Infinity Battlescape
- Thread starter Cosmo
- Start date
I feel the travel system in Elite Dangerous is much more solid and elegant and I love the incredible feeling of scale in ED.
Nevertheless I also salivated when I saw them flying through that canyon on that sunny planet with all the little terrain details and I loved that base on the volcanic planet and that great looking asteroid base.
The mountain ridges on that planet did not look very realistic from space though.
I feel FD is on the right track with their realistic tectonic layer that determines the presence of mountains and canyons etc.
Last edited:
Infinity : Battlescape
Hello my fellow players.
As I know that you all seem to love space, I would like to share an interesting space simulation project : Infinity Battlescape. For those who don't know about this project, it is an independent project started in 2005, developed by a small team on their spare time. As years past, and without any funding, they developed their own engine (i-novae engine), that can generate, like the Cobra Engine (Fontier's engine) entire universes to play with.
Kickstarter : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/309114309/infinity-battlescape
Trailer :
[video=youtube;TJqkiNAuBrw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJqkiNAuBrw[/video]
The (long) project history :
The project started in 2005. At first, it was supposed to be an MMO, but as time passed, they weren't able to find funding for a space MMO (there was no Star Citizen hype at this time, no one wanted to invest in something else than a WoW clone). But they didn't loose hope, and as time passed, they managed to get a small but loyal community, which helped, little by little, to design the game, create their asset (3d model, music, etc...).
Still, even with this community, and an engine already delivering amazing visuals (here is a video from 2007), investor didn't want to invest in the project. Time passed, we were already able to play a little with an early online combat prototype (see here a video from 2006). In order to manage to get funding, it was decided to create a combat game first, in order to get funding to expand the game to a full scale MMO later. Thus came the idea of Infinity Battlescape.
For now, you can think this game as a "Space Planetside 2". The idea of the game is to have games spanning multiple days, across a real-scale planetary system, with no loading, a (possible) small amount of persistence (structure building, etc...), multiple size of ships, ranging from a small interceptor (small but fast fighters) to huge carriers (which serve as mobile respawn base), all of them playable by players. You can just connect during a small amount of time, to do some skirmish, or stay connected longer to participate to a titanic capital-ship space-battle.
Gameplay :
In my opinion, the best way to describe the gameplay is by showing it, so here is some video. Bear in mind that these are an early prototype footage, the are still a lot of change coming, but the base "pew pew" is already here.
[video=youtube;sglhi_PIEX4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sglhi_PIEX4[/video]
My opinion :
As I follow this project for a long time, I cannot be 100% objective. But in my humble opinion, this game is very promising. Combat are faster than Elite, the goal is more realistic than other similar games (you know... Star Citizen
), and the community is already amazing.
Moreover, the game isn't that expensive (for 25$ you get the base game), so, you won't get ruined from buying it.
Hello my fellow players.
As I know that you all seem to love space, I would like to share an interesting space simulation project : Infinity Battlescape. For those who don't know about this project, it is an independent project started in 2005, developed by a small team on their spare time. As years past, and without any funding, they developed their own engine (i-novae engine), that can generate, like the Cobra Engine (Fontier's engine) entire universes to play with.
Kickstarter : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/309114309/infinity-battlescape
Trailer :
[video=youtube;TJqkiNAuBrw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJqkiNAuBrw[/video]
The (long) project history :
The project started in 2005. At first, it was supposed to be an MMO, but as time passed, they weren't able to find funding for a space MMO (there was no Star Citizen hype at this time, no one wanted to invest in something else than a WoW clone). But they didn't loose hope, and as time passed, they managed to get a small but loyal community, which helped, little by little, to design the game, create their asset (3d model, music, etc...).
Still, even with this community, and an engine already delivering amazing visuals (here is a video from 2007), investor didn't want to invest in the project. Time passed, we were already able to play a little with an early online combat prototype (see here a video from 2006). In order to manage to get funding, it was decided to create a combat game first, in order to get funding to expand the game to a full scale MMO later. Thus came the idea of Infinity Battlescape.
For now, you can think this game as a "Space Planetside 2". The idea of the game is to have games spanning multiple days, across a real-scale planetary system, with no loading, a (possible) small amount of persistence (structure building, etc...), multiple size of ships, ranging from a small interceptor (small but fast fighters) to huge carriers (which serve as mobile respawn base), all of them playable by players. You can just connect during a small amount of time, to do some skirmish, or stay connected longer to participate to a titanic capital-ship space-battle.
Gameplay :
In my opinion, the best way to describe the gameplay is by showing it, so here is some video. Bear in mind that these are an early prototype footage, the are still a lot of change coming, but the base "pew pew" is already here.
[video=youtube;sglhi_PIEX4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sglhi_PIEX4[/video]
My opinion :
As I follow this project for a long time, I cannot be 100% objective. But in my humble opinion, this game is very promising. Combat are faster than Elite, the goal is more realistic than other similar games (you know... Star Citizen
), and the community is already amazing.Moreover, the game isn't that expensive (for 25$ you get the base game), so, you won't get ruined from buying it.
System should be 1:1 - realistic scale has always been one the most important features. They are probably using few appropriately close planets in these KS videos. It is also worth noting that the ships in Infinity do not have artifically set max speed - you will accelerate for as long as you have your thrusters activated.
You are correct Varrag; off and on Ive' followed there development. The I-Novae engine is very powerfull, -for us 'Sandboxers' we'll just have to wait.
They nailed space-flight and seamless planetary landing a long time ago (see their old youtube videos). So what they're showing for the kickstarter is a polished version of old stuff.
While it looks pretty good, this indie developer doesn't have much experience or funding compared to Frontier.
It'll take a long time before they finish the game for release. By that time ED will have a lot more stuff.
While it looks pretty good, this indie developer doesn't have much experience or funding compared to Frontier.
It'll take a long time before they finish the game for release. By that time ED will have a lot more stuff.
Last edited:
They are talented. No doubt
Well yes, at least from what I understand, this is basically planetside in space. Definitely should be possible, and yes combat is faster because it is based around combat, though we will have to see how fast it will be at release to make any 'real' assumption on how fast combat is. So yeah limited scope, but within that scope (big space battles) seems that this could do well.As I follow this project for a long time, I cannot be 100% objective. But in my humble opinion, this game is very promising. Combat are faster than Elite, the goal is more realistic than other similar games (you know... Star Citizen
Yay, more games for everyone!
Infinity Battlescape doesn't really compete with ED. The only similarity is that they are set in space and both plan to feature the ability to land on planets. ED is an MMO and requires a highly scalable backend server architecture and to play it as intended players must build up their characters over many months. Battlescape will be an arena based game where players can host their own servers and the game world will be reset for every match.
This is, of course, true. There is no doubt there are lot of bumps and unseen obstacles awaiting them on long road to final product. But at least funding doesn't have to be deciding factor - money can not replace ingenuity, as SC (in negative sense), and Space Engine (in positive) are proving.
I think it's pretty safe to say that the Battlescape is just a first step towards the Infinity MMO. Flavien wants that and everyone in the community knows that. It's just that they accepted reality in which they have to release something smaller to start making money, get rid of that nasty 'vaporware' label they were carrying for years, and finally to testbed their technology, before going for full blown MMO game.
Last edited:
new interview
[video=youtube;OzbMfUoeOy8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzbMfUoeOy8&feature=youtu.be[/video]
[video=youtube;OzbMfUoeOy8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzbMfUoeOy8&feature=youtu.be[/video]
I can't say this interview fills me with confidence. I understand they're just getting into the whole large marketing of the product regards KS. But they should know exactly, after all the years with the engine/game, what the game will be and what the player can expect into the future, they just don't seem too sure of certain aspects.
Fingers crossed.
:S
Last edited:
Yep. Somewhere down the the line a programmer from Epic games joine with the developer apparently brining 500,000 in funding (that never appeared) or so the story goes. Not entirely sure how accurate that it. Once the programmer (Keith?) joined the scope was dialled back to something sensible in the form of Infinity: Battlescape.
I think they're just being cautious as usual. Someone else would keep saying "yeah, we'll do it" and "sure, why not" for every single suggestion they hear.
Btw. Flavien updated KS page with some pretty important informations regarding the current state of the game which, as he emphasized again, is not even pre-alpha:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/309114309/infinity-battlescape/posts/1391112
Last edited:
Flavien said that, due to the manpower/fund constraints, they had to use lot of placeholders and tone down or simply turn off plenty of things he didn't feel ready to get included in this playable demo they are giving streamers for review.
Anyway, if you remember Elite's early development videos which were mostly about David talking, and with very little (quite barebone'ish) gameplay, we can tell that I-Novae has done pretty damn god job thus far. They really showed us a lot more than Frontier did when they started their KS campaign.
Anyway, if you remember Elite's early development videos which were mostly about David talking, and with very little (quite barebone'ish) gameplay, we can tell that I-Novae has done pretty damn god job thus far. They really showed us a lot more than Frontier did when they started their KS campaign.
Last edited: