It's been really long since I updated this page, but here it is. The prototype had a massive rewrite. We've been working with a lot of different ideas in flight mechanics, how ships should move, how users get to interact, and through a lot of those iterations, we arrived on a very Homeworld like movement scheme, but we are aiming to put a hell of a twist on it.
The major components of movement:
- There's a galactic plane, we pull back the map from a third-person view of the ship to view a vibrant map that will be full of wire frame goodies.
- All ships understand that their orientation can roll (relatively speaking) in any direction, this means in combat ships can roll upside down to hit other ships with specific weapons.
- Ships will have:
- Manual movement - you can pilot certain ships in certain conditions.
- Auto-navigation when engaging in combat. Attack patterns and navigation way points.
- Tactical group movement, when formations are effective.
- Finally, the engines may also take damage, reducing speed and power overall in the ship
Major components for weapons:
- Firing Arcs
- Energy drain (uses same power source as movement)
- Weapons that rely capacitors, missiles that launch when locked, and weapons that charge slowly but are extremely powerful and don't rely on capacitors.
- Weapons take damage, and are destructible.
As you may have noticed the perspective is a little different between the two screenshots above. We are building a subsystem management mode where you get to go in and inspect the ship and manage the crew and components inside. Then you get to pull the map back and take a look at the overall battle with a seamless transition.
In the coming weeks as summer progresses, we'll keep you updated as much as possible on the various additional subsystems we'll be implementing. For a quick overview, things like tractor beams, cloaking systems, shields, sensors, and much more will be detailed and here as our prototype progresses.
We have most of these components ready for a presentable prototype, and are well on our way to scripting the demo level for all to see. The gameplay footage will be around 3-5 minutes, and we'll be showcasing what a typical level in Fleet Hackers will be like. We hope to get this ready by end of summer. See you all then!
