Infinity: Battlescape #HO

Weekly Update 5 14-3-2016

I think I forgot to post last weeks update but here's 5 anyway

Hey all time for another weekly update. On the engineering side we've primarily been focused on bug fixing, more website improvements, and working on our new installation/deployment platform - none of which is particularly exciting to talk about unless you're a programmer. What is exciting to talk about however is ships and weapons! The art team has been hard at work concepting and creating rough 3D mockups for all of our new ships as well as their fixed direction and turret based weapons. The first revision of these will be completed on Wednesday.

As I mentioned a bit last week our goal is to get rough un-textured meshes into the game as soon as possible so we can begin iterating on major gameplay systems. Sometime shortly after this coming Wednesday we'll begin integrating these 3D mockups into the prototype starting with the smaller ships, like the interceptor, and working our way up to the capital ships. While it won't be pretty we want to begin getting a feel for the mass/controls of the ships, cockpit visibility, weapon placement, balancing, and relative sizes.

Currently capital ships haven't been implemented in any playable form so there will be some amount of extra work to get our first capital ship up and running. Once that's complete we'll begin integrating 3D mockups for our weapon systems. This will also be quite a bit of work to implement in its first iteration as we only have a simple fixed-direction blaster type weapon currently implemented and both turrets and missiles will require their own targeting AI. That being said it's going to be a lot of fun to watch as the game starts taking shape!

Weekly Update 7 28-3-2016

This week has primarily been a continuation of the work started last week consisting of bug fixes, concept art for our new ships, and rough mockup meshes for the new ships. We've also been spending a lot of time this last week going back over all of our materials to make sure that they have proper brightness and contrast.

Part of the reason Infinity: Battlescape looks so good is that it's using a technique called Physically Based Rendering (PBR). This means that we do a lot of fancy math stuff to ensure that our simulation adheres to the real world laws of physics, such as the law of conservation of energy, which results in a more photo-realistic looking game. This changes the way our artists have to think about creating materials relative to how they have traditionally produced game assets and so we reviewed everything to make sure that our art is cohesive and to ensure everybody is building assets the best way possible.

A problem that we've known about for a while has to do with how we handle High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering. Unlike most (all?) other games we're using realistic quantities of light. The difference in lighting environments between space and atmospheric flight is enormous. Unfortunately that creates some rather challenging problems for us. Without getting too technical we're losing a lot of contrast when a ship is exposed to high quantities of light and it's making it difficult for our artists to properly author their textures. Originally this was going to be fixed in the polish phase of the game but due to its impact on our art team it looks like we'll have to address it sooner rather than later.

This week we've started integrating the rough 3D mockups of the new ships into the prototype. We're looking forward to releasing a patch soon to begin collecting feedback from those of you who have pledged Developer Access as we're confident they will require a lot of iteration between now the release of the final game!

Weekly Update 9 11-4-2016

A new weekly update to go along with our release of a new update for the game (Developer Access backers only)! We were unable to release our v0.1.3.0 patch yesterday due to a partial outage at our data center however everything was all sorted out today and we released the patch without any problems. The major new feature for v0.1.3.0 is the addition of a playable mockup of the corvette. It's big, less maneuverable, and has a very different flight model than the bomber which has already resulted in a number of pilots slamming into planets at fatal speeds. Of course this is only the initial implementation so we'll be iterating on it quite a bit over the coming months. You can read more information about what's changed in the v0.1.3.0 patch notes here. Below is a short video of some of our Developer Access backers playing around with the new corvette in all of its gray, untextured glory:

Now that the corvette has been integrated the next ship to get mocked up is the interceptor, which we expect to go pretty quickly. Following that will be additional weapon systems. Currently the only weapon available is a generic forward facing blaster which gets old pretty quick and is nowhere near being representative of the gameplay we're going after. We want to get some additional weapon types mocked up before we begin integrating capital ships so that we can start testing real gameplay - which should also make our videos much more interesting to watch.

As I've mentioned before our goal is to have all of the major gameplay components mocked up in some form within ₂ months. That'll give us approximately 5 months to get core gameplay reasonably well polished before the game becomes available to our Alpha backers. We also want to have the final art for the smaller ships (interceptor, bomber, and corvette) pretty well nailed down by the time we ship the Alpha. This will give our art team a good chunk of time to focus on the capital ships, stations, land bases, particle effects, and general polish as we push toward Beta and then gold release during 2017.

La estetica de naves y estructuras me gusta mucho, es muy pro-homeworld

Weekly Update 11 25-4-2016

Last week's update mentioned that the patch with the interceptor was right around the corner. At the time we sincerely thought that was the case but supporting game pads and joysticks ended up being a deeper rabbit hole than we had initially anticipated and it took all week to get the new code stable. Fortunately it's now finished and we've begun doing the integration work for the new interceptor mockup which is quite exciting. Due to its maneuverability we expect there won't be nearly as many people accidentally liquefying themselves by flying into mountains at speeds of 2 km/s like there was when we introduced the corvette.

An interceptor with a prototype of external missile pods

Speaking of the corvette our second iteration is coming along nicely. We've reduced its length from 115m to _82m which will make it a bit easier to fly. We're also redesigning its cockpit to increase visibility. As the largest non-capital ship in the game the corvette will perform a role similar to a modern tank. With heavy armor and heavy weaponry including independently targeting turrets it will make its presence known in a battlescape.

The corvette is the only non-capital ship with turrets

This week we've also put some significant work into updating the game launcher and web backend as we get ready to begin internal testing of our new installation/patching system. Our goal is to have it ready in time for the patch after next. At the moment updates to the game are coming once every few weeks. We'd like to significantly increase the frequency of our updates and this new patching system will be essential for reducing the size of your downloads as well as the amount of money we're paying for bandwidth. It's also part of the foundation for what we hope will one day become a Software Development Kit (SDK) for modders.

The completed prototype of the NPC hauler

Last but not least we have a new render, shown above, of the completed prototype of our NPC hauler. To refresh everyone's memory haulers will be spawned at factories every couple of minutes to deliver raw materials to the nearest base/space station. If the hauler successfully makes it then those raw materials are turned into credits evenly distributed among the members of that team for purchasing better ships and weapons. Therefore each team will have supply lines that can be disrupted by enemy forces either temporarily by destroying individual haulers or more permanently by destroying factories.

Weekly Update 12 2-5-2016

We're happy to announce that today we released patch v0.1.4.0 to all of our Developer Access backers. It contains numerous improvements and tweaks to the game. Most notably it has our new input mapper with support for gamepads and joysticks, a more realistic atmospheric flight model, the second iteration of the corvette, and most importantly the new interceptor! We've been getting some questions from Alpha backers about when the game will be available to play. The Alpha release is currently scheduled for October 29th, 2016.

Mockup of the interceptor cockpit

Over the next few weeks our engineering focus is going to shift from integrating ships and gameplay tweaks to taking care of some low level plumbing before we dive into weapons. Specifically we need to make some improvements to our core networking layer such as removing the last remnants of our trusted client code, which prevents hacking, and improving latency compensation. On top of that we still need to get our pledge upgrade system built for those of you who are looking to get in on the action sooner rather than later.

Revision 2 of the corvette cockpit

The art team's primary focus will be on space stations, land bases, and factories. These are large, complicated assets that will take a lot of time to complete. They will also continue work on revising the bomber, interceptor, and corvette as needed based on playtesting feedback. Looking back, full development began on February 1st and in the 3 months since then we're pretty happy with our progress. There's a lot that still needs to be done for the Alpha but we've worked through the initial ramp-up and reached a good cadence.

Revision 3 of the bomber

Weekly Update 14 16-5-2016

This week we deviated slightly from our aforementioned focus on networking to revisit our physics engine. The two are actually closely intertwined as networking physics is one of the most difficult parts of, well, networking. For the last forever we've been using a physics library that is quite old and no longer actively maintained. For a couple of years now we've been meaning to replace it and just didn't have the time to properly evaluate other options.

After looking at Bullet and PhysX along with a number of lesser known physics engines we've decided that Bullet will probably serve our needs the best. Over the last week we've laid the groundwork for this change but we won't actually do the Bullet integration until sometime after we finish the current round of improvements to networking.

(Concept art for sections of space station)

On the art side we have a bunch of screen shots that may not make a whole lot of sense but are actually quite important. We don't have the resources to build a lot of variation into our larger structures such as space stations, land bases, and factories. Instead we're trying to design a modular system whereby pre-made sections of architecture can be arbitrarily combined to create the perception of multiple unique structures.

(Concept art showing how pieces of architecture can fit together)

These screen shots show how we're planning on achieving that goal. We've also started building the 3d mockups for factories based on the finalized concept art released last week. More screen shots to come as these concepts get realized in (rough) 3d!

Weekly Update 16 31-5-2016

Hey all time for another weekly update. A number of large projects are beginning to wrap up. For starters updating the physics code is about done. We've completed a shallow integration of PhysX and it will be fully supported once they finish work on double precision. Originally we were going to use Bullet, which already supports double precision, however Bullet doesn't have multi-threading and its GPU support leaves much to be desired. Unfortunately those of you with AMD cards won't get any GPU acceleration with PhysX however its CPU implementation will still run better than any of the alternatives that we've tried - which are all CPU-only anyway.

Different architectural pieces of a planetary factory

The new installation and patching system is ready for internal testing by the team however there's still some work to be done with the launcher and in our web backend for uploading and publishing new patches. The backend integration also includes the groundwork for a big website update we want to do at some point. The first phase will be the aforementioned installer/patching support. This will be followed by a page that will allow people to upgrade their pledges and then finally the entire web portal will be updated. A new profile page which shows you your purchases/pledges, account information, and how to download the game will be the central focus of the website update.

A mockup of the land base hangar bay with 2 corvettes parked inside

On the art side things are really starting to come together for our space stations, land bases, and planetary factories. There's still a bit of design work left to be done on the land bases however the mockups for the factories and space stations are now being integrated into the game. We'll probably have 1 more patch, which may not include these new assets, using the old installation system before we switch to the new installation system along with a major update.

Major pieces of space station architecture

Scheduling-wise we're going to continue to work on low level infrastructure, primarily the website and game networking, for the month of June. In July we want to refocus back toward iterating heavily on gameplay as we begin a big 4 month push to get the Alpha out by the end of October. This will start with implementing additional weapons and beginning work on the game UI. For Alpha we want to have all major game systems mocked up, a working UI, and all of the cockpits close to being completed. Needless to say it's going to be a busy summer and fall!

Weekly Update 18 13-6-2016

Time for another weekly update! This week we're happy to say we're done with physics. We've primarily been working on bug fixes and preparing our next patch. Previously we had mentioned that our next patch wouldn't contain any new content. Due to the amount of time that's passed between now and our previous patch we felt that would be a bit underwhelming so we decided to push it back a little bit so we can include the new factory and space station placeholders. We also wrote all of the backend code for uploading, verifying, and distributing patches through our new installation system. The last step before that's ready is to finish integration with our launcher - which is getting a major overhaul both in its UI and its internals.

A section of a land base

On the art side the majority of the geometry placeholders are complete. There's still some work to be done on the land base and once we start iterating on weapons we'll likely have some additional mockups to create, both for weapon geometry as well as particle effects, but at the moment we think we're in a pretty good spot with regard to the look and feel of our ships and structures. From this point onward we're going to begin focusing on getting assets retail ready starting with cockpits and assets with a form that isn't affected much by gameplay such as the hauler.

The ground view of a land base

Once the patch is released our focus will shift back toward improving the networking layer, particularly our hit detection and latency compensation, which got delayed by the improvements to our physics subsystem. Sometime in July, after the networking improvements are finished, we will pivot back toward iterating heavily on gameplay starting with weapons. Mockups for our HUD and the game UI/menu system will also be produced. We will be focusing all of our energy on getting the major gameplay systems implemented in time for our Alpha release at the end of October.

A small hangar bay in a land base

As far as graphics are concerned we need to make some improvements to our decal and particle system rendering. On our forums we've discussed D3D12 and Vulkan quite a bit however it currently looks like it's unlikely we'll get to any significant graphics or optimization work until sometime in 2017.

Weekly Update 20 28-6-2016

Hey all it's weekly update time. This last week we pushed hard to get the new patch out however at the 11th hour we ran into a handful of blockers that delayed it. Specifically we realized that our build system was a bit of a mess. The new patching system just handles distribution, installation, and of course patching. What it doesn't handle is the generation of deployment packages.

Panoramic image of the new fighter cockpit

Up to this point we've been using the same build system that we were using for the Kickstarter. Back then we didn't need to produce new builds very often and since we were short on time the build system was constructed as "good enough under duress". Since then it has devolved into an arcane system of scripts and manually copying around files that really only Flavien fully understood and it took him hours to produce a new build - which is a big part of why, up till now, we haven't released patches very often.

Panoramic image of the new corvette cockpit

We spent the weekend constructing a proper, fully automated build system which is nearly complete. Due to this coming weekend being a holiday in the U.S. there's a good chance that we'll push the patch back to next week even if it's ready by the end of this week so that we have all hands on deck in case something goes wrong. We're going to be upgrading a lot of infrastructure for the next patch.

Panoramic image of the new bomber cockpit

On the art side work continues on finishing up the land base mockups and the cockpits for the smaller ships. The geometry work on the cockpits is coming along nicely and we're looking forward to getting to the texturing phase soon. This is particularly exciting because we're getting tired of everything being bland, boring gray geometry. You can checkout the panoramic views of the new cockpits by clicking the images above or following the links below:

• Fighter
• Bomber
• Corvette

Weekly Update 22 11-7-2016

Due to the holiday last weekend this was a short week so it's already time for another weekly update! Unfortunately a shorter week means less stuff to talk about. On the engineering side you can summarize our entire effort as working on getting the forever patch released. I mentioned last week that a recent update to Microsoft's development tools broke our build. At the time of the last weekly update it looked like it would be resolved in about a day but unfortunately the snowball effect that is so common in software development caused the effort required to resolve the problem to "snowball" into taking up the entire rest of the week.

Capital ship turret placeholders.

The good news is that we actually found a number of unrelated bugs in the game/engine that we were able to fix (hence the aforementioned snowball) and final testing on the new build will begin tomorrow. If all goes well we'll get back to finishing up the last bit of the new launcher and then releasing this dang patch.

Interceptor cockpit UV progress. Green = complete.

On the art side work continues on texturing and materials. Jan has made good progress on the interceptor cockpit, Dan is finishing up the geometry decal pass for the bomber cockpit, and Kristian is working on the exterior for the hauler. Hopefully we'll have some prettier images to show off soon.

Weekly Update 24 26-7-2016

It's time for another weekly update. This last week has been a pretty hectic one as we pushed hard to get the forever patch ready for release. Today we started the first phase of rolling out the new patch by updating our web infrastructure. On the surface you probably haven't noticed anything different because the update primarily applies to stuff going on behind the scenes. Over the next few days we'll begin slowly rolling out the patch to Developer Access backers who happen to be in Discord and if everything goes smoothly that will be followed by the general release of the new patch to all Developer Access backers.

Updated WIP shot of the interceptor cockpit

Aside from that Flavien has started work on the new networking code and our artists continue work on getting our first set of production ready assets completed. Jan is getting close to finishing up the interceptor cockpit, Dan is doing the final geometry pass on space station architecture, and Kristian has finished up his civilian/industrial material experimentation and will be starting on getting the hauler production ready.

Another WIP shot of the interceptor cockpit

As we have mentioned before the plan is that by the end of August we'll begin iterating heavily on gameplay again. The first order of business will be mocking up all of our weapons followed by additional game mechanics such as radar, resource management, etc.

Weekly Update 26 9-8-2016

Hey everybody it's time for another weekly update. Over the last week we've primarily been fixing bugs that have popped up since the release of the last patch. There is an ongoing issue with our game server regularly crashing, which seems to be caused by our overhaul of physics, as well as some issues with the new patching system and launcher. We expect most of these to be sorted out soon. Aside from that Flavien has started working on the improvements we need to make to our networking code and I have started building our pledge upgrade platform along with some additional website improvements. Those of you who are regulars on our forums have probably noticed that we also upgraded our forums software to the latest version.

WIP texturing the bomber cockpit

On the art side we're happy to announce that texturing the interceptor cockpit has been more or less completed. There's some polish that will need to be added later on once we have time to address some graphics improvements. We also need to spend more time defining the functionality of the cockpits such as what gets rendered on the multi-function displays. In the meantime work has moved onto the bomber cockpit which as you can see is coming along nicely.

Another shot of the WIP bomber cockpit

There's also a lot of work going on with station geometry and the NPC hauler. We hope to have some new screen shots within a couple of weeks. Along with numerous bug fixes our next patch, which is probably at least another week away from release, should include the land base placeholders and the new cockpits.

Weekly Update 28 22-8-2016

Hey all time for another weekly update. When I announced last weekend that we were hoping to release the next patch this week I didn't realize that Flavien's new computer was arriving soon and it took him a couple of days to reinstall everything and transfer all of his data. Needless to say that meant we weren't able to finish everything for the patch but it's nearly ready. Alongside that our pledge upgrade system is coming along nicely. Accepting payments via credit card and/or Bitcoin is completed and all that remains is integrating PayPal. This also lays the foundation for being able to accept new pledges for the game directly from our website later on.

Initial material pass on the NPC hauler

On the art side the big news is the release of new screen shots showing the initial material pass on the NPC hauler. There's still quite a bit of polish left to do but so far we're pretty pleased with the results. This is the first ship we're getting production ready so it's taken a bit longer as we've experimented with some new techniques and built up a library of reusable textures. Aside from that the finishing touches are getting put on the bomber cockpit and we'll be moving onto the corvette cockpit within a few days.

Another screen shot of the initial material pass on the NPC hauler

After the new pledging system is complete I'll be getting back to finishing up some outstanding issues with the launcher and new installer as well as adding support for incremental patching. Once the next patch is out Flavien will finish up his networking improvements and, as we've mentioned before, sometime next month the both of us should be hopping back onto iterating on core gameplay. That's all for this week!