Frontiers Reach News

If I told you that Frontiers Reach and Blind Alien Productions are a completely self funded venture?

Because it is.





Save for the past year, I was able to maintain a day job throughout most of the development of Frontiers Reach. Mostly remote contract work that required I keep licensing for all of the same software that I use to develop FR anyways. And while it has certainly been a struggle, it has been worth it.


Because I’m self funded, development on FR and subsequent titles is not in danger of stopping unless my heart stops beating. There are no investors to tell me that I have to close up shop because THEY didn’t make enough money off of my hard work and that of the people I work with. And because I do about 80-90% of the work myself from architecting backend systems to 3D modeling vehicles and environments and building the levels and even optimizing everything from top to bottom, there is very little need for a massive budget.


The worst case scenario is that I have to put development on hold, or just slow down, because I have to go focus on making money to keep the lights on. Even if my publisher dropped me tomorrow, which I don’t see happening at all right now, I could still continue to work on the game.


This was extremely important for me to setup operations like this because I’ve long been a story teller with a love of writing and visual arts and games are just the medium I prefer to work in. If games did not exist it would probably be animation or comic books.


Another really great advantage to this is that when you buy a Blind Alien Productions game, much of your purchase goes directly to supporting the studio. Steam of course gets their 30% cut, the publisher gets a cut smaller than what Steam takes, then of course taxes, but what ever is left goes into the studio, the studio technology, and the games BAP makes.


In the past I’ve looked at crowdfunding as a means of bringing in more revenue to fund development and even ran a Kickstarter that failed get funded and have a Ko-Fi I haven’t updated in a while, but at a certain point, the crowdfunding effort becomes a job on its own and then development slows down the same as if I was working a regular day job. And crowdfunding just means I have more investors with smaller contributions and as seen with other projects, micro-investors can get in the way of development and production progress the same as any traditional investor.


All things considered I think the best way forward is to continue working as a self-funded effort because while it can be slower, there are fewer hazards that directly affect the future and progress of the studio and the games it creates.


But most importantly of all, you get an actual product that you can play and participate in the creation of without empty promises, moving goal posts, and the constant nagging that “if you just gave more money” it could all be so much grander and more immersive than the last time you crowdfunded a game.


Besides, as a life long gamer myself, I can’t stand being nickel and dimmed every step along the way.


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With that out of the way, there is a new experimental build up, available for those willing to play test or anyone who just wants to get a glimpse of what is coming on Jan 1.

The build includes numerous changes as well as tweaks to timing of missions and fixes to some particularly complex missions that were incompletable.

For Linux users I should note that there is a new performance tweak that will completely toggle off ALL clouds on maps that have them. This is a tweak I made to test whether or not clouds are the primary culprit in poor performance on some Linux distros.


Till next time pilots, happy hooning!

Today is a bit of an odd day.

If you’ve been following along in the discord server then you’ll know that I’ve been releasing updated versions of Frontiers Reach onto the experimental branch. Today that branch got an update, and today I would like to invite you to join me and the rest of the community in testing the experimental branch in preparation for the official release on January 1st.


As you probably know, the Jan 1 update is intended to be a face lift for the game. But as you can see in the trailer below, this isn’t just about planets. The trailer below contains updated artwork for the Siren exterior and interior. It is also part of an internal effort to update the storefront with new content.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

If you would like to join in on the testing for the Jan 1 release, those of you who already own the game can do so by selecting the experimental branch in the beta section of the steam interface and entering the password below

TestBranchDoode


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But today I have more than just Frontiers Reach 1 content to release and talk about. In continuing from my previous post, I have more to cover in regards to Frontiers Reach 2.


FR1 covers the end of Golden Age of Exploration by exploring the Frontier War and the beginning of the Age of Tarnish, a dark age of chaos and lawlessness for pretty much all of humanity. With yet more waves of colonists leaving the core worlds to seek new lives on new worlds on the frontier. The Age of Tarnish begins with the end of the Frontier War, and ends with the conclusion of the Human-Vir Interstellar War. It is through the conflict with the Vir, that humanity begins to find unity again. But keep in mind this is no apocalyptic end times story. This is just the beginning of humanities story among the stars.


In Frontiers Reach 2 we will be getting a more intimate look at things planet side. As covered in my previous post, there will be new vehicles to interact with. But what I did not cover was the locations on planet and in space that you’ll get to visit.


As in FR1, in FR2, you’ll start out on the moon Frontiers Reach. This time you’ll start in a new sector. One dotted with the catacomb structures left built by the Vir. It is in these catacombs that your adventure will start. But you will not stay there.


On the ice bound world of Jotunn, you will find the Mercenary King. A self made royal whose legacy among the stars is one of fortune and blood. While rumors say he comes from a royal house long dead, no one truly knows where he came from. Only that when he arrived on Jotunn he and his band of mercenaries quickly set about making a name for themselves setting up their own fortress.
Early concept for the Mercenary Kings fortress on a mountain on Jotunn.

The Mercenary King seated upon his throne

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On Quixote’s Dream you will find an alien race known as the Thulians. Once their world was an aquatic paradise with a diverse biosphere. Their people were organized into distinct houses, each with a responsibility to uphold the balance of their natural world. But then division was sown by some unknown force and a 100 year war ravaged their planet. A war that only came to an end after a large meteor struck the planet permanently altering its ecology, magnetic field, and the way of life of all of its inhabitants.
Early concepts of the desert world of Quixote's Dream.

Now the planet is ruled by the relic war machines that wander the wastes, and the Thulians are left to scavenge what they can from the sands of the Great Wastes of He’istha. She whose wrath is absolute. These relic war machines are what is left of the great war that tore the planet apart and they no longer recognize the Thulians as friend. And the Thulians now believe them to be angry gods who will only cease their ravaging when every last one of the Thulians has atoned.
Early sketches of the Thulian peoples.

Early sketches of the Thulian mounts which they ride into the desert.

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In the Mar de Sangre Nebula, you’ll find a clan of pirates who have been hiding and preying upon passersby. This clan of ne’er do wells, is known as the Devils Best, and they are in the midst of a dispute of leadership. If you can win them over, they will become powerful allies in the fight against the Vir.
Screenshot from FR1 of the Mar de Sangre nebula with a pirate in ancient salvaged gear from the golden age of exploration.

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In orbit around the planet Doluu, there is an all female group of Mercenaries known as the Daughters of Minerva. They are currently in dispute with another mercenary group called Executive Opportunities. The DoM specialize in starfighter combat, and EO specializes in ground warfare. EO was hired to put down a farmers rebellion on Doluu and contracted DoM for air support. But EO has not paid DoM. Getting both to join your cause will be a challenge.
Private Military Corporations are the defacto means of military defense and offense in the frontier worlds. Especially during the Age of Tarnish when the Sol Confederacy and Frontier Republic no longer exist.

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That’s it for now pilots. Until next time, happy hooning and I look forward to seeing you on the experimental branch and the Discord server!

Frontiers Reach is not my dream game...

If ever you have heard me say this, or read a blog post where I stated this, then maybe you've been wondering what exactly I meant by it. Or maybe you're just now reading it and thinking to yourself why I would say such a thing.



Today I will elaborate.







Back in 2015 I had a vision.

This vision was inspired by a game called Destiny. A game that had many elements I loved dearly, and that wanted to see expanded upon. The key element of which was the concept of a golden age where in humanity reached for the stars. But that golden age ended with a massive war that caused humanity a great deal of suffering and wiped out much of humanities progress.

2 years later, another game came out called Ghost Recon : Wildlands. It was a new take on the old Tom Clancy IP and while there were some problems I personally found the new direction they went with to be a breathe of fresh air, and something that I had personally thought about doing. But with a setting in a science fiction universe akin Destiny.

In Frontiers Reach 1, we are currently in the midst of the end of the golden age of exploration and expansion. This period will be known as the age of tarnish and the Frontier War. An era of great conflict with humanity divided in its very first interstellar civil war.



But way out on the fringes.

On a moon called Frontiers Reach.

Something stirs beneath the surface.

Disturbed by a group of mercenaries.

Years before a new type of mercenary was born. The Tombwalkers. They got their start as simple mercenaries who made fortunes for themselves diving into the depths of a subterranean alien structure known as The Catacombs. Which in the early days of their fortune seeking was only accessible via a drilling rig that discovered a vast network of underground tunnels and chambers while searching for subterranean pools of mist beneath the surface of the moon Frontiers Reach. For many years it was the only structure of its kind that could be accessed. And the name Tombwalker was given to those who become legendary at navigating the labyrinthian passages of chambers, halls, and traps crawling with hostile life forms and the remnant of the Sol Confederacy expeditions that came before them.

A team of Tombwalkers making their way across a bridge between chambers.

One of many platforms where the Vir store equipment and supplies for the innumerable soldiers in hibernation. That they may one day be awoken in a time of great need from their empire.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Then one day a team of researchers attempting learn more about the alien structures finally opened another site elsewhere on the moon. But it, like the original Catacombs, was just as dangerous and lethal to explore as any other. And so they put the call out to any mercenary group that was brave enough to try their hand at the profession of Tombwalking to explore these new catacombs.

One of those groups to answer the call would be a mercenary group made up of you, the players, as you hop around the frontier looking for every opportunity you can find to make a living.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



This new adventure which I've been planning since 2015 will require new tools, equipment, and vehicles to win the day as you battle against an alien menace that has been disturbed from its slumber deep beneath the surface of Frontiers Reach. This alien menace is known as the Vir. And they are thousands of years old and far more advanced than humanity. But their advancement and humanities are such that human technology is not completely irrelevant. And so there is a chance for humanity to stand against the tide. And this conflict with the Vir will be humanities first major conflict with an extraterrestrial species that is beyond humanities ability to comprehend.

The Vir foot soldier is the basic combat platform of the biomechanical terrors buried beneath Frontiers Reach. In these vast networks of hallways and chambers, they rest in coffin like containers embedded into the walls.

Early concept for the Vir fleet.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Early concept for a Vir fighter


To fight back against the Vir you'll have new fighters at your disposal. Two of these fighters have already been concepted. They represent the 4th generation of cheap fighters brought out to the frontier by new waves of colonists seeking new lives on new worlds in the decades following the end of the Frontier War.




And since Frontiers Reach 2 will include the ability to get out of the cockpit and explore what's on the ground and beneath it, you'll need a set of wheels to get around on.




And of course, some new weapons and armor to protect yourself while you're on the ground. Here is a look at the first of many.



Of course, relics left over from the Frontier War will also be available. Some of which will be in use only by pirate and raider factions who have scavenged the wreckage in the decades after. And others which may offer advantages that even the newer equipment cannot. Built with technology and knowledge that has been lost to the throes of time.

A Frontier War era helmet

Frontier War era rifle

A pair of S-27cu Razorbacks built by pirates using old Wildboar airframes salvaged from a long forgotten battlefield.

A Sol Confederacy Assault Automaton. Expensive to maintain and difficult to find parts for they are typically used by mercenary groups that can afford the.



Frontiers Reach 2 is still a ways off for the time being. And right now the focus is primarily on Frontiers Reach 1 and an offshoot title that I'm not yet prepared to make an announcement for. In the mean time, if you want to support the efforts towards making FR2 a reality, the best thing you can do is join in on FR1. Everything being built for FR1 will be migrated to FR2 in some form as it is the foundation of a new frontier.


Till next time pilots, happy hooning!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


Over the years I've played several space games that have entire procedurally generated planets. Most of them have been straight up barren rocks with very little in the way to do. Though there are a couple of games that have done a very good job in filling out the surfaces of their planets with a plethora of interesting content.


Having listened to the developers of No Man's Sky and Star Citizen give talks on their technology at conferences, I took away from those talks the understanding that even if had the ability to build the systems necessary to fill out an entire planet with content, I simply did not have the resources to make or obtain the content required to use those systems effectively.


In short, it takes a LOT to fill up an entire planet with interesting things to do. But something else was bothering me though. In all my years of playing space games there is one thing that has always bothered me about the genre.


Travel times.


In nearly every space game I've played since Freelancer, traveling between locations made up a significant amount of the play time. And traveling in a space game often involves decent stretches of time where you're basically doing nothing while the stars fly past your screen.


Both Freelancer and Elite Dangerous tried to solve this issues by giving NPCs, and other players, the ability to interdict your travel but at a certain point this became more annoying and frustrating than anything else. Especially in the case of Elite Dangerous where you could be spending as much as 30 minutes in FSD only to be interdicted during the last 2 minutes of travel.


So when I was thinking about how to structure travel between locations in Frontiers Reach I really wanted to get away from relying on long travel times to make the game feel big. And for the record, all of this is ignoring the fact that almost every game that has done full procedurally generated planets feels off in terms of scale. Especially when you're on the ground. So for Frontiers Reach I choose instead to go a different route. Especially since the game is combat focused game.


In warfare, unless you manage to catch an opponent in transit across an open desert, there are very few instances where you would be fighting in the middle of nowhere over absolutely nothing. Most of the actual fighting is going to be taking place in an area of strategic concern. Which could be a facility of importance, a choke point created by a land feature like a valley or a canyon, or a particularly mineral rich field of asteroids in orbit around a star or planet.


When I first started development my tools and knowledge in making space games were quite limited, and so I did the best I could with what I had. And for the longest time that meant the play spaces in FR were under 30 kilometers of horizontal space and the terrain scaling was off. But in the past year I've gotten some new tools and learned a lot about managing larger worlds, and the payoff for all of this learning is that all of the locations in Frontiers Reach can now be expanded by a significant margin.


I'm still discussing with my publisher how best to release these new locations, but right now it's looking like Jan 1st is going to be the day that the Frontier is expanded.


For planetary locations the containment zone is being expanded from 30 kilometers to 60 kilometers horizontal space with a flight ceiling of about 22 kilometers. Meaning dogfights can now take place at the edge of space.






For space locations the containment zone is being expanded to 90 kilometers in just about every direction. With the skyboxes having been completely replaced by a dynamic sky system that allows for multiple planets which now spin.


These new locations are so large in fact that I've had to create a new navigation overlay for objects and locations that fall outside of the camera render distance.




There is still a lot of work to be done, but this is a giant leap for Frontiers Reach in several categories. For now though it's time for me to get back to work in prepping this massive update for the Jan 1 release.


Till next pilots, happy hooning!

With all that is available on the current market and what is yet to come in the likes of Light No Fire and Star Citizen I find myself asking a simple question.


Why play anything else?


These games that are currently in development, and those titles that have already released, that achieve what we might call “metaverse” status in that they are essentially simulated realities no matter how rudimentary they may seem. When games like these exist, that create spaces where anything can happen. What reason is there for anything else to exist?


If Star Citizen created a low stakes PvP arena for gun slinging gladiators, what reason would Call of Duty have to exist other than the story it presents in the context of modern or near future military fiction?


Once the fantasy virtual world of Light No Fire is released, will there be a reason for Dungeons & Dragons to release a new game or would it make more sense to contact Hello Games and work out a collaborative deal? After all, it’s not like they couldn’t just generate a whole DnD themed planet with key locations injected at various points. I would be surprised if Wizards of the Coast hasn’t already had that conversation.


On a personal level I’ve been asking this question of myself with regards to Frontiers Reach for the past 4 years. But as a developer watching other devs work on things they love, I’ve also been pondering what the question means beyond just myself and FR.


With entire studios putting enormous amounts of effort into whole universes, rendered at or beyond the edges of what is possible graphically, where anything is possible in terms of gameplay…


Why would you play anything else?



The truth is that there is plenty of reason. First and foremost is that there are different people in the world with varying levels of interest and time. Second is that not every game is able to deliver on the same experience in the same way. Frontiers Reach being as visually distinct as it is, is just one immediate example I can think of. Another reason is depth, having played games like No Man’s Sky and Elite: Dangerous, one thing that always sticks out to me is just how shallow some of the mechanisms in these larger metaverse type games are. And some of that may come down to accessibility in effort to maximize player appeal across ever wider demographics.



However there is something going on that is affecting the games industry at nearly every level. Something that is having an impact not just on Frontiers Reach, but every game.


I have heard my publisher make mention of it in our meetings. I’ve heard other devs mention it in their complaints about the industry. And recently I’ve read articles about it in the media.


They all say essentially the same thing, that the AA Games section of the industry is gone.


Lesser and lesser interest is being given to games that aren’t AAA games with AAA budgets and AAA sized studios working at the edge of photo-realism in rendering. While there are still some left, numerous studios that once made games in the 20-40 USD range have been decimated by the throes of an economic downturn and increased levels of automation creeping into the game dev space.


There is also a widening budgetary gap between indie games and AAA games. One so large that any AA studio left standing after all that has happened is essentially an indie studio now. Whether they like it or not.



When it comes to Frontiers Reach I’ve always pitched the game, and studio, as indie. Not because of the size of the project, but because of the size of the budget involved with making the project. The whole budget for Frontiers Reach is less than 60,000 USD cold hard cash across 4 years and that’s almost exclusively for software licenses, some assets, and a bunch of voice over. Everything else, the artwork, the game mechanics, and back end running everything and saving your progress. That was all done by myself. Bringing in guest developers to work on different parts and pieces to fill in the gaps where my knowledge was lacking. Even with the assistance I’ve still got 7000+ hours of development time into FR.


So when people ask me about what makes Frontiers Reach standout against the competition like Star Citizen, War Thunder, Everspace, and No Man’s Sky, I always come back to the same conclusion.


I don’t have the money, time, or interest in destroying my personal health enough to even bother trying to compete with those other games. I have certainly felt the pressure in the form of other people comparing Frontiers Reach to other games. But the reality of the matter is that there is no money for FR to be anything other than a niche space/flight combat game. Nearly every direction that I could expand in, is barred by a budgetary limit I simply do not have the resources to overcome. And that’s ignoring the fact that the game is already much larger than it was initially planned to be. Features like the Warmap and Uncharted Worlds were added to increase the content offerings using existing tools and components. Very little in the way of new features, code, or menus needed to be added to facilitate those additions. The Warmap for instance uses all of the exact same scripting tools, art, and NPCs as the main story missions.



So when I think about why someone should play Frontiers Reach over a game like Star Citizen, this is what I have concluded.


In Frontiers Reach, you’re not going to be doing, a lot of nothing. No spending 30 minutes traveling between locations. That’s a fancy loading screen with your vessel moving between major locations as you watch the stars fly past the screen. And then launch into a sector in your starfighter where you will run a mission, or explore the sector at your liesure.

You will be spending a lot of time in combat. This first game in the series is laser focused on space and aerial combat because I want a focus on vehicles, particularly flying vehicles, to be a staple of the series. Even in the earliest of days for FR development and design there was always a focus on flying machines.


Additionally a retro aesthetic is what you get when you dive into Frontiers Reach. If you like me are tired of looking at Star Wars or Bladerunner and things that are desperate to be Star Wars or Bladerunner; then you are probably remembering the older and more obscure scifi worlds and universes out there. Terran Trade Authority is one such universe that comes to mind. Along with Trigan Empire for you more seasoned pilots hailing from Europe.


Frontiers Reach is also a story driven game. Always has been, and always will be. There are of course opportunities to engage in exploration and even shoot some space rocks for game currency, but the driving force is always going to be story. No mindless gameplay loops that end up turning into a grind. We don’t do really want to do that here. And on a personal level, I hate that type of gameplay.


No, out here on the frontier we are almost the exact opposite of the modern AAA, blockbuster, billion dollar “next big thing” game.


In almost every sense of the word.





Till next time pilots, happy hooning and fly dangerously!