Iron Armada News

We're still here. Working every day since our last development blog, the Iron Armada development team has been toiling away working towards the ultimate release of our game. This newly released version is the pre-release for our first non-early access release of the game. There will still be some bugs, and a chunk of more work to be done... but with your help, we are now nearing the first completed version of Iron Armada.

If you would like to read more, you can visit our website to read the full development blog.

What is included in this new version of the game?

Single-player missions and autonomous drones. Players can now construct and fight against autonomous drones in offline single-player modes. These drones also work in multiplayer matches, meaning that cooperative and PVPVE modes are also entirely possible.



Pressurization and airlock mechanics. Players now need to ensure that ships are airtight. Ships can be damaged and entire decks can be depressurized. Players can survive off of emergency oxygen reserves for limited amounts of time... but managing a ship's hull integrity is now of new importance.



Advanced logistics and docking mechanics. Players can now store resources in tanker ships, and transfer resources to other ships using docking bays. Docking bays can also be used to tow other ships, or even house fighters when the fighters are not being piloted.



Torpedoes and advanced weapon mechanics. Players can now construct torpedo bombers, and fire slow (but powerful) physics-driven rocket weaponry. Additionally new explosive, armor penetration, and weapon deviation mechanics will continue to make combat even more interesting.



Voice communications, squad mechanics, shipyards, and more. This update includes a significant number of additional features not listed here. To read more make sure to visit our website development blog!

Remember that this is the beta release for our upcoming full release of Iron Armada. Issues are still expected, and bug reports are much appreciated. However we hope that you will enjoy the new features that we have worked hard on, and once Iron Armada is fully completed... we hope you will appreciate the time we've put into building this game.

Hopefully I will see you on the battlefield again soon.

- Bluedrake42

We just released patch 3.3.0 which fixes a few critical bugs, and also does some backend work to help us with future development! If you want to know the specifics, make sure you check our commit log here!

The primary changelog highlights for this patch are:

• Fixed crash when respawning on non-existant core
  
• Rebuilt underlying systems to be more organized for future development
  
• Fixed issue with selected servers not highlighting properly
  

For those of you who like to follow along with development, we also had our weekly review meeting on Discord today. You can view the meeting notes here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l445se2ZGuE&lc=Ugw-qVn_ja9J3bf--LJ4AaABAg

If you would like to keep up with community meetings, event tests, and our daily changelog... you can join our Discord server by visiting the link below!

Links for our community portals:
https://forum.bluedrake42.com
https://discord.gg/ironarmada

Cheers!

~ Bluedrake42
Drakeling Labs

Hello everyone! Today I wanted to go over our development meeting schedule, that is completely open to the public, so you can stay up to date (and even have an influence on) our weekly development cycle!





For those of you who are interested in being a part of Iron Armada's development cycle, you can attend our weekly meeting sessions that we hold publicly in our Discord!

Our current meeting schedule is:

• Monday - at 4PM EST
  
• Wednesday - at 4PM EST
  
• Friday - at 4PM EST
  

You can join our public meeting channel here where we hold our weekly meetings! Currently only developers (or lead testers) are allowed to talk during the meetings, however everyone is still allowed to type in our public text channels... and of course listen in!

We also keep public recordings of all our meetings in the past, so you can feel free to check our archives to catch up... so you never miss anything! Here is the archive of our last meeting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1fHGolrpD4

We also keep a general topic and notes overview of the meeting in text form on Google documents! So you can also quickly check the summary of what we covered that day! Here are the general notes of our last meeting on Google documents.

We'll continue to post follow up announcements for our future meetings! Hopefully (if you're interested in contributing to Iron Armada's future) you'll be able to attend! Anyone who is interested in helping report bugs, discuss gameplay ideas, organize events, make roadmap suggestions, and also generally test the game are more than encouraged to join!

Thanks so much for attending the last meeting everyone, and we hope to see you all at the next one!

Links for our community portals:
https://forum.bluedrake42.com
https://discord.gg/ironarmada

Cheers!

~ Bluedrake42
Drakeling Labs

Last development blog you all voted on which of the three upcoming features we should implement first! Oxygen & airlocks won by a huge margin! Now today, we're here to talk about how we're going to implement it!



Many people forget what Iron Armada looked like two years ago! For those of you who forgot... here is a little reminder (this is actually relevant =P)



When we first started working on the Iron Armada engine framework... many things you take for granted now... weren't in the game at all (remember that Iron Armada isn't built on an engine like Unity! It is built from its entirely own custom codebase in Java... kindof like Minecraft)

Every little detail of the game (bullets, destruction, player death, animations, moving, building, walking, and more!) had to be built from scratch.

So... for example, when you used to break a ship in half (in older Iron Armada builds) it wouldn't break in half. This was because the computer literally didn't understand the concept of things "breaking apart" and we had to develop that concept from the ground up.



When you think about it... even the seemingly simple concept of "breaking" is a little more complex when teaching it to a computer. So to keep processor usage low, but still simulate convincing "breaks" for ships in Iron Armada... we devised the following mechanism:

Every time a ship tile is changed, or removed... the computer does a manual "flood fill" of the ship, originating from the point of the change. If the computer can still fill every tile of the ship during the flood fill, then it does nothing. However... if not, then the computer marks the isolated tiles and deletes them. Then at the exact same second, the computer re-spawns the isolated tiles as a completely new ship... in the exact same position they were when they were deleted.

This results in two separate physical objects... creating the effective illusion of a ship "break." That is currently how the destruction system still works today!



Because that flood fill system (the one we developed years ago) is exactly the same mechanic we're going to use to simulate atmospheric pressure!

Every tile in Iron Armada currently has a parameter for "I have oxygen" or "I am a vacuum." For instance... this is why you recharge oxygen on a ship corridor tile, but lose oxygen while standing on an asteroid (try it yourself!) However this is also why (in the current version of Iron Armada) you can recharge oxygen on a floor tile... that is floating in the vacuum of space.

However now... In order to detect that oxygen is in a sealed environment... the "ship split" mechanic will be copied and re-purposed. Now, instead of finding "breaks" in a ship... the system will look for "holes" in a room.

Every time a ship tile is changed or removed, the same flood fill mechanic will originate from the offending tile. From here... the system will flood fill the ship, and decide if any "floor" tile (or otherwise non-pressurized tile) is touching a "vacuum" (or empty) tile. If it is... then that entire tileset is then set to vacuum.

Simple... clean... and hopefully also very network efficient ship pressurization! Which is what we've been hoping for all along =)



Hopefully soon! We're still working on a few bugs and critical fixes in the mean time, but we'll be releasing a feature patch (with oxygen) hopefully shortly after!

If you all want to follow up with development, remember YOU CAN WATCH US DEVELOPING THE GAME IN REAL TIME ON GITLAB!

https://gitlab.bluedrake42.com/drakelinglabs/ironarmada

You can also follow our development blogs and posts on our Discord, and our forums! We really value your input, feedback, and most importantly bug reports! So if you want to help us get these great features in faster... please stick around there!

Outside of that... thank you everyone who has purchased the game, and supported development so far. We know we're still in an early state of development, but your support has already made a huge difference for us... and we are humbled by it.

We hope you all will visit us on our Discord, and stick around for our community events! We're excited to work on our next feature after oxygen... which will include a singleplayer update! This way... many of you nightowls can continue playing the game, after the rest of the community is fast asleep =)

Until then... I hope to see you on the space battlefield soon!

Links for our community portals:
https://forum.bluedrake42.com
https://discord.gg/ironarmada

Cheers!

~ Bluedrake42
Drakeling Labs

Hello everyone! Today I wanted to do an exclusive development blog about pricing (and the future versions of Iron Armada) answering many questions the community has asked.



Keep in mind, before anything else, that Iron Armada is currently an early access game. I cannot stress enough... that if you do not enjoy Iron Armada in its current form, you are not obligated to purchase it what-so-ever. We totally support anyone watching and waiting, to wait until the game meets their expectations before they buy =)

However for our loyal early supporters: the people who truly believe in our game... and want to help us succeed, your purchase will go directly towards helping this game develop. Drakeling Labs never did any Kickstarter, or any other crowdfunding project for this title... because we believe in letting players choose to support a game, based off of its current build... not off of vague promises of a better game.

So with that said... please remember. If you would like to support development, you can purchase the currently available Pioneer's Edition of the game... and participate in our early alpha builds (and receive the full game at launch.) However if you would otherwise like to wait... until the game is further along in development, before you commit your money... then we entirely encourage you to do so!

With that out of the way, let's answer some questions =)



We thought we had our price nailed down to 15$... but then after thinking more (and also finally having access to Steam's storefront API) we realized that there are so many other ways we could price Iron Armada to better suit our community.

For instance... I would love to have a free version of the game available at launch. Games like Unturned have done INCREDIBLY well by allowing their players to optionally purchase the game, and support development... but still allow everyone (regardless of purchase) to still play.

I would love to have something like that for Iron Armada. However we're not currently entirely sure HOW we would implement something like this.

Steam has a limited number of ways to manage your game's pricing, and some of these methods require Valve's approval (or complicated technical requirements that need to be completed before you are able.) Because of this... we're taking our time during early access to better understand Steam's storefront API, and what pricing options we're given during release (and what effects each option will have down the road.)

In the mean-time, we have a founder's early access edition of Iron Armada available to anyone who wants to immediately access the game... and support development. However if anyone feels they would like to wait until the game is more completed until purchasing, then we entirely encourage you to do so!



Everything advertised on the store page is already in the game! We do not advertise any feature, or any aspect of Iron Armada... that isn't already included in the current version.

Currently in Iron Armada there are:

• Fighters, frigates, and capital ships that each player can build themselves.
  
• Resource mining, destructible asteroids, and capture-able planets (that we want to expand upon soon!)
  
• A structured team vs team gamemode, where two sides compete to capture planets, destroy enemy ships, and harvest greater resources.
  
• Cooperative ship features, including player manned turrets, boarding other ships, salvaging derelict vessels, and capturing enemy craft.
  

Currently there is only one gamemode in the game, but each server has the ability to create its own new maps, starting ships, and gamemode layouts! However by default, we have included three ship designs and three default maps for new servers!



Iron Armada took about two years of development to reach Steam Greenlight, and then one year of development to reach Steam Early Access. Overall, as we gain more support (and can afford to feed ourselves!) development is progressing faster!

This means I expect Iron Armada to reach a full release much sooner than we expected... but there is also considerably more work to do than our cycle leading up to Steam Greenlight!

So ultimately... I can only say: our early access cycle will have to take as long as the game needs! We want to continuously update Iron Armada regularly, so that our community can see and feel the progress we are making... however I definitely don't want to release the game before it is ready!

Many games (like Rimworld) took the time they needed during early access to really refine their game into something special, something that exploded when they finally decided to launch. I would love to follow in those same footsteps... and take the time we need to make this game great, and use Steam's Early Access platform to its full purpose... as a place to grow our game right, to connect with our community, and to deeply incorporate all our early supporters into the development (and decision making) process of the game
Hopefully that is something everyone from our community can fully understand and support! We're here to make something great... and to put our money where our mouth is. If you don't like the game in its current form, and don't want to buy it... we completely endorse that. However if you want to come on this journey with us, and support our game that you believe in... we humbly accept your support, and we look forward to making this game together with you =)

Thanks everyone who has been a part of our game so far, and to everyone else watching and waiting... we hope we get to meet your expectations soon =)

Links for our community portals:
https://forum.bluedrake42.com
https://discord.gg/ironarmada

Cheers!

~ Bluedrake42
Drakeling Labs