Frontiers Reach News

The past week has been extremely stressful. Deadlines have been missed internally and we've come to a point where the focus of earning money and creating something cinematic has overburdened the project beyond what the team is capable of.

All of this is the result of leadership not being experienced enough to manage a team of this size effectively on top of having a day job.

We're going to hold development, cancel the kickstarter, and drop the games price drastically to refocus efforts. Development will resume in a few weeks.

We have entered the final month before the launch of our kickstarter campaign and the release of what we intend to be a highly polished version of the game. As such we've continued our efforts to refine existing mechanics as much as possible and and are working on wrapping up all of our major systems additions.

One of the major systems coming into this update is the completion of the artwork integration of the module system. Each module now has a description, and some have visible artwork. Eventually all of them will have visible artwork of some kind and will affect performance parameters of various aspects of your fighters. This also is accompanied by the first implementation of the Quantum Flux Field being visually represented in the game. We're still looking to change it but want to experiment with this one a bit.
This past month also saw a bunch of artwork for starships get done that will not be made available until demo release. We've got to get them all rigged with the new AI which is still in progress.
But let's get one with the patch notes.

- Module system artwork is fully integrated into module system and will display both in hangar when setting up a fighter and when on mission.

- The hangar now supports a camera position bar that will allow the player to change camera position when outfitting modules. Future plans to expand to all hangar submenus.

- New loading screens and descriptions.

- New music for Frontiers Reach Patrol mode.

- Major performance optimizations allow for the game to now be played in 4K on some video cards. (We tested on a Sapphire RX 580 8GB card running 4K at 20 FPS with 2 monitors)

- Completely new space station artwork additions for some levels.

- Major changes and additions to some levels.

- Tweaks to starfighter performance and handling.

- Complete revamp of lighting for bridge and menu environment.

- Complete overhaul of the Galley which now includes a kitchen and dining area. (To be filled out with characters at a later date)

- Completely new camera system for the bridge and main menu area. Now consists of better transitions between areas.

- New opening cinematic.

With that we're off to continue working on the game. There may be some things broken here and there so expect us to deploy hotfixes to address any critical issues that may come up.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

On the hangar controller updates.
First Friday of the month and as such, it is update time! A lot of new things and we're going to get right into it:

- New loadout system
Save, load, and modify. The new system takes all of our previously constructed elements for managing your starfighter in the hangar to include paint jobs, and unifies them into the new loadout screen. When you save, it will now be displayed with its cost along the top side menu.

- New Helm menu
A new menu has been added for changing planetary locations. This new menu is also accompanied by updated lighting and transitions during the warp travel.

- Completely overhauled input system now supports three main control schemes. Generic joysticks are supported in theory but we've had some difficulty getting it to recognize a HOTAS setup properly. More updates to come.

- Completely overhauled mouse and keyboard flight system. Part of the input system overhaul was due to this right here. So much had to be changed in the input system to make mouse flight function the way we wanted, that we had to completely rework the entire thing. That said, the new mouse flight system may feel familiar to those of you who have played other flight games.

- New module outfitting updates and menu screen. This new screen is merely a preview. We have a LOT more to get done on the module system. Nothing too heavy a lift for us, just a lot of little things and some small but significant additions like a new camera system to zoom in on the modules as you work on them.

- Completely new Turret system.
This new turret system still has some kinks in it, but it's got a pretty awesome feature set that we're excited about since it allows us to setup turrets in just about any configuration and not have turret artwork intersecting into their own structure or ship hull.

- New bullet system.
Though not fully integrated, and more changes are planned, this new bullet system is far more accurate than the previous one, using more tools for precise detection.

- New missile system.
Missiles can now lead and chase targets and are much more accurate but will lose their tracking completely if they over-shoot their target. No more lasso missiles looping around until they hit something.

- Numerous tweaks to camera system to compensate for changes and additions in the mouse flight mode.

- Completely new countermeasure system.
As part of the module system, countermeasures have been added to the game as a whole new mechanic that will eventually accommodate three different types of defense. Currently we only have flares, which will dot the sky behind the player with enough flares to disrupt a dozen missiles. Eventually a chaff module will be added that disperses a disruption cloud behind the player, and finally an EM field that will project a disruption field around the player as they travel.

- Completely overhauled hangar system for landing and reloading. Much of this work is foundational. Still lots to wrap up here, but it's all essential work for the future. Some of which are the new AI, wingmen, new reload sequence, and mid-mission weapon swapping.

- Numerous changes to the flight model to affect feel, performance, and play. This required rebalancing several parameters on fighters to adjust performance.

- Fixed another edge case that was causing missile warning cones to not go away.

While this week’s update does indeed break some of our levels, we're in the process of getting a bunch more artwork overhauled and new stuff added before our next update on December 3rd. Rest assured all levels will be restored to full functional state and some, hopefully many, will be completely reworked with a whole host of additions added to them.

Additionally, we're beginning work on the first set of missions that we aim to build with the quality in mind for the final product. A lot of this is being focused around preparation for the launch of our Kickstarter but will ultimately play into a better experience for everyone in the long run.

We also want to take this time to give everyone a brief run down on our schedule the next month and our contingency moving forward.

November 22nd - team will review over the period of a week.

November 29th - Decision will be made on whether or not the demo is ready for Kickstarter prime time.
December 3rd - Launch new demo and Kickstarter.

Contingent timeline in the event that demo approval is not met on November 29th.

December 3rd - Demo release as usual.

January 7th - Demo release and Kickstarter launch.

For the sake of getting this out the door, we're only allowing ourselves one opportunity to push the dates back! There will not be a second delay in release.

Oh, before we go, you will need to make a new save file. We added a whole bunch of small changes that we didn't go into because they were parts of the large changes listed above. These smaller changes required adding a number of additional parameters to the players save file.

We regret to inform you that this weeks update is cancelled. But not without good reason.

We're doing this to restructure our schedule a bit so we can get through some major integrations and prep the final demo before going live with the Kickstarter. This will also allow us to really focus in on development and artwork production without worrying if the game will be ready by the weekend.

While our release schedule is going to change you should still expect to see screenshots, video, and artwork hitting our social media accounts as we continue to work.

To accompany this announcement we want to layout a list of things that we're working on.
- More damage models for starfighter NPCs.

- Unity DOTS integration (we're looking at this to solve some performance issues and to increase capabilities. still speculative).

- Original music (Our composer is working on preparing small sampling of the music he is composing for the title as a whole)

- New sound effects for starfighter engines and weapons.

- New enemy AI (there is a lot going on with this new AI and it is capable of a lot of things the current AI is not it's a big integration though and will need to be handled very carefully over a period of days).

- New module system with completely new artwork to accompany it.

- New countermeasures as a part of the new module system. These new CM's come in three forms. Flares, Chaff, and an EM Field.

Flares - Launches a series of flares in a pattern across the sky that disrupt missiles that get too close.

Chaff - Launchers a cloud of disrupting debris behind the player as they travel. Any guided munitions that enter the cloud will be disrupted and veer drastically off course.

EM Field - Deploys a large disruptive field affects missile tracking causing them to veer off target drastically. In some cases missiles have been known to self destruct from short circuits.

- Q-Field visual effect and module.

In the Frontiers Reach Universe, faster than light travel is not achieved by warping space around the ship like most other sci-fi universes. No, in Frontiers Reach we get around with what is known as Quantum Field Manipulation technology, sometimes called quantum flux fields, Q-fields, or Quantum Bubbles. Regardless of the name, Quantum Field Manipulation technology operates on the same principles across the board.

To understand QFM tech we must first understand space in the Frontiers Reach Universe. In the FRU space time is a kin to a liquid, so thin and viscous and all encompassing that it takes enormous amounts of energy, or mass, to affect it in any meaningful way. But what if you could create a spacetime void? A space so empty that not even spacetime itself could exist? Well that's what QFM tech does. In much the same way that a torpedo uses a bubble of air to push water out of the way as it travels at high speed through water, a starship in the FRU uses a spacetime void bubble to push spacetime out of the way as it travels.

In the FRU traveling this way you can reach speeds of up to 1 to 2 lightyears a day depending upon your size and mass. Most starfighters can hop around the interior of a star system quite comfortably if they don't have to engage in any serious fighting. Capital ships like long haul freighters, ferries for small vessels, and other large ships can travel roughly 15-20 lightyears before needing to refuel. The hulking megaships known as Interstellar Carriers can travel up to 100 lightyears before having to refuel.

One of the things we want to do with this is visualize the Q-field affect in some way. Right now we're playing with distortions in the Unity HDRP and have had some really cool effects. But we've had some difficulty getting them to work exactly as we need them so we're exploring a few different options.

- New Mouse flight model. The model we've chosen may seem familiar to some of you.

- Major overhaul of the hangar and mid mission reloading mechanic with a UI that will allow player to swap some equipment/weapons when they've landed aboard the Heliosiren during a mission. This also includes some visual changes.

- New ambient noise backgrounds for Heliosiren interior.

- New Helm menu interface for selecting planetary locations that also gives additional information on the chosen planet.

- Loadout system that will allow players to setup, save, and load different loadouts.

- New character art and dialogue system changes (this will likely take affect later as we're still working out our full list of characters and only have portraits right now).

- Support for more languages.

It's difficult to say when exactly all of these things will be available in the game. Some are already in. Others haven't even been started on. Assuming we can actually get all of them in on the new schedule, which is partly why we reworked it, Frontiers Reach should be a fairly more refined and deeper game to experience.