Infinity: Battlescape #HO

The-Force #151 Feb '17

Weekly Update 50 21-03-2017

Hey everyone it's that time of the week again, here's your Infinity: Battlescape weekly update. This has been one of those nose to the grindstone weeks where everyone is working diligently on fairly large projects. Our recent optimization pass is finished for now and we released a new patch that's been showing around a 20% improvement in frames per second (FPS) on average. Flavien is back on networking which we hope will be wrapped up within a few weeks. Once he's done with it there'll still be some optimization work left but we're going to defer that until Beta or later so we can get back to gameplay.

Pre-rendered shot of the factory nuclear reactor
Work on the UI is coming along nicely. The implementation of our new async D3D11 renderer is more or less complete, though a lot of testing remains, and the blocking issue with Vulkan that I previously mentioned has been resolved. This means that the UI R&D is back on track in both Vulkan and D3D11. As we've mentioned before Vulkan won't be supported at launch, we're just laying the groundwork for a future upgrade of the entire engine sometime after the game ships to retail. Hopefully I'll have some screen shots of the new UI system within a week or 2 - the exact time frame will most likely depend on how long it takes to implement support for text.

WIP placeholder for the googly eyed asteroid bobble head

On the art side Dan will soon begin work on final geometry for the destroyer. Jan is wrapping up the placeholder for the googly eyed asteroid bobble head, seen above, and once he finishes the placeholder for the space whale he'll begin work on final geometry for planetary bases. Kristian is about halfway done with the final geometry for all of the various structures associated with factories and it'll take him a few more weeks to finish all of it.

More station windows

That's about it for this update. Due to everyone working on large projects we aren't quite sure when the next patch will be, probably sometime in March, but the good news is that it should be a large update containing the new networking and/or the new UI as well as bobble heads (most likely without the bobble).

The-Force #152 Mar '17

Weekly Update 51 28-2-2017

Hey everyone it's time for your regularly scheduled update. This week everybody continues their work on large, multi-week projects. Flavien has made some good progress on networking and has completed his initial implementation of our new client-side prediction code. To summarize, this means that the server is able to compensate for latency so that when it looks like you shot something on your screen the server actually agrees with you. This is obviously extremely important for a solid dogfighting experience. There's still quite a bit of work left to be done as he needs to merge his test code with the game's code and once that's working move onto server-side collision detection with planets - a difficult problem.

Pre-rendered image of the command center of a factory

I ran into what I'll refer to as an unexpected patch of deep mud while working on the path rendering R&D for the UI which has slowed me down over the last few days. The paper I'm using is dependent on some big-data and scientific computing algorithms that are readily available on NVIDIA hardware but not AMD hardware. I have to convert them to be cross-platform which is time consuming, error-prone, and tedious but once I finish getting through it I'm optimistic about wrapping up the rest of the initial path rendering code soon. I'll still have to take care of font rendering and a few other things but at least I should be able to start showing screen shots.

WIP placeholder for the space whale bobble head

On the art side Kristian continues to work on the factory which is composed of many large, complicated structures. Once Jan finishes with the space whale bobble head placeholder, which is already looking pretty good, he'll be helping Kristian finish up the factory before they both move onto the land base. Dan is starting on the final geometry pass for the destroyer which is likely to be the first capital ship we implement in the game.

That's it for this week, until next time!

The-Force #153 Mar '17

Weekly Update 52 7-3-2017

Hi everybody, this is Flavien. Keith is away on a trip for a bit more than a week so today and next week I'll handle the weekly updates.

On my plate this week, more work on networking and.. physics. I've found a "stuttering" issue in the way we currently handle our multi-threaded physics and spent a few days fixing it. Unfortunately it half-broke my networking prototype, so I had to redo a bunch of stuff that was working last week. Speaking of networking prototype, I feel that I should elaborate on what the state of networking is, as Keith only mentionned a few words about it in the past weeks.

When I started working on the new networking model, I created a new independent prototype ( surprisingly called "networking experiment" ) which recreates some of the gameplay.. in 2D. It is client-server based just like the real game, but the top-down 2D view allows a much easier understanding of what's going on in terms of networking updates and physics. Although the view is in 2D, the actual simulation remains 3D. In this prototype I already implemented client side prediction, lag compensation, smooth actors paths interpolation and bandwidth compression. I also downloaded a small utility called "clumsy" which allows to simulate various latencies, packet drops and other typical failures. I've also tested the new prototype in real conditions between EU & US under a 150 ms ping.

The results so far are very encouraging, and much better than the currently available build. However, because it remains a prototype, it's still going to take time before the code is cleaned and "plugged in" ( basically a huge copy/paste ) into the new code branch. Once this is done, I'll still have to do some work on server-side collisions ( especially with the planets ), as everything is now mostly server-sided. Then the next step is to resume work on gameplay, which will include the new resource system, new weapons, controls/flight changes and maybe an initial implementation for capital ships.

Factory hangar module WIP

Needless to say, the alpha release is not going to happen any time soon; we're probably at least 2 months away, if not 3, from that happening. To be honnest this is pretty disapointing to me as I was anticipating faster progress. Also on a private note, I am going to relocate to a new but cheaper place in Brussels some time in April, which is probably going to cut a good week of work at a critical timing. I apologize for that.

Keith is still working on the new user interface code. He's been in "shader hell" for a week now, and from what he told me he had to convert a dozen of shaders ( from which 2 or 3 are massive, and very complicated ) from the paper he's been using. Before he left for his trip he finished that work, so when he's back he'll resume work on the font rendering. We're using a "path" rendering system for the GUI ( a big word to say we can rasterize curves ) in the hopes that it'll bring a higher quality than what most games are utilizing ( bitmaps ) which do not work well with anti aliasing and zooming. As we can use "vector art" directly, we should get really good anti aliasing and high text quality at various resolutions and screen sizes.

Corvette render with ambient occlusion

On the art side, Jan has imported the new bobbleheads as assets to the editor, so they're now ready to be used in game. I'm not sure when we'll have time to make a new build; we'll have to experiment with springs for the bobblehead physics ( probably around beta ), so in a first step the bobblehead will likely be a static 3D model standing somewhere in the cockpit. Jan has also been producing a bunch of short video clips of our 3 main ships ( interceptor, bomber and corvette ) and started to help Kristian on the factory assets like level-of-detail experiments.

A factory module in the editor

Kristian is still busy on the factory assets, modelling and texturing modules as he goes. Some of the modules will have an in-game function and be destructible in game ( the nuclear reactor provides energy to the factory; the gun tower defenses; the sensor tower allows to detect incoming hostiles, etc.. ). We are hoping to model a "destroyed" state of those modules when their hitpoints reach zero, but we'll probably lack time to do that before beta, so in the alpha version we'll simply swap those models with some kind of placeholder dirt/blast material.

Finally, Dan's making good progress on the global shape and plating on the destroyer, but it's still to early to show anything yet That's all I have for now, I'll bring you more news next week,

-Flavien

1

The-Force #154 Mar '17

Weekly Update 53 14-3-2017

Hey Everybody, Flavien again for this week's update as Keith is still away for a few days. This week's been a bit slower than last week, but I'm wrapping up the networking tests. The last piece missing is bandwidth compression which was broken some time ago and which I need to reimplement. I've also spent a few hours playing with some minimalistic A.I. for missiles and auto-aiming turrets ( which will mostly be used on the corvette, capital ships and defense buildings ). It seems to work pretty well so far, despite having to solve a quartic equation (!) to anticipate where to aim projectiles at, ahead of the movement of the target's. Who said programmers don't need to be mathematicians ?

Factory concept art with HUD

Jan finished to render the small ships promotional clips, but still need to edit the final videos. Meanwhile he's also helping Dan on the destroyer design. Hopefully we'll have something to show you in the next update.

Space station in game prototype

Kristian is working on more factory module assets. He completed the biggest / most complex ones so far, but there's still a handful of smaller / simpler modules that need to be done. You can see in the following pic some of these modules.

Factory modules

See you next week with another update from Keith !

-Flavien

1

The-Force #155 Mar '17

Weekly Update 54 21-3-2017

Hey everybody. Flavien again for the last update until Keith his back ( I was mistaken last week, his return flight is actually.. today, so he can't do the update this week either ).

On the technical side, I was able to wrap up the last networking tests. Everything seems to behave pretty well even under relatively bad networking conditions ( packet drops, lag of 200+ milliseconds etc.. ). I've started the integration step to the real game, however while doing so I detected more physics-related issues; in particular we seem to have a major performance issue where space stations ( which are composed of millions of triangles ) cause collision detection slowdowns despite being millions of kilometers away from where dynamic entities are.

Another factory concept from Kristian

Looking at the code it seems to be an issue with our 3rd-party physics library (ODE) taking a slow code path instead of the optimized one. I already have a fix in mind, so it shouldn't take more than an afternoon to fix. In other news, bandwidth compression has been reimplemented and I've continued playing with some basic A.I. for missiles and auto-turrets.

Not much to report on the art side as everybody is busy continuing their work from last week; Kristian is wrapping up the factory buildings, while Dan and Jan have been working on the destroyer. They're refining the global shapes and plating, here's a WIP paintover ( lacking details since they're not that far yet ):

Destroyer shape paintover

Destroyer underside paintover

See you next week !

-Flavien

1

The-Force #156 Mar '17

Weekly Update 55 29-3-2017

Hey everyone time for a slightly late weekly update. I (Keith) am back writing the weekly update - I was out of town visiting family for _2.5 weeks and Flavien had taken over in my absence. Most notable for this week we've released a new video30 showing off a networking simulation with 300 players in a "massive space battle" firing streams of blue bullets. It may not look like much but the simulation represents the culmination of Flavien's work on the new networking code, particularly latency compensation with physics simulation, and he's now going to begin merging the new code into the game.

Pre-rendered image of a factory

Now that I'm back I'm resuming my work on the UI. The core path rendering R&D is nearly finished however there's a lot of work remaining on font rendering, text layout, styling, keyboard/mouse input, animation, and optimization. On the art side Jan and Dan are still working on the geometry pass for the first capital ship to be integrated into the game - the destroyer. Kristian has started on the materials for the factory and we hope to have some pretty new screen shots of that sometime in the near future.

WIP engine prototype for the destroyer

The big task over the next week we'll be addressing is updating our scheduling. Needless to say the networking and UI systems have taken much longer than we initially anticipated for a variety of reasons that will probably be a blog post for another day. This means at a minimum we're looking at another 2-3 months before we can ship the Alpha. The good news is that these 2 systems are the last major R&D unknowns we have scheduled and once completed we'll be getting back to focusing purely on gameplay with the occasional diversion for art team internal tools. To make up for the additional delay we're considering the possibility of having 1 or more Alpha player weekends like we did in January.

That's all for this update. I'll talk more about the next patch and scheduling next week after I have more time to finish getting reacquainted with life.

1 1 respuesta

clethaw #157 Abr '17

#156 Me encanta la atmósfera general del juego y sus planetas de esos artworks.

The-Force #158 Abr '17

Weekly Update 56 5-4-2017

Hey everyone time for another weekly update. As I mentioned last week I'm going to go more into scheduling with this update. At the moment the new networking code is being merged into the game. This is the single most important blocker for the release of the Alpha and once it's finished Flavien will resume work on core gameplay. I'm continuing my work on the UI and once that's complete I'll join Flavien with finishing up the Alpha gameplay and making some additional improvements to the launcher, installation runtime, website, and payment platform.

Concept ideas for final carrier geometry

Like we said last week it's going to be at least 2-3 months before we're able to release the Alpha and we'll have one or two, maybe even three more Alpha free-play weekends to make up for the delay. The first of these will occur after we finish integrating the new networking code into the game. This process could take around a month as the networking affects every single part of the game and we have to tear down the game to build it back up. Any intermediate patch would essentially be a version of the game that would appear to be a significant regression from what we currently have though in reality that would be because non-upgraded systems would be disabled.

WIP materials for the factory

Once the next patch is released and the new networking code is verified to be working smoothly we expect that Alpha gameplay will begin to rapidly take shape. This will include the implementation of the resource system, capital ships, teams, radar/sensors, turrets, and new weapon systems. After the release of the Alpha rapid iteration of gameplay should continue into Beta. We will be holding multiple Beta free-play weekends during the Alpha, like we've done for Alpha backers, to help make up for delays in their access to the game. At the moment, depending on how much time we need for polish during the Beta, we're probably looking at the game going gold sometime in the summer/fall of 2018. From that point we expect to be supporting the game and releasing additional content for a significant amount of time.

The-Force #159 Abr '17

Weekly Update 57 12-4-2017

Hey everyone time for your weekly update. The big debate this week has centered around the design for the final geometry of the carrier. The decision is between a long carrier or a stubby fat one due to centripetal force at the edges. Technically speaking we can just choose whatever we think looks the best and make up fake reasons for it but we do try to stick to designs that are at least somewhat plausible in relation to real life. Feel free to join the debate and give your opinion on our forums. As far as the rest of the art team is concerned Kristian continues his work on materials for the factory and Dan is still working on the final geometry for the destroyer.

Different basic hull shapes for the final carrier geometry

On the engineering side Flavien continues to integrate the new networking code into the game - which is necessary for our next patch. I've finished the initial R&D implementation of path rendering, which we'll be using for our UI, and I'm currently testing it with a multitude of different geometries to fix any lingering bugs that may be hiding. Once that's complete the next step will be to finish implementing the UI within an R&D sandbox before finally integrating it into the game (similar to how we did the new networking code).

WIP materials for the factory

That's it for this week. There's a few more things to wrap up and then we should start to have a whole lot more to talk about!

The-Force #160 Abr '17

Weekly Update 58 18-4-2017

Hey everyone it's time for your weekly update. On the engineering side this week has more or less been a continuation of last week - merging the new networking code into the game and finalizing the new UI rendering code in preparation for adding support for text, layout, etc.

WIP final geometry for the destroyer

On the art side Jan and Dan continue their work on the final geometry pass for the destroyer. You can see an early work in progress screenshot above. Jan has also been doing some material work experimenting with different ways to do armored plating.

Different layers combined to create armored plating

Kristian is finishing up the last few things with factory materials and then he'll be moving onto the final geometry pass for land bases. That's all for this week. Updates will likely be a bit on the short side until we finish getting the new networking code merged into the game. After that we'll release a patch and have plenty of new things to talk about!

Examples of detail textures used to compose armored plating

The-Force #161 Abr '17

Hey everyone here's your weekly update. On the engineering side Flavien has integrated support for Steam. We probably aren't going to release the game on Steam until the Beta begins but most of the work for doing so is now complete. I was continuing my work on the UI when I ran into some crazy memory corruption issues. Those ended up taking a few days to fully resolve however in the process I've greatly improved our tools for tracking memory allocations. That means if/when a memory corruption issue pops up again in the future it shouldn't take as long to find the source of the problem.

WIP destroyer comparison with non-capital ships

On the art side Dan continues his work on the final geometry pass for the destroyer which is coming along nicely. Originally Jan was going to help him but we decided to move Jan over to doing the final material pass for stations. Kristian has finished up the material pass for the factory and is working on the final geometry for the land base.

Pre-rendered image of the WIP destroyer

That's all for this week. Now that the Steam integration is finished Flavien is moving back to completing the merger of the new networking code into the game. Depending on whether or not we run into any unforseen issues it could take another couple of weeks as a number of game systems have to be rewritten during the merger.

Pre-rendered shot of the engines of the WIP destroyer

The-Force #162 May '17

Weekly Update 60 2-5-2017

Hey everyone it's time for your weekly update. Flavien has been busy continuing his work on merging the new network code. A number of low level systems have been completed however there's still quite a bit of work left to be done. Unfortunately on my end I had to take care of a bunch of administrative things last week and, aside from some bug fixes, I didn't get a chance to do much coding.

Planetary orbital defense cannon

On the art side Kristian continues his work on planetary bases, Jan on texturing space stations, and Dan the final geometry pass for the destroyer. Planetary buildings have a modular design that ultimately connect to a central command center like spokes on a wheel. There was a fair amount of discussion surrounding how the ground around these buildings will be constructed. Smooth parts of a planet at the micro level still tend to be quite lumpy. When constructing buildings in real-life heavy equipment is used to make the ground level but in our case, due to technical limitations, we can't do that at the moment. Instead all of the buildings in our planetary bases will be on base plates to provide a level surface. We discussed the possibility of having little roads and industrial vehicles driving around but ultimately concluded we won't have the resources to implement what would ultimately be an aesthetic feature.

WIP station texturing

Another challenge we've encountered is with regard to large chunks of geometry - most notably the station pieces. As far as we're aware our stations will be some of the largest ever included in a game. It's quite difficult to provide interesting micro and macro detail on every centimeter of a square kilometer of station surface area. You can see an example of the challenge above. If you were zoomed in close to the station you would see a lot of small detail but from far away the piece looks bland and repetitive. There's a good chance this is going to be an ongoing issue and it's something we will continue experimenting with. That's all for this week, until next time!

Another shot of WIP station texturing

The-Force #163 May '17

Weekly Update 61 8-5-2017

Hey everyone time for your weekly update. Last week Flavien and I switched places regarding available coding time. Flavien was busy getting ready to move into a new apartment which took up most of his time. I, however, was able to fix the last outstanding bugs with path rendering (that I'm currently aware of). There's one remaining rendering feature concerning large shapes that I have to finish before I can start final testing and code cleanup but that shouldn't take too long. After that it will be onto adding support for font rendering, text layout, and finally integration into the game.

WIP land base structure

On the art side Kristian continues his work on final land base geometry and Jan on the station material pass. Dan spent last week producing some short videos of extremely high quality 360 degree renders of the interceptor, corvette, and bomber. There's still some on-going post-production work but we hope to release them in the next weekly update. Unfortunately they don't include materials since we didn't want to spend the time it would take to rebuild all of our materials in 3rd party rendering applications. That being said the detail work of the geometry really comes through and we're looking forward to showing them to everyone.

Work continues on the station materials

More information on the state of the new networking code should come once Flavien gets everything sorted out with his new apartment. The networking code represents our largest blocker, it was our biggest risk item, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and once we get past it we expect we'll be able to move quickly on the rest of the Alpha to-do list.

1

The-Force #164 May '17

Weekly Update 62 17-5-2017

Hey everyone it's time for your weekly update. On the engineering side we've ported the camera system to the new networking code and added support for the name pools that will be used to choose names for NPC ships, space stations, and land bases. For those of you who pledged reward tiers that allow you to submit a name we'll probably end up creating a custom page on our website where you can submit your name(s). Aside from that Flavien is still working through some stuff with his new apartment and I had another week where I was heavily focused on administrative tasks.

Pre-rendered shot of the land base command center

On the art side we have some new videos for your viewing pleasure! They are simple turntable animations showing off the geometric detail we've put into our smaller ships:

Interceptor:

Bomber:

Corvette:

In parallel to creating these videos Kristian is continuing his work on the land base final geometry pass and Jan is still focused on station materials. That's all for this week, until next time!

1

The-Force #165 May '17

Weekly Update 63 24-5-2017

Hey everyone time for your weekly update. On the engineering side we've been working on a couple of different things. For starters the large shape support for UI rendering has entered the final testing phase. Once complete there'll be a code cleanup phase before work starts on font rendering. In parallel to that work continues on merging the new networking code into the game. The system for recording matches for playback has been ported over along with some threading improvements. Flavien still has another week or 2 before he gets fully settled into his new apartment, there were some unexpected issues which were wreaking havoc on his schedule, but that should all be resolved soon.

Initial material pass on the land base command center

On the art side Kristian has started on the material pass for the land base command center - pictured above. Once completed he'll move onto other "modules" such as hangars, power plants, radar, and orbital defense. Each of these provide specific services for a land base and when destroyed affect its ability to function. For example if a hangar is destroyed it can no longer spawn ships. When a land base module is damaged it will slowly repair itself unless it has been damaged beyond a certain threshold, i.e. if it loses 80% of its health or more it can no longer repair itself. Power plants will affect the rate at which a land base is able to repair itself among other things so it's critical they are protected. Jan has been out of town for the last week but once he gets back he'll resume work on station materials.

Another shot of the initial material pass on the land base command center

That's all for this week. Once Flavien finishes moving into his new apartment we hope to progress quickly toward finishing the merging of the new networking code and releasing the next patch.

1

The-Force #166 May '17

Weekly Update 64 31-5-2017

Hey all it’s time for your weekly update. As I mentioned last week Flavien is now moving into his new apartment and will be without internet access until next week. I’ve combined code cleanup with the final testing for the UI path rendering which I hope to have wrapped up soon. Once that’s all finished I’ll move onto font rendering which is the last step before I can begin building UI widgets. You may recall from a weekly update a few months ago that the new UI code supports Vulkan in addition to D3D11. After working with Vulkan for the last few months I’ve reached the conclusion that it isn’t mature enough yet for our purposes and I’ve decided to replace it with D3D12.

Initial material pass on the land base command center

Why do Vulkan and D3D12 matter? They contain special new optimizations that are particularly relevant to how we generate and render procedural planets. Obviously procedural planets are a cornerstone of Infinity: Battlescape and we want to be able to take full advantage of these performance enhancements at some point in the future. For now the majority of the game will continue to run on our legacy renderer, including our procedural planet generation, but sometime after the game ships to retail we’ll move everything over to the new rendering system so we can fully realize all available compute power.

A view of an orbiting space station

On the art side things continue to move along at a good pace. Jan recently returned from being out of town for a week and is resuming his work on station materials. Kristian is working on the support modules for the land base which includes power generators, orbital defense, communications, etc. Lastly Dan is focused on the final geometry pass for the destroyer. Capital ships are something we haven’t really discussed much yet. Flavien already has an idea for how he wants to implement the initial control scheme and it will be a high priority item after we release the next patch.

A piece of space station geometry

That’s it for this week. Once Flavien gets back and finishes merging the new network code we’ll get that next patch out and move on to more exciting things!

2

The-Force #167 Jun '17

Weekly Update 65 6-6-2017

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. I would like to start off apologizing if anyone was confused by our update last week concerning Windows 7 support. I mentioned that we were integrating a D3D12 backend into our new multi-threaded renderer, which is what the new UI system is being built on top of, and some people interpreted that as meaning the game would only be able to run on Windows 10. I would like to clear up any confusion and state that Infinity: Battlescape will be supported on Windows 7 via D3D11 at least until Microsoft drops extended support (currently January 14th, 2020). That being said I do encourage anyone still running Windows 7 to heavily consider upgrading to Windows 10. It’s a much better OS, there are numerous security and performance enhancements, and since our entire team is running Windows 10 the bulk of our testing will be on Windows 10.

Another pre-rendered shot of the land base CoC

On my end during the last week I was able to more or less complete our D3D12 renderer. There’s still about another day’s worth of work to get it running with our new UI system but that should be all. After that it’s back to finishing up the code cleanup pass on the UI and moving onto text rendering. As mentioned before Flavien has been without internet access all week while he moved into his new apartment so I don’t have anything new to report from him. Hopefully he’s been catching up on his sleep .

More station pieces in-editor

There's not much new to report on the art side this week – everybody has been working on the usual things which includes the land base, destroyer, and station textures. The art team is currently way ahead of the engineering team so they aren’t always working full weeks which allows us to save money. That’s it for this update, until next time!

1

The-Force #168 Jun '17

Weekly Update 66 14-2-2017

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. I’m happy to report that Flavien has finished moving into his new apartment and is now getting back into the swing of things. On my end I finished the initial implementation of our D3D12 renderer. There seems to be an incredibly odd driver bug on NVIDIA hardware, or at least on my NVIDIA hardware, that makes it impossible to run certain types of compute shaders. In a cruel twist of irony the majority of our UI code happens to be compute shaders written in a way that causes this bug to rear its ugly head so, for now, I can’t get our new UI up and running with the D3D12 renderer. Thus, I’m moving forward with the rest of the UI code cleanup, polish, and testing with only our D3D11 renderer. At some point in the future I’ll have to validate it against our D3D12 renderer once the driver bug has been fixed.

Pre-rendered image of the hauler docking with a land base
On the art side Kristian has gone on vacation to take advantage of the short but sweet northern European summer so not much new to report from him until he returns. Aside from that Dan is continuing his work on the destroyer while Jan is still working on materials for the various station pieces.

Editor shot of more WIP station materials

Now that Flavien has returned we’re working on getting back on track for finishing up the merge of the new networking code and releasing the next patch. Shortly thereafter we’ll do another free-play weekend for Alpha backers. Obviously we didn’t expect his move was going to be so disruptive but we’re going to push through it and work on releasing the Alpha as soon as we can.

1

The-Force #169 Jun '17

Weekly Update 67 20-6-2017

Hey all it’s time for your weekly update. Now that Flavien has been back for a full week and Kristian has returned from vacation the pace of development has regained its momentum. On the coding side we’ve merged the camera system with the new networking code along with a number of improvements to the ship control scheme. We can now fly around in the game with the new networking code however the combat systems still need to be re-implemented. Several bugs with our UI path rendering were squashed and we’re nearly ready to begin work on fonts/text.

WIP material pass for a station piece

On the art side Jan has started work on the materials for 3 more station pieces. Kristian is working on the secondary modules for land bases. He’s also produced a short pre-rendered video of the command center which we’re working on releasing soon. Dan has been playing around with some different designs for the destroyer engines.

Prototype of an engine for the destroyer

Overall the primary focus remains on finishing the merger of the new networking code, wrapping up our multi-threading performance improvements, and releasing the next patch. Once that’s complete we’ll have some Alpha backer free play weekends as our full attention shifts to releasing the Alpha build. That’s it for this week!

The-Force #170 Jun '17

Weekly Update 68 28-6-2017

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. On the coding side the last week has been pretty productive. Flavien made a good amount of progress on merging the rest of the game with the new networking code. At this point most of the game has been ported except for planets – which is obviously a rather important omission. The reason planets haven’t ported yet is because one last big technical challenge remains.

In-editor materials for a station pylon

Previously, before Flavien embarked on rewriting our networking code, all of the collision detection was done on the client. This was pretty straightforward because a player can only ever be near a single planet at any given moment in time so the game only generates geometry for planetary terrain patches that are visible. Unfortunately, as is customary to prevent cheating, we had to move all collision detection to the server during a multiplayer game. The problem is that the server must handle many players, we want to support hundreds, who are all traveling extremely fast around any number of planets. This means the server must constantly regenerate highly detailed geometry for the surfaces of multiple planets just in case something happens to run into it. It gets even worse once you add bullets into the mix.

In-editor materials for a station strut

Unfortunately, before we can finish merging the new networking code and release the next patch we need to resolve this last problem. We have several ideas for how we can address it however it’s going to be tricky and will take some time. Aside from that a good amount of progress has also been made on the new UI. Getting the path rendering code production ready is nearly complete and, assuming all goes well with benchmarking, work will finally begin soon on text rendering.

In-editor materials for a station hex tower

Lastly the art team is still hard at work on the destroyer, land base, and station materials. Kristian took some time to create a new pre-rendered video of the land base command center alongside the NPC hauler which we hope you’ll enjoy. That’s all for this week, until next time!

In-editor materials for all 3 station pieces

The-Force #171 Jul '17

WeeklyUpdate 69 5-7-2017

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. This week has been more or less a continuation of the previous week. Flavien spent some time polishing up various game systems changed by the new networking code. He also put more work into our new control scheme which will be unveiled in the next patch. On my end I spent half of the week polishing up GPU memory management with the UI and some new code for benchmarking GPU rendering performance. The second half of the week I had to take care of several administrative tasks along with the fact that this weekend was the big July 4th holiday weekend here in the U.S.

Pre-rendered image of the land base service tower

On the art side Kristian has completed the land base service tower, pictured above, and continues his work on the remaining sections of the land base. Jan has textured some more pieces of station, many of them are support structures that aren’t particularly exciting, while Dan continues his effort on the destroyer.

Editor shot of more WIP station materials

That’s all for this week’s update. It’s a bit of a short one due to the holiday on my end but we should have more to talk about next week.

The-Force #172 Jul '17

WeeklyUpdate 70 12-7-2017

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. Due to the holiday here in the U.S. last week was a short one for myself. I spent a good chunk of it writing new GPU benchmarking code and then using it on the UI path rendering. Running in debug mode with unoptimized shaders the initial results are what I hoped they would be – 500 to 750 fps with a GTX 1080 at a 1080p resolution for simple full screen shapes. This should translate to at least 200 fps on moderate hardware though I still need to see how many shapes can be drawn before performance begins to significantly degrade. At the high-end of 4k resolution I get around 200 fps. This is approaching the performance danger zone given that it’s only a simple scene being rendered with a GTX 1080 however it’s unlikely anyone will be running the game at 4k without a seriously powerful GPU anyhow. Lastly our algorithm scales extremely well for shapes that don’t cover a lot of pixels so since our UI won’t actually take up a lot of screen space even at 4k we should see decent frame rates in practice. Another benefit of the new UI code is that we can decouple its render rate from that of the game. What this means is we can render the UI at 60 fps whereas the rest of the game could be running at 120 fps so that UI rendering has a minimal impact on the smoothness of the game itself. Finally, in the case of extremely low-end hardware, we could render the UI at quarter or even half resolution and composite it into the final picture. I also found two bugs while doing the benchmarking, one is already fixed, and I’m currently working on resolving what is hopefully the final bug before I move on to more exciting things.

A pre-rendered shot of land base repair infrastructure

Flavien spent the majority of his week working on improving the threading of our game update logic. As we’ve mentioned before this will be an incremental process but he’s nearly finished with the most significant step. Once completed he’ll get back to resolving our last remaining major technical hurdle – the server-side planetary collision detection we described in a previous update. After that the focus will be on releasing the next patch and returning to gameplay iteration.

Another in-editor shot of station materials

The art team continues its work on a number of large projects. This includes the final geometry and materials for the land base, the material pass for space station pieces, and the final geometry pass for the destroyer. It’s probably going to be at least 2 months before all of that is wrapped up but once we release the next patch we’ll try to get as much of that content into the game as possible. Lastly, we’ve been receiving reports over the previous few weeks that some people are experiencing problems with Facebook login. We haven’t changed anything on our end with Facebook in months, maybe years, so my assumption is that something changed on Facebook’s side. As soon as I finish fixing this last UI bug I’ll do another polish pass on our website and backend infrastructure and for those of you experiencing problems we appreciate your patience. That’s all for this week, until next time!

The-Force #173 Jul '17

Weekly Update 71 19-7-2017

Hey all it’s time for your weekly update. This week, despite running into some issues with our new multi-threaded game update code, Flavien has made significant progress towards our next patch. While there’s still a lot of work to do on server-side collision detection of objects with planets the rest of the game is working well with the new networking code. We’re looking forward to getting it into the hands of players to put it through a proper stress test. In other news while testing the new path rendering code at 4k I found some new bugs. Unfortunately, this then lead to a vicious cycle of fix a bug, find a bug. The good news is I recently broke the cycle, the last known bug is fixed, and I’ll soon start fixing some website issues including Facebook login. After that I’ll be moving onto the process of building the initial mockup for the game UI.

A crazy shape originally rendered at 4k using our new path rendering

On the art side good progress continues to be made on the destroyer, station materials, and land base. In a week or 2 we’ll begin integrating all of the new artwork from the last few months into the game as we prepare for the next patch. We’ve accumulated quite a bit of new stuff so this is probably going to take one of our artists the better part of a week to complete.

Reusable living quarters greeble for space stations and land bases

That’s all for this week. While the server-side planetary collision detection still remains a major blocker with plenty of R&D unknowns the light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to come into view. We’re looking forward to putting this patch behind us and shifting our focus toward completing the Alpha.

The-Force #174 Ago '17

Weekly Update 72 26-7-2017

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. On the engineering side Flavien spent a good portion of last week working on some issues with networking error detection that he discovered. These center around problems with how our the new networking code was integrated with our physics library. On my end I fixed a number of issues with using Facebook for account login and creation. Facebook changed some things on their end which broke our integration. If anyone using Facebook for login is still experiencing problems with our website or the game please let us know. I’ve also started work on gradient support for path rendering as well as building the rest of our UI subsystems.

Pre-rendered image of another portion of the land base

We spent time this week discussing some design elements of the gameplay surrounding capital ships. The central question is how quickly should we give players access to capital ships? At the moment our core design restricts access until a player accumulates enough money to purchase a capital ship. It was proposed that we possibly add an additional XP requirement to prevent new players from blowing all of their money on a capital ship and then immediately dying due to inexperience. This could also be a form of griefing since money will be distributed evenly amongst members of a team – the smaller a team the more a person could, either intentionally or accidentally, waste the resources of their team by buying expensive ships and immediately dying.

WIP rear geometry for the destroyer

On the art side the usual work continues on station materials, the land base, and the destroyer. The new assets from the last few months are now being integrated into the game in preparation for our next patch. Due to the aforementioned networking error correction issues we don’t have a firm date just yet but we’ll let everyone know as soon as we can provide one with confidence. That’s it for this week, until next time!

The-Force #175 Ago '17

Weekly Update 73 3-8-2017

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. On the engineering side Flavien continues to wrestle with some networking issues. During testing of the new networking code he ran into some more error correction problems which have been consuming a lot of time. Fortunately it’s not all doom and gloom as he’s also been making a number of improvements to various game systems including weapon hard points and energy management. On my end I’ve started testing combinations of complex shapes with the new UI rendering code. Unsurprisingly I found more bugs however I got those sorted out fairly quickly. I then moved onto colors which have been coming along nicely. Thus far I’ve completed support for solid colors and linear gradients. Radial gradients are almost finished and I expect to be moving on to the UI event system and text rendering soon.

Pre-rendered image of the primary hangar structure

Not much new to report on the art side this week. They continue to work on the station materials, land base, and destroyer geometry. As I’ve mentioned before these are some big projects and we don’t expect they’ll start wrapping them up until September. The good news is once they’re finished that will represent the bulk of our assets. We’ll still have a couple capital ships, some animations, and a bunch of weapon effects but beyond that it’ll mostly be polishing.

Station trim greebles

Due to the networking issues that Flavien has run into we aren’t ready yet to provide a firm timeline for when we’ll release the next patch. Our expectation is that by the end of this week the only blockers remaining will be error correction bugs and the server side planet collision detection. We’re working diligently to get it out as soon as possible and we greatly appreciate everyone's patience!

Playing around with colors and gradients with UI rendering

The-Force #176 Ago '17

Weekly Update 74 9-8-2017

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. Unfortunately, last week Flavien was still caught up trying to fix some bugs with our new networking code. The issue revolves around a problem in motion interpolation that is causing jittering. For example if two ships are flying at the exact same velocity, meaning relative to each other there is no motion, they will perceive each other as jumping around slightly. This problem did not manifest itself in Flavien’s R&D tests so it’s proving to be quite tricky to figure out.

Pre-rendered image of the land base hangar building

On my end the implementation of colors and gradients in the path rendering has been completed. Insofar as the Alpha is concerned all R&D on path rendering is finished – though I still have some things such as stroking, post-processing, and arbitrary clipping that will likely need to be supported for final release. Path rendering has been fully integrated into the UI system and I’m currently working on building some additional low-level UI subsystems for styling before I start on text rendering.

A piece of station geometry in the editor

Not much new to mention on the art side as work continues on the land base, station materials, and the destroyer. Due to the unexpected amount of time it’s taking to resolve the last few remaining issues with the new networking code the next patch probably won’t be released until at least early September. As we’ve mentioned before the networking is critical for a good multiplayer experience so it’s something we’re taking as much time as is needed to get it right. As always we appreciate everyone’s patience and we’re working diligently to get the next patch out as soon as possible. That’s it for the last week, until next time!

Another in-editor piece of station geometry

The-Force #177 Ago '17

Weekly Update 75 16-8-2017

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. Last week Flavien was out of town on vacation so not much new to report for him other than he’s back to working on that pesky jitter bug with the new networking code. On my end I finished all of the low level UI subsystems I was working on last week and started on text layout and rendering. Text layout can be quite complicated however our needs are fairly simple at the moment so I’m hoping it doesn’t take more than a few days for a minimum viable product. Once text is finished I need to add support for input events from the mouse and keyboard, implement a number of common widgets such as buttons and text boxes, add support for SVG parsing, and finish UI version 1 with an optimization and polish pass before I integrate it into the game. It’s unlikely the new UI system will be ready in time for the next patch however our goal is to get it into the game shortly thereafter.

WIP geometry for the destroyer

On the art side things continue to move along nicely. Kristian finished the land base hangar and is nearly done with the power plant. While the exterior of the hangar looks pretty good the interior is still in a semi-finished state. The reason for this is we haven’t determined how we’re going to spawn new ships yet. Depending on available time we will either have them just fade into view or, if we have enough time (not looking likely to be honest), we’ll build an animated elevator system. Jan continues to power through texturing the station pieces, there’s a lot of them, and Dan has made some good progress on the destroyer.

WIP station plating in-editor

The biggest blocker at the moment is the aforementioned networking jitter bug. Once that gets resolved we hope to move toward the next patch fairly quickly however we still need to finish up server side planet collision detection. As we’ve mentioned before Flavien has made a number of modifications to the game code while integrating the new networking so the next patch will be more than just new plumbing. That’s it for now, until next time!

Pre-rendered image of the WIP land base power plant

The-Force #178 Ago '17

Weekly Update 76 23-8-2017

Hey everyone it’s time for your weekly update. Flavien has made some progress on the remaining networking issues however it isn’t completely resolved yet. With game networking there are significant challenges around compensating for latency and synchronizing game state – particularly when it comes physics simulations. To summarize the difficulty at a high level, games use lots of fancy math to estimate where everything is supposed to be and then subtly correct errors when an authoritative update from the server is received. Throughout this process there are many places where additional, small errors can accumulate within these mathematical computations. In most/all other games this small accumulated error has no discernable effect on gameplay as it results in the position of an object being off by a few millimeters or less. In Infinity: Battlescape objects are moving at speeds of thousands of kilometers a second and at such high velocities what would be a millimeter or less of error in other games becomes many meters for us. This is what was causing the stuttering we previously described and Flavien has implemented a fix that reduces it to a point that’s “good enough” for now.

WIP pre-rendered shots of the land base power plant

Unfortunately, there’s still an issue remaining with physics updates that causes collision detections to have a slight delay. Once Flavien gets that sorted out he’ll get back to server-side planetary collision detection and after that we’ll finally be able to release the next patch. On my end I spent half of last week out of town traveling to a couple of weddings around various parts of the country. Fortunately, before I left, I made some significant progress on UI support for text. As expected text layout is quite complicated. Due to our international playerbase we want to be able to support different languages, many of which have special layout considerations depending on line breaks and how characters should be merged or replaced due to ordering. While macOS and iOS provide Application Programming Interfaces (API’s) to handle just about any sort of text need you could possibly think of, the API’s available on Windows aren’t quite as thorough. This means I must fill in the gaps with my own layout engine. The good news is that our near-term text needs are relatively simple and I’m only adding support for the things we absolutely require. The initial implementation is nearly finished and I’ll add more advanced features as they are needed.

More in-editor station pieces

There’s not much new to report on the art side. Work continues on the land base, station materials, and destroyer. All of that should be wrapping up in about a month or so, at which point we’ll move onto the remaining 2 capital ships and weapon special effects. That’s it for this week – until next time!

The-Force #179 Ago '17

Weekly Update 77 30-8-2017

Hey everyone, it’s time for your weekly update. After our last update a group of community members expressed interest in helping us tackle the problem of stuttering in the networking code. Flavien spent some time building a small example application which was made available on our forums. We’d like to thank everyone who participated in the ensuing debate. Some interesting solutions were proposed and we’ll be testing a number of them to see if anything helps eliminate the problem under real-world conditions. As it stands right now we’ve decided to (mostly) move beyond the stuttering and Flavien has spent the majority of his time this week working on wrapping up the remaining networking loose ends as he prepares to start on server-side planetary collision detection – the last major blocker for the next patch (that we’re currently aware of).

Pre-rendered image of the WIP land base communications building

On my end I’ve made good progress on text layout – the UI can now render full paragraphs of text with different types of paragraph alignment and text wrapping. Before I’m finished with text v1 there’s still a couple of features left including paragraph overflow trimming, justification, whitespace trimming, OpenType features such as ligatures, and text decorations such as under/overlines and strikethrough’s. Of these I think overflow trimming and justification are likely to be the most difficult but we shall see. As I mentioned last week, once I’m done with text I’ll move onto the I/O event system, scrolling, hit testing, and then integration into the game. For those of you with Developer Access who accidentally discovered that the Esc key immediately exits the game, you’ll be delighted to hear the plan for the first screen made with the new UI is for a proper in-game menu which you will bring up with the Esc key!

WIP UI including a stackpanel with a 10px margin, radial gradient background, 2 buttons, and a text block with word wrapping

On the art side everything is continuing along with the usual set of work items. Kristian is working on the land base communications structure, Jan is still powering through station materials, and Dan has made more progress on the destroyer final geometry. As for scheduling we obviously took a big hit in August with the unexpected networking issues we ran into with stuttering. If the problem with server-side planetary collision detection doesn’t take more than a week or 2 we should be on track for a September release of the next patch. After that the expectation is that the new UI will be ready for integration into the game and our focus will shift full steam ahead towards the Alpha. Our hope is that the big investments we’ve made over the last year in systems we’ve previously neglected such as networking, physics, UI, threading, etc will begin to pay us back as we move through the Alpha and beyond.

WIP destroyer geometry

The-Force #180 Sep '17

Weekly Update 78 6-9-2017

Hey everyone, it’s time for your weekly update. Flavien has continued his work wrapping up the last few systems that needed to be integrated with the new networking code. He completed our property replication system, which allows us to specify how important values are synchronized between clients and the server, and he rewrote weapons which now use a hardpoint system for placement on a ship. Previously, a single weapon was hard coded into the game for all playable ships but the new hardpoint system, which allows classes of weaponry to be mounted on a specific point on a ship, will provide the foundation for allowing players to reconfigure their weapon loadouts in the future.

Pre-rendered WIP land base layouts

On my end I completed support for advanced OpenType features with text rendering such as ligatures, subscripts, postscripts, etc. For Latin languages, many of these features aren’t used very often but they become particularly important when drawing text for Asian languages. The biggest outstanding item for text rendering is paragraph trimming, which is appending an ellipsis (…) to the end of the last line of a paragraph when its text doesn’t fit within the allowed space. I’ve made a good amount of progress on it so far and hope to have it wrapped up soon. Once that’s complete I’ll be moving onto the items outlined last week such as I/O events, hit testing, etc.

More in-editor station materials

Not much new to report on the art side. It’s the usual land base, station materials, and destroyer geometry. Much of it should be getting wrapped up by early October. Moving forward this week Flavien has a couple of smaller items to finish off with networking and then he’ll resume work on server-side planetary collision detection. As we’ve mentioned before this is the last remaining blocker for the next patch. If he can get it sorted out within the next 1 to 2.5 weeks we should be in good shape to release the next patch in late September. That's all for this update, until next time!

Usuarios habituales

Tags