Hey folks. I wanted to give a quick update on the next Airship Commander release!
Things have slowed down quite a bit in 2017. The main reason for that was the team had to get day jobs to support our families. For my art partner (who's also a new father) that meant pretty much the end of their involvement.
For me however, my passion for military steampunk airships duking it out over smoggy cities remains undiminished. I've been steadily making progress on weekends and evenings, with most of my energy going into picking up the asset/art slack. This has meant I've been spending a lot of time far down the rabbit hole of 3d modeling, texturing and animation.
The next release will include the first pass of those asset swaps. Two good examples are below:
Vessel Augment Prop (old):
Vessel Augment Prop (new):
Strategic Room (old):
Strategic Room (new):
Beyond the new authoring burden of creating the assets, optimizing these spiffy props to run at VR friendly framerates on minimum spec machines has taken a lot of time. One of the main goals of the next release to ensure this new art isn't killing perf. The install footprint has definitely increased (getting close to 2 gigs).
Last thing I'll touch on is a rough roadmap to completing the game. The summer release should be out by August at the latest. The current plan is to follow that up with a Fall release that includes the last major features being integrated (bombing and deploying minefields). After that, we hope to release the final Early Access build in the Winter. That build will incude tutorials and other first time user experience improvements.
I feel pretty good about those commitments, but like anything in life, they're not guarantees. What I can promise you, without a millisecond of hesitation, is that Airship Commander will be finished. One tremendous advantage of working on things you are white-knuckle passionate about is you MAKE the time to push them forward.
Realizing this game continues to be one of the greatest experiences of my entire life. To excavate these images from my head that have been haunting me for two decades, and make them VR-real is unlike any creative endeavor I've participated in. Going full One-Man-Band and creating the art content has made it even more magical.
Failing to follow through on finishing my dream game just isn't a possibility, and I hope you'll come along for the ride!
Proof of Life!
Hey folks. It's been too long since an update so I wanted to send a quick note.
A few utterly self-inflicted crisis ate most of the last two weeks. Then this week is the Game Developers Conference, which tends to be a -75% productivity debuff applied across the entire industry. Excuses, excuses.
The hardening sprint has made SOME progress despite those roadblocks. Airship Commander is now using the latest versions of Unity, SteamVR and the Virtual Reality Toolkit (the backbone of the touch controls). A couple of untextured props are looking better and the main deck of the Raptor is sporting much improved textures.
We're currently in-progress on integrating the Interdiction and Escort mission gametypes into the Strategic Campaign. They're actually proving a little tricky from a design point of view. Let's look at Interdiction.
The idea here is that if an enemy controls a Strategic Waypoint, and you send your fleet to that zone, you'll get an interdiction mission (destroy enemy cargo vessel). If you succeed at destroying the target, you return to the Strategic Campaign HUB, but the state of that Strategic Waypoint hasn't changed!
You were successful, and the enemy Capital Ship won't get the resources from the waypoint, but the zone is still enemy controlled. This means if you go back in for another mission at that zone, you're going to get another Interdiction mission. You'll never get a Capture Waypoint mission.
Setting up the logic for when you get specific missions is a fun design challenge, but one that is fraught with surprises and unintended consequences. Chasing each one down, trying a few things, is taking a lot more time than the "merge existing gametypes into the strategic campaign" Trello card would at first suggest :).
I suspect we're looking at the back half of March for the next release, but things are fluid. The Single Pass Rendering feature added in the latest version of Unity is roughly a 20% performance increase on GPUs, so I may release a build with that sooner rather than later. The QA burden is always a factor in new releases and I'll have to marshal the team to see what's possible.
A bit more rambling of an update than usual but I wanted to give a brief update. Airship Commander is barreling forward and I promise nothing will get between me and finishing the game before the end of 2017. It's because of players like you that this is all possible, and while I sound like a broken record, thank you from the bottom of my heart for keeping an eye on our little airship virtual reality game!
Closing in on half-way!
Hey folks. We're working on the 0.5 release for Airship Commander. On our original timeline, 0.5 would be roughly half-way to the full release, and we're excited to be nearing such a milestone!
The team has been spending a lot of time playing the game, and it's looking like we're going to take February to develop a "hardening" version. The goal isn't to add very many NEW features in a release like this, but rather polish, solidify and improve what's already present. We're thinking of a couple of angles of attack:
- Audio: The sound experience for Airship Commander has a huge amount of room for improvement. Some features are working great like the High Pass Filter on the explosions (gives distance ones a cool "booom" effect). Others work but don't really accomplish much (UI SFX for example). Lastly there's loads of SFX that are just missing (mine explosions, robot VO).
- AI: The AI still does lots of dumb stuff. We've discovered that with the addition of being able to order friendly squadrons, we inadvertently made it EASIER for the players to put the AI in positions where they don't do what's expected (3x squadrons attacking same fleet == clipping airships).
- Performance: General performance has been fairly decent, 50% due to game optimizations and 50% due to new features provided by the tech companies (async rendering, single pass rendering). That doesn't mean it can't get better!
With those being the major areas to target, we feel the entire experience will vastly improved by making these better versus adding new prototype features.
That isn't to say that a few new things won't make it into 0.5. Integrating the remaining mission types into the strategic campaign has a lot of appeal (escort, interdiction, minefield, and bombing). As does replacing some of the prototype art with assets closer to the final version (capture point tower for example). As we get closer to release we'll cover in detail what's brand new.
Airship Commander couldn't exist without your interest and support. The team continues to be deeply grateful for your attention and thanks for taking the time to read this update!
0.4 Airship Commander is RELEASED!
Hey folks! The latest version of Airship Commander has been released!
Airship Commander 0.4 Changelist
New
- Strategic Campaign Prototype: Hunt the enemy capital ship while protecting your own.
- Missile Combat in Core Combat Loop: Anti-vessel missiles have been added to the Falcon and Raptor vessels. ALL vessels have been equipped with point defense.
- Fleet Customization: Spend resources acquired by participating in the Strategic Campaign to customize the airships in your fleet.
- Order Friendly Squadrons: Use the Order Gun mode to first select the friendly, then select the enemy it should target.
- Miniatures: A collection of each airship miniatures are available in the Strategic Hub.
- Capture Gametype: Send a rowboat to capture the tower, protecting it from missiles during it's journey.
- Sargasso Scenario: The old "mission select" scene with the floating wrecks is now a stand alone scenario reachable from the Map Prop.
Better
- Augment Vessel functionality now a switch to the right of the steering wheel (Raptor only). Allows toggling between increased movement speed and increased rate of cannon fire.
- Merged all "guns" into a single gun that is present on the main deck of each vessel. Swipe left and right on the trackpad to cycle modes.
- Deck crew now spawn in random locations on the deck every scenario. Further they will cheer when good things occur (capturing strategic waypoint), and cry when bad things happen (friendly ship destroyed).
- AI Raptors and Falcons can now destroy capital ships.
- Returning to the Strategic Hub scene added to the Application Button on the controller.
- Moved the Map Prop from the back of the main deck on the raptor. The Narcopope Campaign and other one off scenarios can now be accessed in the Strategic Hub.
- Moved Chaperone and Tooltip option switches to Strategic Hub.
- Tuned controller collision when in Strategic Hub.
- New controls for customizing dynamic cities.
- Robobird flocks patterns are more varied.
- Missile collision size increased compared to 0.3.
- Rowboats now spawn one level below the owning airship. In practice this means you can no longer spawn rowboats at very low altitude.
- AI will now take over any vessel you abandon via a rowboat.
- Lowered tooltip height for multiple props to not occlude the players view as much.
- Rowboat exhaust trails don't vanish when the rowboat does.
- Updated to latest version of Unity and SteamVR.
Fixed
- SFX for missile explosions working correctly.
- Options now persist scene loads (though not game launches).
- Damage smoke correctly displaying once again.
- Large wreckage now instantiates on vessel destruction in the correct orientation.
- A couple of deck props now have the correct shader applied (noticeable on fadeouts).
- Fixed a few instances of "phantom collisions" triggering ejecting crew.
- Fixed atmospherics on Narcopope Campaign mission 3 and 4.
- Fixed atmospherics on Random Mission: Insane.
- Miscellaneous script optimizations.
Known Issues
- Dropping Xbox 360 and Mouse/Keyboard support.
- Fleets destroyed in tactical stay dead if the player dies and restarts scenario.
- Augment lever doesn't work in cap ship gameplay scenario.
- Atmospherics broken on Airship Museum.
0.4 Airship Commander Overview
Hey folks! We're very close on the next Airship Commander release, 0.4.
It's a doozy, with four new major features:
- Strategic Campaign
- Missile Combat in core Airship Combat Loop
- Player Fleet Customization
- Issue Orders to Friendly Squadrons
In addition there are tons of polish, optimizations and bug fixes.
We've put together at video that outlines each of those better than I could with words. Check it out!
https://youtu.be/ItX_Ku3BH4M
If all goes well the update should release in the next day or so. Thanks again for your continued support and attention!
0.4 Going Into Test!
Hey folks! Airship Commander 0.4 has hit feature complete and is going into test. If all goes well it will release in the next week!
0.4 is a MASSIVE update. We're working on a video to preview all the 0.4 features, and cannot wait to show you all the new ways to play. It contains as many new features as all the previous updates combined, and dramatically expands all the activities players can partake in.
There is one bit of news that might not be welcome to everyone: we're dropping non-touch controller support.
As we continue to embrace all the cool mechanics touch allows, it's become a major task to mirror that functionality for keyboard/mouse or xbox 360 controller. As an example, the new strategic layer is all about grabbing miniatures and placing them on multiple maps. Creating equivalent controls requires us to essentially restart from scratch on the UI and input mechanics. This is not only time consuming to implement but also a major time sink to test.
This is a reversible decision so please let me know if you are a non-touch player. Looking at the data of our users, virtually every customer is using touch controls. We can re-route the effort we've been investing in xbox 360 controllers support into new gameplay, and we believe that's the smart move. If nobody cares about non-touch, it's crazy to keep bleeding off energy into a feature collecting spiderwebs. Please, let us know your thoughts!
The team continues to be deeply grateful for your interest in Airship Commander. We believe the next release really moves the needle on fun factor and couldn't do it without your support. Thank you for checking in and have a great week!
New Campaign Structure for Airship Commander in 0.4 Release
Hey folks! Thanks for checking out a quick preview of Airship Commander 0.4. The team came back from the holiday break more fired up than ever and we're happy to show off two work-in-progress features that we're planning on including in the next release.
When thinking about the second campaign for Airship Commander, something quickly became apparent. While the Narcopope Campaign that shipped in 0.1 accomplished what it set out to do, we felt like there was a lot of areas to improve upon.
The first area we targeted was mission structure. The Narcopope campaign is a combination of 15 hand-crafted "missions," but they're pretty much locked. Nothing the player does (except dying) has any impact on future scenarios. Giving the player agency over the types of scenarios and fights they embarked upon appealed to us immensely.
Thinking back to Wing Commander Armada, we started to wonder if having a "Strategic" layer of gameplay added to the existing "Tactical" layer wouldn't be a solid approach. We quickly prototyped the idea and sure enough it added a great deal to the whole experience.
Each faction has a single Capital Ship that is the goal of the game to destroy/protect. The map is comprised of a number of Strategic Waypoints, each of which when under faction control contributes resources for building new squadrons of airships. More Waypoints under your control than the enemy's means you'll be able to flood the map with friendlies, pushing their faction back to their starting location. Once hemmed in like this, the Destroy Capital Ship scenario becomes available which is very similar to the 0.3 Capital Ship Gameplay missions.
You can see a quick overview of that functionality here:
https://youtu.be/nUfEhgCzwbQ
Once we played this format to completion a few times, we knew we were on to something. Adding new "verbs" to this structure is natural (i.e. minefields, bombing, etc), and gives the player even more authorship over the types of scenarios they play.
Another big area of improvement continues to be the moment-to-moment gameplay of piloting your vessel. The 0.3 release introduced man portable weapons to the deck of your ship, and this proved to be a major step in the right direction. The problem however was that you only got to employ this engaging gameplay in rare situations: when taking on capital ships. What if there was a way to integrate it into most of the combat encounters, specifically airship versus airship?
As you saw in the video above, this works splendidly. Your focus becomes a critical resource. Should you spent it on lining up the perfect broadside? Or firing some of your limited number of missiles at distant targets? Or shooting down incoming enemy missiles? This juggling act proved very engaging, and having it be a part of every airship encounter increased the teams enjoyment of the game immensely.
These two features are major steps forward for Airship Commander, and we can't wait to hear what people think when they get to try them out. We're spending the next week-ish finishing these features as well as a few others we're keeping under wraps for now. After we lock-down for release, we hope to spend about another week polishing and bugfixing. If all goes well we should be releasing early February.
As always we continue to be incredibly grateful for your support. The entire experience of making Airship Commander has been a dream come true for the team and couldn't be more appreciative for you checking us out. Thank you for your time!
Quick Post-Holiday Update!
Hey folks! After a great holiday break the Airship Commander team is back to work cranking on the 0.4 release.
There are three major features being developed and we plan to start showing them off in next week's announcement. We're continuing to focus on giving the player things to do beyond gawk at the battle vistas, and these brand new elements certainly accomplish that.
We can't thank all of you enough for enabling us to realize our little steampunk fantasy. It's been an unforgettable journey and the best is yet to come!
Airship Commander 0.3 Released!
Hey folks! We've just made the Airship Commander 0.3 release LIVE!
The build notes:
New:
Destroy Capital Ship scenario. Spawn from your own Warhawk, traverse the battlefield, and destroy the three critical hit locations on the enemy capital ship.
Anti-CapShip and Anti-Airship missiles now available.
Anti-CapShip gun: Man portable weapon that paints critical locations on the enemy CapShip to destroy with missile (keep on target for 5 seconds to fire).
Point Defense gun: Man portable weapon that paints incoming Anti-Airship missiles to destroy with point defense projectiles (just touch target to fire).
Bird gun: Man portable weapon that can be used to destroy robo-birds flying around airship.
Rowboat Pointer: Used to designate the target of raiding rowboats (moved off player gaze)
Tooltips added to Steering, Altitude, Map, Waypoint, Gun, Change Deck, and Option props.
Chaperon Toggle: Toggle the VR chaperon on and off.
Tooltip Toggle: Toggle the tooltips between proximity, always on, and always off.
Red Navy faction added for Destroy Capital Ship scenario (Raptor, Vulture and Warhawk). Mirror match!
Added Drop Bombs prop for motion tracked controllers to the lower deck of the raptor.
Robo-Birds now emit feathers on death.
Better:
Change Deck props now require "use" to work instead of just touch (trigger).
Altitude prop moved closer to Steering prop to reduce pointless teleporting.
Steering, Altitude, Map and Waypoint props now a single mesh with atlased texture to reduce draw calls.
Waypoints can now spawn multiple squadrons with a delay between each.
Airships can now spawn other squadrons (Warhawks).
Updated flag art.
Collision with Capital Ships is an insta-kill.
New art for CapShip cannon projectiles.
Map Prop now removes all controller/keyboard text if using motion tracked controllers.
All city block verts optimized roughly 25%.
Removed countless unnecessary objects, pointless components and other (minor) performance and memory drains.
Vultures tenancy to aim over the Osprey's hull fixed.
Explosion volume for missiles and CapShip ordnance increased.
Updated CapShip in Mission 3 to use new assets (though it's friendly so nothing much changed gameplay wise).
Adjusted handle collision for Map Prop.
All exhaust now persist their source dying for a modest duration (airships, missiles, falling crew).
Fixed:
Fixed when the player spawns at very high or very low altitude, any altitude changes are inconsistently applied.
Highlight on touch for Change Deck prop works better after the first use.
Quit lever on Map prop works. Returns to Mission Select on any scenario other than Mission Select. Quits if on Mission Select.
Known Issues:
All guns require motion tracked controllers. Console-style controller support will follow this release.
Horizon/city z-fighting for mission 3
Vessels lost their night lights for mission 5
Auto campaign mission advancement on Map Prop off by 3.
Bloom currently disabled, but an option toggle will follow this release.
Thanks as always for your interest in Airship Commander. It only gets better from here!
Quick Update on Airship Commander 0.3
Hey folks. I've got Marty Feldman eyes so that must mean the next Airship Commander update is getting close to release.
Spending 8 hours a day in the HMD takes it's toll :P. We're down to three bugs so it shouldn't be long now.
Thank you for checking in on these updates and following Airship Commander!
