As I have recently confirmed, Kichae is not an astronomer as he maintains and does not work at an observatory, which he also claimed, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in Kichae’s views.
For game unit visual design, what matters is the unit’s profile at a distance and overall feel. The bomber will be viewed from 10s kms away, at least, so the visual design must be distinctive at range.
This also gets to the question of “Immersion.” A consistent art design for units is more important than making the unit realistic. Furthermore, the realism of any unit is highly theoretical at best, because the energy associated with it will be impossibly large.
I say, go for a simple and striking design which conveys detail with a low graphics load. A lower detailed unit is a very acceptable trade-off for higher player counts.
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The energy associated with these engines was always going to be unrealistic. If we’re looking for realism in cases of Sci-fiction, the best we can really do is to have proportionality.
All things being equal, a bigger engine will produce more thrust. To be realistic, in a proportional sense, that thrust would be aligned with the desired design acceleration rate of the ship versus the mass of the ship. At which point, it becomes easier to create a ship if you have already assign a value to your unrealistic thrust.
This of course would not necessarily lead to an aesthetically consistent (or even pleasing) art design.
I essentially agree though. I myself would go for something aesthetically pleasing. Realism (even proportionally) would likely be too much work for too little appreciation.
We honestly don’t know, we don’t have any more information regarding his departure than you do. It was a complete surprise and he let us know at the first meeting after the KS finished. He said his life situation had changed, I can only speculate as to how/why, and we just keep moving forward and rolling with the punches.
We said it would be released by the end of January.
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Edited by @INovaeKeith: I am getting tired of the constant flame war between @Zen and, well, everybody. This is a warning to @Zen and all the rest of you that I’m going to begin cracking down.
@INovaeKeith That’s fair.
I think you could make a reasonable pass at a consistent and pleasing art design that still flirted with physics, but it might not be an art design that tells the visual story the artists are aiming for.
What we’re seeing here is sort of hot rod meets space ship meets Tonka, and that probably fits the visual vernacular better than realism would.
As one who actually looks into statements as opposed to believing everything they hear, you are correct Keith, sort of. As stated on the Kickstarter page, the end of January was not set in stone since an earlier possible release was inferred.
- Access to the latest internal builds of the game (est. January 2016 or sooner).
Anyway, that is behind us now and it’s time to look forward. Hopefully something will be released at the end of this month. Knock wood.
Look, if someone is willing to use their credentials to make a point, we have the right to question those credentials. Moreover, I don’t believe you speak for ‘everybody’ and I have agreed with many posters both in writing and by clicking likes. So I don’t know what you are on about. What’s more I try to keep it civil - a lot more civil than the personal insult I received today in a private message laced with profanity. Anyway, we can disagree here. I just disagreed with INovaeKeith despite having agreed with 95% of what he has posted. And I am pretty sure he can live with that. So I’m sorry if I don’t agree with everyone or send personal insults to their message box…just not built that way.
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Thats sad to see…
Oh well. Its a shame. But hey you have got this far … nothing will stop you now 
Keep going I-novae team !
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Always a shame to lose good people, but I can imagine how it would have been a difficult choice to make. Had Infinity raised more money in the Kickstarter then maybe it’d be different I guess? Still, it is what it is…
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I think it would’ve been different had we raised more money but that’s pure speculation.
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I think a mini fund raising campaign push every 6 months might be a good idea. With something every 3 months like a round up post much like CIG’s monthly report. A round up report added to here, steam (as and when), SC and ED forums, KS, etc.
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That’s not a bad idea, once we get the prototype out perhaps we can begin discussing what such a push would consist of.
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That would be a good time to test something like ‘early access’ for a new ship or something.
When a new ship comes out, everybody will want to play it. New and shiny and all that. I can recall multiple times in PS2 that the use of a single weapon/vehicle absolutely saturated the game when it was released. (Harasser/ZOE)
So you can limit the number of players using by giving ‘pledge pushers’ a week or so advance on a new ship, which will allow for balancing in a more controlled usage environment, despite being on the same server as everybody else.
Just spit-balling here, I’ve thought about this before but never saw it implemented anywhere IFAIK.
Hey guys I’ve been away for a few weeks after KS ended.
Anyways I’ve been wondering what the current status on dev access is? Do we already have access to the KS prototype? I saw some kind of progress post that looks like they are doing a bunch of stuff coding the login and authentication systems.
So do we have access yet? If not what is the ETA? Like another 2 weeks or something? I thought it was supposed to go out in January anyways.
We had originally expected to ship it by the end of January but due to some unexpected developments it was delayed. We’re working diligently to get it out at the end of February.
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Appreciated the update from Flavien - as always very interesting.
In regards to ‘Higher polycount: decal geometry is geometry, even if simplistic, it definitely increases the total model’s polycount’, I hope I-Novae doesn’t go too SCish on the massive polycounts because it really makes playing difficult because the engine struggles; it also vastly decreases player count which I believe will be Battlescapes strong point, that and landing on planets. Of course I little better quality would be nice but things are looking pretty fine so far.
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We think it’s actually a real good thing. The decal geometry can be disabled on weaker systems so it’s really something that will provide a significant increase in detail and richness to the environment for players who have a system that can handle the extra workload.
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While the topic has come up, I’ll offer a friendly reminder that the lower you can go with graphics cards, the wider your reach will be. I have a 660ti, so I apparently won’t be able to run the game. But I’d be perfectly happy turning off most everything until all I see is terrain with missing octaves and which uses rubbish textures, ships that are off by a level of detail and so forth. I’d be happy with that stuff because I find playing a game with rubbish visuals to be more fun than not playing it at all. That’s particularly true with multiplayer games, where the other players are a big component of the gameplay.
In ARMA 3, I find that there are people playing at 10fps on laptops and they have a great time. Because they get to play a fun game, even if their experience is a bit lacking compared to that of others’.
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Overall I’m in complete agreement with that except for two issues:
- Perhaps ironically it requires more engineering effort to support lower-end systems given that we’ve designed the game for high-end from its inception
- It can imbalance gameplay if some users are able to disable certain visual cues to give themselves a competitive advantage. For example clouds and other forms of atmospheric haze, which are extremely expensive effects, inhibit vision and if you turn them off it’s easier to see your opponent thereby possibly making it easier to kill them. This forces us to make a choice between the business case of allowing as many people to play as possible vs adhering to our artistic vision for the game.
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