You mention planets and stations in the Kickstarter will there be any interaction with them ❓

Yes, sure! This is one of our unique features - possibility to interact with such huge objects. Image below demonstrates rate difference between small ship (fighter) and 1/4 of space station:

Here is a level of details of Scientific Station (YTG race):

Furthermore, here are screenshots to demonstrate size difference (pay attention: these are screens from very early version of the game, made few years ago, so ther is no normal map and other modern materials!):

Here is a fleet of huge ships of Shaarkarians:

And this is a close view of fighter flying over the Battleship (located in center of the bottom line of ships in screen above):

Something else - remember that destroyer in center of the screen:

And now find a bunch of them, fixed in slots of transport ship^

We succeed to realize this feature because of unique system of construction elements, what let us optimize computer resource usage. We have game missions, when you should fly in tunnels inside of huge asteroids, fighting with enemy fighters. Other missions subjective is to reach Shaarkarians mother ship (that huge ship with blue horns and numerous tails on the screen above), to fly inside and to reach central area to destroy the biotech's brain located there inside.

Planetary landing is a different kind of task, but I cannot reveal all details now 😉 let me just convince you - it is there too.

Quick update for all spacers:

Finally we decided to reveal the demo to public - the playable demo is available to download!

Please check links here on Kickstarter http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/digitilus/skyjacker/posts . We will update list of links as soon as new hosts will be added.

PAY YOUR ATTENTION: Please be sure the demo fits your technical requirements, learn the README! http://www.skyjackergame.com/docs/ReadMe!.pdf before to start downloading the demo. This demo is PC/Windows only! It is compatible to Windows XP, Windows 7 (both 32/64 bit systems).

If your computer is not powerful enough, demo can crash due to the lack of RAM or if you have not gaming video card (such as integrated IntelHD etc.)

Here are few hints to let you adjust the demo to minimize crashes:

- Disable ‘postprocessing’ (Setup.exe)

- Use lower screen resolution (Setup.exe)

- Use lower texture resolution (Setup.exe)

- Go to installed directory, find file ‘config.cfg’, open with Notepad, find the line ‘Game.Asteroids = 1.00;’ Change to 2, 3, 4, 5 or higher. The meaning: =1 means every first asteroid will be loaded (so 100% asteroids will be loaded into the game level), =2 means every 2nd asteroid will be loaded (so 50% will be available). The bigger is a number, the less asteroids will be there in the game level, what will improve CPU usage.

All these operations will let you play demo if you have not powerful computer or laptop. I succeed to launch and to play this demo on Dell XPS1330 laptop (CPU Intel DualCore 2.1Ghz; 2GB of RAM; Videocard NVIDIA GeForce 8400 with 256MB of Video RAM), which is not a powerful device. But sure better to use something more powerful to play comfortable.

WARNING! It was a very spontaneous decision to disclose the demo to public! Yesterday we replaced a lot of our inner working data from there, and now the demo can crash sometimes. Don't claim us too much, it's just a working demo version, but not the final game! No doubt, the final game will be cleaned out and tested 100 times before the final release.

Special comment concerning voices - this is working version, so all voices were recorded by us for us. We hope to get funded and then to hire good voice artists to record perfect voices.

Good to hear, this could be rewarding or risky at the same time because as you say the demo is not of real demo quality, your description is really a tech demo showing off the features currently in the game at this point. A lot of people today don't seem to grasp tech demos and they seem to think it is what the real game will be like (kinda like a demo). I haven't played the demo yet but plan too, I just hope it boosts the contributors to the kickstarter so you can get Skyjacker done. 🙂

Well, let me show you our backers' comments:

Demo ran really smoothly on my machine - it was beautiful to boot. I was using mouse controls and really liked the set up with the engines on the mouse wheel. Really enjoyed missions 2, but also likely the "clean up" mission 1. Sometimes it's just great to get out and fly around destroying things uncontested 🙂

Frankly I liked the speech. The setting involves you as the only human in a universe of diverse alien species, right? I say this with all love guys but the speech as presented helped me feel like I was in fact dealing with aliens who weren't one hundred percent on the language. Whatever you do for voice acting, I encourage you - find voice actors for whom english is a second language, or third. Scour the euros!

Etc...

So JUST GIVE THE DEMO A TRY :))

It's wonderful to see space gaming mentioned so prominently in a dev's About page:

Digitilus LLC is a space games developer. We are a gang of professionals with over 20 years of real work experience in the seething core of game industry.

We like SciFi/space genre and we keen on the theme of space exploration. We see our mission in aggressive promotion of the theme of SPACE EXPLORATION employing our talents and passion to make games.

Approved! 🙂

Yeah, here we are 🙂

I know nobody usually read About Me (me - I'm reading always to understand who are developers), but I sure, we must explain - we are not making fantasy, or WWII shooters. We do space games ONLY! 🙂

You were right all along! The government is hiding THEM from you – but THEY are here, all around us! We have the evidence, and now you will know the truth about the ALIEN SPACESHIPS! You can get your own HERE:

http://www.skyjackergame.com/starship_disassembly.zip

https://s3.amazonaws.com/disasm/starshi ... sembly.exe

To be sure it’s not a fake, look inside! You can completely disassemble and reassemble it. The ALIEN TECHNOLOGY is so smart that you can order the UFO to take itself apart and watch from inside! Just choose DEMO mode for that. Or you can do it on your own!

No time to waste – get your own ALIEN SPACESHIP today!

We are sincerely grateful our good friends from the Noble Empire ( http://noble-empire.com/ ) for their help and personal contribution in this update preparation.

Enjoy!

That video of a assembly/disassembly is great. 🙂

Just got done playing the demo that you posted on the kickstarter and really good work for a playable alpha that is for sure. I know it is an alpha but I did run into some crashing on my x64 Win7 machine when playing at times. No biggie I was able to play both mission types.

I have a few questions on the Hanger;

1. Do you plan on maybe showing small descriptions of the various weapons? Like showing who made them, range, type of warhead, guided/unguided and things like that.

2. Will we be able to exchange different ship parts?

3. Can we have more than one ship in the hanger and where are these kept in the game? And can they be retrieved no matter what station/outpost your at?

Now on to the demo, I thought functional wise it was quite sound and had some nice action elements. The destroying of the various derelict ships and rocks in space was awesome and the overall visuals are nice touch. I would have liked the ability to change control scheme in game but I'm sure that will be there in the end. On the convoy mission, it was fun but lacked a challenge to me. I felt like all those escorts really weren't fighting back well enough, there was definitely more of them than us so it should have been a fight but it was relatively easy to take out, unless it was supposed to be that is 🙂

Overall nice tech demo and was wondering did you have a screenshot key in the demo that I could take some shots with to do a small write up or if you have a few that show some nice pieces of the demo that would be nice. But good work on this Eugene and the kickstarter is going slow but your getting more backers everyday.

DarkOne, as for your questions:

1)

Yes, we are planning to include wiki concerning many things there in the game. Currently I have Race-pedia there in my personal web-site (in Russian!): http://djekaster.com/proza/abyss-lights/racepedia/

Furthermore there is a glossary: http://djekaster.com/proza/abyss-lights/glossary/

But they are in Russian, so we will translate them while localization work. You can use Google translation tool just to learn more in general.

Sure we will explain details of each weapon and other parts, used there in Hangar mode.

As for "what race did that gun" - you can see race emblem there on the left, while switching ANY detail. There is emblem and abbreviation, what means:

ASP - Aspirogans

BLG - Balagores

FLSK - Fslak-Tuembao

KRST - Karrishta

RTB - Rak-Tak-Bashogee

SHA - Shaarkarians

SMKT - Smaktoo

TLD - Tailoddans

TRSK - Trasskah

2)

- answer 'yes' and 'not' YES: those parts there in a Hangar are looking very close to what we can see in other races' spaceships there in a battle mode. But NOT: because those parts are really different from original details. Means, we have a basic structure of the player's ship, and we must adapt details to fit that structure. Here is an example of such adaptation:

More inclusions you can find there in other pirates' spaceships. Currently we have around 30 types of pirate ships. Some of them are assembled from real parts of other races' ships, but have special rusty/crachy/scratched skins.

3)

Well, we have a basic ship framework, which is our hardware base. We use it to mount other details on it. But this framework will be the same during all missions. We only will mount new and new details and devices. But here is a trick - growing in ranks we will get details with additional slots, what will let us to mount details over details. For example, we have "wing" class of details. this class has two types of weaponry slots, mounted on it: 1) rocket/torpedoes launchers 2) mounted weapon (machineguns, ray-guns, etc.) But some races' wing includes such additional devices like additional engine drives, what will be additional to your main engine drives. Even there in demo you can select RTB or SHA wings, which includes such additional engine drives. This lead to new gameplay feature - you get different flight model due to additional engines presence. Same way we will have many other types of expansions there. Some of them will open possibility to mount detail on detail, increasing total number of slots. In result the complexity of your spacecraft will grow in time, while this still will be fighter class of the spaceship.

You cannot change your ship configuration inside the battle. To re-configure your spaceship you should leave the mission, go to hangar and to make changes in your ship structure. Then you need to restart mission from the beginning.

DO YOU HAVE AN ANDROID? GET HIM A SPACESHIP!!!

Your good friend and loyal partner - your Android needs to get his own SPACESHIP!

As was promised, Android version of STARSHIP DISASSEMBLY is on the air!

Get a spaceship for your Android device and let both of them give you pleasure!

Get it HERE: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... isassembly

If you like our gifts, please support us with your pledge there on Kickstarter http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/digitilus/skyjacker

Enjoy, spacers!

See Skyjacker has restarted their kickstarter with a longer one, hopefully this will give them a better chance of hitting that 200k target.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dig ... -skyjacker

Oh, yeah ... excuse me for no mentioning this here. We should 1000 thing to do after re-launch re-assembling our previous community and changing all our social treads to the new link.

By our opinion It was the only right decision in such circumstances as we had, and now we hope to reach our goal to make this game real.

well i did not know there was a demo of this. been watching this game for some time too. i'll def give this a try.

the game looks great so far though.

Yes, it is, and you really need to get it a try. But before to download I would strongly recommend you to read ReadMe! ( http://www.skyjackergame.com/docs/ReadMe!.pdf ) Despite of the bad English, this document contains a lot of really necessary information. And please remember - this demo was our internal sandbox, some testing polygon. We agreed to open this demo to public after multiple requirements of our backers there on Kickstarter. But it's very early Alpha and it's crashy. So if you'll experience trouble with demo launch, firstly read the FAQ there http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dig ... -skyjacker

If you still will be unable to launch - collect files described there in FAQ and send them to me

Furthermore, we have small app for PC, iOS and Android where you can disassemble star ship per its parts. Take a link here http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dig ... cker/posts

Thank you 🙂

Skyjacker upto $69.000 and still have 29 days to go.

Is it just me or is "Skyjacker" a bit an odd name space sim/game.

Well, I guess, its name is not more odd than Freelancer, or Drifter, or Kinetic Void - no one of those names has any relation to space 😀

We just jumped over $70K tier there on Kickstarter!

27 days remained to reach our goal, and we sure we will be in the right place in time!

Hello,

just a little feedback on my testrun with the demo version 1.1 (did not apply that extra patch thats mentioned on their homepage - i guessed its already integrated)

my system i7 950 @3,07 / 3,09 GHz 12gb ram - ati radeon HD 6875 with 1gb video memory using latest ati drivers (the one with auto-updates) and installed except for directx allt the additional drivers from the games installation.

WIN 7 Home Premium 64bit SP1

Played on maximum settings @ 1920x1080

First impressions:

Very clean and fast interface.

Very good and responsive flight controls - i think thats very important for an action flight/space sim - on par with freelancer regarding only the mouse control

I like that it supports joystick - especially the one me have - have to try with it later.

The damage system makes fun too - like to blow chunks from those big freighters away. Even larger debris parts can be shoot to smaller pieces.

Enemy fighters - if not killed at medium range are quit good at evading while dogfighting.

Finally no auto-aiming shots - or at least i could not notice it - you need to aim yourself ahead !

Explosions (from the big targets) are ..well BIG and blinding - though my ship survived without problems.

I had no feedback (aural / visual) if my ship got hit or damaged - also had no time to watch my ships Health Status - and i doubt that i was that good at evading shots

(remember the distinct sounds in privateer if your shields and then armor was teared aways and then later your cockpit got damaged)

Like the different control schemes - i wonder just how the strafing mode would work with this very fast dogfighting...

Also like the mission descriptions - almost a similar humour like space rangers 2

Near the end of Mission 2 i had a CTD - i wondered that it went that far with all maximum and "only" one GB video memory. So thats ok for me.

The lensflares are completely irritating - why kill your very nice drawn graphics with some unnecessary artificial effects ? .

and a few suggestions:

Would like to see graphic effect customization - ie . disabling lens flare effects.

Also would like to see a "dark space" option - you know dark as in look at the night in the sky dark.

With only the local star(s) being the lightsource and an albedo effect generated on appropriate surfaces.

The missille effects / trail should be upgraded - its right now basic tech demo like. (less longer trail or even none, and less "blocky")

Thank you very much for your demo ! - its really impressive considering it is "just" a tech demo.

I really hope to see the "Christmas miracle" effect happen in a big way for this game - it's too great not to be well-funded! The devs have assured us they'll keep working on the game regardless... but it'd be nice if they didn't have to get full time jobs or survive on ramen noodles and water. Spread the word!

Personally, I like the name - it's unique and not forgettable like too many other space game titles that seem to consist of combinations of the words "genesis," "rift," and "void." "Genesis Rift: The Void" - "Rift Void: Genesis" - Genesis Void: the Rift"! <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_rolleyes.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

The name also makes sense, as you are a space pirate.

I guess it just me but tend to think of planes when I see the title as in "Hijacker"

I get that. But really you can hijack any vehicle. Boat, truck, jet, train - why not a spaceship? I hope we get to steal disabled ships and either sell them or use them ourselves. <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

Good point.

Think there was a mention about a garage for ship storage.

The art in Skyjacker is looking very nice in these fleet videos...

I just hope we will see some epic battles <img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />