our Early Access launch on Steam in a month, things are been pretty busy.. and that's an understatement. It's going to get even busier in september, so updates are going to be very irregular from now on, just be warned..

A new beta backer week-end will be organized next week, from Friday august the 30th to Mondy the 2nd of september. We had a couple of technical issues in the last event, but this one should be much more fluid. Note that this might be the last one before the launch.



For all the details please see this thread: Infinity Battlescape Asteroid backer week-end

There will be two community events on Saturday 31 and Sunday the 1st, at 19:00 UTC, as usual. More information in this thread: I-Novae community events



We are wrapping up production on our Steam trailer and will announce the official Early access launch date in a week or two.

Steam integration is also progressing well. Our build system is now compatible with Steam and authentication / integration with I-Novae accounts is almost finished. We still need to implement a server browser in the game client ( basically what our custom launcher was doing ) so that Steam clients know to which server to connect to, but this should go relatively fast to implement.

We've also more or less figured out our plan regarding giving a Steam copy of the game to backers. If you pledged on Kickstarter, IndieGoGo or our website, a Steam section will appear in your account settings on the I-Novae website, which will allow you to login to Steam. After you successfully login, the game will be granted to you and appear in your Steam library like any other game. ETA on this feature is around the launch, end of September, however we might do some earlier internal tests with a few select member of the community, if needed.

Extra game copies ( backer tiers above $100 if I remember well ) will be given as extra Steam keys. There is no ETA on that just yet, but it'll definitely be after the EA launch. In general, crowd-funding rewards will come after the EA launch. A certain number of them aren't even on our radar just yet, so might slip well into 2020.





In other development news, in the short term ( next week ) we are focusing on the patch for the next backer week-end. This is what we're planning on doing for next week's patch:

• The first version of the Star map
  
• More balance tweaks related to weapons on the Interceptor and the Corvette
  
• Another round on stability ( we've had a few issues introduced by last patch ), also fixing full-screen and lower-resolution issues
  
• A basic implementation for system menus ( options, in-game keys rebinding, etc.. )
  
• Improvements to the menus / UI in general, with more information displayed in the various menu tabs
  
• Revamp of input / controls, unifying events, and using more logical default keys ( goodbye to right-ctrl for launching missiles ! )
  

The following are on our wishlist, but will likely slip away to early September:

• Laser counter-measures for capital ships
  
• Battle statistics / performance ratings / rebalancing the scoring system and maybe introducing the ladder rankings
  
• HUD improvements and MFDs
  

In the "longer" term ( second week of September, probably ):

• Ship upgrades system
  
• More iterations on the menus / UI
  
• Improving the new player experience, giving hints, mini tutorials, and reducing the learning curve, making things more clear
  
• More work on capital ships, control scheme and weapons management
  

Finally, in whatever time is left:

• The missions system ; we want to at least add support for scouting, bounty hunting and hauler escort/attack missions ; those already exist in game but are a "natural" part of the game flow. We want to make some of these more formal, including clear objectives and rewards.
  
• Introducing a few new Battlescapes and planet environments
  

The longer-term goal (2020+ ) we have in mind for the mission system is to implement a semi-procedural missions generator, based on various templates. Assassination missions, investigation missions, helping kill a pirate base in an asteroid field, hack an enemy base, plant a bomb, protect a ship while it's being repaired, etc.. not super original, but would definitely bring variety to the game. Some of those missions would have conflicting objectives with players of the enemy team, which would make them mini "game modes" within the game. We'll see exactly how far we can go with this next year.

As you see, while we're getting there, the amount of work left for September is still scary. There's a good chance various systems will stay in a "first-stage implementation" and be iterated / improved on after the launch. It's important to keep in mind this is Early access, and we'll still have a year of development ahead into 2020 before we can call the "full 1.0 version" ready to be released.

The closed-beta week-end for Kickstarter and IndieGoGo backers has started !

We've been focusing on visual polish, added new effects, and improved many areas of the gameplay this time around.

There's still a lot more to do in the next two months until we're ready to release on Steam, but we're slowly getting there !

Here's a short teaser video of what the game looks like now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1EiYqKgJ8o

In the next days we'll record footage to produce a new trailer on Steam.

-Flavien Brebion

Remember to wishlist Infinity: Battlescape if you haven't done so yet, thank you.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079620/Infinity_Battlescape/

It's been a while since the last update, clearly we cannot call these updates "weekly" anymore :) It isn't entirely a surprise though, as we're getting closer and closer to the Early access launch ( September 2019 ) so I'm getting busier and busier.

A few weeks ago we released the closed beta patch 0.4.7.0 which contained the first version of the UI. Unfortunately I wasn't able to finish the star map in time, so it'll be delayed until the next patch, end of July.



We'll organize our first Asteroid backer week-end from Friday the 26th of July ( around 19:00 GMT ) to Monday the 29th. This means that pretty much everybody that participated to our crowd-funding campaigns on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo ( or our own website at the $30 tier ), will have access to the game during that week-end.



Our goal is to start production of the game trailer for Steam around the end of July. We'll use the asteroid backer week-end as an opportunity to record the new footage.

In the past 2-3 weeks and until mid July, we are focusing our efforts on visual polish for this footage, to make the game look as attractive as possible, within our limited time and budget of course.

We're doing a pass over all the placeholder effects and replacing the worst offenders to improved versions. There are a number of effects that we think are good enough for now ( like the warp jam or the ship explosions ) but there are many others that we are upgrading. Here's a non-exhaustive list:

• We are adding a glow / haze effect around the sun. It is a volumetric effect, which means that as you get closer to the sun, the "size" of the effect starts to surround your entire ship - to the point where the entire screen goes white. In terms of gameplay, getting too close to the sun causes radiations damage over time.
  
  
  
  Note: capital ships have more HP, so they can get closer to the sun before dying..
  
  
• We are playing around with a warp tunnel effect. It looks pretty generic, but sometimes simple is good. It is fully animated; we're still working on it. We've experimented with a white spot in front of the tunnel ( and black behind ), but although it does look nice, it quickly becomes annoying in terms of gameplay ( you can't see where you are flying in warp ). In the picture below we've tried adding a hole at the tunnel center. It helps a bit, but it's still not good enough. We're going to play with a smoother fade and a larger "visibility" spot at the center, next.
  
  Note: we're also playing with the idea of twisting the tunnel around the ship dynamically, and maybe add a purple-ish light to make the ship feel more integrated to the tunnel.
  
  
  
• Battle smog: we finished implementing lit / volumetric particles. We're going to upgrade most of our smoke-like effects to use it ( ex.: atmospheric clouds, smoke damage, contrails.. ). We're also adding a new battlefield effect, kindly called "battle smog". The idea here is that damaged ships and explosions leave smoky remnants that linger on the battlefield. Their lifetime at the moment is around a minute. It looks a bit like clouds-in-space at the moment, but it does look pretty nice, especially as the smog particles reflect nearby explosions.
  
  In my opinion, the best thing is that the effect isn't just an artistic / static backdrop, but fully dynamic. The smog particles tell the story of the battle due to their nature. They even inherit a bit of the velocity of the original explosion and spread in various directions randomly.
  
  Smog particles WIP
  
  
• The max shadowing range was increased, for roughly the same performance cost. The previous maximum range was 8 Km ( so any pixel further away than 8 Km was in direct light, even when occluded by a mountain ). The new range is 26 Km in high quality and 120 Km in extreme quality.
  
  We're also revamping / thinking of revamping the following effects:
  
  
• Projectiles are curently a billboard; we're experimenting with 3D particle meshes instead. They should look a lot better, especially at narrow angles.
  
  
• Missiles, torpedoes and proximity mines effects have all been replaced. We're trying to stick to a color theme in general: red-orange for kinetic weapons impacts / explosions, green for laser / beams ( not implemented yet ) and cyan / blue / purple for energy-based weapons / shields. Oh, and be happy: bomber AIs can now use torpedoes against capital ships !
  
  
• We're reworking the projectile impacts. They'll use the actual mesh of the ship instead of the bounding box; at low angles they'll be bouncing / causing a reflected sparkles cloud. We'd also like to have large projectiles pierce through small ships, instead of just having the projectile disappear.
  
  
• We're also looking at implementing particle ribbons for contrails and similar effects.
  
  More battle smog. The smokey effect is a placeholder, we're working on higher resolution ones with more variations.
  
  
  Ships texturing
  
  
  Kristian has finished texturing the corvette. In the pictures below you can see the Scoria default skin. He's started texturing our last ship, the carrier. It is unlikely to be 100% finished by the end of the month, so we decided that we'd concentrate on the major areas of visual interest for the trailer, and apply some basic texturing on details, and revisit the details texturing properly at a later stage.
  
  
  
  
  
  

In terms of gameplay, we are ( admitedly at a lower priority, since we're focusing on visual polish ) iterating on the UI / menus, AI, cleaning the HUD / making it more intuitive. I am also hoping to get the ( finally ! ) capital ships missiles / torpedoes / counter-measures / flak canons in, for the next patch.

Ideally, we'd also get the ship ugprading system in, but I'm not sure there's enough time left in July to do that. We'll see where we stand at the end of the month.

Note that I will be leaving in a vacation trip to France next week, for a couple days, before we enter the final stretch to the game's launch. I'll be very busy on producing the next patch when I'm back in mid-July, therefore there will be no more development update until the next asteroid backer week-end.

-Flavien Brebion

Remember to wishlist Infinity: Battlescape if you haven't done so yet, thank you.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079620/Infinity_Battlescape/

Hey everybody, time for another update. Before I jump in to development news, I'm happy to announce that we'll be collaborating with Markus Zierhofer to produce Infinity: Battlescape's soundtrack. Markus is incredibly talented and the quality of his work so far gives us full confidence that he'll be able to nail down the musical style for Battlescape. You can listen to some of his work on his website.

Markus has already completed the main menu theme, and I can safely say that the entire team is in love with it. In the coming month or two he'll be producing a couple of ambient soundtracks, anticipation / thrill and finally battle tracks. We're in the middle of figuring out how to seamlessly blend all these tracks together based on the game's context dynamically.

We haven't determined yet if we'll patch the tracks into the game one by one as they're produced or if we'll wait a major patch in July / August to make them all available at once. More news on that in the coming weeks.



In other development news, Kristian has finished texturing the bomber. The bomber textures that were available in the backer's beta patch 0.4.6.0 were still a work in progress, so now Kristian has been able to finalize them - especially everything related to rusty edges, roughness and small scale details. Here's a screenshot of the updated bomber:







On the UI side, most widgets have been completed and are now functional. The UI code is getting integrated into the game and we're now ready to build the new star map or ship selection / upgrade screens. The goal is to have a first version available in the next patch, next week. It'll look pretty ugly at first, as we're spending no time on "making it look good" - functional is the keyword here. The first version will be very simple and will definitely be lacking, but in the next few months we'll continue to iterate on it until it's ready for Early access.

Speaking of the next patch, we'll probably be reverting the flight model experimental anti-drifting system introduced in the last patch. We didn't feel comfortable releasing the game without at least testing it once. It's possible that we'll keep it in a reduced form as an equipment, for capital ships only. Another change that we're thinking of introducing is aligning warp-out velocity to a target ( within bounds ) when a player disengages the warp drive. This should make it easier to catch up with a fleeing ship, which at the moment can be a frustrating experience.

That's it for now, more news next week for the new patch, and (hopefully) the first pics of the star map !

-Flavien Brebion