Heroes of Science and Fiction News

Only 4 days left until Silence of the Siren launches in Early Access! We are excited to show you a brand new trailer made for the occasion. Give it a watch and tell us what you think! :)

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Sit close to the fire, my young friends! Take a sip of beer and listen to what I have to say to those young ears of yours, because the story of Sovereign Fleet is about old men and even older grudges. And about crazy aliens, yes, about those too. So listen up, now. It will be really shiny.



You all know the Sovereign Fleet of today. They call us space pirates and see us as smugglers from rim colonies who accept any fugitive and weirdo who stray among us. Ha! Those empty kegs! We are so much more!
Primo, we are family. The ever-fighting, bickering, and annoyingly loud kind, but a family nevertheless. We care for each other and have one another's back like a family and it makes us strong.
Secundo, we are warriors. Warriors born both of necessity and lust for an adventurous life. A colorful rebellion against the UNSS, its oppression, and its artificial way of life, bound and governed by corporate greed. And those crazy aliens. The Sovereign Fleet is like a wild weed. It sprouts in places unfit for life, turns to blossom against all odds, and then withers away only to grow again just a few feet away. This weed cannot be eradicated by any elaborate poison. If you stomp it down it will rise again, and trust me, my friend, it will leave some long thorns in your boot’s sole.



But why the metaphor: “poisons and heavy boots”? The answer is once again the UNSS - and there would be no UNSS without the crazy aliens. The Earth as their predecessor and the Sovereign Colonies, our ancestors, had their fair share of animosity before, but only when the cursed aliens called Hesperidians arrived in the Solar System and stuck their ugly insect faces out of their mothership, an immense interstellar ark, the real ugly business started to happen.
I don't know why the Hesperidians chose the Earth over the Sovereigns, but they did. Together they started to build the UNSS establishment and Earth received all the alien technology and know-how. That was the beginning of the end for the Sovereign Colonies.

What happened then, you ask? You know what always happens when two possess all the power and have no common goal. The war happened. It does not matter which incident kindled the fights but they spread like wildfire and quickly as one, too. The war started by clashes between starships, but the Sovereign fleet was quickly scattered. We had no idea the Hesperidians had the shield technology and without it, the fights quickly moved to our space stations, asteroid mining facilities, and under the crystal bubbles of planetary colonies. We gave them a hell of a fight, but they fought dirty and did not shy away from using any new technology.


Then the governors arrived and established a protectorate. Labor camps, prison colonies, repopulation. Name any atrocity, you won’t be wrong. But in those dark times, the Sovereign fleet began its return. The small acts of heroism, inconsequential sabotages, and ambushes in the rim territories. Masked as transport ships, we began our fight against tyranny. A desperate fight, fed by grief and vengeance.
Over the years, most of the old captains fell to the UNSS hunt, one by one. The Hesperidians used all the dirty tricks they had, but a handful of those old spacewolves managed to survive to this day. That is good because they are the backbone of the Sovereign Fleet now. The body and muscles. You lot. The young generation became Sovereigns for different reasons. You hot-headed devils seek adventure, wealth, and the most glittering currency of them all, fame. The usual expiration date of the new sovereign captains back in the Solar System was a year or two, depending on their talent for evasion. But despite the number of exemplary cases, new captains always appeared.


The Solar system is only so big and it can only hide so many ships. A balance was kept for some time. But everything changed the moment a path to a new world opened. The Siren System became our promised land. And then a miracle came. We were cut from the Solar System. The remnants of the UNSS fleet that moved here with us lost their advantage of superior numbers. Forgotten settlers from rim colonies, Fossorian deserters, and renegade Children of the Source, all came to join our way of life.


The UNSS already lost the Siren system, because they lost the most important war. The war for people's hearts. Step by step, heart by heart, we will take everything they have and return nothing. We will build this place wild and beautiful. We will take the old dream about sovereignty and make it into reality in our new home. And one day, who knows? Perhaps there will be enough strength to kick the UNSS and their crazy alien friends from the Solar System too!

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.