Space Definity Windows, Web game

Space battles yet unseen in the virtual Universe! If you are in a search for a stunning space adventure which contains dogfights, team duels and requires different tactical skills you are at the right place. Chasing the boyhood dreams of epic space battles a small team of developers in this part of known universe assembled the missing link. An engine that can handle it all, an MMO universe in which at every moment there can be many separate battles and every battle can gather more than 500 players in one massive space shooter battle. Yes, it is finally here!

Primary mission and guidelines are towards dynamic and fun environment for every game session. This is and will be a free to play game. This also does not mean that the final version of the game will have lower quality than the pay to play games.

Being a large and technically very demanding project we had to split it into many phases. The main reason for this is that the players can see the progress in as short intervals as possible, and on the other hand the participation in future development. This is an indie development so we believe that reasonable small steps are important as well as the final results, so there won’t be any unachievable promises. We will deliver everything planned and promised. That is why we have already published the demo version of the game, it is completely playable, although it is in the early phase of development. From the development point of view, this is the most important and complicated part of the game, provide an engine that can host many single battles for so many players, the core of everything that follows and definitely the part of the development process on which we are the most proud of.

DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Phase One
Since this is a large project we want to see progress of the game as soon as possible. We will deliver constant updates of the game and that is why we are organizing campaigns in phases looking for a certain amount of support. This way every segment of development can be monitored and our supporters can rest assured that the game is going in the planned direction. One part of this phase was the development of the currently playable demo, we must stress out that this is a big step and a really proud one. It is a core which will receive all upcoming upgrades and new development phases, but mostly it is a proof that we can develop a game that is technically so complex.

Mechanics
In the first release, we plan to make battles where players can choose a desired game mode, scale (number of players) and game match system that will provide easy battle finder to join them depending on their rank. Rank will be calculated based on the number of battles participated, outcomes and achievements in them. There will be also a choice for players to enter a battle with a friend and choose sides for team battle play. After every battle, players will receive experience points and credits for the ship used in last battle based on the player’s performance and battle outcome. Players can own more than one ship and every ship can be upgraded (speed, hull, shield, weapons,..). To buy a certain upgrade for the ship it has to have enough accumulated experience required for that upgrade and enough credits to buy it. Experience gained in single battle will reflect only on the ship which participated in it. Credits can be spent on any ship.

Battle scale will go from small, medium, big to huge (1000+) players. In previous months we developed the game core which supports 500+ players in one battle. For now there is a limit on game size since more players in one game require more server resources than more games with less players on one server. With server upgrades and more server power added we will test and find the optimal balance for different number of players in a single battle. With further optimizations we will achieve more and when we hit some hardware limits we will use certain software technologies which combines multiple servers to act as one so even more players can participate in one battle.

The game will be well optimized in the visual sense so it can be played on older hardware. If your hardware can run the current demo without problems than it will be able to run the final version of the game too. Our priority is to maintain the balance between visual effects and their optimization because the battles of planned magnitude cannot perform well without it.

Battles will have time limits so that game dynamics can be preserved. Huge battles will be held on a previously announced timetable so people can organize and not waste time on waiting for the battle to start. Timetables for huge battles will be created by the players in the specially developed game system. In huge battles, players will be able to win special prizes.

After the first release of the game the persistent universe will be defined, but that is a story for another time.

Currently there are two active game servers, one in the US West region and the other in the EU region. The only drawback is that they have limited output resources. That is because upgrades for high performances that are required for 24/7 big scale battles are financially out of our range at the moment. Our plan is that during this campaign we organize several big scale battles in predefined time periods so the full potential can be presented as described.

Goals for the phase one
Reasonable goals which will upgrade the current demo into the desired first phase version.
- new ships
- new maps
- ship’s radar system
- ship’s shield regeneration
- ship’s cloaking device
- different weapons to choose from before the battle with different damage to shields and hull, speed and range, or heal for allies
- tactical map of the zone
- mission statistic
- more asteroids and space stations, some of them specially shaped so they can help develop different strategies or battle tactics
- visual and design improvements
- joystick controller support