Heroes of Science and Fiction News

In today's post we'd like to go just a tiny bit more technical than usually. Let's peek a bit behind the scenes and let's have a look at a few features we're particularly happy with how they turned out. And we'll of course also mention why they're interesting when you actually play the game! :)

[h3]The Day-night cycle[/h3]

Matching a day-night cycle to the cycle that controls when the units get replenished at your bases works so well! Especially the bases themselves can look quite beautiful at night.


But we're not only talking about visual spice that adds to the atmosphere. We've already started enabling some gameplay features built on top of this, like monsters changing between day and night.


Different days (cycles) will also often trigger different global effects.
Some of these will give you a bonus, some will impede your production or limit your visibility range on the map.



[h3]Lights[/h3]
In realtime graphics (unless you use the so-called deferred rendering, which is not suitable for our graphics style with a lot of transparency and hand-drawn sprites) there's usually a limit to how many dynamic lights the engine allows you to use - in Unity it's 4.

We use these for the main light that casts shadows and for an ambient light, but we needed much more. The solution? A custom 2D light map.



We render sprites that represent lights of different shapes to a texture, which is then accessed by shaders that draw all the different types of objects, monsters and terrain. And what are these lights actually used for?

• There are colored lights to subtly highlight which player owns which structure.
  
• There are directional lights from your commander's 'torchlights'.
  
• And a lot of custom pointlights placed by the map designers to highlight objects or locations.
  

[h3]Fog of war[/h3]

The Fog of War system has been one of the most complicated features to implement, as it affects almost everything else in the game.

There are three levels of the starry 'fog' as you explore the map: undiscovered, 'remembered' and of course areas currently visible to your commanders and structures.

As you leave an area, the game must remember the state of everything when you've seen it last and this is for example used when a path is planned for your commanders. The game will also give you a [!] notification and sometimes pause your commander's movement if you return to a discovered area and something has changed, like when the treasure you're going to pick up has been already taken or a monster already defeated.


Now, let's have a quick look at the graphical side.
A starry sky with some light nebulosity works well for the sci-fi settings.

To make things more complicated for ourselves, we also added a little paradox: Notice that the Fog of War texture looks like it is above the terrain (this is quite subtle, but look at some stars on the left or on the right next to the discovered area)!



One more little detail is that objects right at the edge of the undiscovered territory don't just pop up, but they get rendered as their silhouettes first, so they can nicely fade-in!


Let us know if you enjoyed this kind of a technical post! We might do one about scripting the campaign, if you're interested. The next post though should be a proper introduction of the Sovereign Fleet, the third playable faction included in the Early Access build coming in September!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2147380/Silence_of_the_Siren/

In Silence of the Siren you're not limited to taking over the existing buildings on the map. There are a few useful structures that your commanders can construct to defend your territory, boost your income or surprise your enemies.

[h2]The Rules[/h2]

Any commander can use their movement points once per round to construct something. The objects cost some resources and usually take a short while to activate, but if you so desire, you can spend a little bit extra to power them up immediately.



There are also special points on each map, building zones, that allow you to construct these structures with a big discount.



If one of your structures isn't needed anymore, you can always take it down. You will even reclaim some of the materials that were used to build it.

Some of your commanders will learn the Builder skill. It allows them to construct more powerful versions of the buildings and gives some nice discounts for various actions on the map, including upgrading your mines!

[h2]The Structures[/h2]
First, let's list them all, then we'll have a closer look at three examples!

• Mining probes,
  
• Automatic turrets,
  
• Outposts,
  
• Drone dogs,
  
• Cybersnares, traps that catch enemy commanders - available to commanders with maxed-out Builder skill.
  

Drone Dogs are small stationary bots that extend the visibility in the fog of war. It's always nice to leave one behind when returning from an expedition to see if somebody is following in your steps. :)



Outposts let you leave guards at your chosen location - and provide a few special perks.



Most importantly, if you have a gateway-type building in your base, you can send troops to your outposts directly!



Also, when some enemy units want to join you during negotiations, but there's no space in your army, no problem! The nearest outpost can accept the recruits instead!

Then, on the economy side of things, there are Mining Probes. Here, we're talking about a classic risk/reward mechanic. A probe will mine some resources each round, until somebody pays it a visit and empties it. Do you need the resources right now? Oh, somebody else left an unguarded mining probe nearby! And so on. :)



While we still have some work ahead especially when it comes to game balance, you should now have a pretty good idea about the options your commanders have at hand when they're out in the wild.

Which one did you find most interesting? Have you tried any of these in the demo? Let us know in the discussion!

In this (pre-recorded) one hour stream we play a skirmish map and show a couple of playable factions from the distant Siren star system. Come check out some of the interesting mechanics and features in this upcoming turn-based strategy game with RPG elements.

In this (pre-recorded) one hour stream we play a skirmish map and show a couple of playable factions from the distant Siren star system. Come check out some of the interesting mechanics and features in this upcoming turn-based strategy game with RPG elements.

Hi, we're happy to announce that a big update of the Silence of the Siren demo is already up for everybody to try and it brings a new map which is not only fun to play, but also showcases quite a few new features. Let's have a look:


The maps in Silence of the Siren will have different layers and this is the new Orbital layer you can visit if you find a working space port.

Or, like in the demo, if you get kicked out there for your actions against the Fossorian military. O_o




Trying not to spoil anything, but... :) The demo level starts with a bit of story and has some more character interactions that can give you a bit of a picture of how the campaign planned for EA is going to work.
Don't forget to visit the Keeper for a little side quest!




Exploiting the territory for more resources? Guarding it passively or with automatic turrets? Any commander can build a selection of structures and commanders with the Builder skill get access to more powerful version of each.




Ok, you know how game development works: iterations. This is, if we remember correctly, the fifth version of the commander card - but it's getting better and better! :)



So, these are some of the main changes in the demo introduced over the last few months. if you'd like to give the game a try yourself, the demo is already up on Steam. And as always, we'll be grateful for any feedback, bug reports, wishlists - and let's hope the game does well during the Next Fest event.

And then, the next milestone is already the EA release at the end of September. Fingers crossed!