Fire the torpedos! … More power to the shields! I’m proud to show you my work in progress…
Quintet is a multiplayer space game where players work harmoniously to control the same ship. There are 5 roles: Captain, Helm, Tactical, Engineering and Science.
I’ll let this youtube video speak for itself:
You can play right now in your web browser. The iOS client is coming soon.
This game is a ton of fun to play in person with some friends.
WORK IN PROGRESS NOTE: To play the big ship… have the captain switch to helm so he can steer. I don’t have separate captain/helm controls yet.
This game looks very well thought out and polished! Love the visuals and mechanics of it all. I’m guessing this took quite some time to optimize for the Ipad as well as computers, looks seamless!
While this is a multiplayer game, will there be any sort of options for AI positions when you only have one or two other friends to play with? I’m just asking because it looks like all five positions are essential to piloting the ship.
There are currently two other ships “Solo” and “Duet”… Solo you can play entirely by yourself. I mapped all the controls to the joystick so you can even click “hide ui” and just play like a space shooter! It’s a small fast ship. Has basic functions (no engineering, science etc.) but it’s the only ship with “cloak”
Duet - let’s one person fly and the other shoot. Weapons and shield are stronger. Tactical screen can modulate your beam frequency to try to penetrate shields.
ALSO… You can play together with a couple of solo ships, duets and a quintet all together in one game. I have a bunch of friends coming by tonight (Nov 30th) at 7pm (Eastern Time). Log on at that time and play a solo ship with us.
That’s really interesting. I’m always excited to see innovative games being developed for mobile devices, especially when those games stretch across platforms.
As far as the Ipad goes, I have a few questions on the development side. How difficult is it to work around the constraints of the mobile systems? Also, are you making use of the Ipad’s motion/direction sensitivity like Metal Storm? It would be really interesting to see what it might be like to pilot a ship in space using that method of control. It worked out really well for Metal Storm, but with the freedom that a zero-gravity environment embodies might make the controls a bit difficult to adjust.
Either way this is a very interesting and well executed product. Keep up the good work!
Hey… I’m not using the gyroscope at all. I’ve played around with games that used gyroscope control for flying and I found I did not really like it. I think it’s much easier to just use your thumb… especially for fine movement. Also… if you want to hit other buttons at the same time… such as shooting or adjusting thrust… it’s kind of hard to hit buttons like that AND TILT at the same time.
My game is playable right now on the site… check it out: http://quintet.us
That looks really awesome carmine. Just played the 2 player Ship alone (Browser). We need more players!
Just a little comment:
It would be nice to have some target indicators on the screen edge to point you to the right direction. The big white arrow is a little distracting.
Probably a smart move. I agree that the tilt can get in the way when precise movement is necessary. Still everything is looking extremely well polished and organized.
I got a chance to play around with the web demo and it plays very well! The ship movement feels smooth and user-friendly, so great work on that.
The demo plays really well. Some things that I’d love to see:
Ship creator - design your own ships and save them for future use.
Helming - Negotiate before engaging in combat. “ON SCREEN”, but a dialog system would be a lot of work. To make it easier and more passive, you could tell your science officer to lock on to the ship and “beam” the captain to the other ship to attempt negotiations. No fancy graphics, just a another window that has a cool down for negotiations, while the captain is on the other ship. After the cooldown could just have a negotiation success/fail (random) and you can engage or ignore the ship. Haha even if negotiations are successful you could fire anyways.
Engineering tasks - I’d love to have a ton of things for the engineer to do.
Does the AI fire back yet? Plans for a story mode?
Love that you have cross-platform play working, I can see this doing well on steam as a stand-alone though. Needless to say, this is one of the projects I’m jealous of, quality-wise really impressive and wish I was working on it and/or wish I thought of it first. Good job!
edit: PM me if you need an extra in your testing. I should be available Friday.
Outstanding, your game triggered fond memories of Eternal Silence( a fantastic space shooter HL2 mod, it was amazing , you could hop on a ship, board the other carrier and take it over ) .
The only that could make it better would be a zombie like Co-Op mod , like me and my crew( and maybe another crew) against the hoards of space !
Hey… AI absolutely fire back… play a scenario besides Target Practice and they should be shooting at you.
I originally had more things for the engineer to do… but it did not make sense (the way I had it) because death was not such a big deal in the game. I changed it to be “more fun things to do”… I do think he could use one more ability. I’m open to suggestions!
I’m thinking of setting up something for us all to play on Friday… we might be in all different Time Zones… maybe 10pm or 11pm EST or something? Does later work better?
There is a scenario there called “Armada” which has lots of bad guys… maybe you were thinking of lots of very weak bad guys? Or something else? Let me know…
Hey Everyone,
I’ve been deep in the profiler for a couple of days and done a lot of optimizing. I also got the network code to be a lot smoother (it’s tough with rigidbodies + network + follow camera)…
