Dev Blog: Apparent Horizon

In my case it’s really between realism and mayhem. 

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Kiting enemies is effective if they can’t reach you which is cheap and exploitative of games. To counter this  I made 2 pathing algorithms, one which paths around objects (is recursive and potentially extremely expensive) or one that just pops it through the other side (extremely cheap but a bit unrealistic).

For comparison the Path Through is only 18 lines of code and is executed only once. It includes 1 ray cast, 3 vector calculations and a simple addition to position.

The more expensive way included 2 Initial ray casts, then 2 recursive algorithms that can make multiple attempts to find a better suited path on both the start of the trip and the end. This means x amount of ray casts to determine non collision and multiple vector additions and offsets. 

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This lead me to decide to go with the less realistic but more hectic algorithm which will allow hundreds of ships to quickly become untangled and keep the game running smoothly.

I’ve been updating on my twitter more than before as it’s quicker and keeps me programming instead of doing current write ups. 

NGUI turned out to work pretty well once I learned more of its tricks and intricacies. Liking it very much.

More to come in a few days, I should be able to do a more beefy write up than this. :D Cheer!

Is flakey as all hell.

Issues I’ve encountered so far which should be simple.

• Perspective Cameras do not work well with U.I.
• Small U.I. objects don’t work when object is moving.
• Anchor can cause U.I. to jump of screen
• U.I. if too far back gets behind objects even though I’m making a 2D U.I.

Kickstarter Script

Apparent Horizon

n  Intro

Hello and welcome to Kickstarter 2014. Today I present to you, Apparent Horizon. A game created specifically for you, specifically by me. Now who am I?

n  Myself and Giblet Games

For starters, I am the founder and head game developer at Giblet Games. What is Giblet Games you might ask, well in short it’s a freshly started indie developer founded by me. Back to me and why I am here today. I am, at my core an avid gamer. Now I’m not talking Flappy birds and Candy Crunch, I’m talking SNES until I needed glasses and gaming until my eyes are twitching. Since I could walk I’ve been dwindling precious hours of sun and moonlight away with my thumb training exercises. Through the years I have trained my thumbs, my wrists and hopefully soon my neck. Yes rift I am looking at you. So one thing I know when I play it, is a good game. These standards I set for other games are the standards I will hold myself to while I code until I can’t think straight.

n  Philosophy

Which brings me to my main goal of KickStarting Apparent Horizon, I am no artist. This leaves me at a point in development where I have most of my features implemented but not complete. This allows me to direct an artist towards modeling what I need without having to change it later on for rigging purposes. I have my self modeled primitive objects and rigged them how I need them to be rigged to make sure it was possible. With this knowledge in mind I believe it is time to start working on the other major component of Apparent Horizon, the Art.

n  Genre

So here we have today is my first project I am going to release for all of you, Apparent Horizon. I’d like to start with the genre by saying this game is a hybrid. I feel all the latest and greatest games today are heading in at least someway into hybrid genre territory. This allows our core gameplay to be expanded and bring fresh ideas to the table which past generations have not provided. As with all hybrids it can be hard to denote their exact genre so as with mine it will be a mix. Apparent Horizon stands in the Space-Sim / RTS genre providing frantic action like X-Wing and fleet control like Sins of a Solar Empire. Couple this with ship upgrades, exploration, team work and awesome weapons and you’ve got Apparent Horizon at its core.

n  Features

Now you’re probably wondering what features the game brings to the table, well there’s a few. First we have a billion different system combination possibilities coupled with a randomly generated ship creator so no system will ever be the same when created. Initially I am going to release with a multiplayer mode that can also be played alone where the players are pitted against all factions whilst building up and protecting their mobile base. This mobile base allows players to upgrade, research and build new ships / turrets and store resources for later use. The Mobile base will only be part of the multiplayer environment as it is needed for the Co-op Mode. Players will face waves of at first increasingly numerous enemies then will begin to face stronger enemies until there’s just no possible way to fight any longer.

n  Team Work

This is where team work comes into play heavily, each faction has numerous ships that hold different capabilities that  are better for different applications than one another. While one player may be able to buffer shields another may be able to super cool weapons and increase their firing rates. What this allows is numerous hours of gameplay where players can attempt to find the best balance of upgrades and ships to fight off the enemies as long as possible.

n  Research and Ubers

Research paths are key to unlocking extra ships however exploration can also grant some major advantages early on with the inclusion of Uber player only ships. These are ancient ships or prototype weapons discovered by exploring the systems you travel to. Once found you can reverse engineer them and begin to construct them for you or your fleets use. These ships will not be found via researching ship types as those are limited to other factions models.

n  Resources

Now onto the heart and soul of researching and upgrades: resources. In between your fighting or even during with the proper drone you can harvest asteroids or absorb fuel from the star in the system you are in. These resources are stored and then can be used to upgrade or create new ships, turrets and research traits. Without resources you will not be able to repair your hull or craft new stuff so it’s important to manage your resources while defending against those whom wish to do you harm.

n  Modding and Multiplayer

As for the multiplayer component I will initially be testing a four player + A.I. fleet setup to balance the game, I may allow for more unofficially but will not guarantee performance or connectivity. As for other unofficial content I have from the beginning have made modding new ships, weapons and techs a priority and will have complete documentation on how to create, compile and implement mods! This is important to me as a gamer because without mods games are limited to the lore / style of game they are set in. With mods - worlds and ideas can be expanded for years to come and this allows me to begin work on a new project instead of worrying about making DLC. This also allows me to focus on patching any bugs you may come across that I myself didn’t catch. So yes you can Mod!

n  Outro

This brings me to the final and most important part of this kick starter. I want this game to be fun and challenging, to work not only your mind but your reflexes alike. In the upcoming weeks I will be finishing some of the final features, tweaking them and showcasing them for the world to see. With that in mind I am going to attempt to greenlight / early access on steam as more and more ships become available for use in game. As of now I have no concrete release date in mind however I am hoping for a Q3 2014 full release. If you are on my kickstarter page off to the side you can see what tiers of funding I have offered and below you can check out the full transcript of this video + challenge funding levels I have offered for fun. These apply only to PC and if all goes to plan the game will release at $14.99 on Steam this year.

Thank you for watching and I hope I have piqued your interest. You can follow the development blog over at apparenthorizondev.tumblr.com or twitter.com/horizonapparent.

Features

Bug Fixes

So this week is my foray into Space Stations. Initially I will be coding the swapping / changing of ships (mostly done). Next comes the upgrades / change out of modules on ships, finally i’ll have a place to research, purchase and store ships for future use. 

Research will be cross station / system so you don’t have to worry about going back and forth.

More like an idea I want to follow after completion of this game. Doing a bit of planning in the cae when im away from my current game. No more ideas for this one because i dont want to cannibalize the time i have to put into the game already on other features.

Ill give a small hint on my next endeavour. God Game.

So I did a lot of coding tonight and optimized a lot of my systems with fresh code thats faster and cleaner. However I made one small change to order of operations which was critical to cycle saving and this is very important to consider. Sometimes recoding should take back seat to reordering. I had my ai check distance and calculate threat then compared to see if targeting is applicable. Now calculating threat is a pretty big process especially when in bulk quantities or multiple times per frame. It has to retrieve the faction from the dictionary (going to change this to be in the ship class itself) and then go through another dictionary that holds the opposing factions and the relations with them. This can take a lot of cycles if done multiple times per frame. One major change i made to this was checking distance and determining if applicable then calculating threat and applicability. Overall this saved a bunch of money on my car insurance and I didnt even switch to geico.

Kickstarter Perks
$1.00 to $9.99 – You’re Awesome!
$10.00+ Includes Game – ($5.00 less than release price $14.99)
$20.00+ Everything Below + Copy of Extra Music not used in Game.
$50.00+ Everything Below + Thank you in credits [Includes me trying as fast as I can to say everyones name extremely fast]
$100.00+ Everything Below + A name of your choice as a system name.
$500.00+ Everything Below + A custom sound from you in game. X10
$500.00+ Everything Below + Design a custom ship with our designers! X5
$1000.00+ $100.00 and Below + Place a custom AD in game that is tweaked to look like it belongs in the future X3
$5000.00+ $100.00 and Below + Your Logo on the splash screen as a Sponsor!

But I assure you progress is being made. Last week into this weekend I linked and upgraded my A.I. and Weapons systems.

I began using the message system for weapons as it seems actually faster than a non-cached get component piece of code. Which is fine because it only sends a message when something gets hit and that’s not super often. What’s good about this message system is it allows me to generalize my weapons system so all planets and objects can take damage which was true before but in a much clunkier way which I hated.

Also important is how I target with my weapons, to the root of my objects using transform.root. This kind of runs into a problem when I have parent celestial bodies like moons but I’ll sort that out soon enough.

Anyways it’s late and that is it for this update, some pictures and videos on the way or over on my Twitter @ twitter.com/horizonapparent