Sky Fleet First Monthly Update
Progress continues on Sky Fleet. I’m working hard to get the game playable and finish it by early next year. This article is about the progress that has been made in the past couple months. If you would like to find out more about Sky Fleet the website is at http://skyfleet.io/.
THE ENVIRONMENT
I spent quite a bit of time developing the environment and setting for the game. At first Sky Fleet was going to take place in space. Then one morning I decided it just wasn’t appealing enough and threw it all out. I liked the idea of English countrysides, blimps and floating islands so gave that a shot. Here are a few progress shots.
After lots of work here’s what I ended up with. A ship attached to a blimp, timber-framed buildings, lots of thick fog and distant hills.
CLOUDS
I found a great video about generating clouds from worley noise. Worley noise is pretty simple. You create a bunch of random points then find the distance from each pixel to the closest point. Combining two worley noises and a simplex noise creates the clouds you see in the game.
BUILDINGS
I did a first pass on the art for the buildings and got most of them implemented. I’ll be coming back to these later on to improve and finish them.
THE SPAWNER
No this is not the space needle. This is where players will spawn from. It’s one of two buildings in the game that will be attached to the ground.
POWER GENERATOR
Buildings will need to be connected to the spawner by power cables. Power generators will give power to connected buildings.
AMMO FACTORY
Guns are pretty useless without ammo. The ammo factory is where you will purchase ammo for your ship.
TURRET
Turrets defend your base from enemy attacks. Don’t let them run out of ammo.
BANK
When a player dies they will lose their ship and everything they were carrying. Store uridium in a bank so that when you respawn you will have some uridium to buy a new ship.
SHIPYARD
The shipyard is where players can purchase new and better ships.
RESEARCH STATION
Purchase upgrades and research new equipment at the research station. Anyone on your team can donate towards new upgrades.
NEXT ON THE TODO LIST
Next on the list are the enemies and their buildings. I’ll be figuring out how the enemies will work and develop their AIs along with the art for their ships. The enemy drones will have a spawner similar to the player’s and outposts that I will need to make. I also need to update the trailer soon. I’m hoping to get the game playable in a month or two.
