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[Moghjubar]

Kickstarter is now LIVE: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/309114309/infinity-battlescape/description
https://www.inovaestudios.com/Battlescape

Livestreaming of prototype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sglhi_PIEX4

If you dont know what Infinity: Quest for Earth is... well, look it up.   This isn't actually QFE but battlescape... but anyway...







Effectively, they have a great deal of engine, but they need to do a 'smaller' game to finish up and actually make something.  Supposedly the game is going to be a small, arena type game with resource management: more details soon.

Heres an old engine video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=a6a69dMLb_k

More recent video:planetary overview and sweet, sweet rings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR9KpK1Ua-Q

From blog: vid showing multiplayer flying in a canyon: https://inovaedev.blob.core.windows.net/share-pub/Videos/OBS_chase_2.webm

Quick blurb from the blurb about prototype thats going to be in kickstarter:
"
 The Battlescape Game Prototype: expectations
As we have been teasing in the past, I have started working on a prototype of the game. It's obviously in a very early stage, and it is not a pre-alpha. It is a prototype. I really want to emphasize this, because although I'm implementing it so that as many components can be reused in the future, there are major systems that will probably have to get revamped when we start on the actual game after the Kickstarter. Gameplay is experimental, and is currently just used to get a "feel" on how things might play and look like. So don't jump jump to conclusions after seeing it in action ( right now in this blog it'll just be small teasers, but we'll show a lot more during the KS campaign ), nothing in set in stone and it still looks rough.

Let's start with the technical side first. The prototype was built on top of the Kickstarter pitch video assets. Those assets weren't built for the prototype in the first place, which practically means that in terms of polycounts and textures resolution, we've been cutting corners. To give an example, the Hellion has a polycount budget of 11,000 triangles. But this number was set many years ago and is outdated. In recent tests we've pushed this budget to around 200,000 triangles for a small ship like the Hellion, and much more for bigger ships like a carrier. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to remake the assets, so the Hellion still looks low-poly. Rest assured that for the actual game we'll rework all these assets and upgrade their look.

TL;DR: Everything you'll see in the Kickstarter and Prototype is already pretty much already outdated in terms of visual look. I know it sounds weird to say that when it's taken us a long time to get this Kickstarter out of the door, but it's simply a practical consequence of developing all of this in our part time at a lower pace instead of working with real funding. In addition, we're not working with an established engine like Unity or Unreal Engine 4, therefore there are constantly new technical features / improvements that we need to do, which other games / Kickstarters aren't bothering with ( and which allow us to provide you an entire seamless Solar system ! ).
"

Looks like its basically funded now!

[Hanzoku]

So... he wants people to pay him to make a technical prototype, so that he can shop that around in a second kickstarter for the game he actually wants to make?

[Mattk50]

So... he wants people to pay him to make a technical prototype, so that he can shop that around in a second kickstarter for the game he actually wants to make?

Battlescape isnt a technical prototype, the idea is a match based space combat game with resources and relatively large amounts of players(100+), with a full scale solar system down to each planetary surface as the arena. If it turns out as they intend it could very well surpass similar, and very fun, games that have existed in the past like free allegiance. We haven't gotten a good replacement for that one yet, no really good, single sitting space arenas with more strategic layers than just deathmatch. Thats what im hoping for out of this, at least.

As far as i understand, the super-mmo they wanted to make but dont have the capability to do right now is not going to be a stretch goal or something. Stretch goals will include things like better mod support, more ships, and additional gameplay features. IMO its a better approach than promising something they can't deliver as elite dangerous did.

Short Q&A with Keith on their forums:

1. The biggest misconception seems to be that E:D, NMS, etc built planet tech before us. We've been working on this for a long time and arguably everybody else is just trying to beat us to the punch
2. It's truly seamless, to-scale, and playable *right now*. It isn't a promise of something we could, should, or will do. We've already built this, it works, we're going to show you during the campaign.
3. Modding is one of our stretch goals, we can't wait to see what other people can build with our tech
4. This is just the tip of the iceberg with what we'll be able to do with our tech. Really I can't begin to explain the magnitude of cool stuff we can do once we get funding

If you were to compare your game to the other big name space titles out there. What would you consider I:BS' highlights, strengths, and mechanical value?

Easily our biggest strength is that we have amazing planet tech *right now*. Everybody else is playing catch-up to us, lets keep it that way. Secondly we aren't promising the ultimate game of everything. We know we can't build that right now. We hope that the launch of this KS demonstrates that we can ship product and that we're fully committed to being both transparent and realistic about what we can accomplish and under what time frame (we've learned a lot on that front ). That's also why we haven't taken anybody's money up until now. We wanted to be certain we could deliver a polished product before we took that step. Sometimes slow and steady wins the race.

How long did it take you to get to this stage?

A *long* time lol. We've been working on the KS for ~2.5 years I think. Flavien started working on the tech back in 2004.

How tough was it multitasking a job and a rather devout hobby for everyone in the team at this point?

Incredibly difficult. How hard this has been really can't be put into words. We've been juggling jobs, significant others, and burnout for *years* to bring this tech to market. On top of that we're scattered across different countries, cultures, and time zones. Most of us have never met one another. This Kickstarter really represents a tremendous accomplishment.

We're hoping the thrill of combat skills & tactics/player & corporation competition/honing of skills will keep players coming back. Holistically at its core, Battlescape is an "arena shooter". You will spawn, you will fight another team(s), one team will win. As funding increases, the complexity and length of the battles will evolve infusing more possibilities in the realm of tactics/semi-persistence, however ultimately you win or lose a battle, then start over. This is a successor to ICP remember.

[Sergarr]

I honestly don't see why would I want this game. Apparently the tech base is a planet simulator, but the gameplay is a highly confined arena shooter? Why would you need the whole planet simulation for something like that?

[Defacto]

I honestly don't see why would I want this game. Apparently the tech base is a planet simulator, but the gameplay is a highly confined arena shooter? Why would you need the whole planet simulation for something like that?

As I understand it, it is ''confined'' as in ''confined to a single 1:1 scaled star system''. At least that is the plan for battlescape.

[andrea]

It is confined as compared to the original project of a galaxy wide MMO, but a 1:1 solar system is still way larger than most open world games. Definitely not something I would define as highly confined.

even just a single planet and its orbit would be huge.

that is from what I understood of the project anyway. I have been waiting for this for a long time and if the technical prototype(which I understand will be released during the kickstarter) is convincing on the engine and scale, I will most likely back it. Navigating the rings of saturn  searching the enemy hiding behind a space rock, gathering on the far side of a satellite for an attack on a planet, dogfighting from orbit to the wide oceans and narrow canyons. Seems fun.

[Sergarr]

I dunno, it seems that 90% of the time you're going to be tracking through empty space, and that doesn't seem very fun.

[Niveras]

I don't like the idea of it being an arena-match game set in such a huge area. You could join the match and spend hours tooling around and not necessarily find anyone.

It seems like it would work better as a persistent PvP world like Planetside.

[Android]

It seems like it would work better as a persistent PvP world like Planetside.

I am hoping that they will go somewhat in that direction, while still retaining some overall victory conditions too.

[Mattk50]

I don't like the idea of it being an arena-match game set in such a huge area. You could join the match and spend hours tooling around and not necessarily find anyone.

It seems like it would work better as a persistent PvP world like Planetside.

It's very silly to suggest this would be an issue. In planetside people can run around in the middle of nowhere, where nothing is happening, but they don't want or have to  be, so they don't. Unless the devs turn out to completely fuck up the gameplay design, there will be numerous points of interest, methods of interdiction, sensor ranges, and no excuse for players to just be "tooling around not finding anyone".

[Moghjubar]

Kickstarter now live: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/309114309/infinity-battlescape/description

Livestream of gameplay right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sglhi_PIEX4

[Rose]

I really wish I could back it, but I'm broke.

Also calling battlescape a tech demo is a bit of an injustice. It's only as much a tech demo as the quake and doom games were.

[Niveras]

It's very silly to suggest this would be an issue. In planetside people can run around in the middle of nowhere, where nothing is happening, but they don't want or have to  be, so they don't. Unless the devs turn out to completely fuck up the gameplay design, there will be numerous points of interest, methods of interdiction, sensor ranges, and no excuse for players to just be "tooling around not finding anyone".

Yeah, I guess you're right. People are going to gravitate to where things can actually happen - even if it's just harvesting resources or delivering them, never mind the actual fighting - which actually lends itself better to a defined match model, where you know there are enough active players at the time to warrant the match being run. In a persistent world model, you'd actually be able to log on and not necessarily know how active the world is at the time (depending on what numbers are available prior and how the game shows activity).

It still feels like it could benefit from a persistent model over matchmaking, just so wimpy players like me can play and "contribute" to some kind of progress without necessarily having to risk fighting - for example, harvesting during low pop times.

Also calling battlescape a tech demo is a bit of an injustice. It's only as much a tech demo as the quake and doom games were.

This isn't the first iteration of this. The original, several years ago, was a mostly largely intended to test the netcode or something, but people played it as a PvP fighter sim. Although I guess that wasn't really a tech demo either. I:TQFE was always, from what I know, intended as a galaxy simulation, including smooth transition to planet surfaces, and the economy aspects grow from that. But that public alpha, or whatever you want to call it, was a skybox only, there were no planet transitions.

[Mattk50]

It's very silly to suggest this would be an issue. In planetside people can run around in the middle of nowhere, where nothing is happening, but they don't want or have to  be, so they don't. Unless the devs turn out to completely fuck up the gameplay design, there will be numerous points of interest, methods of interdiction, sensor ranges, and no excuse for players to just be "tooling around not finding anyone".

Yeah, I guess you're right. People are going to gravitate to where things can actually happen - even if it's just harvesting resources or delivering them, never mind the actual fighting - which actually lends itself better to a defined match model, where you know there are enough active players at the time to warrant the match being run. In a persistent world model, you'd actually be able to log on and not necessarily know how active the world is at the time (depending on what numbers are available prior and how the game shows activity).

It still feels like it could benefit from a persistent model over matchmaking, just so wimpy players like me can play and "contribute" to some kind of progress without necessarily having to risk fighting - for example, harvesting during low pop times.

Also calling battlescape a tech demo is a bit of an injustice. It's only as much a tech demo as the quake and doom games were.

This isn't the first iteration of this. The original, several years ago, was a mostly largely intended to test the netcode or something, but people played it as a PvP fighter sim. Although I guess that wasn't really a tech demo either. I:TQFE was always, from what I know, intended as a galaxy simulation, including smooth transition to planet surfaces, and the economy aspects grow from that. But that public alpha, or whatever you want to call it, was a skybox only, there were no planet transitions.

the ICP was originally intended to test netcode then branched out into general combat testing and eventually got a ton of community contributions and turned out to be a great combat game in itself. I played the hell out of it. If the ICP alone is indication of the quality of game design that will go into battlescape that alone would be worth it. But they also have an amazing procedural engine with unprecedented scale. Other games can try to fake it, like ED, but you always notice the instance changes and they force gameplay into certain directions, this doesnt.

They've handed out press demos to several streamers, bluedrake did earlier and just now.
Badnewsbaron did a stream of the game, including the racing prototype, and even interviewed some of the developers. Really, the game is so far along even as is, it's wonderful to see. I reccomend watching that stream, it's saved in his past broadcasts here: http://www.twitch.tv/badnewsbaron/v/21713702

[Niveras]

Ah, Combat Prototype. I knew it had a special name but couldn't remember.

Also, I'm glad to see that it is still very much alive and getting along. I learned of it many years ago, but stopped keeping up because the forums were always basically "it would be so cool if [thing] was in!". People were even starting and joining corporations/guilds/whatever. A lot of really excited people over something that still hasn't seen the light of day. Then they changed the forums and I was like, "WTF is this? How is this better than what it was?" I couldn't make any sense of it after the change.

Anyway, yeah, glad to see it is slowly making its way toward release.