Notifications
Clear all

Rodina

Page 5 / 7

auryx
(@auryx)
Warrant Officer Registered
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 202
 

Just spent an enjoyable hour trying the demo. I just wandered around, found my ship, flew about, got lost, flew back, wandered around more, got lost again, found some boxes by sheer luck 🙂

 

It's very sparse but it gets one thing absolutely right: the atmosphere. It has that "lonely space exploration" feel which I love, like Pioneer and Fairspace. Ambient music is excellent too. I'll probably buy it and keep exploring.

 

Things I miss so far are: altitude indicator on the ship for landing, some kind of "you have a new message!" bleep, and a torch/flashlight, so that you don't just have to run around the planets in the dark 🙂

 

auryx

You look good through a crosshair.


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

IIRC it should be the G key to turn the light on.

 

Just downloaded the new version myself so I will be having a look later on at the changes to the game.


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

Video updates from Brenden as he is trying to get the game greenlighted on Steam http://elliptic-games.com/?p=562

 

 

Don't think he will many problems getting it just hope it happens before Steam changes the current version of Greenlight.


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

Another update from Brenden http://elliptic-games.com//a >

 

 

Reddit AMA

June 20, 2014

The Reddit AMA I did this week was amazing! It just kept going and going- I answered questions for about 16 hours straight, went to bed, then got up and started answering again.

You can check it out here on Reddit. I’d say only about 50% of the questions were advice on how to break into the games industry 😛

 

Up Next

June 20, 2014

Hey Guys! So I’ve been asked a few times about what’s next for Rodina. I realized I had to have an answer to this question 🙂

A little background: My plans for Rodina literally do include the kitchen sink, so it can be difficult to choose from a smorgasbord of possible features. But after thinking about this a little bit, I realized that despite my indecision my gut already knew what I was going to be working on.

While promoting the game the past few days, I’ve mostly just been cleaning up the project and reorganizing code. But just recently without much thought, I started work on a Room System, that would understand enclosed spaces and the way they connect to each other. Nothing too complicated, but also it would be pointless unless I was going to use it for other systems, like atmospherics, or an electrical grid. You know, the “Sim” stuff you guys voted on 😛

SO! I’m going to do that! Now that I’m done with fires, I’m going to continue with simulation features. Rather than bounce around, chipping away at several boulders, I’ll try to focus on ship sim stuff for the next couple of months at least and see how much I can carve out. I think some focus will serve both me and the game very well.

After that, maybe start work on NPCs? It’ll be vote-time then for sure!

 

 

That altitude meter and ships landing gear are still the two thing I would like to see in the game but we will wait to see what the next vote is for.


ReplyQuote
Raptormeat
(@raptormeat)
Petty Officer Registered
Joined: 10 years ago
Posts: 12
 

That altitude meter and ships landing gear are still the two thing I would like to see in the game but we will wait to see what the next vote is for.

 

Yeah, the altitude meter fits into the "We need headlights!" mold- once I start hearing a request over and over again, it becomes a higher priority. No guarantees of course but I'll keep it in mind!


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

Nice to see some frequent updates to the blog

Here’s the progress on the room system I’ve been making. This system splits up the map into different sections based on how they are connected. Here’s the system artificially turned into colors so it can be seen in action:

RoomSystem2-300x187.jpg . RoomSystem4-300x187.jpg

There’s still a few bugs. As you can see, the system thinks these two rooms are one room when connected by an angle piece. I must have some error in the fill algorithm which finds the boundaries of each room:

RoomSystem6-300x187.jpg . RoomSystem5-300x187.jpg

The system doesn’t understand the big airlock doors yet, either.

As I mentioned in a previous post, this system will be used for several ship simulation features. I think my goal for this next update is going to be the ability to blow the airlock, exposing the ship to hard vacuum and blasting out its atmosphere. That seems like a fun feature, and it will also mix well with the fire – no oxygen means no combustion!

 

 Blowing the airlock shades of Battlestar galactica. 😎


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

See the game has been greenlighted on steam which should make updating and down loading a lot easier.


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

news update from the blog http://elliptic-games.com/?p=653

 

 

A very exciting and pivotal day for Elliptic Games- Rodina is officially available for purchase on Steam! You can also try the demo, or download the Rodina soundtrack as a DLC!

For existing customers: Steam keys are coming soon. Everyone who donates up to the Buffet tier ($15) or above will receive a Steam key. That includes those who are currently in the Appetizer tier who bump their donations up. BUT it may take a little while to get those keys out. I’ll post again once the system comes online!

Rodina will remain for sale here on the site, and I will continue to do votes and offer picture credits to those who decide to donate at the appropriate levels. I’m not 100% sure how it’s all going to fit in with Steam, but hopefully things won’t change too much.

Thank you to everyone who helped get Rodina to this point! My greatest hope is that Rodina is successful enough that I can worry less about business stuff for a while and focus 100% on development. If that happens, it’s because of all of you!

 

Should make updating the game easier.

 


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

New update on the way

 

 

Hi Folks! It’s been a while since the last update so I thought I’d fill you guys in on what to expect next and when.

Many of you know that this next update will be about Blowing the Airlock. This update will add atmosphere pressure simulation to the game, so you can open all the doors and the airlock of your ship to stop fires. But be careful – cause when the oxygen explosively decompresses, you might fly out the airlock too!

Lately I have been crunching to get this next update out. I have a little trip scheduled Sept 7th – 13th: I am visiting my family on the East Coast, so I wanted to finish up before I left.

Unfortunately, last night I got sick. And frankly I was pushing it already. So the update will come out the week I get back: Sept 14th – 20th. I’m a little bummed, but now I can take some vacation time to add some extra polish to this update, so it’s not all bad 🙂

Going Forward

This next update will include some other little surprises as well. Rodina players will find a new way to move around the world. Also, those of you who have referenced a certain scene from Wall-E will find satisfaction. And there will be some new options to improve performance for people experiencing lag when they first arrive at a planet.

Finally, this update will pave the way going forward. I’ve come up with a flexible roadmap (which I will share at some point) for how I’m going to get to the point where players can blow the airlock on an enemy ship and run in guns blazing. Improving the interior system is a big step in that process!

As always, thanks so much for your enthusiasm, patience, and general support for my game!


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

Update now available through steam ect

 

Rodina 1.1.3 has been in beta testing on Steam for a few days now, and it’s finally stable and available for download!

This build is BLOWING THE AIRLOCK and adds a brand-new feature to Rodina: atmospheric simulation. In this system, every room on your ship, and every location out in space, has an associated atmospheric density. Opening all of the doors on your ship to and draining the atmosphere can be a quick way to extinguish a whole fire, but it might also result in explosive decompression and throw you out the airlock!

It’s not hopeless out in space, however, as you can use your new Jetpack to fly back in the ship. To activate the jetpack, simply try to hit jump while you are already in the air.

This build also contains some new options for improving performance on low-spec machines, some optimizations to improve AI performance, and it removes the Steam wrapper which was causing problems for a large handful of customers.


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

Brenden has posted a road map for the game, more details on the blog. https://elliptic-games.com/?p=780

 

 

THE BIG GOAL

In my wild fantasies I want to make Rodina a fully populated RPG world, with political factions, class warfare, laws, used spaceship salesmen, weapon and suit technologies, and yes – maybe even multiplayer. Realistically that’s all years away, so what’s the first step on that journey? We need a big goal to work towards that is ambitious, yet achievable, and which sets us up for future awesomeness.

SO! The plan for next year (or more?) is get to the point where the player can blow an enemy airlock, board its procedurally-generated corridors, and take over the ship with lasers blasting. Every feature that I work on in that time will be related, directly or indirectly, to making that goal happen. And once it’s accomplished, the game will be in an incredible position for further development.

So the way that I’ve broken this down so far is to identify several genres of future features:

INTERIORS:

* Moving Interiors

* Cockpit / Windows

* Arbitrary Entrances (Portals)

* Multiple stories

* Electrical Grid

* Access Tubes / Ducts

LOCATIONS:

* Procedural Vanguard Debris

* Board Crashed Enemy Ships

* Enemy Defense Towers

* [secret]

NPCs:

* Basic Companions

* AI / Pathfinding

* IK / Behaviors / Animation

* Enemy NPCs near downed ships.

* [secret]

Nothing here is meant to be final – this is just to give a rough idea. I’m trying to get a feel for the kind of art assets, features, and story elements which will best support the Big Goal, and building the updates around that. Each will add a fun little gameplay element in its own right, so that we are constantly moving forward while keeping the game viable.

Once enough of these updates have happened, we can start to synthesize them:

ENEMY COMBAT:

* Board Enemy Ships

* Invade Enemy Base Complexes

 

 

If we’ve done our jobs right, most of the features for these updates will already be done! This will allow us to focus this stage on content, variety, and refinement!

 

 

 

 


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

New update incoming.

 

 

Awesome. 😎 😎 😎 😎 😎


ReplyQuote
XenonS
(@xenons)
Warrant Officer Registered
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 399
 

Wao, this game shows some awesome ideas and features, I've just downloaded the demo. Very eager to see all this in action   

 

Congrats!

XenonS


ReplyQuote
Styggron
(@styggron)
Master Chief Registered
Joined: 12 years ago
Posts: 125
 

I adore Rodina.


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

Oh yes. 😎 😎 

 

 

Rodina 1.1.4

This update is called Spaceship Bobsledding, and it adds a brand-new feature to Rodina: moving interiors. Now you no longer need to bring your ship to a full and complete stop before exiting pilot mode. You can simply leave the controls while the ship is moving. This has several implications:

* You can no longer Park In Space, so be careful! Your ship will keep moving (and crash!) while you walk around.

* The throttle will keep doing what it was doing when you left the controls. So the ship may coast, or it may actively drive, while you are in the interior.

* Be careful when exiting the ship. Leaving while driving or while in 3rd or 4th gear is not recommended. Leaving while the ship is rotating quickly isn’t advisable either.


ReplyQuote
natansharp
(@natansharp)
Master Chief Registered
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 168
 

I don't understand why the spaceship is so bad...the rest of the objects are well maden (planets, deep space, etc).


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

The game is still very early in development although a few people have been working on some mods of the ship.


ReplyQuote
IronHound
(@ironhound)
Warrant Officer Registered
Joined: 14 years ago
Posts: 337
 

Tried the demo.

While it seems well made I find the performance laughable for what the game actually does. But its Alpha and they have time to optimize.

Not my kind of game. It seems like Noctis or one of those other space voyeur games.


ReplyQuote
Potsmoke66
(@potsmoke66)
Captain Registered
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 1815
 

 

I don't understand why the spaceship is so bad...the rest of the objects are well maden (planets, deep space, etc).

 

I can't say iif he still holds to this idea,

But if i remember right as well as interiors

even shiphulls should be designed by the users,

missions as well

 

He uses what we thrown overboard. (because he's a clever lad)

 

but i guess PinBack certainly knows more about that or what he decided finally.

when i visited the project (was it already two years ago?) he said it's based on scripts.


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

New vote.

 

 

Hard one this, robot babies are tempting but I think I will go for the cockpit mode.


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

And it's the cockpit mode for the next update.

 

 

February 17, 2015

The vote is closed and the results are in! Rodina customers in the Bossypants Tier have spoken and they have spoken thusly:

Robot Babies: 41
Cockpit Mode / Windows: 69
Moons: 29
Bugs / Optimizations: 4

The Bossypants vote is binding, so that means that my next milestone, which I am already hard at work on, will be Cockpit Mode! My plan is: you will be able to actually sit in the pilots chair, and when you activate the pilot station a Holoscreen will come down to show you a first-person view to the outside. You’ll also be able to place these Holoscreens around your ship to act as virtual windows!

You may remember that I also asked from input from ALL Rodina customers, via youtube, email, Reddit, twitter, and Steam. They responded as follows:

Robot Babies: 14.5
Cockpit Mode / Windows: 17
Moons: 13.5
Bugs / Optimizations: 5

So, really the breakdown was pretty similar! What I’m getting from this vote is that, while Cockpit mode was the winner, the other options are pretty popular as well so I intend to keep them around for the next vote at least! The only option that wasn’t popular was Bugs and Optimizations but I will always have that option because the game will ALWAYS need them! 😀

Thank you to everyone who participated- I hope that it was fun getting to decide what’s next for Rodina! I’ve really enjoyed getting your feedback and look forward to doing it again soon!

 

Also their has been a small house keeping update to the game.

 

 

Rodina 1.1.5 is now available! This release is a maintenance release without any new gameplay features. However, it does have the following:

* A new interior renderer intended to improve framerate for some users

* A new document parser which dramatically cleans up errors in the ingame documents

* A completely rewritten keyboard input tech to fix some isolated issues

Also, a test feature! I did some experimentation with procedural robot voices. Try them out by pressing F9, F10, or F11 while playing!


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

Update from the blog. https://elliptic-games.com/?p=848

 

 

I’ve updated the Dev Build on Steam with some exciting new changes!

As you know, the current milestone is Cockpit Mode, which involves, among other things, a viewscreen. This update contains the technical features necessary to make this work: Holoscreen Windows!

Now you can see the entire Universe from inside your ship!

Holoscreen-1024x640.jpg

To try it out, switch to the Dev Branch in Steam, enter the ship editor, and place a few Holoscreen Entities in your ship layout. They will act as windows.

A few notes:

* I had to disable MSAA anti-aliasing for technical reasons (I can explain below). You’ll see jaggies, but I will fix this before releasing the milestone.

* Please don’t worry that you can see your ship from inside itself. I’ll work it out before release.

* The Holoscreen models are ugly and temporary.

Enjoy!

Technical Notes

* The windows are implemented as portals using the stencil buffer. They are an exciting feature which eventually could be used not just for cockpit mode, but also for mirrors and (one day) wormholes / portals.

* Internally, I had to refactor the “geometry collection” render stage, to allow for greater control over what is rendering when (“First, render the portal, then render the whole exterior, then the whole interior”, etc). The new system is awesome- much cleaner, more powerful, and easy to read than what I had before.

* The game uses a logarithmic depth buffer for the extreme distant depth precision needed at planetary scales. Since this is implemented in the pixel shaders, it doesn’t work great with MSAA. It left artifacts on the interior tile pieces, and so I used to turn off the log depth buffer every time the layer went inside. (You may have noticed that there were lines in the wall that disappeared when you closed the airlock- that’s why!) With the way the portals work, it’s better if everything is a unified system, so after hemming and hawing I’ve disabled MSAA. I will implement FXAA, which will hopefully play nice with the log depth buffer, before the next release.

 

 

Never realized there was a dev build on Steam although I think I will wait until he updates the main game.


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

Oh yes 😎 😎 😎 😎 https://elliptic-games.com/?p=860

 

 

Last night I stayed up late and finished all of the major changes necessary to finally do this:

Cockpit-Mode-1024x640.jpg

Flying in first person is a go! And it’s pretty great 😀 You guys are gonna love it!

Now to make it so you can actually sit in that pilot’s chair!

 

Going to be one sweet update.


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

From the blog https://elliptic-games.com/?p=866

 

 

CockpitMode-1024x576.jpg

Cockpit mode is now available on the beta branch on Steam! To try it out:

* Switch to the beta (or dev) branch

* Either start a new game, or load the new default interior so that you get some Holoscreens in your cockpit. You can also add Holoscreens, or the new Holoscreen tileset, if you want to keep your current interior.

* Sit in the Pilot’s Chair by just walking into it

* While flying the ship, press “F” (for “Activate”) to bring up the pilot menu, and choose “Toggle 1st/3rd Person”

Now you’re flying in 1st person mode!

Warning!

Cockpit mode is for Rodina experts only. You think atmospheric entry and combat were hard before? Now they are even tougher!

Also:

This is build 1.1.6 and it comes with some caveats: this particular build is not going to come out of beta! There are a few reasons for this:

* Cockpit mode introduces some pretty big performance issues. It may not be playable on your machine!

* MSAA anti-aliasing is still turned off

I’m going to be out of town for a little over a week, but after I get back I’ll fix any bugs you guys find, and start on an optimization pass and put anti-aliasing back in, before fully releasing this build!

 

Nice 😎 😎 but am still waiting for it to make it into the main branch.


ReplyQuote
Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

At last, cockpit mode should be in the main branch. https://elliptic-games.com/?p=886

 

 

May 5, 2015

Thanks to the help of all the beta testers, Rodina is faster and more stable than ever! This update finally allows you to control your ship in first person from the pilots chair!

(Press F (or whatever your “Activate” key is) while piloting the ship in order to bring up the piloting menu, which will allow you to toggle first person mode.)

It also comes with some significant optimizations, including some new options: Retro Mode, and Lighting Quality, which can drastically improve performance for those with very low-spec machines. Here are some examples of what Retro Mode looks like:

RetroStart-300x168.jpg RetroSunset-300x168.jpg

I’m not going to lie – I’m not stupid enough to do this, but there was a brief moment when I considered making Retro Mode the default way to play the game. It’s a gimmick but I like it a lot!

Read on for the full patch notes:

 

RODINA 1.1.7

* New Feature: Retro Mode!

* New Feature: Lighting Quality option

* New Feature: EnableGodMode() script function

* New Feature: FXAA Antialiasing (sorry- had to remove MSAA for now)

* New Feature: Freelook button (ALT) for looking around while piloting the ship

* Optimization: Added frustum culling

* Optimization: Added planet horizon culling

* Optimization: Move processing from pixel shader to vertex shader

* Improvement: Switched back to 1 3D ship model (+1 optional physics model). No more flying vs parked versions.

* Improvement: Flashlight tutorial stage

* Improvement: Activate jetpack when pressing the “down” (CTRL) button while in mid-air

* Improvement: Make fires slightly easier

* Bugfix: Turn off portals when the ship door is open

* Bugfix: Fix problem with swapping mouse buttons

* Bugfix: Fix doors which can lead to the void between interior and ship

* Bugfix: Fix tutorial messages fighting with the notification system

* Bugfix: Fix angles wall physics

* Bugfix: Fix discrepency with the entity scheduling

* Bugfix: Fix broken arrow/page keys for scrolling in menus

RODINA 1.1.6

* New Feature: Cockpit Mode

* New Feature: Holoscreen windows + tileset

* New Feature: Sitting in chairs

* New Feature: EGHealPlayer() script function

* Improvement: Keep shader cache files loaded so we don’t need to access HDD to recompile shaders

* Improvement: Poll planet height render textures form the render thread rather than generation thread

* Bugfix: Fixed clicking outside of the bounds of a scrolling window


ReplyQuote
Page 5 / 7