Fractal Softworks Forum
Other => Discussions => Topic started by: Psiyon on April 23, 2016, 05:24:12 PM
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UPDATE: Live on Kickstarter!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2048283477/disunity-strategic-space-warfare
Hey everyone: this is a sort of micro-announcement for my game Disunity. Things have progressed very well over the past year, so I'm starting to publicly push out some screenshots and other media.
I'm posting this here since Starsector was more or less the driving force that really got me into game development. As such, Disunity takes a lot of inspiration from Starsector--Alex & co are great role models and I learned a lot through my years of playing their game. Without Starsector, this game would not have existed in any sort of capacity.
So, what is Disunity? It's a single-player real-time strategy game firmly focused on starship combat. Players assume the role of supreme admiral, and conquer star systems with their fleets.
Description from my website:
Spoiler
Features:
Lead your fleets in real-time combat across entire star systems.
Master the art of fleet composition with detailed ship and weapon attributes.
Subvert the minds of your enemies--everything you gain is appropriated from hostile forces.
Collapse the Terran Union and conquer Earth in a nonlinear campaign.
Create custom maps, ships and weapons with native mod support.
Why is Disunity different?
There are several concepts that set Disunity apart from other strategy games.
Everything gained is taken from the enemy, replacing the traditional paradigm of resource gathering and unit construction.
Rather than commanding individual ships, fleets are the basic unit. They derive their stats from the ships that compose them.
Fleets move using Newtonian physics—there are no maximum speeds, only acceleration values.
When will it be released?
Disunity is currently in early alpha. While an exact release date cannot be given, if Disunity’s Kickstarter is successful, the game can be expected to be released as an Early Access title on Steam within a year.
If you want more info and want to be kept in the loop (Twitter tumblr or email), take a look at the website: disunity.velgames.com (http://disunity.velgames.com)
For now though, I'll post some screenshots:
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/71512473/images/Dis/ss1.jpg)
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/71512473/images/Dis/ss2.jpg)
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/71512473/images/Dis/ss3.jpg)
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/71512473/images/Dis/ss4.jpg)
I'm really hoping for the chance to work on this project full-time once I graduate from college (like 2 weeks from now), and as much as I dislike the idea of crowdfunding sometimes, it's unfortunately the only way to get this off the ground in any reasonable time frame. One way or another, the game will be finished--it's just I'd rather do that in the next couple years, rather than the next couple decades. So if you're interested, please consider supporting me when the full announcement/kickstarter/greenlight stuff goes live in a bit less than a month--it'd really mean a lot. I grew up on games like Homeworld, so the idea of bringing a new space RTS to the market is really exciting for me.
If anyone's got any questions, I'd love to answer them!
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This looks VERY interesting, i'll have a look, possibly soon.
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Great to see you've gotten this far with your project and best of luck! The very first dive into practical game development can be tons of fun and is always an excellent learning experience, win, lose or draw :)
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Thanks :D
The very first dive into practical game development can be tons of fun and is always an excellent learning experience, win, lose or draw :)
Technically this is my fourth game project. The first project I was a part of landed my school as a finalist in E3's college game competition in 2014, believe it or not. The other projects were related to school as well, but I learned enough from each one to get myself to the point where I didn't feel totally lost and confused when I began Disunity :) But yeah, so far Disunity has been a blast to work on. I've been fortunate enough to have a lot of feedback from fellow students and a lot of help from my professors along the way, so I've been slowly molding this thing into something I truly think is pretty awesome. No matter how things go, I'm totally glad I took the year to hammer this thing out--like you said, it's a lot of fun.
Edit: Some tweets with some gameplay footage:
https://twitter.com/brettmgregory/status/724021286947676160
https://twitter.com/brettmgregory/status/724017509653946368
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Looks really interesting, 2D Homeworld-ish.
I wish you the best of luck with this project :)
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This looks really cool! Love that you're tackling the "no maximum speed" design challenge; the way it looks like you've got it set up seems super promising in that regard. And it seems like a nice differentiator to get people interested.
Probably premature comment: have you considered making the switch from "icon" to "ship sprite" view slightly more gradual? Like, a 0.2 second crossfade, or thereabouts. In the videos, it's a bit jarring. Obviously early footage etc... and everything else looks really good.
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Very promising! I look forward to seeing more :D
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Thanks guys!
Love that you're tackling the "no maximum speed" design challenge; the way it looks like you've got it set up seems super promising in that regard. And it seems like a nice differentiator to get people interested.
Indeed--so far it's been working quite nicely in testing. It's really different having fleets move like this compared to having speed limits. Newtonian movement introduces a lot of quirks but I think that in this RTS setting it makes planning your movements a lot more interesting. One thing I've really liked about it is that it lets ships with low acceleration values catch up to ships with higher ones--meaning large ships can quickly swoop in and deal a ton of damage to a group of faster ships that just started to run away. It kind of inadvertently solves the issue of ships kiting others in certain situations.
Probably premature comment: have you considered making the switch from "icon" to "ship sprite" view slightly more gradual? Like, a 0.2 second crossfade, or thereabouts. In the videos, it's a bit jarring. Obviously early footage etc... and everything else looks really good.
Yeah it's a bit harsh right now, definitely want a nice smooth fade for it in the future. Thanks for the comment though :)
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Hey everyone: I could really use your help, and it will only take a few minutes of your time.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2048283477/270080509?token=4087cc36 (Please don't share this link too freely, I'd like to keep things somewhat under-wraps for the time being since it contains the announcement trailer, among other things. Thanks!)
Disunity will be going live on Kickstarter fairly soon. I'd be extremely appreciative if you could look over the project's current draft and provide some feedback through the form here: http://goo.gl/forms/Qe6BadcHWwdyC39G3
I want this to be as successful as possible, but that's not going to happen if my eyes are the only ones looking at the Kickstarter pitch.
Currently, I feel as if the Kickstarter page is in fairly decent shape. There are definitely some bits of polishing I feel it needs, but I want to get other opinions before I start finalizing anything, or churning out new content for it.
Thanks in advance to everyone who lends a hand, again, I can't thank you enough.
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Responses submitted! Let us know when it goes live (I'm sure you will).
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Likewise! The gameplay footage is looking really good. Especially like that ship firing at the planet thing you had going on there - really works well. <makes a note>
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If only there were something in SS that needed that kind of visual effect.... *cough JangalaOrbitalBurns cough *
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Thanks guys, I appreciate the interest!
@Alex I'd like nothing more than to see a big scary beam shooting up planets in Starsector XD
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I wish you luck Psiyon!
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This looks freaking sweet. I'll be keeping an eye out for it.
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This looks freaking sweet. I'll be keeping an eye out for it.
Agreed! This is one to watch, that's for sure.
Best of luck with future development, Psi. ;D
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Thanks again everyone for the kind words and support!
Disunity is now on Steam Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=698086360
Additionally, the Kickstarter will be launching on June 7th, which is this coming Tuesday. You can keep up to date with things on Twitter, Facebook, or the website's forums (http://forum.velgames.com/index.php), the links you'll need are on the Greenlight page :)
Thank you all for your support so far, you're the best!
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Thanks again everyone for the kind words and support!
Disunity is now on Steam Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=698086360
Additionally, the Kickstarter will be launching on June 7th, which is this coming Tuesday. You can keep up to date with things on Twitter, Facebook, or the website's forums (http://forum.velgames.com/index.php), the links you'll need are on the Greenlight page :)
Thank you all for your support so far, you're the best!
Good luck! I'd greenlight you but I have a restricted account thanks to not having spent enough money...
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Good luck! I'd greenlight you but I have a restricted account thanks to not having spent enough money...
They do that?! Man, Steam really has gone downhill. Restricting an account due to balance and spending?! What a joke.
But hey, don't want to turn this into a "Steam rant" topic lol.
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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2048283477/disunity-strategic-space-warfare
And it's live on Kickstarter!
A big thanks again to everyone and your support, it really does mean a lot to me. Regardless of how this turns out: thank you all :D