Post you ideas for short videos that I-Novae may create with the current Infinity: Battlescape prototype or that requires little changes to it. These videos could act as promotional to the Kickstarter campaign.
Proposing the following scenario:
A Oneris-class freighter leaves the asteroid base heading toward a destination near the planet with rings, picking up speed and getting ready to warp. A single or multiple Hellion class ships attack the freighter, targeting its rear end causing damage.
The freighter manages to warp, but the warp drive is damaged(doesnât need to be visibly) making the ship change course toward the planet and unable to disengage warp for a moment. Once the ship disengages warp it is still on a high speed impact course towards a desert area on the planet. Camera cuts to ground level view.
Another Hellion is near the ground level of the planet and from the cockpit sees the freighter crashing down to earth. Once it crashes a large puff of dust forms on the crash site. The Hellion then proceeds to inspect the crash site, flies into the dust as the camera switches to third person and fades to black.
The video might be in less than 2 minute time range. This scenario only really requires 2D dust sprite particles forming at the crash point and a little post-processing of the recorded video.
Just a player amount test, showing as many ships as possible. Even if itâs just the hellion, it doesnât matter, people still get to see the scale of the battles that will happen.
And yet, all requests for them to demo such a player base has returned nothing. I donât understand why they refuse to say either âNo, itâs not at the state where it can handle that many playersâ or âYes, letâs get that done.â Weâre stuck with these three and four people tech demos that look beautiful, but provide nothing new once youâve seen two or three.
I donât think people care about how many players can be in a match as much as how the matches work, why the game would be fun. The videos and live streams so far have done a good job of demonstrating the engine, but I feel some people may be a bit confused about the purpose and scope of the game (something I felt about Star Citizen). The devs canât really show a functioning match yet (I presume), but they might be able to mock it up and explain it (instead of just a paragraph of text).
This post would seem to suggest that the devs are concerned about allowing too many people into the server at once. While adding more players may showcase that the prototype can handle them, it will also result in a decrease in performance for everyone.
So then build up and see how far you get before it crashes. If the number is a terribly low number, donât bother posting the data (itâs still a prototype, after all). If you can get 20+ people into the match and shooting each other over Cinder, then that is going to make for a much more interesting video than one guy just kind of meandering about until two people get into a dog fight.
We canât show the 100-virtual players test, simply because it does NOT look good. You have to realize I wrote that test program in a rush just to make sure I had an idea of what I was talking about. It wasnât meant to be presented to the public in any way. The virtual playersâs ships all have the same orientation, arenât shooting at each other, etc⌠IMO it looks too stupid, weâd just get a flood of people not understanding what theyâre looking at. Especially the ones who havenât followed the project too closely.
We are gradually opening the real server to more people, so I think weâll be able to demonstrate bigger fights by the end of the campaign, but I wouldnât expect a 100 players battle. Weâre just not at this stage yet.
Right, and Iâm not saying to just open it up to 100 people, nor am I saying you should show off the pseudo-stress test. Whatâs the maximum number youâve had on at one time? If itâs more than four, youâve already got the potential for more interesting fights than Iâve seen so far.
I convinced a streamer (with hundreds of people watching) to look into the project. Half of the stream didnât understand that I:B is a combat game because there was virtually no combat, and what little there was had no interesting maneuvers or, bluntly, talent behind the stick. When youâre trying to sell a combat game, people shouldnât be confused on if there is combat.
Yes, but this is a prototype. Most KS have nothing to show at this stage. The alternative for us is to show nothing.
Listen, itâs not like I disagree with you, itâs just that I see no easy solution to that problem. Weâve had 10-15 streamers play the game, sometimes for hours. Thereâs simply no way we can show 10+ players fighting all the time. Everybody is on a different agenda, different timezones. The only thing we can do is to coordinate one big event with a maximum number of people in it ( and we have plans for that ) but we canât simply prevent people from testing and showing the game for hours.
I doubt that. There will be no observable structure to the combat until the actual battlescape-based gameplay is in place. A furball of 40 ships blasting away at each other really isnât going to make the game any more attractive than two or three guys blasting away at each other. Whatâs needed is a series of scenarios such as @Pendrokar is asking for . The videos need to communicate the motives for combat engagements. Thatâs what really gets people to thinking about playing the game. Just throwing a boatload of players in fighters into a big open space would be a pointless gankfest, and there are many such games out there already.
Ramming a planet head-on:
-start from the destroyed space station or outside of the planet with the asteroid belt
-pick out a place on the planet (maybe someone else at the bottom of a canyon?)
-go full speed and dont care about breaking until you crash into the planet/other player with maximum velocity
Reason:
Some people are still complaining about the seamlessness being fake, so that is the most on-the-nose approach I can think of. It might be a good idea to do it in 3rd person so that you get to see more of the surroundings.
extra:
-do the above steps with as many people as possible from different positions but roughly the same distance
-make people basically rain on top of the poor chap in the canyon
-one video per perspective perhaps? At least two, one from orbit showing the transition, the other one from the bottom of the canyon.
-add a certain song about raining men to the background.
-call the video âunfeasible strategies: manned orbital bombingâ if the chap on the ground doesnât get destroyed
One extra option to give a bit more âfreeâ feeling when entering atmospheres in videos is to do some odd movements, a barrel roll, or change the descent/ascent rate, increase or decrease speed, or just turn a bit to the side, do any of those while exiting or entering a planets atmosphere. Like, all videos mostly contains ascending/descending (unless the video contains combat, but then itâs usually a streamer with 30min+ video time) in a constant speed and angle, making it look a bit non-controlled. Just making those odd movements MIGHT add to the free feeling, make it seem less rigid.
That and try to do a atmospheric flight with another player, so you can see that you are actually flying through the atmosphere from space with another player, not using any hidden loading screens or instance hopping. When flying solo the one watching doesnât have any form of reference for anything, adding another player to the video might get them some feeling on how it actually is to fly there.
As a sidenote, I really liked bluedrakes 2.5h video since he actually flew with other people and did a lot of stuff in it, he didnât just do the normal go from space to planet thing (obviously having a 2h30min video of him going in and out of atmo all the time would be boring >.<). It added a lot to the video anyway, itâs just that itâs hard to link the video since itâs rather long, peole who have no real interest in infinity to start with donât really want to have a 2.5h long video in their lap. But it did contain a lot of nice things like ground to space combat, racing along the ground with other players, checking out stations, and such stuff.
A dev describing the following(maybe in more detail) while already recorded/shown gameplay combat scenes and some quick concept art about the subject rolls in the background.
âImagine a complete game with all stretch goals. Hundreds of players fighting over a big ground installation that is firing up, with capital ships bombarding it from orbit, and all of that happening during rain/storms and high winds that make it harder to aim. Lightning destroying ships and missiles, charged clouds breaking radar contact, solar flares disabling ships in orbitâŚâ
Would there be a way to give the client to some people and later take away their right to connect to servers/play it?
Thereâs plenty of backers on this forum who have beta tiers that are set for later dates, you could pick ~20 of them with machines/internet connection thatâs up to spec and let us have a crazy shooty time for a day or two, you could record our shooty and produce a video of a âbigâ battle. Then you cut us off till our due time.
well⌠in my opinion you did awesome job with the kickstarter video.
Perfect cuts and scenes + awesome music.
That had effect. This kind of thing hooks people so they go and want to know more.
So they go and watch some streaming and if they like it deal is sealed.
They know what are they getting and it is enough.
But what you need now is⌠well yet another one of those more cinematic onesâŚ
It does not have to be perfect - you donât have time for perfect.
But people unfortunately donât have patience/time to watch hours long sessions for few bits of awesome. (you can clearly see this in youtube statistics - part audience retention)
Some random idea:
one person (who is really skilled with the game - i would say Flavien - filming)
Rest are the actors - You can use footage from actor and cameraman and mix it up.
You donât need much. Devs should suffice (btw disable portraits for this)
Do some scenes together - make several passes on each.
some really short and simple stories,
-coordinated attack on some target.
-chase of one WIP target in canyons. (fly slower, people wont know the difference)
For inspiration there is so many movies and books you seen and read.
So many scenes just pick one and remake it in game.