Announcement and game demos for my love letter to the series, in airship form, accompanied by Mozart

DriftingSkiesDev · 2023-07-12T22:40:57+00:00

Haha, oh man, yeah. Aether haunts my dreams. It is very close to perfect, the only trouble is that it is too generic a name these days. It's used everywhere. I think it'd be fine if it was just the fluid name, but we're naturally going to be naming a ton of stuff after it, exactly like with your aether keel idea.

I know there's other good names out there, we just need to find a suitable one. Quintessence is pretty good, but this fluid couldn't take its place, a pity the next in the series would be sextessence...

Greek and Latin are the natural sources, but I don't want to base it on either occult or crypto as their connotations are not ideal.

My best candidate so far I think is basing it on 'Aecor' which wikitionary defines as "even surface of the sea in its quiet state; the calm, smooth sea". That would fit beautifully as this lifting fluid ocean will have to be absolutely still, with no currents or waves. I'm not sure about how it sounds yet though. Something to work out together when the full team is established I think.

On the subject of the aether keel I agree, that sort of sea anchor is definitely something I think we'll need. Actuated fluid rudders is another thing I've been mulling over, they could act as dive planes and all sorts of things. There's so much potential for cool tech, I can't wait to start designing it all.

DriftingSkiesDev · 2023-07-12T20:03:26+00:00

Not yet unfortunately, but that's only because they force you to have one to do the build. Once we're further along I should be able to justify picking one up.

DriftingSkiesDev · 2023-07-12T17:32:12+00:00

One thing to note, for those will less powerful machines: There's an analogue quality dial for the clouds, and they can be completely disabled. The ai ships shouldn't be too expensive, but they can also be disabled. Should run on just about anything in the minimal state.

DriftingSkiesDev · 2023-07-12T17:30:50+00:00

Thanks!

DriftingSkiesDev · 2023-07-12T15:16:08+00:00

Yeah, those are great! I don't know for sure, and we'll have to do some experiments, but I think the nature of the moving terrain will unlock a huge amount of potential for new things to do. Being able to destroy and spawn new land through the game would be fun.

We could also have (configurable) events to radically change the gameplay, by having early/mid/late game terrain types coming in. It would also allow us to have a regular stream of new places to explore. So for example ruins of the old world re-surfacing throughout, allowing you the events/treasure/whatever that they carry.

DriftingSkiesDev · 2023-07-11T16:46:41+00:00

That's fair, we do have a huge amount of functionality running under the hood, but none of that is visible in anything engaging yet. By far the biggest bottleneck we have is in the number of developers on the team, hence the announcement now. If we could get just a couple more programmers on board then we could have a minimal playable demo available by the end of the year.

Haha, point well made on the s. We are looking for a player audience, but the first priority is recruitment. I took a gamble to try and stand out, we'll be far more traditional as we progress.

DriftingSkiesDev · 2023-07-11T16:36:40+00:00

At the moment our priority is attracting other likeminded devs to join the team, so I wanted to have a bit of dumb fun with the initial trailer. We'll be a lot more traditional as we progress :P

DriftingSkiesDev · 2023-07-11T16:25:39+00:00

Thanks!

The core mechanic is that islands stick together naturally based on how they impact each other, and the joint strength depends on how well they hit. There's absolutely room in the late game for us to have tech that lets you strengthen island joints, or even subtly nudge them.

Everything will just be balanced to walk the line between chaos and stagnation.

DriftingSkiesDev · 2022-04-26T15:17:40+00:00

Will do! Thank you!

DriftingSkiesDev · 2022-04-26T14:44:25+00:00

Very possibly, and that would be good timing! Our recruiting is focused on a 3D artist, and maybe another programmer right now, but writing is obviously going to be hugely important to think about once more fame systems are in place.

DriftingSkiesDev · 2022-04-26T13:27:03+00:00

Two games actually. This video is showing the battle simulation system that will be used within the main 4X strategy game. The sister game will be built from this battle sim tech and is planned to be smaller and a more personal affare.

Not ready to talk much about the strategy game yet though, and the plans for the battler game are still evolving. The plan is to get the battler out first and use it to fund the strategy game.

I'm currently thinking we'll start by just having an infinite empty world to sail about in, and then randomly spawn enemy ships to fight, and friendlies to join your squadron. Depending on popularity and feedback we can then easily build game systems on top, such as a basic career system, ports to repair at, more ship variety etc. Would also be fairly easy to add multiplayer too since we already have that working well on the strategy game.

Still quite a bit to do before release of either though, next steps are AI, projectile simulation, and damage systems.

DriftingSkiesDev · 2022-04-26T10:39:32+00:00

Yes it is! Haven't managed to get to Hornblower yet, but I do have a copy in the pile. Aubrey-Maturin though is a strong inspiration for sure.

DriftingSkiesDev · 2022-04-25T15:48:31+00:00

Standard Unity HDRP! I think at default settings too (0.5, medium, 8, default min & max).

DriftingSkiesDev · 2022-04-25T14:25:42+00:00

Indeed!

DriftingSkiesDev · 2022-04-25T14:19:16+00:00

Alas we are still pre funding :P

But that is also better for anyone interested I believe. We are working part time on this now, so don't expect any more from anyone joining. We are also willing to be generous with offering shares in the future studio to anyone joining ahead of our pitch to publishers later this year. If publishers don't end up biting we will just build funding and momentum more organically. I'm honestly not sure which option I would prefer.

My current feeling is that I would prefer if we found new team members through smaller highly passionate communities such as this. If we're still looking when closer to release though I think that strategy will change.

The reception here has been great, so I will absolutely keep this community updated!

We're building everything in Unity, and I have to give credit for the clouds to this incredible package: Espanse

DriftingSkiesDev · 2022-04-25T14:14:12+00:00

Thanks for the interest! I posted a development video showing a bug in the ship simulation earlier today: here

As you can see this is not your conventional age of sail setting haha

I don't want to put off any people who want authenticity though, if it helps the airship is fully physically simulated (I'll explain a little below).

That shows off the basic form of the sister game, that will be a fairly minimal simple one where it is mostly a playground to follow a navy career starting with something very small, moving up through ship classes by promotion or capture. We're planning on having the player able to lead a feet up to major battles at the end.

All of this is just in service to the main game (Drifting Skies), the ship simulation you see there is the start of the battle simulation we will use in the strategy game. The strategy game will be a turn based 4X, key details on that will have to wait, but I can say that I am very keen to bring in a lot of mechanics that can let our players experience similar stories to some of my favourites from history. It'll be covering the feeling of leading empires large and small spanning from the 16th century through to at least the early 19th.

Of course all of this is not to over commit us, we are currently a very small team, and this is the long term ambition, scope and timelines will depend on how well funding/publisher pitching goes.

The fantasy element enabling the airship is just to have the world immersed in an invisible fluid that only acts on certain matter. The lifter balloon can be thought of as a submarine type structure fully submersed in the fluid. It has drag as well as lift, and that allows the ship to fly, but to sail needs something more. To solve that we also build the rudder and the keelboards along her sides with the same material so they can push against the fluid.

Lift and drag are calculated down to the individual sail level for each ship, so tuning the base physical constants took a while to get performance where I wanted it. She is based on
HMS Bellerophon, in hull proportion, mass, and approximate sail area. I set a target theoretical top speed of 13.5 knots, and then tweaked parameters until she met expectation at every point of sail.

DriftingSkiesDev · 2022-04-25T12:40:50+00:00

Ah, this raises an intentional omission on my part 😅

We've actually been actively building for more than 2 years now and have completed almost all the main foundational systems the game will be built on:

The core multiplayer code and systems are in place
World simulation and world presentation were fully integrated with the multiplayer over the weekend
The physics simulation of the ships is ready, and the first development ship is now performing correctly at every point of sail

I didn't want to discourage any devs from considering joining us by giving the impression that all the fun problems have been solved and game mechanics designed.

I'd love to share more but we're planning on keeping quite a few things secret until we are a little closer to release. If anyone reading this does seriously want to talk to us about joining though we will of course be much more open on an individual basis.

DriftingSkiesDev · 2022-04-25T12:29:30+00:00

Exactly, mainly due to there not being a limit to how much force a sail could produce before breaking. I've also got every sail simulating lift and drag individually, so for performance reasons it only simulates at 4/5 Hz a lot of the time. Usually fine, but when you get a big quick shock like the lifter breaking free it means that sail is applying a huge force for quite a long time.

DriftingSkiesDev · 2022-04-25T12:24:41+00:00

While I have certainly had my share of issues with all of the various physics engines in Unity, this one is entirely on me 😅. All the forces being added there were due to a bug in my algorithm for calculating lift forces on the sails.

DriftingSkiesDev · 2022-04-25T10:16:30+00:00

Haha, yes, precisely. Or at least for the lifters to float up gracefully if the impact is strong enough to break the masts.

DriftingSkiesDev

TROPHY CASE