Infinity: Battlescape #HO

#121 mola!

Weekly Update 32 20-9-2016

Time for another weekly update. You may have noticed that the forums have been down for the last few days. This seems to have been caused by some sort of hiccup with our hosting provider that corrupted the disk on our server. Unfortunately it coincided with my being out of town traveling which significantly slowed our response. The good news is that other people appear to have experienced the same problem and we hope to have it sorted out soon.

Flavien has taken a break from the networking code to focus a bit more on the game. Factories can now be spawned on the surface of a planet. He also significantly improved the quality of shadows cast within a cockpit. The rest of his time was spent working with our artists to improve their workflow for building ships.

On the art side the NPC hauler is pretty much finished. Kristian has moved onto creating the mockups for our UI and HUD. Jan is still working on the corvette cockpit, we hope to have some new pictures to show off soon, and Dan is doing the final geometry pass on various pieces of space station. We were hoping to release the next patch before I went out of town but we weren't quite able to get all of the testing completed. Now that I'm back, and once I finish getting the forums sorted out, we'll get back to releasing that patch. The flip side of the wait is that it should contain quite a bit of new content.

Weekly Update 34 4-10-2016

It's that special time of the week again, weekly update time! This last week has been a particularly busy one as we released a new patch, pre-Alpha 0.1.6.0, yesterday to our Developer Access+ backers! This patch contains a whole bunch of new content including the completed hauler, new cockpits, and the prototype geometry for land bases and factories. If you're interested you can read the full patch notes on our forums.

There's a good chance this may be the only patch we release this month as we finish up the last pieces of low level infrastructure such as networking, the pledge upgrade system, and incremental patching. On the art side work will continue on finishing up the corvette cockpit and exterior hulls for the small ships. We've also started mocking up our UI which we hope to start integrating into the game in November.

Looking further out into the future the first big-ticket new gameplay system will be weapons followed by the resource system. Our primary goal is to get all major gameplay systems mocked up as soon as possible so we can release the Alpha. Once that occurs a process of implementing lesser systems and continual refinement will take us to the Beta. After the Beta ships we'll begin final polish and an optimization pass before going gold. We're just taking it one day at a time while keeping an eye on the prize - shipping Infinity: Battlescape to all of you!

Weekly Update 36 18-10-2013

And another week bites the dust. Some of you may have noticed that our forums went down for a few hours earlier this week. That was due to the maintenance I spoke about during the last weekly update. I'm thrilled to report that the last of the forums issues caused by our outage in September have been resolved.

Over the last few days we've spent a lot of time thinking about the HUD of which you can see the latest mockup above. Our guiding theme for the SFC faction is balancing 80's industrial sci-fi with advancements in technology you could expect way out in the future. To that end we want our HUD to be a blending of what you'd see in modern military aircraft and futuristic elements you would need to make newtonian spaceflight manageable.

You'll notice in the top left corner we have radar similar to what you'd find in many other space games. This is just a placeholder as radar is currently one of the least defined systems in the game. We expect it will morph heavily over time once we get into Alpha.

We've also done some mockups of the main menu system. You'll notice from the picture above there's nothing particularly glamorous about them. We've discussed the possibility of zooming around the solar system as you open different menus but that will likely depend on how much time we have during the polish phase (probably not much).

A couple of new patches have been released for the I-Novae launcher and the installation runtime over the last week. We're fixing problems and releasing patches as backers find them. Unfortunately this has come at the expense of finishing the pledge upgrade system however we're currently only aware of 2 remaining outstanding issues with the installation runtime so we'll be getting back to the pledge upgrade system shortly. A lot of backers have been asking us when it'll be ready and it's one of our top priorities.

To summarize we're currently finishing up the networking improvements and pledge upgrade system. Once those are complete we'll be moving onto implementing weapons, our new menu/HUD system, and incremental patching.

Weekly Update 38 1-11-2016

Hey everyone time for an update. This last week has been fairly hectic for all of us. As was mentioned last week most of the team is trying to find new living arrangements within their respective cities because our leases all coincidentally expire at roughly the same time. This has affected our work schedule a bit since finding a new apartment is quite time consuming.

Flavien has taken a brief break from the networking code to implement the foundation for what we hope will someday be support for mods. We've implemented a simple racing mod which we intend to maintain throughout development of the game so that the interface between mods and the game will be preserved. I've been working on some low level rendering improvements that will lay the foundation for the new UI system we want to build to power our HUD and menu system.

On the art side work continues on the final geometry passes for the corvette exterior, interceptor exterior, and large station pieces. Aside from the new screen shots in this update there's not much else to say about that at the moment. I've put in an application on a new (cheaper) apartment so I should have a lot less distraction this week which will allow me to refocus on finishing the pledge upgrade system. Unfortunately the other guys are still looking but we hope they'll find something agreeable soon.

Given that we'll all have to pack, move into, and then unpack in our new apartments by the end of November - combined with the upcoming holidays - it's possible that our Alpha launch early next year might be a bit on the rougher side. It's still too early to know for certain but in the end we figure that Alpha backers just want to have something to play sooner rather than later. Lastly we're planning on having our free weekend for Alpha backers to try the game sometime after the pledge upgrade system is completed. Some Beta backers have expressed their desire to upgrade so they can be a part of that free weekend and we want to make that available for them. That's it for this week!

Weekly Update 40 15-11-2016

Hey everybody here's your Infinity: Battlescape weekly update! I'm thrilled to report that the coding effort for pledge upgrades via credit cards and bitcoin is now complete! I still have to work with our lawyer to get a Terms of Service written before I can release it but hopefully that'll be sometime this week. While waiting for the legal review I'll be shifting over to some low level engine improvements which lay the groundwork for our new UI system for the game.

Flavien continues his work on networking. Unfortunately when it comes to planets nothing is easy and it's taking a bit longer than anticipated due to some hiccups with server side hit detection on planet surfaces. Most notably the server needs to generate terrain collision meshes on-demand for every player and particle in the game that happens to be near the ground which, worst case, can be quite a lot over an incredible surface area. This poses some unique technical challenges.

On the art side we're finishing up the large scale final geometry pass for space stations. Once that's complete we'll begin the final geometry pass for factories. Jan and Kristian are still working on the final geometry passes for the corvette and interceptor exteriors. Those are really coming together nicely and they're going to look great once the texturing pass is complete. Lastly if you have an opinion on whether or not our interceptor should have a horizontal bar in the cockpit please head over to our forums and vote.

Weekly Update 42 29-11-2016

Hey All, this is Flavien. Keith ran into trouble with his computer yesterday ( it's having difficulties booting up apparently ) so I'll be in charge of this weekly update.

Keith has been making good progress on the new Vulkan renderer and abstractions. He can almost render a.. triangle. No kidding. Interestingly, to be able to render just a single triangle in Vulkan requires pretty much all systems to be functional, so although it might not look like it, it's a huge step forward ! We still have to experiment with shaders though.

If you remember the thread about Vulkan versus DirectX12 on our forums a few months ago, we had expressed some doubts about the built-in Vulkan shader compiler, as it doesn't seem to perform any advanced shader code optmization. Now that the fundation is there, we will soon be able to figure that out and determine whether shader performance is acceptable or not. If it's not, we can still 1) wait for the compiler to mature ( which hopefully should happen by the time the game is released ) or 2) later on, switch to DirectX 12 while maintening a fall back on to DirectX 11 for Windows 7+.

Interceptor landed on planet ( render )

On my side, I'm working on our new entity-component system ( ECS ) and refactoring the client / server ( including networking improvements ). It's taking a while, but that was expected. ECS will allow us to utilize more agressive multithreading including for gameplay logic ( in the current build, gameplay logic is single threaded with a couple of independent systems such as sounds, networking or physics running in separate threads ).

The client / server refactoring is also a very important step because it allows us to introduce some major concepts for the future game, such as a form of database persistency ( if the server crashes, we don't want players to lose their progression and the state of the match / battles that were running ) or a replay feature ( still experimental, so I can't promise it for the final game, but that's definitely something we want to do ), and even the basics of modding ( through C/C++/C# custom DLLs ). So as you can imagine, this new version is a major milestone in the project, and will also introduce a bunch of new gameplay concepts ( such as team-based gameplay/spawning, credits, etc.. ).

There's currently no ETA for that new version, but I can safely say it won't happen until next year. Meanwhile, we're still going to release a bunch of content patchs for the current build with art assets improvements or experiments ( like for the interceptor cockpit's bar, which according to a poll on our forums, most people would like to see removed.. ).

Corvette final geometry pass ( render )

On the art side, I'm happy to report that the geometry phase for all 3 "small" ships ( interceptor, bomber and corvette ) is coming to an end. It's still not 100% finished but it's getting close to. Kristian is finishing up the bomber, but still has to rework the landing gears which we found a bit frail for such a bulky ship, and adding some minute details. Jan's detailed the corvette and added various details on the plating and thrusters. Since we haven't posted a real-time preview model yet, it's a good occasion to let you review the Sketchfab model here:

corvette preview model

Dan has moved on to working on.. space station windows. They're very important because they're the best way to give a sense of scale to things in space. So we're trying to make the windows as varied as possible to avoid patterns, and include some additional man-scale details here & there, like docking doors. We're planning on making the windows layout unique per station, so even if two stations are reusing the same modules, they'll still look slightly different with their windows on.

Also note that next week, Keith is relocating to a new place and might or might not have Internet access, so I might be in charge of the next weekly update too See you next week,

-Flavien Brebion

Weekly Update 44 13-12-16

Hey everyone it's time for the weekly update. First off I'm incredibly happy to announce we've released our pledge upgrade platform! If you'd like to upgrade your pledge make sure you're logged into your I-Novae account and click here2. In other news Flavien has finished his threading and optimization pass for our entity game update loop. In practical terms what this means is that the game will now make better use of all of your CPU cores which is great because you probably paid a lot of money for them.

The corvette final geometry is complete, shown here with light markers

On the art side we've reached a major milestone - all of the geometry work for small ships is now complete! There's still an ongoing debate within the team about the horizontal bar in the cockpit of the interceptor but aside from that it's all done. The art team is currently working on integrating the new models into the game as we want to release a new patch and host a free play weekend for Alpha backers early in the new year. Unfortunately we probably won't begin texturing the ships until after the Alpha is released so they'll continue to be visually boring on the exterior but exciting in the interior for a while longer.

Corvette with light placements from another angle

That's pretty much everything for this week. We'll have one more weekly update of 2016 before the team scatters for the holiday. When we come back in the new year we'll do our annual review while plotting our course forward for 2017.

2016 Retrospective 10-1-2017

Hey everyone here’s our first update of 2017 – the 2016 retrospective! Last year was quite the year for us and this is a big update so hold onto your butts. As soon as the Kickstarter finished at the end of 2015 Flavien and I started getting the prototype ready for release. The beginning of 2016 was particularly hectic for us as we set up our hosting infrastructure, imported Kickstarter data, set up an IndieGoGo campaign for ongoing crowdfunding, and built the first version of our launcher - all while getting contracts sorted out. Our artists officially started work on February 1st and we released the Battlescape prototype to our Developer Access+ backers a few weeks later on February 28th.

A squadron of Developer Access+ players in the prototype

The initial response from Developer Access+ backers was overwhelmingly positive and you can view many of the beautiful screen shots they’ve taken on our forums. While the release of the prototype represented a small but important milestone there was little time for celebration. We immediately began iterating on flight mechanics, adding support for joysticks and other input devices, and integrating 3D mockups for our small ships, cockpits, factories, etc.

As we moved into the summer we realized we were going to have to spend some more time on low level game systems. When the Kickstarter prototype was created we were rushing to get it finished by November 2015 and had to cut some corners. The most notable of those was the networking. Unfortunately solid networking is absolutely critical for a pleasant experience with a multiplayer game and the difficulty in properly implementing it matches its importance.

Land base

After making some progress with our new networking system we realized our physics code was also in severe need of an update. We had been using the same physics backend for at least 5 years and needless to say much has changed over such a long period of time. Thus, we spent a few weeks updating the game to work with modern physics engines such as PhysX and Bullet. During this period we also released our new deployment/installation framework which, while currently in its infancy, will be central to our plans for modding and community management after the game ships to retail.

The I-Novae Engine as it is today was started by Flavien back in 2004 as a hobby project. This was one year after consumer grade dual core processors first became available. To that end the I-Novae Engine was originally designed to be single-threaded. What this means is that if you have a CPU with multiple cores, as you almost certainly do, our engine would only use one of those cores for most of its work while the other cores remained largely idle. As autumn rolled around we decided, given our performance targets of Infinity: Battlescape, it was finally time to upgrade the entire engine to be properly multi-threaded so that it makes use of all available CPU compute power.

Backer screen shot of a lone mountain

While working on the multi-threading update we released our pledge upgrade system, something we promised during the Kickstarter campaign, which will become the foundation for our own crowdfunding and digital sales platform. Unfortunately in October we had to announce the Alpha release would be delayed until early 2017 - however we’ll be offering a free weekend of play for all Alpha backers sometime in the near future. As 2016 came to a close we started on the last series of networking improvements and our new UI system.

Most of what has been mentioned so far pertains to the engineering side of game development but our art team has been quite busy all throughout the year as well. Final geometry has been completed for all of our small ships and cockpits. The NPC hauler has been fully completed including both materials and geometry. Materials for the small ship cockpits have been completed though additional tweaks will be required once we begin adding cockpit instruments. Significant progress has been made on final station geometry and our art team is currently more or less on schedule to get everything completed within the original estimated timeframe.

A factory

So where does that leave us for 2017? Given how long this update is I’ll get into most of that next week. What I can say for now is that we’re working on releasing our next patch at the end of this week. It will mostly be a content update though it will also include plenty of bug fixes. If everything goes smoothly we’ll announce the date of the free Alpha playtest weekend shortly thereafter. That’s it for our 2016 retrospective, we look forward to continuing our weekly updates throughout 2017!

Weekly Update 48 7-2-2017

Hey everyone time for another weekly update. On the programming side this week we have fixed a number of bugs and while making some significant performance improvements. Most notably we improved the performance of our physics interpolation calculations by 70% and we've nailed down some problems with random stutters that could affect users while moving the mouse. With the exception of the stuttering these are all CPU improvements so if you're GPU bound, meaning the game runs slow because your GPU isn't very powerful, you won't notice any difference in frame rate after we roll out the next patch.

WIP space whale bobble head concept

The primary focus of course is still on finishing up the networking and completing the new UI system. The foundation for the UI is working pretty well at this point and I've started work on the R&D for something called path rendering. Traditionally game UI's are created using raster/bitmap images however now that more and more people are using 4k displays we have to build our UI with extremely high resolution images or else it will look blurry. There is, however, another option - we can create our UI with resolution independent vector art and a technique called path rendering. Of course there's a reason most games use images, it's a helluva lot easier, but we believe that in the end we'll be able to provide a superior experience with path rendering and it'll be worth the extra effort - especially for modders.

WIP station windows

On the art side the team is working on some multi-week projects. Kristian continues building and optimizing the final geometry for factories. Jan is working on some great concepts for the space whale bobble head which invoked a lot of lively discussion at our last team meeting. We're thinking of making it an SFC space whale with a bit of cyber punk but that could change. At the moment it just looks like a glowing whale. Dan is finishing up his work on station windows which is really breathing life into our station pieces. Over the next few months there's a lot of large, multi-week art projects as we build land bases and capital ships. Once that's complete we'll finally be able to start on materials so we can show all of you something other than boring solid color geometry.

Building factory geometry

That's it for this week's update. Everyone on the team is pushing hard to get back to iterating on gameplay as soon as possible. Networking and UI are big systems but once they get sorted out we should be able to hit the ground running!

Weekly Update 49 13-2-2017

Hey everyone time for another weekly update. You may recall that in the previous weeks update we mentioned we'd spent a lot of time on optimization. Originally we intended to only spend a week on it but there were a few outstanding issues we still wanted to address and that ended up taking up most of this week. Fortunately that effort was not without merit as we've improved the performance of a key system by 400%. On top of that we're working on releasing a new patch soon including these optimizations, some new content, as well as a number of bug fixes.

WIP factory geometry

On the UI side I ran into what appears to be a bug in NVIDIA's Vulkan driver which stopped my R&D effort dead in its tracks. I pivoted into building the D3D11 backend for our new rendering system, something I was going to have to do at some point anyway, and I should be able to resume work on the UI R&D shortly. The optimization effort was primarily spearheaded by Flavien and now that it's complete (for the time being) he'll be getting back to finishing up the networking. Our goal was to get back to iterating on gameplay by March but given that it's already halfway through February it's possible it might not happen until mid-March depending on how long the rest of the UI and networking stuff takes. Once we do get back to iterating on gameplay we expect to progress to the Alpha release fairly quickly.

A concept drawing of the googly eyed asteroid bobble head

On the art side work continues on some large multi-week efforts I had mentioned previously. Specifically the mockups for the bobble heads, the station windows, and the factory geometry. After those items are finished we still have final geometry for land bases and capital ships before we start on materials and texturing.

Googly eyed asteroid concepts

That's it for this week. Bear with us as we finish up these last couple of major technical hurdles and then it'll be onto all of the exciting stuff!