Infinity: Battlescape - The Quest for Funding - Games

Remember these guys: [video=youtube;fO7XhaTGDYg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO7XhaTGDYg[/video] They're finally doing a kickstarter for their game thing, it's a bit(very) late, and they've pulled back the scale from the original super-mmo plan, but for a bunch of part timers who made their own engine i think they've done a pretty solid job. We'll get more info on the specifics of battlescape when the kickstarter goes live[URL="https://inovaestudios.com/Battlescape"] on the 21st[/URL], but for now we know the plan is that the game will be an arena space combat sim with resource mechanics in a single full scale solar system. probably something like savage or natural selection 2 except on a larger scale with a lot more players. Free allegiance is ancient example of what they're going for. I'll be quite happy if they do it well, i loved that game even if i caught it on near the end of it's lifetime. Really curious to see the full reveal. Some words from infinityadmin/Flavien: [QUOTE]The Battlescape Game Prototype: expectations As we have been teasing in the past, I have started working on a prototype of the game. It's obviously in a very early stage, and it is not a pre-alpha. It is a prototype. I really want to emphasize this, because although I'm implementing it so that as many components can be reused in the future, there are major systems that will probably have to get revamped when we start on the actual game after the Kickstarter. Gameplay is experimental, and is currently just used to get a "feel" on how things might play and look like. So don't jump jump to conclusions after seeing it in action ( right now in this blog it'll just be small teasers, but we'll show a lot more during the KS campaign ), nothing in set in stone and it still looks rough. Let's start with the technical side first. The prototype was built on top of the Kickstarter pitch video assets. Those assets weren't built for the prototype in the first place, which practically means that in terms of polycounts and textures resolution, we've been cutting corners. To give an example, the Hellion has a polycount budget of 11,000 triangles. But this number was set many years ago and is outdated. In recent tests we've pushed this budget to around 200,000 triangles for a small ship like the Hellion, and much more for bigger ships like a carrier. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to remake the assets, so the Hellion still looks low-poly. Rest assured that for the actual game we'll rework all these assets and upgrade their look. TL;DR: Everything you'll see in the Kickstarter and Prototype is already pretty much already outdated in terms of visual look. I know it sounds weird to say that when it's taken us a long time to get this Kickstarter out of the door, but it's simply a practical consequence of developing all of this in our part time at a lower pace instead of working with real funding. In addition, we're not working with an established engine like Unity or Unreal Engine 4, therefore there are constantly new technical features / improvements that we need to do, which other games / Kickstarters aren't bothering with ( and which allow us to provide you an entire seamless Solar system ! ).[/QUOTE] Short Q&A with Keith on their forums: [QUOTE]1. The biggest misconception seems to be that E:D, NMS, etc built planet tech before us. We've been working on this for a long time and arguably everybody else is just trying to beat us to the punch 2. It's truly seamless, to-scale, and playable *right now*. It isn't a promise of something we could, should, or will do. We've already built this, it works, we're going to show you during the campaign. 3. Modding is one of our stretch goals, we can't wait to see what other people can build with our tech 4. This is just the tip of the iceberg with what we'll be able to do with our tech. Really I can't begin to explain the magnitude of cool stuff we can do once we get funding [quote="Kreydis, post:3, topic:1095"] If you were to compare your game to the other big name space titles out there. What would you consider I:BS' highlights, strengths, and mechanical value? [/quote] Easily our biggest strength is that we have amazing planet tech *right now*. Everybody else is playing catch-up to us, lets keep it that way. Secondly we aren't promising the ultimate game of everything. We know we can't build that right now. We hope that the launch of this KS demonstrates that we can ship product and that we're fully committed to being both transparent and realistic about what we can accomplish and under what time frame (we've learned a lot on that front ;)). That's also why we haven't taken anybody's money up until now. We wanted to be certain we could deliver a polished product before we took that step. Sometimes slow and steady wins the race. [quote="Kreydis, post:3, topic:1095"] How long did it take you to get to this stage? [/quote] A *long* time lol. We've been working on the KS for ~2.5 years I think. Flavien started working on the tech back in 2004. [quote="Kreydis, post:3, topic:1095"] How tough was it multitasking a job and a rather devout hobby for everyone in the team at this point? [/quote] Incredibly difficult. How hard this has been really can't be put into words. We've been juggling jobs, significant others, and burnout for *years* to bring this tech to market. On top of that we're scattered across different countries, cultures, and time zones. Most of us have never met one another. This Kickstarter really represents a tremendous accomplishment.[/QUOTE] Dump of released media: [video=youtube;ktv15FTHm3s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktv15FTHm3s[/video] [video=youtube;a6a69dMLb_k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6a69dMLb_k[/video] [video=youtube;DM57IvPa1t8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM57IvPa1t8[/video] [video=youtube;zR9KpK1Ua-Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR9KpK1Ua-Q[/video] [IMG]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/kickstarter/landingpad.gif[/IMG] [t]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/forumsavatars/original/2X/e/ef10e4f1cbb4c4aa5d88174a3533612d0e2465e2.jpg[/t][t]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/forumsavatars/3889d976f2c2d4d7a9112b3f09d0e3733b8244034302.png[/t][t]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/forumsavatars/37814481a4994120d1b8222db7216545aff6e1f56e91.jpg[/t][t]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/forumsavatars/3782e5f70fda78b3cb17d7209445babc0940760e8f6b.jpg[/t][t]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/forumsavatars/37081e0de6d5f177d9648306d418f0a295899451ac22.png[/t][t]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/forumsavatars/3709b00317eec77ac1f8e60730d8697074b544ba8b47.png[/t][t]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/forumsavatars/3554f6027d52cf0bc16934615fbc43d9963b549af780.png[/t][t]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/forumsavatars/35284c08228abf921c593d645e27b12a87370f3406ed.png[/t][t]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/forumsavatars/3490a13f558e3a82abdfc73af7ff32dcc58081336427.png[/t][t]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/forumsavatars/3489da8086d1f282aa258276c4dece503b2c2b3eab81.png[/t][t]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/forumsavatars/3397470f4bb70835278ae4dbda0e0ac606c1f2c102a0.png[/t][t]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/forumsavatars/34828c8cca59c01d02e8cf3a7ec67c03b75f62a7daf9.png[/t][t]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/forumsavatars/33968edae5a74b26ea0cc581ca81ac5f0f35aef56796.png[/t][t]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r3wWJAZrFow/VfxJj26-lFI/AAAAAAAAAIo/w7Plp8OEhq4/s1600/screenshot19.png[/t][t]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DcoziPio-sY/Uyea3b68lwI/AAAAAAAAAKM/cwdNfUTJ3Zg/s1600/screenshot72.png[/t][t]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ezjPu1DYO6o/UyeaiKdkYiI/AAAAAAAAAKE/SzeSujSEHMQ/s1600/screenshot69.png[/t][t]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fsa9ecW4w8I/VVkrOfx7-MI/AAAAAAAAARU/FoQMkIlQs5I/s1600/DemoScreenshot_ConvoyEscort_004.png[/t][t]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Jp0btsLUWGs/VVkrO8qUNOI/AAAAAAAAARY/liX2oaQOspY/s1600/DemoScreenshot_ConvoyEscort_007.png[/t][t]https://www.inovaestudios.com/Content/Images/ScreenShots/DemoScreenshot_CityScene_Sunset_003.png[/t][t]https://www.inovaestudios.com/Content/Images/ScreenShots/DemoScreenshot_HellionMars_002.png[/t] [vid]https://inovaedev.blob.core.windows.net/share-pub/Videos/OBS_chase_1.webm[/vid] [vid]https://inovaedev.blob.core.windows.net/share-pub/Videos/OBS_chase_2.webm[/vid] [QUOTE]We're hoping the thrill of combat skills & tactics/player & corporation competition/honing of skills will keep players coming back. Holistically at its core, Battlescape is an "arena shooter". You will spawn, you will fight another team(s), one team will win. As funding increases, the complexity and length of the battles will evolve infusing more possibilities in the realm of tactics/semi-persistence, however ultimately you win or lose a battle, then start over. This is a successor to ICP remember.[/QUOTE]

Infinity's still going? I thought it was vaporware for sure. The old combat demo they had was interesting, one of the only space games I know of where individual thrusters, wings etc could be blown off and affect the performance of the ship rather than subsystem destruction while the ship's model stayed unchanged. Another thing that bothers me with most space games is that where subsystems are featured, except in the case of capital ships the entire ship its self will be destroyed before any subsystems.

Jesus. Their engine has been in development for what, 10 years? I remember when they were still trying to make an MMO out of it. [editline]15th October 2015[/editline] Don't hold your breath.

2.5 years too late their only selling point is really detailed planet surfaces: everything else is extremely mediocre and early development. how are you supposed to compete against elite or star citizen; games that do the same exact thing and have already set a foundation

[QUOTE=69105;48911897]2.5 years too late their only selling point is really detailed planet surfaces: everything else is extremely mediocre and early development. how are you supposed to compete against elite or star citizen; games that do the same exact thing and have already set a foundation[/QUOTE] The current idea isn't an MMO, its an round based space combat arena in a full solar system scale with 100+ players. There is a lot of value in single-sitting gameplay where you dont need to worry about your structures being blown up when you go offline. Not that elite even has any of those features, it's hardly a contender at this point and despite having multiplayer aspects, overall they are extremely boring and poorly implemented. I-Novae has the opportunity to be a solid, competitive game lacking annoying poorly implemented mmo mechanics, or a cash shop. SC's upcoming arena commander 2.0 is the real contender here, and if they *ever* do planet surfaces past small instanced areas it will be some far off expansion well after the PU has been released. Battlescape has a niche to fill with breathing room. These guys also have a working prototype though it's low on content right now. We'll see exactly how far along it is in the kickstarter, i guess.

Looks almost like SpaceEngine.

KICKSTARTER NOW [url]https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/309114309/infinity-battlescape/\[/url] HQ ks vid: [url]https://inovaestudios.blob.core.windows.net/kickstarter/Infinity_Battlescape_Trailer.mp4[/url] some guy with a press copy livestreaming it now: [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sglhi_PIEX4[/url]

Just pledged $250. Can never have too many space games. :v:

I was just watching the streams and theres TONS of stuff not in the KS video. They have a fully working prototype, not on the level of what SC has but honestly its great looking. Just one ship and one weapon, but they have combat working and playable, looks like ICP style. They have warp working, power management mechanics, tons of stuff. Funny thing. They not only have combat, but racing working, with similar checkpoint system, except in canyons on the surface. Additionally, the atmospheric flight model is different from the space one. In other words, their racing is already better than SC's. [url]http://www.twitch.tv/badnewsbaron[/url] , a space streamer guy just did an interview with the devs and is still playing the game and doing racing right now. edit: here is the vod of the above stream: [url]http://www.twitch.tv/badnewsbaron/v/21713702[/url]

Been following Infinity since 2009. I pledged the second it went live Get her done Flavien and Co. [editline]21st October 2015[/editline] I've been watching Blue Drake's stream. This tech demo is downright beautiful! And on top of it they have the core mechanics of the game play ready introduced.

And exactly how long is this shit going to take them? 5 or 10 more years? They basically hyped this game up and claiming they could make a MMO out of it for 9 years with nothing to show for it other than planetary entry. Yes, Planets look amazing and they were one of the first people to get it, but it is becoming common-place with space games nowadays from indie. I wish I was excited but i'm not holding my breath considering the constant dead periods of infinity.

[QUOTE=timothy80;48953989]And exactly how long is this shit going to take them? 5 or 10 more years? They basically hyped this game up and claiming they could make a MMO out of it for 9 years with nothing to show for it other than planetary entry. Yes, Planets look amazing and they were one of the first people to get it, but it is becoming common-place with space games nowadays from indie. I wish I was excited but i'm not holding my breath considering the constant dead periods of infinity.[/QUOTE] They built this engine from scratch with a team of 1-3 at the beginning and 0 funding. The game world is a full scale replica of an entire solar system with no loading screens or instances. The fame is due in 2017 if it meets it's funding goals.

[QUOTE=timothy80;48953989]And exactly how long is this shit going to take them? 5 or 10 more years? They basically hyped this game up and claiming they could make a MMO out of it for 9 years with nothing to show for it other than planetary entry. Yes, Planets look amazing and they were one of the first people to get it, but it is becoming common-place with space games nowadays from indie. I wish I was excited but i'm not holding my breath considering the constant dead periods of infinity.[/QUOTE] Everything they were doing until 2010 was the part time work of one guy. Then it was the part time work of a few guys, and now its going to be the full time work of around 8 guys with the kickstarter. They've estimated 2 years for battlescape, pretending their full time development would be as slow as their part time is unreasonable. Furthermore, no other game does it as well. ED has it's instance system, evochron planets are one big blurry texture, no man's sky from what we've seen is a cartoony game with instances out the wazoo.

[QUOTE=69105;48911897]2.5 years too late their only selling point is really detailed planet surfaces: everything else is extremely mediocre and early development. how are you supposed to compete against elite or star citizen; games that do the same exact thing and have already set a foundation[/QUOTE] By making a smaller, more focused game. The bottom portion of their kickstarter even talks about how they want to avoid feature creep.

Backed this straight away. I swear I've been following this game for like 9 years now.

following development of I-novae engine for last decade or so, nice to see they finally reached Kickstarter ;) (I pledge when they get to PayPal phase) starting small is wise, many of us wish they did it already in 2010

[url]http://imgur.com/a/ZvaOs[/url] some pictures i took in prototype of Infinity: Battlescape [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/P1sXfwP.png[/IMG] [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/CFAGPfT.png[/IMG] [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/bZcpZt6.png[/IMG] [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/LVAkI4H.png[/IMG]

holy shit how is it?

[QUOTE=The Rifleman;49013777]holy shit how is it?[/QUOTE] it's prototype, so for technology demonstration it's fine

RPS posted an incredibly lazy article about the game, they didnt even realize there's a playable prototype [I]which was sent to them.[/I] Bah, RPS is shitty but even kotaku did a marginally better job.

I'm not able to figure out where to get the prototype. I've backed the project.

[QUOTE=paul simon;49017596]I'm not able to figure out where to get the prototype. I've backed the project.[/QUOTE] You have to pledge $250

[QUOTE=RobBrown4PM;49017982]You have to pledge $250[/QUOTE] What. That's disappointing :/ [editline]31st October 2015[/editline] Also, it says the internal builds are available from January. It's not January yet. How come Dwarden has the prototype? I don't get it.

[QUOTE=paul simon;49018089]What. That's disappointing :/ [editline]31st October 2015[/editline] Also, it says the internal builds are available from January. It's not January yet. How come Dwarden has the prototype? I don't get it.[/QUOTE] some streamers, youtubers and a few community members who fit the spec requirements for the proto already have their hands on it to help with demoing, populate the single server, and promote it. Flavien explained that the proto delivery to everyone else who pledged at that tier is estimated for january because they need to make sure everything clears through amazon/kickstarter before they start handing out builds. I dont think you had reason to be disappointed, all the info about prototype/alpha/beta access right in the pledge tiers. There won't be a whole lot to do in the prototype anyways, if you wait for the more finished versions of the game to get out there you'll probably have a better overall experience, something i've learned after burning out on a few early access games since it became a thing.

Sounds boring compared to what they were promising years ago and compared to something like Star Citizen. The visuals, the engine and whatnot are impressive but the gameplay sounds meh. I'll keep my eye on this but i wouldnt be surprised if nothing came out of it.

[QUOTE=Adarrek;49021022]... promising years ago and compared to something like Star Citizen ...[/QUOTE] My memory may be a bit fuzzy on the topic, but I-Novae as a company never literally promised anything. They were making an engine, the whole mmo game that I'm guessing you're referring to was their own end goal, the "why" behind making the engine in the first place. Comparing this to SC is silly, they share space and large scale, but it's the fundamentals of each that make the differences. SC is going for all out max immersion, you're a person actually walking around in the ships, you get in and out the pilot seat, and so forth. Infinity is going for opposite, less on "you're a person in the ship etc", more on sheer awe-inspiring scale. It's like the never ending comparing of Battlefield to Call of Duty. Do they look the same? You spawn, you run around, you die. You damn right they look the same, but it's the overall gameplay that makes them different. CoD as always been about small map, fast-paced, up to 8v8(?) combat. Rounds normally lasted maybe 10 minutes, if that. You jump in, you jump out. Battlefield is the other side of the coin, meant for large-scale battles in large maps, where decent teamwork can decimate even the highest of ranking players. Of course that doesn't mean they're actually played that way, and half the time it's not, but the point is still there.

Oh hey guess what just got funded. [video=youtube;7C4yi8D6ZAI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C4yi8D6ZAI[/video]

combat video is more watchable material [video=youtube;wP3wEpn8Kg0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP3wEpn8Kg0[/video]

$340 cad later, lame exchange rate, but damn, I love me some space games.

I need to clean up the OP later since i went a little mad with the screenshots, but for now an update: people at the dev access tier are ingame! [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGnDd8DRcyw[/url] There's a new ship but otherwise its more or less the same as the original prototype. People are already modding the planets to get different results out of the generator. It will be some time before we see the game come together as a game but the flight model works really well aside from warp which is pretty rough. The developers have started posting very detailed progress reports every few days [URL="https://forums.inovaestudios.com/t/quick-progress-reports-engineering/1926/20"]on the forums[/URL]. Here's the latest! [QUOTE] Monday, 29 Feb 2016 Warning: long post incoming. So, here we are. The long anticipated "developer-access" launch has happened ! We were crunching hard all during these past days, some of us not going to sleep before 4 to 7 am. I personally have been crunching for most of February, but even so, this was a "soft crunch". These past 3 days however.. oh boy... last time we worked that hard was the days before the Kickstarter launch. Needless to say, we're all pretty tired and we're gonna slow down a bit for the coming days. So, how did the launch go ? In fact it went pretty smoothly. Which is not to say that it was perfect, it absolutely wasn't, and many people had issues with their accounts access rights or the installer. But there wasn't any major issue ( other than some well known bugs ) in the game itself. No major stability issue, no major framerate issues ( a lot of users seemed to be pretty happy with the performance, and was above their expectations. A few even ran it on laptops at decent framerates ). But overall, we are most than satisfied with the launch, and we think it has gone as well as we could realistically expect considering our low resources and budget. Personally, on a scale from 1 to 10 ( 1 being a catastrophic failure and 10 the perfect launch ) I'd say it was a solid 7 or a 8. The game was launched yesterday at around 8 pm GMT. The server hasn't crashed once during that time, and we had a peak of 35 players a few hours after the launch. It was really fun to see players getting used to the controls of the game, fly around, explore planets and shoot at each other. Then press ESCAPE by accident. My evil plan has succeeded, it seems.. :smiling_imp: And so much for the "cease fire" gentlemen's agreement. Within minutes, everybody was firing at each other and chasing others around the asteroids. I even got killed a few times :rage: While the server itself was stable, it seems like there was a few network hiccups, with sometimes players failing to update for many seconds. After a while it stabilized again. The server isn't exactly too powerful and it has limited bandwidth, but I don't think we were close to the limits. We might have to investigate later with a better server and more stable bandwidth. So far feedback from our testers on the prototype has been overwhelmingly positive. Of course, the game isn't perfect and features a lot of placeholders and systems that are barely functional ( I'm looking at you, warp systems :wink: ). There seems to be a bug with flight auto-assist disabled that prevents you from side strafing; the annoying cockpit flickering bug once you die is still there; but overall it's working pretty well for a first release. I'd like to share two quotes ( I won't name the authors, they'll recognize themselves ) that made me burst into laughter when I read them. "Man, I must've been following this off and on for 9 years. It's kinda surreal to be playing this prototype" and "whaouu this new cargo ship is awesome !!" The first one is self-explicit. The second one made me laugh because the "cargo ship" is an untextured placeholder, and I definitely wouldn't quality that as "awesome". A lot of the new content on the asteroid base didn't even exist a few days ago. Two or our artists, Jan and Dan, worked on it until the last minute ( adding the hangars where you spawn for example ) to give the asteroid base some sense of scale from these industrial insallations. It'll definitely look much better once textured and lit. Kristian has made new texture packs for planets ( I love some of the new Mars-like surfaces ) and the new asteroids. They are more colorful and varied than the ones from the Kickstarter, although I'm sure nobody remembers :smile: The UI also got a revamp, but it is functionaly identical to the KS one. It's still a placeholder though. In a few months we'll do a serious pass on it, both in terms of functionality and visual look. The bomber ( the new flyable ship ) currently behaves more like a fighter. This is a conscious choice, since I didn't want player's first experience to be with a sluggish ship that has no missiles or torpedoes yet. Once we have an actual fighter implemented into the game, there will be massive tweaks to all controls and physical parameters to make the ships feel more like what their roles imply. [/QUOTE]