Faerdan









Level 0 UNION Spaceship Command [Now on Greenlight] « on: June 12, 2015, 01:45:24 AM »

About UNION Spaceship Command



Click here to see the latest pre-alpha video on YouTube, showing turret beam weapons, shields and ship destruction.

UNION Spaceship Command is a cooperative spaceship simulator in which two or more players work together to command a spaceship. Each player on the ship takes on one or more roles (currently Captain, Helm, Tactical and Science/Coms). It is inspired by the concept of Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator, but this is a very different game. UNION is very much focused on simulation, having systems which are deep but which are also accessible (the goal is easy to pick up, difficult to master). The entire game is simulated, from the physics used for (3D) space flight to power, heat and sensors.



I'll be covering the features of UNION in more detail over the coming weeks.





Clicking an image below will open a full size version.









About Development

I have been working on UNION on and off in my spare time over the past three years. It has undergone a few restarts in that time, as I learnt more about the networking and architecture requirements of a game of this type. My belief in the game has not diminished though, and I believe that I have enough momentum now, and am far enough along, to see the game through.



A big breakthrough for me in UNION was re-building the game using a data focused entity component system, it has made so many things fall into place rather easily.



I have all of the networking framework done with large scale entity/object replication, dynamic movement (with prediction and interpolation) based on physics, flight, prototyped power and heat simulation, shields, a working prototype of the engineering UI, and a work in progress prototype of the tactical UI.



Performance and stability, both in terms of general/rendering performance and networking (particularly over the internet) are hugely important to me. The game performs really well over the internet and it is very stable.



I will be doing a video dev log soon, but here is a short video clip of a multiplayer flight test I did yesterday, showing multiplayer flight with physics (every object on the map, including asteroids, are dynamic with mass):



UNION Spaceship Command is a cooperative spaceship simulator in which two or more players work together to command a spaceship. Each player on the ship takes on one or more roles (currently Captain, Helm, Tactical and Science/Coms). It is inspired by the concept of Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator, but this is a very different game. UNION is very much focused on simulation, having systems which are deep but which are also accessible (the goal is easy to pick up, difficult to master). The entire game is simulated, from the physics used for (3D) space flight to power, heat and sensors.I'll be covering the features of UNION in more detail over the coming weeks.Clicking an image below will open a full size version.I have been working on UNION on and off in my spare time over the past three years. It has undergone a few restarts in that time, as I learnt more about the networking and architecture requirements of a game of this type. My belief in the game has not diminished though, and I believe that I have enough momentum now, and am far enough along, to see the game through.A big breakthrough for me in UNION was re-building the game using a data focused entity component system, it has made so many things fall into place rather easily.I have all of the networking framework done with large scale entity/object replication, dynamic movement (with prediction and interpolation) based on physics, flight, prototyped power and heat simulation, shields, a working prototype of the engineering UI, and a work in progress prototype of the tactical UI.Performance and stability, both in terms of general/rendering performance and networking (particularly over the internet) are hugely important to me. The game performs really well over the internet and it is very stable.I will be doing a video dev log soon, but here is a short video clip of a multiplayer flight test I did yesterday, showing multiplayer flight with physics (every object on the map, including asteroids, are dynamic with mass): « Last Edit: July 10, 2015, 07:06:36 AM by Faerdan » Logged UNION Spaceship Command [Greenlight | IndieDB | Twitter] Developer of

Faerdan









Level 0 Re: UNION Spaceship Command « Reply #1 on: June 12, 2015, 12:02:31 PM » The Engineering Station





The engineering station is the beating heart of a ship in UNION. The power, heat and damage it manages affects every other station on the ship. I also really felt like it needed to make a statement about what UNION is.







I started with the idea of having each system on the ship shown as a widget floating in it's position on a holographic version on the ship. I did up some mock widgets (shown above) but they were pretty uninspiring and it didn't feel like they would lead to a good UI.







So I went back to the drawing board. An idea I played with a lot was to have a pipes style setup, where you have to route power around the ship by placing and rotating pipe-like connections. It was too complicated and finicky though, so I started thinking about doing connections in a different way. That led me to the idea of arranging the systems of a ship in a circle, with the power core in the centre. The power core would have output nodes which can be connected to input nodes on the systems. You can only connect output nodes to input nodes if you can reach them (a connection line cannot cross the core or other nodes). The first picture shows the ship in a standard configuration, the second shows a "Cruise" config to power the energy-hungry cruise engines. The only other things powered in this config are short and long range sensors.







I felt really energised by this "power wheel", and began to add more information while refining the design. I added power charge, heat and coolant displays to each system. I also added the idea of having an upper limit to the amount of power each node can output. If a node is outputting too much power, it becomes unstable. Unstable nodes can explode when the ship takes damage or if too much heat is generated across the systems. Finally I added head and power displays to the outside of the wheel. The heat and energy output of your ship combine to create your energy signiture. The higher your heat signature the easier you are to detect (especially at longer distances) and the more accurate any locks on you will be.







Here is a rather large image showing different configuration examples.







And here it is built into a full UI. The large buttons on the left allow you to create and use your own configs, along with the un-changable Standard and Cruise configs. Clicking on a system in the wheel displays that system in more detail on the top left, allowing you to tweak any components/weapons which are attached to the system.





I am going to do a video dev log soon which shows the multiplayer flight, physics and shields. After that I intent to work on turrets with targetting and firing.



I had built my UIs to use Scaleform, but it does not currently support Unity 5. It seems like I may need to rebuild them using Unity's own GUI system.





Thanks for reading! The engineering station is the beating heart of a ship in UNION. The power, heat and damage it manages affects every other station on the ship. I also really felt like it needed to make a statement about what UNION is.I started with the idea of having each system on the ship shown as a widget floating in it's position on a holographic version on the ship. I did up some mock widgets (shown above) but they were pretty uninspiring and it didn't feel like they would lead to a good UI.So I went back to the drawing board. An idea I played with a lot was to have a pipes style setup, where you have to route power around the ship by placing and rotating pipe-like connections. It was too complicated and finicky though, so I started thinking about doing connections in a different way. That led me to the idea of arranging the systems of a ship in a circle, with the power core in the centre. The power core would have output nodes which can be connected to input nodes on the systems. You can only connect output nodes to input nodes if you can reach them (a connection line cannot cross the core or other nodes). The first picture shows the ship in a standard configuration, the second shows a "Cruise" config to power the energy-hungry cruise engines. The only other things powered in this config are short and long range sensors.I felt really energised by this "power wheel", and began to add more information while refining the design. I added power charge, heat and coolant displays to each system. I also added the idea of having an upper limit to the amount of power each node can output. If a node is outputting too much power, it becomes unstable. Unstable nodes can explode when the ship takes damage or if too much heat is generated across the systems. Finally I added head and power displays to the outside of the wheel. The heat and energy output of your ship combine to create your energy signiture. The higher your heat signature the easier you are to detect (especially at longer distances) and the more accurate any locks on you will be.Here is a rather large image showing different configuration examples.And here it is built into a full UI. The large buttons on the left allow you to create and use your own configs, along with the un-changable Standard and Cruise configs. Clicking on a system in the wheel displays that system in more detail on the top left, allowing you to tweak any components/weapons which are attached to the system.I am going to do a video dev log soon which shows the multiplayer flight, physics and shields. After that I intent to work on turrets with targetting and firing.I had built my UIs to use Scaleform, but it does not currently support Unity 5. It seems like I may need to rebuild them using Unity's own GUI system.Thanks for reading! « Last Edit: June 18, 2015, 11:06:35 AM by Faerdan » Logged UNION Spaceship Command [Greenlight | IndieDB | Twitter] Developer of

Faerdan









Level 0 Re: UNION Spaceship Command « Reply #2 on: June 18, 2015, 08:39:16 AM »







You can click the image to see it in full resolution.



Not a full devlog, but I just took the first screenshot of ship-on-ship action (with turrets, laser beams and shields working together in multiplayer) and really had to share. I will produce a video dev log soon showing everything in action soon (flat out developing at the moment).You can click the image to see it in full resolution. « Last Edit: June 18, 2015, 11:06:48 AM by Faerdan » Logged UNION Spaceship Command [Greenlight | IndieDB | Twitter] Developer of

Faerdan









Level 0 UNION Spaceship Command [Dev Log 5 - now with video] « Reply #3 on: June 26, 2015, 02:41:26 PM » My Recent Progress, And A New Video

A rock solid simulation, and the creation of a believable reality, are very important elements of UNION development. For this reason I have been focusing heavily on multiplayer flight, physics, turrets, (beam) weapons, shields, and destruction. And I finally have something to show for it in this video:











Turrets





Turrets are fully simulated on the server, finding targets (or at least attempting to up to the edge of their firing arcs) with their own rotation speed. These turret rotations are are then synchronised on the player clients so that they can see the the turrets as they currently are. As with all of the networking code this functionality has been designed to work well over the internet (using a variety of techniques to minimise the bandwidth requirements).







Firing Laser Beams





Turrets are grouped into weapon groups which can be targeted and fired independently. Turrets will only fire when they have the target in their sights. Shields however do not block line of sight, so it is possible for a target to hide behind another ship's/station's shields (or for you to accidentally hit the shields of another ship).



Beams do damage based on their strength and how long they fire for. These variables can be tweaked by the Engineer. The more energy a weapon uses, and the length it uses it for, affects how much heat that weapon generates.







Shields





Shields absorb energy from weapon hits, depending on the current strength of the shields. If all of the weapon's energy isn't absorbed there will be some penetration to the hull.







Structural Integrity And Destruction





A target's hull absorbs the energy from any hits, removing or reducing any damage to internal systems. This absorbed energy damages the ship's structural integrity. If that integrity drops low enough the ship will explode.







That's it for now. I would love to hear your comments and suggestions.



- Faerdan A rock solid simulation, and the creation of a believable reality, are very important elements of UNION development. For this reason I have been focusing heavily on multiplayer flight, physics, turrets, (beam) weapons, shields, and destruction. And I finally have something to show for it in this video:Turrets are fully simulated on the server, finding targets (or at least attempting to up to the edge of their firing arcs) with their own rotation speed. These turret rotations are are then synchronised on the player clients so that they can see the the turrets as they currently are. As with all of the networking code this functionality has been designed to work well over the internet (using a variety of techniques to minimise the bandwidth requirements).Turrets are grouped into weapon groups which can be targeted and fired independently. Turrets will only fire when they have the target in their sights. Shields however do not block line of sight, so it is possible for a target to hide behind another ship's/station's shields (or for you to accidentally hit the shields of another ship).Beams do damage based on their strength and how long they fire for. These variables can be tweaked by the Engineer. The more energy a weapon uses, and the length it uses it for, affects how much heat that weapon generates.Shields absorb energy from weapon hits, depending on the current strength of the shields. If all of the weapon's energy isn't absorbed there will be some penetration to the hull.A target's hull absorbs the energy from any hits, removing or reducing any damage to internal systems. This absorbed energy damages the ship's structural integrity. If that integrity drops low enough the ship will explode.That's it for now. I would love to hear your comments and suggestions.- Faerdan Logged UNION Spaceship Command [Greenlight | IndieDB | Twitter] Developer of