We're back folks! After a long 6 years, we've come a long way learning from players like you and also coming up with great game ideas to show for. And we present to you: Starlight: Eye of the Storm! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1492210
What's this game about?
Starlight: Eye of the Storm takes place roughly 6 months before the events of this game. It talks about the final secret mission our protagonist Jun Jimin has undertaken for the UNC Council.
Thomas Lock knew about her exploits, often referring to Jun as a top ace pilot in the navy before she became a fleet commander.
The game itself is a 2D vertical shmup set in a 3D environment that brings you instant fun and memories not just its retro-feel but also some familiarity with the Foresight universe.
What is it so different from other shmups?
Starlight: Eye of the Storm has several special abilities that the fighter can make use of. Such as:
Drift - An auto-pivot metered feature that will pivot your fighter towards enemies automatically, allowing you to focus your fire on the target.
Special Powers - Each fighter having its own special powers, each power has a range of abilities and synergies between allies to help you boost the release.
The game also has a weapon shop with up to 30+ unique weapons and upgrades. Most weapons can be upgraded if you have the skills to pull off combo hits and kills. Most of these weapons are already well-known in Foresight itself.
Looks like Foresight?
We did get an upgrade on the UNC Frigate that you'll see in the game itself. They'll still have the same complement of a Standard Mass Driver Cannon with a Particle Cannon on the top.
This time, you'll come up close and personal with the UNC Headquarters. This is a new structure that is much bigger than the original UNC Command Center. The HQ houses most of the UNC Fleets and is home to the Command Academy. However, at this point it's under the final phases of construction.
Similarly, you'll also see the Phobos City in the flesh! Remember the mission where you have to escort the Dreadnaught back to Phobos and it disappears into a city? You'll see it its full glory, including the dry docks!
This is your developer here - Jeremy - seemingly the only guy fronting the support cases, fixing the bugs and developing the game.
Well, the fact is - it's not too far from the truth.
I've always withheld talking about our team size and strength because I'm pretty sure nobody will give a damned. Everybody including myself, is only interested if the game is fun or not.
Team Strength
So what's our true strength?
1x Programmer/Coder (me) aka Producer (guiding the vision), Particle and Effects Artist (ie, the bloom, distortion, anamorphic lens flare and all the pews pews you see in the game), aka game orchestration developer (this part is alike a modder given a lot more powers)
1x Composer (also me) - wasn't very good but I tried my best anyway.
1x Audio Producer (yeah me) - I had to be on site to train every voice actor/actress to perform the voice acting correctly and consistently. Then after that I had to edit, cut, mix, and integrate them into the game, on top of that, test the final product, timing and pacing to ensure they're of sufficient quality.
And subsequently, every other thing that came AFTER launch.
Roles that were not undertaken by me
1x Art Director - Most of the cutscene artwork, draft ship designs etc.
1x Junior Artist - In charge of all the UI touch ups, cutscene touch ups, some planetary textures etc. (ie, Haven)
2x Mesh Artists - We had 2 guys in succession. One of them was actually a student but he was good enough to help us develop all the meshes, including the broken up pieces. Yes, they're different meshes, not some magical mesh cutting generated mesh.
1x Temp Artist - We hired to finish the additional artwork required for the cutscenes.
1x Copywriter - The original author of the Foresight story, character tropes etc.
1x Level Designer - This guy is our hero. Despite the initial technical difficulties, he translated all our maps into the game's map ensuring ships and pass to and fro.
~7-10x Voice actors and actresses - If you find the voices that came later on in the campaign are better - that's because we managed to eek out some funding to hire proper folks to do it.
Why talk about this now?
Recently I spent some time taking a look at Starcraft 2. We've constantly being compared against this great RTS (that I've purposely never played to avoid undue influence) and I understand the great chasm of production levels between Starcraft and Foresight despite them technically being a very different RTS.
Therefore I think it's time to just spill the beans on how small a team we were. On top of that Foresight was developed under an insane budget of less than 50k USD. I'm not saying this to garner sympathy. I'm just sharing this for those who are interested (or curious) to know the facts behind the game's development.
Conclusion
My utmost concern is always whether YOU are able to enjoy the game properly. But it has been 5 years since the game's launched. Therefore I think it's fair you guys know how we even managed to push the game till launch.
Till our next game.
Jeremy
Revealing the lore
Background
Potential spoilers warning!
In the UNC campaign, roughly, mission 5, Lock witnesses a negotiation between Vasily and Pugalenthi on an uneasy alliance. The negotiation was initiated by the Slavic Sirerians and was accepted by the UNC Council of Foresight due to one single reason - a new homeworld away from a nuclear-devastated Earth.
In the middle of the mission, the purist faction known as the Sirewraths attacked and literally ended any possible negotiations.
What was the Patriarch's plan?
It's known by now that the Patriarch has 8 banner fleets under his command and he himself had a very thin line of command to the Sirewraths. In short, he created the fleets to compete against each other for power and has a link to an external rogue (but powerful) faction that unites the Slavic Sirerians as a whole.
From this perspective, it'd seem that the attack was at least, tacitly sanctioned by the Patriarch; Vasily Andropov, being one of the banner fleet Admirals, didn't even get a hint of a warning of the attack.
On top of that, the Sirewraths intentionally left the Potemkin (Vasily's flagship) unscathed to essentially make Vasily the scapegoat.
So what was the Patriarch playing at? Was he really interested in an alliance?
The answer is yes. And it was really his true intentions to hand over Haven as the new homeworld for UNC to settle onto as their new home.
But why?
The Patriarch, alike the rest of the True Sirerians alike those on Earth, plays the long game of manipulation. His intention is to soft-imprison the UNC humans on Haven while awaiting for his true master to arrive.
Both, the Patriarch and the Council knew that if humans were given a comfortable environment to live in, they'll eventually succumb to weakness.
The Council of Foresight knew the game and used the new homeworld "Haven" as their justification to negotiate.
Vasily was just a pawn.
Did Thomas Lock suspect anything?
Thomas Lock actually sensed that something was amiss from the way the pieces were played out on the table. Haven seemed too good to be true but yet, it was politically impossible to deny UNC humans from taking it as their new home.
Nevermind the new homeworld... Lock's primary consideration was - what's in for the Slavic Sirerians? He didn't have time to ponder over the question; the attack on the delegates forced Pugalenthi to act and Lock, as a first-class honours academy graduate, inadvertently becomes a pawn in this plot.
Conclusion
We'll be revealing more of the lore in details in the coming weeks and months to fill you in on perspectives that are not possible to be present in the game itself. We hope it'll help improve your Foresight experience.
4 YEARS already?!!
Haha hi everyone,
Yes, it has already been 4 years since Foresight was released.
But first things first, let us give you a BIG THANK YOU for all your support!
What has happened to Foresight so far?
2018 is a rather quiet year for Foresight until several serious bugs were reported. While the code is definitely getting older, we took it upon ourselves to ensure that our players deserve what they've paid for; a fully functional game.
Thus, patch V1.3 was conceived and developed to cross Foresight's codes over to a newer API and engine, thus receiving additional stability that came with the upgrades.
4 years ago, we made up our minds that even if the game crashed and burned; even if there's only 1 person playing the game, we'll be obliged to support the player. That's our commitment to our players and we've always been consistent about it. You can expect the same level of commitment if not higher when we release our new games in the future!
What's next for Foresight?
Unless anyone says otherwise, we think that the RTS genre, while definitely alive, the space RTS subgenre has more or less being absorbed as being a part of GS.
Therefore, even if there's going to be a Foresight 2, it'll most likely be in the Grand Strategy genre while retaining its RTS components, some parts that existed in Foresight will be shifted.
We've also constantly heard that you guys hate to wait and excessive build times make the game slower if not already inherently slow.
Thus, the closest POSSIBILITY that might occur to Foresight is a probably a HD remake; subjected to you guys voting for it more than less.
What's next for Strides then?
We've been pretty quiet for the past 4 years partially because we're growing. We're listening and learning from all the feedback we've gotten. One thing I can say about us is that, we've definitely learnt a lot from you guys!
We're also strategizing our next move and how we intend to stay relevant and viable in this ever-competitive business. But rest assured, we're far more committed to stay connected with you, our customers, than before! After all, it's you folks who play and decide if our games are worthy or not.
Ok fine! What's next?!!!
We've been working on our next game, which will be announced in the near future. The game's name is known as Starlight. It's set in a time before the events of Foresight, effectively making this game a prequel. However, this game won't be a RTS. More details to follow in the near future.
Conclusion
We developed Foresight utilizing the best of our abilities, though we've made several bad decisions that led to a poor initial release. It was actually a 4-year effort with a team of up to 35 people. The core team consisted of 7 people. The game was originally slated to be released by end of 2012 but due to certain unfortunate circumstances, we were forced to delay the game.
I've never once mentioned this because if the game is bad, it IS bad. If people don't enjoy it, it's pointless to shove it down their throats. End of the day, what matters the most is you folks. If you ain't enjoying our games, then we've failed and definitely don't deserve your money. Period.
Let's hope we'll do better with our next game!
Cheers,
Jeremy
Patch 1.3 released!
Dear all,
As promised, Foresight 1.3 has been released!
What's new?
- The main font resolution has been upgraded. Just, see it for yourself to see the difference.
- You can now V-sync while being in windowed mode.
- Change of engine version from 1.0 to 1.2. StridesLib Engine v1.0 was built based on the much older VS2005 runtimes. However, in v1.2, it's built on the more recent VS2015 runtimes. Thus, for backward compatibility's sake, both runtimes will be installed on your machine.
StridesLib Engine v1.2 did resolve a lot of stability issues. However, Foresight might not have fully be compliant to it yet.
Adjustments
- There was a feedback long ago that Foresight looked like a white saturated mess in heavy battles. After that, we went into observing popular space battle scenes like TCW to understand how best to represent explosions without over saturating things. As such, we've modified certain effects to be blended as-per-normal... in a way, it might feel a little weird but it does show both texture and depth rather than saturation.
Of course, some things will still cause a mini-sun, ie, combined nuclear explosions. But that'll be the only case. Hope the new slightly adjusted look and feel will be well-received.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where ships die but aren't removed from the game
- Fixed a bug when you try to insert characters into your chat and it glitches
- Fixed a bug where "Load Game" in the main menu doesn't show anything
- Fixed a bug where the game - on first startup, doesn't start up properly - the symptoms are in scenes where there're distortions, the game is rendered twice, once with 1/4 top-left and the other, a complete scene.
- Fixed a bug where Campaign 3, Mission 3 (Mission 23) cannot be completed because the Vindiator will get stuck at Phobos.
Caution
- It does seem that Foresight might crash when you close it. This could be due to some difference with the order of release. Therefore, you might still encounter crashed when you close Foresight.
- Due to the complexity of the crash, which only occurs during release, it'll take some time to find out the cause.
Conclusion
Some friends initially discouraged me from working on this patch since the game is already 4 years old.
However, I personally feel that if the playing experience is severely impeded, I'll need to take responsibility and fix it. Surely, that's what I feel when I encounter a game that has logic-breaking, stopper or crash bugs.
I'd also like to thank all who posted feedback on bugs and improvements. You will always be listened to and we'll try to improve as much as we can. (realistically, we can't fulfill everybody's wishes :( )
Thanks for supporting Foresight and have a great weekend!
Regards,
Jeremy
Proposed Patch - Upgrading Foresight to a newer framework, bug fixes
Hi all,
In light of some of the bugs reported, we'll be planning to release a patch to formally address these issues.
However, there'll be a change in the runtime libraries requried and this change will automatically be reflected when the patch is released. The change will still preserve support for the old Windows XP as well as support for the latest Windows 10.
The only problem we might encounter is remote regression errors that might occur beyond our means to detect it. Therefore, we'll need more time to build the game again before we can release it as a patch.
Thanks again for all your support! It has been a long 4 years since release and we've gone through many ups and downs to learn from you.
P.S. We're currently already working on our next game, which explains why Foresight patches are getting slowed down.
Thanks again and we'll announce the release of the patch as well as progress updates from time to time!
Workarounds
I understand that there's a problem when you first start the game and press LOAD GAME and everything disappears except the 3D battle in the background. The workaround is to first go into OPTIONS, then BACK, then LOAD GAME and you'll be able to see it.
Mission Issues
I'd not recommend using cheat codes to get by. Instead, I'll try to reproduce the issue, fix it then pass you your saved game. Otherwise, I'll still fix the mission and email out to those who need it immediately.
Of course, all these fixes will be included in the patch.
Regards,
Jeremy
Multiple-screen issue - Addressed
Dear all,
It has come to our attention that new players encountered a strange bug where their game, when started for the first time, will have 2 separate screen, a smaller screen and a full screen.
Workaround
- Restart the game just once. This is a first-time resolution detection issue.
What will we do?
This is likely to be a legacy code that was broken during our very last build. We're currently looking into it and might have a fix in the near future.
Conclusion
We apologise for any inconveniences caused. We hope you'll continue to play the game and please let us know if you have any feedback; be it suggestions, complaints or anything.
We'll be listening.
Thanks,
Jeremy
Patch V1.2b-iii released! (was soft released some time ago)
Dear all,
First of all, sorry for the weird lack of announcement whenever a bug fix patch is released. We were in the midst of preparing for GDEX in Columbus, Ohio as well as building our next game, Starlight.
Despite this, we didn't neglect Foresight and have been actively fixing bugs and releasing them.
What's fixed?
The bugs get harder and harder to find. Each of these bug can almost be classified as super bugs since they require a very specific scenario to reproduce.
The latest patch fixes crashed pertaining to multiplayer games where having hundreds of fighters engaged in a major dogfight will cause the client machine to crash.
The fix also includes improvements to synchronize ships who happens to be out of sync, ie, position and sector off-sync. Previously, only the position is synced, causing a weird glitch for clients (not servers) where ships entering a bottom-right wormhole will re-enter from top-left. (because the ship is still in the previous sector in the server)
On top of a slew of multiplayer bug fixes, some regression bugs were fixed as well. All in all, the game is currently stable in multiplayer until the next bug/crash report.
Conclusion
Foresight CAN be a better game if you guys voice out, comment on it, rant about it and give us a feedback or two. You can be assured that we'll be there listening and learning from you.
So what's Starlight? We'll make a separate announcement in a separate page when the time is right.
Hope you guys enjoy the week ahead!
Regards,
Jeremy
Patch V1.2a-i released!
Dear all,
As we're on the hunt for some of the most elusive bugs in Foresight, we bring you the latest fixes, mostly multiplayer issues and some weird single player issues as well.
Addendum
Caught the following bugs during a routine code review and has since fixed them:
1) When a player dies, all ships belonging to that player are always asked to halt even when it might be stationary or stopping. While it may not be much in single player, it'll hurt quite a bit by sending halt packet per ship per frame to all players until it's been destroyed. Fixed.
Bug Fixes
1) You can no longer recruit officers if you have insufficient funds. For some reasons we detected the fund situation but didn't block it.
2) Fixed a multiplayer bug that causes the game to crash after 3-4 minutes especially when AI starts to have fleets.
3) Fixed a white blinking issue where the screen may sometimes without warning blink white. This issue is peculiar as it only appears when certain ships begin to accelerate. We found out that this issue is tied with another issue below but it's a ship engine power ratio calculation issue in itself. (thus causing the engine particle to scale beyond the screen space)
4) Fixed a potential bug (not fully confirmed but likely to be there) where the flagship of a fleet can be susceptible to getting stuck halfway through the throat of the wormhole. Interruption to ships going through wormhole is one of the reasons why ships get stuck or go into turbo speed mode even in nornal space.
5) Fixed some minor issue with the officer dossier window.
Conclusion
Bug fix patches will be released as and when the bugs found has been fixed and properly tested against regression.
Many apologies for any inconvenience caused!
Thanks,
Jeremy
Patch V1.2a Released!
Dear all,
First of all, thanks for your support and feedback. With it, we're able to improve the game and make it more stable.
This patch fixes major bugs with multiplayer and some minor ones with general flow of the game.
What's new?
- Foresight now uses StridesLib v1.2 engine which is far more stable than v1.1 used by the previous build.
Modifications
- Voice profile data file modified slightly to reduce the amount of searches performed when a certain file cannot be found. This is to improve game performance consistency.
V1.2a will NOT work with V1.2 on multiplayer. Please update in order to play online!
Bug Fixes
MULTIPLAYER FIXES:
1) When the client cancels a build order or request order on a production structure, the next-in-line icons aren't updated, causing a misunderstanding.
2) Scoreboard doesn't work properly in multiplayer mode, showing itself prematurely.
3) Fixed a bug where the game crashes after roughly 1 minute. Found to be due to a regression bug that causes the order to kill itself incorrectly while working on it on the server. (thus only the server crash)
4) Fixed a bug where a server-only multiplayer game with AI players DO NOT START THE GAME. The game is shown, the command center is somewhat controllable but you can't enter the game menu and/or the game seems to be in a limbo.
5) Fixed a bug where if the client kills the server player and there're only 2 players, the game will not end for the client.
6) Fixed a potential bug where if a client was disconnected prior, it will not be able to connect to ANY other servers unless the game is restarted.
7) Fixed a bug where the lobby background sometimes doesn't appear, sometimes it shows trash or even the font texture and it's highly random.
GENERAL FIXES:
1) Fixed a small bug where the background action is frozen after returning from viewing a cutscene
2) Fixed a bug with all the cutscenes where a delay caused instructions below to be skipped thus, skipping all the clean up operations. The symptom is such that when you play the same cutscene a 2nd time, nothing is shown except a blue screen. You can still skip the cutscene. Affects only 2D assets.
3) Fixed a bug where if the cutscene plays a repeating humming sound for environment, it doesn't STOP PLAYING after the cutscene is skipped.
Conclusion
We're more than happy to maintain work on Foresight while working on our next title.
What we can promise you is that, the next game's 3D graphics will be far superior to Foresight's.
We can't reveal too much of the new game just yet, but an announcement will be made next month! So, please stay tuned and keep the feedback coming!!
