Could you please tell me more about this ‘Battlescape’. Will it incorporate ships and planets you can walk around on?
I can tell you with certainty that players will thankfully not be able to get out of their ship. Otherwise, there aren’t too many facts known about Battlescape at this time.
What we know so far is that Battlescape will be an arena shooter (but not like any you’ve seen before). It will (hopefully) utilise a full-scale seamless solar system for matches. The devs also intend to make the combat feel “big”, inspired by Star Wars-esque battles.
There are further ideas that depend on funding, such as making the arena persistent, introducing non-combat resource roles, a basic economy and things.
Hope this gives you an idea. There is a lot more information scattered around the forum if you search for it. Look at some posts from the I-Novae team, especially Keith and Flavien.
Hmmm…you say players will thankfully not be able to get out of their ships, but if not then what makes Infinity any better than SpaceEngine? If you are going to market an engine you have to market something that another isn’t capable of; and with no first person avatars you are taking a step backwards. Sure there maybe no loading screens but a vast majority of people will put up with loading screens for the added dimension of feeling like you are actually on the planet or flying a spaceship. In fact I would never back such a project because like I said it isn’t anything that I couldn’t get out of SpaceEngine or Elite Dangerous for that matter.
All I can say to that is Star Trek Online; eww
There are good games with avatars and bad games. If you are going to use a crappy game with crappy avatars as a measure then there is nothing really to say. But I can predict that Infinity is going nowhere or at best will be relegated to a small group of clique players.
Massively (3 digits) multiplayer combat in physically accurate Newtonian 3-dimensional space, with the option of diving into an atmosphere for atmospheric combat (albeit in vessels designed to use thrusters rather than aerodynamics for lift).
Or in one word: gameplay.
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I’m not sure how you can even make that prediction at this stage.
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I think I can also predict you don’t represent gamers everywhere, at least certainly not myself and others on the forum. I wouldn’t make arrogant claims about people that you have no evidence to back up with.
While walking on the planet or out of your ship may be a game breaker for you it is not for many other people. Also it sounds as though you believe you are entitled to having the devs change their entire game just because you don’t like how they are making it.
Its obvious you like SC and there is nothing wrong with that. SC is not my type of game or gameplay which is why I’m waiting for infinity. If you can’t see and respect other people’s opinions you should at least attempt to learn. Not everyone needs a fast paced fps shooter to keep them entertained. I only need my pew and my spaceships.
I have to ask, what’s your goal in coming here telling us “that while infinity sounds great its not my perfect game so you should change that.” What outcome did you expect, honestly?
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Speaking for myself and alike, it’s actually even cotrary to a game breaker. Getting out of your spaceship would make the game feel childish.
Totally agree.
This has been discussed so much over the years that it’s not worth carrying on about it. In a months time another person will again come along conducting the same bs argument.
A bit late to the thread but I just want to give my thoughts about this
I don’t think they were late to the train, they COULD have jumped on it, showed what they had done so far and set up a kickstarter about their battle engine in a solar system that MIGHT come out in a long while. Remember the space sim kickstarter hype was like a year or two ago, I’m not 100% sure if INS would have been able to figure out any form of good dates to give to the public or any good development plans.
For me it feels like IF they would have jumped on the space sim kickstarter train they could have shown their awesome ground to space flight, but most likely with some things broken (things they have been hard at work fixing now) and that’s about it. Afaik there hasn’t been much done with combat, therefor I guess there wouldn’t be anything like that shown in a kickstarter video so people might be confused if it’s just an exploring game or what?
If they would advertise for a combat simulation, why isn’t there any combat in any videos? OR IF there would be combat in the videos, I believe it wouldn’t look very good since (I’m sorry I’m just guessing here again) the combat haven’t been in focus and quite frankly isn’t that important until you get a good engine running stable in the first place.
So iunno, putting up a kickstarter that have 3+ years of work to go (if the kickstarter would have gone up before/at the start of the space sim kickstarter hype race) with lacking video content is in my eyes not the best recipe.
HOWEVER, NO space sim have ground to space seemless transition, except for no mans sky but that game is also FAAAR away from having realistic… anything really, so INS still have some cards up their sleeves. Imo, wait until you can show off the good parts and until you KNOW when you can release certain stuff and you KNOW how long things might take. I think a kickstarter 2 years ago sure might have brought in a bunch of money but I also think it would have been far from successful.
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Yes, in a month’s time someone else will stumble upon the forums here, and another dismissing contest will start up. This is something that we, as a community, are going to have to learn to deal with. In many ways, we’re part of the face of Infinity. We’ve invested a lot in this project – not nearly as much as the developers and artists, of course, but still a lot – and I think we have to realize that new people to the forums have not. We’ve had these discussions a countless number of times, and they haven’t. We have a responsibility to be as welcoming as possible. The last thing Infinity needs is a reputation for having a rude, arrogant, or intolerant community surrounding it. Especially not before the funding drive.
@Overlord you are, of course, entitled to your opinions with regards to whether Infinity: Battlescape will be your cup of tea. Many of the features you’ve mentioned have been lobbied for in the past – and hard, mind you – by members of this community. Again, though, additional features require additional funds, and it’s impossible for INovae to know the full compliment of features it will be able to support in Battlescape without knowing what kind of funds they will have to work with. They really don’t want to over-promise and under-deliver, and there’s a real danger of doing that without knowing how much money they will have to work with.
I know for a fact that the devs listen to this community. I’ve had discussions with Flavian, Gene, and others attached to the project, both on the forums and in the community IRC channel, and have walked away feeling like I had been heard, and that my feedback has been appreciated. I also know that listening to someone and doing what they’ve said are two very different things. There are many, many features that the devs would like to include in the game, but they have only so many person-hours to work with (keep in mind that most of the team is made up of volunteers, and any who aren’t are being paid with savings from some of the others). Most of those features have been, by necessity, been pushed well onto the back burner so that they have the best chance possible of producing a functioning, polished game.
Naturally, with increased funding comes an increase in the number of bells and whistles they can include in the game. You and the dev team seem to have come to different conclusions as to how to best secure that increased funding – you obviously support a slow-burn ramp-up in content drops to whet peoples appetites for a pending crowd-funding campaign, while the devs have decided upon a more time-compressed, content-bomb approach – but it is yet to be seen which approach will be most effective. Crowd funding hasn’t been around long enough to make rock solid determinations of these things. The marketing campaign for Battlescape is going to be a gamble regardless which approach is taken.
There are many of us here who would greatly prefer the slow-burn approach, if for no other reason than because it would give us a steady trickle of content. I’m not convinced we (and I say we as I’m one of these people) aren’t acting purely out of self-interest, though. I have no figures to suggest that such an approach would increase the probability of success of the funding drive. I just know that it would give me a steady stream of shiny things to gawk over.
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Hello @Overlord ! Welcome to I-Novae’s forum 
If you stay a while and listen (no, I will not identify those items for free ! Go back farming demons !), you’ll most certainly find out that there’s a small core of regular users, with a lot of lurkers as myself.
The previous forum used to be somewhat more developped, content-wise for sure (and maybe slightly more people? …). Therefore, most, if not all, subjects have been circled a lot of times. Little is left to discussion (talking only about the game here) unless there’s some bone thrown out by the devs
Also, you should know that I-Novae’s team is mostly (if not all of them ?) working on spare hours after work. Not like Roberts’ team.
I think most of the previous comments contain what I’ve wanted to say, but I’ll add this: throwing money is not always the answer to shorten developpement. No matter how much you pay the artist, even with a lot of helpers, there’s still a minimum of time required to make a statue / painting / game. And I think SC has a lot of delay to catch up with I-Novae.
Anyway, I’m curious to how did you discover I-Novae ? Friends, Google ?
“I have to ask, what’s your goal in coming here telling us “that while infinity sounds great its not my perfect game so you should change that.” What outcome did you expect, honestly?”
Us? Fanboy alert. “You” are not Infinity. Your opinion doesn’t mean anything more than his.
I for one would LOVE to go out of my ship and make a spacewalk. Imagine floating around in these wonderful environments, maybe even with an Oculus Rift? This “community” is clearly hostile to outsiders and “foreign” ideas.
No, I just base my predictions on what is being offered and what people are investing in. I could be wrong. But I have a pretty good record in seeing which will make the grade and which won’t. Of course I could be wrong, but sadly I think Infinity is missing a great opportunity. And that is fine if that is the type of game I-Novae and its supporters want. But I seriously doubt people will be tripping over themselves to support Infinity since the only thing it will offer is pretty graphics and no loading screens. In fact it is merely a step up from EVE online. And again that is fine but if it is this forums basic function to ignore opinions then I-NOVAE is on the right track because it has ignored and turned away pretty well its entire fan base. I say learn from your supporters and welcome input - both positive and negative - and stay proactive, otherwise you will fail. So all the best to I-NOVAE and everyone.
I never said that I would not want to get out of my ship at some point. This is only my opinion that I am very much entitled to, as are you, and Overlord. Clearly, that is not the opinion of everyone on this forum, and that too is okay. Walking out of my ship would be great, but not a necessary feature. The only feature I want, as stated before, is my ship and my pew. Anything else is a bonus. I have my opinions, and I also know what Inovae plan, and my opinions on what I would like them to do will not make the game release any sooner, and has no guarantees to make it any more successful.
You misunderstood my question as hostile. I really wanted to know, because his responses also came off as hostile in the way of Inovae will fail if we don’t do what SC has done etc. I say “us” because that’s who his questions were addressed to, “everyone” as denoted by the title. Everyone is the community. You, me, Inovae, even overlord is a new member of this community. I just wanted to know what the point of his apparent hostility was.
I was not trying to pick a fight, I’m not even trying to make him feel unwelcome. I happen to agree with his point that the community will have to be active in advertising Battlescape just as much as Inovae will. I’ll be doing my best when the time comes. What we do disagree on is the how and why.
Since overlord replied as I was typing this i’ll respond to him as well:
I’m not trying to sound accusing, but where is your record? What makes your predictions have any claim of accuracy? You’ll have to forgive me but I remain skeptical. If you want to convince me that your way is right, convince me. If you think that it’s the only way. Tell me and show me why there is no other way. I have no problems with being wrong because I want Inovae to be successful just as much as anyone here does.
What reasonable gameplay features do you recommend that will make it offer more than pretty graphics and no loading screens? You can suggest WiS(Just going to use the eve acronym for walking in space here) all you want, but that’s an unreasonable request from a team that is just finishing the engine and starting a KS. There is no gameplay to begin with, let alone code that would deal with foot soldiers(Disclaimer: That I know of). So what gameplay features, aside from WiS, would you like to see in battlescape that in your eyes would make it better than SC? I’m sure you spend time on their forums(I do not). What do you and the rest of the SC forums want in their space sim shooster?
Edit: Lots of silly grammar things
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Then the game should be doing fine if we consider the latest CoD : only pretty graphics, no real evolution considered to the last one, and yet best sells ever
Considering SC (bashing should go both directions, right? 
), we can consider they’re doing extraordinarly well since they amassed a huge fortune out of mere promises that are yet to be kept. And frankly, seeing the last update on SC, it’s nothing more than existing “Star Conflict” so far. Not impressed knowing they have FarCry’s engine.
Considering the core of the fans is scientificly orientated, I’d say I-Novae have very well listend to its supporters. Sure, maybe (certainly ?) they missed some marketing opportunities to launch the alpha / beta / whatever this year. But if they think it’s not ready yet, no stress then. But as for the game itself ? They want an “open space world”. There might be some loading screens, but mostly something similar to WoW: as little as possible.
Oh, and you still haven’t answered my previous question. How rude 
The main problem with WiS is that it requires a massive ammount of efforts and resources to pull it off. Possibly even more than the entire base game.
You need entire new fields of gameplay, that have to work in conjunction to the Space gameplay - despite the fact that Space gameplay is about superfast ships with small nuke-grade weaponry.
Then you need to make the game ten times as pretty for the close-to-ground FPS view. Then you need ten times more content to not let things bare and empty at FPS view.
Then you need animations and all those expensive things needed for humans in FPS.
Then you need to make sure it is interesting.
Eve tried, and it crashed and burned - despite it being hundreds in size and, according to some, the biggest economic powerhouse of Iceland.
Unless I-Novae Studios, a 8-people strong team with no outside investment yet, get some massive investment, something far outside of the scope of any crowdfunding campaign (unless you happen to be one of the biggest names in the history of gaming and you use some … out-of-the-norm funding methods), they simply do not have the resources.
So if I:B and probably at least another game is a great success, maybe they should put WiS in their new project. But for I:B, there is simply no way.
(Unless you have twenty million dollars to invest in I-Novae Studios, that is.)
EVE online with first person combat and no character skills is what I’ve been hoping for since the first time I heard of Infinity.
Disclaimer: the remainder of this post is based entirely on my own recollection of things said on this and the old forums. Recollections stored in the same part of my brain which clearly remembers my 2nd grade teacher teaching my class a way to do subtractions that no one else, either him or the class, had ever heard about. So yeah, pinch of salt and all that.
I seem to remember a devpost on these forums that someone was working on implementing the foundations for character models and animations in the engine, as it might attract licensees.
So yeah, just needs gameplay and quite a few layers of polish. Probably wouldn’t delay the game by much more than a year to do that.
On the old forums, in the OpenGL days, IA mentioned that there would be loading screens when using the jump-drive to travel between stars (cleverly hidden behind some kind of wormhole animation, minigame, or cutscene).
As Battlescape scenarios will be limited to a single solar system, the only loading screen(s) likely to appear is when starting the game or joining a server.
Oh, I didn’t mean “footsoldiers”. When I saw the 2010 alpha video, I dreamt of exploring the vast universe on my own, hundreds of lightyears away from other players, and just “existing” in this beautiful universe. I don’t want this game to turn into yet another mindless shooter. Which is why I don’t get why for some people, their “pew” is so important. You can “pew” in universes a million times smaller, why does it have to be this one?
When I imagine WiS, I imagine simply being an astronaut making a spacewalk. Or taking a stroll on one of the planets. I don’t necessarily want shooting, sprinting, taking cover, and all those other FPS shenanigans.
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