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Author Topic: Kickstarter- Kinetic Void, a 3D space sim in Pre-Alpha with modular ships  (Read 6360 times)

Harabeck

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Hey guys, I'm the programmer for Badland Studio and we're trying to raise money through Kickstarter to fund our 3D space sim. Our most outstanding feature is our super customizable ships. You build your ship from scratch by attaching modules together any way you want. But it's not like Spore or Gal Civ2 where the placement doesn't matter. Each module has its own hit-box and takes damage individually, and where you place your weapons determines where they can shoot.

Read more about it on our Kickstarter page: http://kck.st/KniuPR

Download the pre-alpha demo and build your own ship: http://kineticvoid.badlandstudio.com/the-ship-builder/
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Upgradecap

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What are the prospects for the game? What will you be able to do/build?
And most importantly, will there be moddability to the game?
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Harabeck

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You build your ship and use it to trade/pirate/do missions for factions, or just explore. The game will be an open world sandbox with a lot of procedurally generated content.

As for mods, certain things will be possible by just leaving the structure of the game exposed. For instance, the pool of ships that can spawn for a faction will just be folders with the ship template files. To add your own ships to the NPC's, you will be able to make a ship in the demo, take its save file and drop it into the appropriate folder. Designing modules will be a bit harder; we'll have to make an external tool to handle it, but we absolutely intend to do so. We're also going to leave tons of variables relating to galaxy generation exposed to the player via a menu you access when you start a new game.
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Upgradecap

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Well, that sounds like a great opportunity that i cannot miss out on. Will you have an playable alpha/beta like starfarer does, or will you only let the public play it on release?
Also, what code is it in? Java, C#, C++ or?
And as for modding it, will it be equally moddable as starfarer? :D
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Catra

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what are the physics going to be like?

are creations going to gain velocity according to its mass, or is it going to be something the X series did and try to simulate it( incase you're not in the know: basically ships had a flat acceleration, that more or less felt right for the ship size / faction lore)? are ballistics (if any) going to have an extremely long range outside of nebulaes / gravity wells? what about missiles?
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Harabeck

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Well, that sounds like a great opportunity that i cannot miss out on. Will you have an playable alpha/beta like starfarer does, or will you only let the public play it on release?
Also, what code is it in? Java, C#, C++ or?
And as for modding it, will it be equally moddable as starfarer? :D

The demo we have now will be constantly updated, even up to release. Eventually it will have all ship modules, but the test sector will be very limited. To experience more of the game before release, our $20 Kickstarter reward gets you beta access. I'm sure we'll be taking more traditional pre-orders after the Kickstarter ends.

It's made in Unity using C#.

We'll do our best to make it as moddable as possible, though it may have to come a bit at a time.

what are the physics going to be like?

are creations going to gain velocity according to its mass, or is it going to be something the X series did and try to simulate it( incase you're not in the know: basically ships had a flat acceleration, that more or less felt right for the ship size / faction lore)? are ballistics (if any) going to have an extremely long range outside of nebulaes / gravity wells? what about missiles?

Anything in play is a physics object and will react accordingly. If you smack into an asteroid, expect to take damage and for your ship to be thrown about. Weapons will also have physics impulses (larger weapon projectiles will actually just be large physics objects moving at speed). The ships maneuver by applying thrust to the center of mass through the physics engine. Speed and acceleration are a matter of thrust vs mass, but engines will be subject to diminishing returns on thrust if they're too small compared to the overall mass (e.g. Right now we only have frigate sized modules, if you make a battleship sized ship, it will always be slow no matter how many small engines you slap on it). This will allow us to make sure larger ships have an appropriate feeling of weight.

We will have missiles, energy weapons, and a variety of other weapon types (someone suggested harpoons for instance). 

Gravity wells would be a cool feature, but I can't promise anything.
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CrashToDesktop

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Hmmm...Unity.  Sounds tempting.  Too bad I can't get anything until next month.  This may be my next thing. ;)

EDIT:
DAMN!  It looks wayy too fancy for my laptop.  It would melt it in the first few minute... :(
Looks good!  I can't wait to see some combat footage (if there is yet).
« Last Edit: May 05, 2012, 04:57:35 PM by TheSoldier »
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Harabeck

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EDIT:
DAMN!  It looks wayy too fancy for my laptop.  It would melt it in the first few minute... :(
Looks good!  I can't wait to see some combat footage (if there is yet).

Well, I don't know anything about your laptop, but you should at least give it a shot. Unity can be turned down to pretty low graphical levels. Download the demo and try it out.

There isn't much combat to show at the moment as my AI is broken after some changes we made, and we've been focusing on other things. We may add something like a stationary space station with turrets that fire at you sometime soon though.
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Upgradecap

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You know, this game has so much opportunity, for modding aswell! :D

Too bad i don't have 20 bucks, only 17  :'(

Oh well, do we get the beta aswell? ;D


EDIT:  I cannot for the life of me figure out how to fire the main guns on the ships, not the fixed ones.
« Last Edit: May 06, 2012, 04:58:43 AM by Upgradecap »
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CrashToDesktop

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EDIT:
DAMN!  It looks wayy too fancy for my laptop.  It would melt it in the first few minute... :(
Looks good!  I can't wait to see some combat footage (if there is yet).

Well, I don't know anything about your laptop, but you should at least give it a shot. Unity can be turned down to pretty low graphical levels. Download the demo and try it out.

There isn't much combat to show at the moment as my AI is broken after some changes we made, and we've been focusing on other things. We may add something like a stationary space station with turrets that fire at you sometime soon though.
Thanks, I'll try it out!  This is gonna be awesome...;)
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I am officially an epoch.
Quote from: Thaago
Note: please sacrifice your goats responsibly, look up the proper pronunciation of Alex's name. We wouldn't want some other project receiving mystic power.

Harabeck

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You know, this game has so much opportunity, for modding aswell! :D

Too bad i don't have 20 bucks, only 17  :'(

Oh well, do we get the beta aswell? ;D


EDIT:  I cannot for the life of me figure out how to fire the main guns on the ships, not the fixed ones.

Guns are still very much unfinished. I think the fixed variant of gun_01 will fire with middle mouse though.
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