What happened to their forum?

Coming soon

Just noticed the video

Like the ship model

Thanks to Trumpet for pointing this out on the shout box.

As we get closer to launching our Kickstarter we're beginning to nail down the environments we're going to use for our campaign video. This is a sneak peak of the solar system we're building for Infinity: Battlescape.

 

Just been having a look at I-Novae website and noticed they had their 2013 Retrospective up http://inovaekeith.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/2013-retrospective-and-whats-next.html Looks like they are about to go for their Kickstarter.

State of the Kickstarter
As I have mentioned before our Kickstarter will be for a game titled Infinity: Battlescape (I:B). This is not going to be the same game as Infinity: The Quest for Earth (I:TQFE). Most notably it won't be an MMO. After taking stock of the situation early last year it became apparent to us that we needed to reduce the scope of our ambitions in the near term so that we could release a product. Our ambitions for Infinity the MMO are huge and the capital requirement to build I:TQFE at the most basic level is on the order of millions of dollars that we don't currently have. Thus we've decided to build a game with a heavier focus on space combat.

To summarize, our core 30 seconds of fun will be massive space battles like you see in Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, etc. If we raise enough with our Kickstarter there will also be plenty of support roles combined with deeper strategy and tactics for those of you who aren't so keen on combat. I:B will be multiplayer only and take place in the Infinity universe within a single solar system (others may be released as DLC). Instead of having individual maps, combat will take place in different "battlescape's" throughout this solar system. Exactly how this concept of a battlescape is implemented will, like many things, depend on how much money we raise. Either way the game will contain an offline sandbox mode where players will be able to explore in peace without any restrictions.

You may be wondering why haven't we released the Kickstarter yet. As it turns out launching a good Kickstarter is a lot like dying from a thousand paper cuts - the devil's in all the little details. When we initially announced our plan for a Kickstarter the overall message we received from the community was "don't launch it before it's ready". This was best summarized I think by an article in Rock Paper Shotgun. We've taken that advice to heart and we realized last summer that we simply couldn't release the Kickstarter in 2013 with the level of quality that we want and you expect. The good news is that we're pretty confident we'll be able to get it out in the first half of 2014. I know we've said this before but hear me out.

 

Please can infinity just die? Who is going to be interested in infinity when by the time it comes out SC will have had 2-3-4 years to mature...?

...think about it 🙂

Well I will be backing it just for the offline mode.

The only other scifi Multi-player only game I can think of is God Factory: Wingmen, they have had too unsuccessful Kickstarter IIRC. Granted Infinity Battlescape will have the seamless planet transitions from space which should give it an edge but a lot will depend on how much they want and how well the Kickstarter runs.

Also I think  Elite Dangerous will be more of a threat to them than Star Citizen as Frontier have promised the seamless planets feature in a future update to E:D.

Anyone  been looking at the Twitter page for I-Nova they have mentioned that they will be doing their Kickstarter some time after the GDC assuming it the one in the USA on the 17 March so they could be going for it at the end of this month?.

They also mention that they will be doing one last video before the GDC and the start of their Kickstarter so keep an eye on Youtube.

New screen shot of WIP ship for KS w/ some engine lighting added (still missing exhaust glows)

 

That WIP of one the Kickstater ship looks somewhat familiar.

I unfortunately won't be donating to the Kickstarter; however, I have been following this game's progress with interest for years.

Who knows its just a game engine in constant development is my opinion

Damn ship model is great and the engine is great as well. But I think at times Infinity has wore down some of the fans in not releasing something over the past 4-5+ yrs we have been watching this game. Yeah the engine is amazing, but I am really interested in how close they actually are to producing a game I could purchase. If the kickstarter has the game coming out in 2-3yrs they might be hard pressed to be successful (depending on the amount they are looking for) just because there is so many space games flooding the market now and some are amazing. Infinity could have stunned us all 2-3yrs ago with coming out and really grabbing all the market share because there wasn't hardly anything out there at that time that this game does. Now we wait to see what will be in Infinity.

Looking forward to finally getting some answers from the kickstarter.

will have to see if anything comes of it not holding breath they might come up with a small title, actually on their website seems they have a lot of potential small indie devs lning up for the engine but they are keeping it close to their chest hoping for the big bucks hasnt happened but then again they have nearly a million in private bacing so they arent in a hurry

Remember everyone this Kickstarter is about Battlescape not Infinity.

IIRC Battlescape is a multi-player game set within one solar system of the Infinity universe.

Looks like I:B kickstarter launch will be delayed a bit :  http://inovaekeith.blogspot.fr/2014/03/update-as-i-head-to-gdc-2014.html

Keith Newton words citation  :

 

Sometimes I think we're a little too obsessed with perfection.

 

no shit dude ? 

Inhaling too much vapor, between SC and Elite who would want this? It offers nothing different and only much less.

The terrain engine is what looks the most appealing about Infinity; this engine has the most visible progress in that direction to me, whereas E:D and SC have only promises of landing on procedural planets.   Infinity's community has been occasionally a little rabid (someone with a gorilla avatar called the game I had spent over a thousand hours contributing to "a poor attempt"; I don't feel at all bad about it as the game is still growing whereas I:QE has been on the margin of existence).  The fact the website went down for a while isn't a good sign, either.

I appreciate what the devs are trying to accomplish; it will be really cool if they are able to pull it off.  The screenshots have been amazing, but there still hasn't been anything to inspire confidence that this will actually be a game to me.  I really like I:QE's aesthetic so far, and it looks hopeful that the main dev is attending GDC this year; if they turn this into a full fledged multiplayer game it would be sort of miraculous.

Can't recall off hand if they have said anything about what the player can do on the planets.

So will you be able to land at a base or will it be just flying around on the surface dog fighting other ships.

What we can do with planets in Infinity Battlescape [I:B] is dependent upon the amount of funding we receive (at a minimum from what you see with our current screenshots, we'd like to at least add vegetation and volumetric clouds).  We would like to have structures on the ground that can be attacked/defended, but that type of gameplay will likely be a stretch goal. 

The main focus of I:B gameplay will center around 2 teams of 128 players each engaging in first person spaceship combat at areas of interest scattered throughout a solar system, eventually culminating in massive space battle end games.  We're still putting our gameplay ideas down on paper, and will present them at the launch of our crowd funding campaign, as well as on our Infinity Battlescape website (once it's finished).  Those who pledge for the alpha level tier will be able to help us shape the optimum gameplay via forum feedback and play testing.

One definitive thing I can say about planets is there will be no landing at ground installations (or space stations for that matter), with the express intent to get out of your ship and walk around with a character avatar, not even for the highest stretch goal.  This however, is not because the engine could not handle this type of implementation. The engine is optimally coded and right now is garnering very high frame rates in our testing, the reason is more of an art resource/coding implementation and game design issue that comes with a very small indie team.  Even if the crowd funding does really well and exceeds our goals, we're not going to be tacking on all kinds of stretch goals that drastically change the core game design as well as increasing the scope to the point of potentially damaging a solid launch, walking avatars as a stretch goal would do just that.

Long term, we are still committed to the Infinity MMO, but I:B has to come first. It's a game we know we can build with our small team.  We're focusing on shipping a solid initial product, which if successful, will lead to the development of the MMO.  However, as mentioned above, the crowd funding campaign will only be for Infinity Battlescape, there are no ties to the MMO other than the engine used for I:B would be the starting point for the MMO, the art direction, and some of the lore. 

I can understand many of the frustrations people may have about the seemingly perpetual nature of this engine's development.  I am the lead artist, and have been involved with this project since 2007, and have been waiting just as long to get going and make a game already, we're finally almost there.  It has been a long iterative process for the art team, developing/re-developing the art pipeline alongside the coding team as the engine evolves.  Not only was it important for us to develop the pipeline, but also work with the coders to develop & optimize the engine's art toolset, which is not only important for our team, but also for the viability of licensing our technology as a revenue source to support our game project(s).

Two part time coders can only go so fast, and believe me, we have tried to add to the coding team, but the talent level required is very high, and the passion for our particular project HAS to be there due to the pro bono nature of the work required.  Looking back at the upgrades to the engine in preparation for this crowd funding campaign, I can only say, now that I see the latest installment and its performance gains over the previous, the upgrades were quite necessary and are very welcome. The artists now have a much more robust toolset to work with to create an immersive game world, and the engine’s performance has increased drastically from where it was 3 years ago.

So for those who are still interested, hang in there, we’re finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, and very much look forward to building a game with this engine.

I for one are looking forward to seeing what you guys have got .

Will their be any Rift support for the game?.

Yes, one of our coders has an OVR devkit, and has already implemented it.

Been a long time since we have heard any news about the proposed Kickstarter, any one know what they are upto, are we looking at next year now?.

We are pushing as hard as we can to get the KS out as soon as possible, understanding that we are still a non-funded/part time dev team.  We had quite a few coding delays this year, specifically in the realm of HDR/tonemapping.  Lighting is very crucial in terms of visual presentation for a game, and integration into a game engine which allows seamless planetary interaction along with space based and interior scenes has proven to be very complex/challenging. Developing a global HDR solution that retains the kind of quality we require in any/all possible game scenarios has taken longer than we anticipated.  For most games, artists are afforded the ability to tweak the lighting on a per scene basis, that is not an option for what we're trying to build. This of course is not the only technology hurdle we have to deal with however.

Having said all that, we have a handle on these challenges and we will be releasing a new planetary rings video shortly, it will be the last video we release before the KickStarter.  I am not going to give any dates, because when you're non-funded and the team members are working part time, there is just no way to reliably do that.  What I can say is we are still hitting it hard and our efforts will ultimately culminate in a Kickstarter campaign. 

Excellent news INovaeGene will be looking out for the video.

And remember when you do start your Kickstarter campaign lots of updates.