Comments - Timmon26

The inability to travel into the twilisphere is evolutionary, like the inability of penguins to live in the Sahara. When life made its way up the mountains it eventually became specialized to live in that habitat. Humans (ish...things...) evolved from said life. Because humans can't cross the twilisphere, they were confined for most of their history to a single tight cluster of mountain peaks later called the Imperial Continent.
No humans existed on other peaks prior to steam powered (or hand powered in earlier years) colonization because convergent evolution does not work that way. The land animals on each peak are all naturally endemic; however many plant species can be found on multiple peaks due to airborne seed spread or transmission of gametes by long distance flying creatures. As a result of the universal latitude-based plant life, land creatures on separated peaks are often similar due to convergent evolution, though physiologically different (compare sharks to dolphins).

The second half of the historical background is wrong on many levels.
If you're going to be entering this contest, it helps to have more than basic understanding of evolutionary biology.
I know this world inside and out; if you're entering this contest and have any questions about technology, zoology, sociology etc. as it pertains to AE's past, send me a PM and I can clarify things.

Definitely. The gyro is a combination of his airscrew and glider designs, plus the steam engine for power, the Wright Flyer control surface configuration for maneuvering, and a few personal tweaks of course.

From the get-go I wanted to take steampunk in a new direction. I love the steampunk style, but it's fairly mainstream and tends to get overused.
Most of Leanardo's machines make for plausible sci fi on their own, just lacking a believable power source. Combine their principles with basic steam tech and you get a brand new style.

Big Huge tried something similar with their Vinci faction for Rise of Legends, but they took the steam and steel a little too far; the Da Vinci influence was just barely apparent.

Ahh, not all the time ;). The medium artillery ship's spirals are in tractor configuration.

When in doubt, you can tell by the rudder vanes. The ribs always run aft from the mast.
The smokestacks, also, will never point forward.

That would only block more of your field of view.
I think the trick is going to be to move the camera left or right depending on your mouse input, so your crosshairs are always against blue sky (or your target). The camera would "stick" to one side until you turn with sufficient force to flip it over to the other side. The camera shift would give you a small amount of depth perception as well.
If this doesn't work we can just place the camera in front of the hoop. Realistic or no, it works. More than a few driving games feature bumper cameras for the same reason.

Hud size is one of the many things we'll be tweaking based on the community's reaction to the demo. The demo gameplay will be an integral part of the final game, so the more feedback we get on it the better.

Personally I think the HUD may be a big on the big side... Then again, I know there have been lots of large HUDs that don't appear to obscure gameplay at all. Often the best way to tell is just to play it and see.

Hell yeah that's a good thing! BG&E's one of my favorite games of all time. Was listening to the soundtrack just the other day.

Perspective largely came naturally. Perspective is really very simple, it's just all the methods of teaching it (I think) are complicated. With perspective, you only need to know four things:
1. All lines that would be parallel in real space will converge at a point in 2D space, each point representing a parallel set,
2. If a group of parallel sets vary on only one axis in real space, they constitute a horizon set, and their vanishing points will lie along a horizon line. For example, if you have an octagonal prism, four edges (two on each base) will form a parallel set. All four of the prism's parallel sets will form a horizon set.
3. The midpoint of a line receding into real space will not be the midpoint of the line in 2D space, it will always be closer to the vanishing end of the line. Let's say you've drawn a rectangle that's receding to a vanishing point and want to divide it in half. What you do is draw a line so that the two resulting halves are geometrically similar (if you scaled the far one up, it would be congruent with the near one).
4. Field of view is determined by how close you position your vanishing points in 2D space. If you're drawing a classic cube and your vanishing points are all very close, your field of view is large and the cube will appear distorted like in a fish-eye lens. If the vanishing points are far apart the viewer's field of view will be more centered on the cube. If the vanishing points are infinitely far away, the drawing is isometric.

The Elder Scrolls did that too ;). Two moons is a bit of a creative cop-out. When it occurs to a world builder that their story doesn't take place on Earth and so shouldn't have a single grey moon, their first thought is to add another one "to make it weird".
We did too, until we realized how common it was. Our planet instead has one moon (tidally locked like Earth's) and one set of rings.
I've never designed a night sky before, but I intend to do it well. Expect more environment-related news in the weeks to come.

Work more with paper and pencil. Digital art has a way of making everything look artificially good so you don't get much practice (unless you're painting freeform with just brushes on Photoshop or whatever program you use).
A good sense of perspective is a combination of sketching experience and mathematical knowledge.

We're crunching to finish a fighter combat demo right now. Our target release date for this is either Christmas or sometime in January, provided we don't hit any major setbacks.

Designing a craft to fly in the Twilisphere would take some thought. The Twilisphere is super-dense, yet non-liquid, an environment never explored in a video game or even in the real world to my knowledge. The only place like it is the lower atmosphere of Venus.

Such an expansion isn't even on our radar at the moment. Like any zero-budget indie project, our main goal is simply getting the game working and finished with as few problems as possible.
We're trying to keep from getting ahead of ourselves; a game this ambitious will only be finished if we take it a step at a time.

Merchant ships still have steam engines, but they're just used to power "windmills" instead of spirals.
Farms use moving air to collect energy; ships use energy to move air. A merchant ship's propulsion system is basically a windmill in reverse, just like modern props are.
In the game, merchants will appear to "swim" through the air, a bit like a cuttlefish: Youtube.com

To the best of my knowledge, it works. Mechanically all the essential parts fit together and the engine will actually run.
The power to weight ratio is easily below par, so it won't fly. But it would make a nice kinetic sculpture :P.

I think it's also possible for a scene to take place over nothing but land, with no Twilisphere visible. If you were to fly over the very center of Andasho for instance, you'd see nothing but mountains; cities could easily be built in the valleys between peaks in these areas.
Other scenes may just be endless clouds...

So true...
Before I got into game development I never considered the amount of work that goes into it. Now every time I play a video game I get distracted by the textures and animations and wonder about the guy who spent hours getting them to look just right.

Even if you're an admiral, you will still have an avatar, a location in the AE world (this is almost always your flagship). You can only give direct orders to other ships that are in the immediate vicinity. Unlike a traditional RTS, Aero Empire will take distance into account. There is no radio in the AE universe so you can't magically give orders to units halfway around the world; your Commanders will have control of your forces in your absence. If you want to micro your units you'll have to appear personally on the battlefield to lead them...

I'm planning on using an alternate propulsion mechanism for the merchant ship designs. The windmill mechanism for the farms will operate on the same principle, only in reverse.
Stay tuned, I think you're gonna like it :)

Most combat improvements will likely take the form of Blimp upgrades that you can buy: better armor, more powerful guns, etc.
Depending on how in-depth the research system ends up being, training programs may also play a role in crew performance.

Thanks :)
It's being modeled right now actually. Unfortunately it can't be very high-poly, but we'll try to squeeze in as much detail as we can.
And yes, all the little engine bits will animate.