New game: "Aeronautica"

Community Showcases
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Currently in the early development stage, ‘Aeronautica’ is an upcoming 3D open-world steampunk game involving combat, trade, exploration and colonization with airships, biplanes and other vessels in a sandbox environment. The game world includes thousands of miles of procedurally-generated terrain which can be freely explored and settled (if your airship can carry enough troops or settlers to build fortresses or towns). Players will be able to fly their ships in first-person perspective from the pilothouse and walk through the ship while fighting in realtime battles. Although it mostly focuses on airship exploration and combat, it’s intended to be as open-ended as possible and may also eventually include surface ships, submarines, and (steampunk) ‘tanks’ if there is enough support.

Here are some early screenshots:

Below: The Imperial warship S.S. ‘Princess Grace’, showing the stern decorations (gilded horses and a large gilded heron, and of course a portrait of Grace herself on the side).

Below: ‘Grace under Fire’ (sorry for the bad pun): The “Princess Grace” surrounded by sparks and shrapnel during a battle against one of the Duke of Snoddly’s ships. Players can either fight alongside or against the Royal and seigneurial fleets, serve as a privateer or bounty hunter for one or more of the ruling families, or set out on their own to explore, trade, create colonies, or conquer.

Below: another image of the same battle. Snoddly’s ship can be seen at the top of the image. An Imperial Eagle Interceptor (winged dirigible) is in the lower right, and behind it is a player ship (mostly obscured behind the Interceptor).

Below: early screenshot of the pilothouse of the “Red Falcon”, a premium ship that players can purchase. Outside the window is an early version of the S.S. Princess Grace without most of its stern decorations.

Below: this is what the back portion of the same pilothouse looks like.

Below: several types of airship (at left, a premium player ship called “The Dragonfly”; at center is the “Red Falcon”; at right is one of the Duke of Snoddly’s ships).

The above are just some early screenshots and a quick description. I’ll try to update this page soon. In the meantime, the website has more info : http://starving-indie-developer.com/aeronautica.html

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Internal visual detail looks very nice.
Sounds interesting. Will there be ship customizations available? Cause gamers like that kind of thing.

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Yes, players will be able, at minimum, to change some of the equipment, swapping weapons, engines, etc for new devices. There is also an extended feature goal that would allow players to design their own ships and then order their shipyards to build them (if they have shipyards). You can see more information on the website, at: http://starving-indie-developer.com/aeronautica.html
Thank you for your interest, and your comments about the graphics. The screenshot of the pilothouse with gauges and brass pipes was made almost entirely just with stock Unity primitives (capsules, spheres and cylinders) with the Standard Shader applied to them. Originally it was going to just be a placeholder, but Unity’s reflections make it look fairly realistic.

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A three-minute video is underway but won’t be done for at least a few more days. I could post a briefer video of just combat if anyone is interested.

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Since this game is planned to include some degree of multiplayer support, I’d like suggestions for setting up the “noob rules” in a way that prevents something like what GoonSwarm has done in so many games - i.e. hundreds of them join a game and then use the basic starting ships or money to overwhelm other players using swarm tactics. E.g. in Eve Online, they use the lowest level ship that new players start with to launch attacks with hundreds of ships against much smaller (albeit better) vessels, and they often win. This creates enormous problems, and yet new players need to start with something substantial enough to give them a chance. Anyone have any suggestions?

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Example of the procedural terrain, with waves lapping up on the shoreline. The whole thing is produced in the shader, including the waves (which follow the coastline, for the most part):

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Looks quite interesting, is there some story/plot your following that I am missing? (like who this Princess Grace is?)

I like the idea of first person flying/fighting, sounds cool.

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If you want to stop armies of new weak players from defeating fewer strong players you can make it possible for stronger players to defeat a considerably big number of weak players and make a big penalty for weak players if they lose their ship. This way weak ships wont be used so easily.
As I recall the beginner ship in Eve online cost nothing, so by using them players don’t risk anything and that’s an issue.

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Thank you for your comments. The S.S. Princess Grace is named after a member of the Royal family (a little girl at the time when the ship was first commissioned years before the game takes place). Grace herself probably won’t be in the game, or at least not prominently; but there will be a host of other aristocrats whom the player can either fight for or against, or run missions for them (e.g. hunting down pirates for a bounty if the noble has issued a “Letter of Marque” for their death or capture). Each duke, earl, baron, etc will have a set of goals and an AI “personality” (varying degrees of aggressiveness, acquisitiveness, intelligence and senility or insanity, etc). E.g., the Earl of Smidgen has a relentless goal to grab as much land as possible to expand his enormous tea plantations, but is largely peaceful and willing to pay the player for any land that he wants (if the player has one or more settlements that Smidgen’s scoutships have discovered). The Duke of Snoddly is also expansionistic and more warlike, but also more narrowly focused on land that has precious metal deposits and therefore more likely to ignore player settlements if he thinks they don’t have the resources he wants (whereas Smidgen wants almost any land that can grow tea). The Earl of Gluffin is mostly focused on fighting piracy (and occasionally the Duke of Snoddly, who once stole his Aunt Mable’s false teeth), for which he has raised a force of pilots which the player can join. The Earl of Wubbly (husband of Aunt Mable) serves the Royal family in the Imperial Navy, and is a staunch enemy of the Duke of Snoddly since Snoddly sometimes goes to war against the Royal family, and almost everyone else at one time or another. The old Duke of Chumley is largely retired from active service, and spends his time writing books such as his famous “Duke Eustace IX of Chumley’s Guide to Modern Airships and Other Vessels and Vehicles, Encompassing All Current Royal and Seigneurial Ships, Common Commercial Craft, and Many Other Vessels, for the Greater Edification of the Public … (etc, etc; the title runs on for several paragraphs…)”. There are many other nobles.

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Yes, the default ship in Eve Online is free, and its replacement is also free. I could do what you suggested, in fact that would be realistic (new ships don’t just pop out of thin air); but on the other hand a new player might not be willing to keep going if they face great difficulty the first time they lose a ship. One alternate option would be to give new players only a cargo ship with no weapon mounts and a weak hull that can’t be used for ramming, but with a free replacement paid for by the usual “insurance”. This wouldn’t go over too well with players who want combat right away, but those players could have the option of joining one of the squadrons maintained by a noble, with tight restrictions on who they can fight (and they could later buy their own ship and use it as they please).

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New screenshot: the Red Falcon’s port guns (a large gatling gun with eight barrels, and a flak cannon):

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The view from behind a big gatling gun:

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I’m looking forward to updates on this game :).

I like the design of all the ships except for the ones with the huge wings. They look way to heavy. Maybe the wings can be shrunk down. I say this because all of the other ships appear like they might be able to fly in real life, and when you see the ones with the huge wings, they look out of place compared to the others.

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Yes, some of them are a bit large. I assume you mean the three “Eagle” ships with the golden wings shaped like a bird’s wings? I can scale those down.

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I’m in the process of improving the combat system, explosion effects, etc, for an upcoming video. Here’s a rare screenshot captured at the exact moment when the S.S. Princess Grace fired all of its lower starboard long-range cannons (and there were also two flak explosions nearby):

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Some screenshots from a combat video I’m working on.
Below: The S.S. Sun-in-Splendour and a fleet above it:

Below: closeup of the Sun-in-Splendour’s tower:

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If the airships are rigid, the airframes shape should be more visible. In the image below, you can see that there are line segments going from the front to the back of the ship. There are also circular rings that make up the structure of the ship.

The texture of the ships needs some more work. The pure black color is little to clean, and doesn’t appear to react to the light very much. If you lower the shininess level and apply more variation and dirt to the texture it will make it look more real.

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Rare screenshot of a flak burst a fraction of a second after detonation (and it somehow exploded behind the ship that fired it… either due to a bug, or because Imperial gunners are surprisingly incompetent…)

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I gota say the ships look awesome! :slight_smile:

I would love to see some of the combat (maybe a gameplay vid?) :wink:

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Thank you. :slight_smile: A video should be done later today and posted by tomorrow.
Here’s a screenshot of a burning biplane from a battle that will be part of the video.

(BTW, why does Unity’s forum display the images too large and all pixellated? You can see what they actually look like on the website, at: http://starving-indie-developer.com/aeronautica-screenshots.html )

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