We're drawing pretty close to the first release of Sky Nations and I've been crunching in some last minute fixes and optimizations before it goes up, which hopefully make it straight into the release build before it reaches you guys.
What's in 0.11?
This is the first build available to the public and it contains the base mechanics of the game, creating ships, crafting, sculpting items and procedural islands. You can get a bit of a clearer view of the exact content on the wiki. But it is really the base needed to play the game. There will be a lot more content to come in the following updates.
You also find the wiki pretty important in playing the game initially, since the game is in development building a tutorial into it hasn't been a priority so you may find the getting started guide pretty useful!
What are the planned updates?
The game will be updated roughly every 1 or 2 weeks, depending on the content and between then for bug fixes. These will add new features and content to the game. These will not be major updates and may only add small parts of a bigger feature depending on what that feature is. Some updates may break world files although I will try and avoid that. But since some changes may require this, be aware! So what is coming? You can look forward to the following things being implemented in the future as the development progresses:
- NPCs - Both friendly and aggressive NPC's are planned and they'll fill several uses and mechanics for players.
- Mod Support - Full C# modding API for the game server, allowing you to make your server unique and change some of the core mechanics of the game. Or even create your own game-type within the game! This will be implemented over several updates and will be updated when new features are added so it can access them.
- Land Capture/Nations - Land capture will allow players to capture and protect islands from other players, making it so other players cannot place blocks and must use a significant amount of force to break existing blocks. It will also allow you to group up under one leader to help defend, build and fight together.
- Weapons - Although I didn't quite manage to squeeze them into the initial release, players will be able to wield various ranged weapons to aid in boarding ships or fighting off mobs. These will be crafted from items in the game and possibly looted in the future.
- Unique ship parts - Many unique blocks for your ship with a big variety of effects on it. More tiers of currently existing items as wel. Such as cannons, thrusters and power cells.
- Land Energy System - Currently energy and machines that require it are limited to ships. The energy system will be expanded to land, so you can build defenses and run many of the blocks such as Radars that you can already use on ships.
- Multiplatform Client - I'm hoping to have a port of the client for both Mac and Linux in the future. Currently this rests on a few unimplemented features in MonoGame. Note: the server is already multiplatform.
Server
The game server is multiplatform and should run on most linux distros that support mono. As well as on Windows. It'll be uploaded to the skynations.net website so anyone can download it ahead of the release on desura. This will be most likely be wednesday. So if you'd like to setup a server ready, you'll be able to! You can find the server setup guide here.
If anyone out there runs a game server renting platform and wants to setup a plan for Sky Nations, drop me an email at: ben@skynations.net and I can help you set it up.
A Quick Note
The game has never been played by such a large variety of users and machines during internal testing. So especially on initial release, a few performance niggles and bugs will most likely pop up. I'll try to fix these as fast possible. So I'd ask you to patient if anything like this happens. After all the game is still in development! If you'd like to report a bug or a problem, please contact me by the following:
- IRC: #skynations irc.gamesurge.net
- Or email me: ben@skynations.net
- Or Tweet me: @MrBenjammmin
I love the music you're using in the trailer! It's quite enthusiastic and engaging in itself. Who created it?
The music is a place holder, it's royalty free music by Kevin Macleod. You can find his site and music here: Incompetech.com
just bought my copy about 30mins ago reeaaalllllyyyyyyy cannot wait to play this game it looks so fun and awesome! good job guys
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