PlanetQuest Mega Update — 3rd Person Gameplay, Meta Game Evolution and Roadmap
Once more into the breach
Last week, we released a blog post in which we teased some changes coming to PlanetQuest by way of some internal experimentation after the Multiplayer Preview. Today, we pull the curtain back on not just that, but what shape our Meta Game is taking and what our latest rough timelines look like, visualized through a roadmap update!
Let’s start with a tale, shall we?
PlanetQuest: Frontiers — changing the game…
When we initially came up with the concept of PlanetQuest, the dream was to deliver a 3rd person experience that really did justice to the amazing planets we had created. Realistically, though, that dream had to be put on the back burner, because we also wanted to build a game for a global audience that could run on low-end hardware and slower internet connections. Since that was our priority, the team felt that it would be unfeasible to both accomplish that goal AND deliver a 3rd person experience to the standards that we wanted to. Nevertheless, we kept the dream alive in the back of our minds.
And then the Multiplayer Preview happened.
As we mentioned in our previous blog post, we came out of the Preview with a lot of data and feedback to consider. It was clear that we had a lot of work to do in regards to optimizing the game for low end hardware and slower connections. Thus, a series of experiments began. One of them in particular started bearing some really interesting results.
As some of you are aware, our Founder Loren is a bit of a (please don’t kill me Loren) code monkey, by which we’re of course referring to him having helmed the development of more game engines than he cares to admit. So, being bound to the house while awaiting the arrival of his twin daughters, he started applying his prowess to tackling some of the performance challenges that arose from the Multiplayer Preview. At one point, Jon, another one of our Founders and Art Director, off-handedly challenged Loren to “while he was at it” just implement some magical tech that would let us offer “Full HD gameplay across all platforms”, so we could switch PlanetQuest to the 3rd person game of our dreams.
Now we weren’t there, but it seems that, after listing many, many ways this might end up proving to be impossible and going into a huge laundry list of completely new and often unproven tech that would need to be implemented, or even invented, for this to be remotely feasible, just as Jon was about to say he was just joking around, Loren said: “but hey, it sounds like a fun challenge…”.
And so prototyping and experiments began, initially just aimed at checking the real world performance of our target platforms on all sorts of algorithms and loads that would be needed for this to even stand a chance at working…
After about a week, everything was still looking good. Another week passed and Loren still didn’t unearth any results that seemed like the definitive nail in the coffin. So things progressed from testing various performance capabilities to implementing the massive list of technological innovations needed to make this work. New compression approaches, specialized GPU data formats and implementations of technology that were never supposed to work on older, weaker hardware.
At times it seemed like what already started as an insane challenge might have hit a dead end, as undocumented hardware limitations came up to spoil the party, yet every time a creative workaround was found that just barely saved the day.
Still trying to manage the team’s expectations, there were frequent reminders that we weren’t quite there yet, but that didn’t keep our concept artists from cheering from the sidelines and piling on the pressure by starting to mock up what 3rd person gameplay might look like… concepts like the one below started to circulate…
By week four most of the developers had dropped what they were doing and were feverishly piling into the new tech as they could feel we were getting close. A few more weeks passed and we found ourselves at the point where all the key technical tests that were needed to prove viability were done and everything still held up. We were faced with a whole new potential reality, going from “there is no way this is going to work” to “holy smokes, this CAN actually work”. We shared the concept with some of our most active community members, dropping hints here and there about a potential change in direction, and we were met with great enthusiasm.
And so here we are today, where we’re incredibly thrilled to announce that PlanetQuest: Frontiers (working title) is pivoting from a top-down to a 3rd person perspective and everything that entails. As amazing as that is, we are not blind to what this is going to require. We are trying hard to not let scope creep get the better of us, but of course this changes the game in a big way.
The road ahead is going to be quite challenging, with major changes to our core systems and game design being undertaken. The scale of the environments is, naturally, going up, alongside the gameplay loop changing from being heavier on action to more of a mix of exploration, survival and extraction. We’ll have much more to share on this as we progress, as our horizons have broadened considerably with the introduction of this change and we want to take you along for the ride with us on the way to PlanetQuest: Frontiers, giving you frequent insights into the many technical and artistic challenges we’ve yet to tackle along the way.
Pretty big bombshell, no? Well, that’s not all we’ve been working on.
Introducing PlanetQuest: Outposts
You read that right — the Meta Game is now a standalone, full-fledged, free-to-play title, tentatively named PlanetQuest: Outposts (working title).
The concept of the Meta Game has grown a lot since we started work on it, so much so that it took on a life of its own. Instead of trying to fit it into a mold, we let the idea breathe and take shape, which coalesced into the rapidly evolving concept of PlanetQuest: Outposts.
The crux of this game is accessibility — it can be played by both planet owners and (in a lighter version) by people who want to get a taste of what the PlanetQuest universe has to offer. Naturally, free-to-play players who really get into it can take things to the next level by buying a planet off the marketplace and joining the planet owners in the higher tiers of gameplay.
We’re thrilled with how the design and initial development for Outposts has shaped up so far. It’s a game that will put more power into the hands of planet owners and allow them to develop these to their heart’s content. In Outposts, players can discover and research new technology, build out facilities, and might even be able to provide some additional benefits to future explorers that will call their planet(s) home.
We were inspired by (and have taken elements from) old-school space colonization board games and 4X strategy titles (Pax Imperia comes to mind) to create a game that is simple, lightweight, and rewarding. The core gameplay loop we’re envisioning goes a little something like this — owners build out their planet with bases, facilitating their growth through resource gathering, while at the same time exploring the planet and nearby celestial bodies via drones and probes in hopes of discovering valuable finds (such as Artifact Shards) that allow for better upgrades than those possible with basic materials. With planet management gameplay that’s short and sweet and easy to pick up and put down, it should be a perfect distraction for whenever you have a moment to spare.
Curious how it’s coming along? The images below were wrested from the hands of one of our designers just a few days ago…
There’s more. As you know, one of the pillars of our universe is our incredible interactive storyline, which we, naturally, want to incorporate into every experience we produce. With Outposts, we want to make players feel like the universe is alive, which means storyline choices, galactic events, and occurrences on the planets themselves will have a tangible effect on the experience.
We can’t wait for you to get your hands on the first preview of Outposts and experience it for yourselves. That, of course, raises the question of how this will all come together.
We have one team focused heavily on Outposts, a second team of hardcore developers working on all the new technology and content needed to bring PlanetQuest: Frontiers to life, and trailer related art efforts instead pouring into a real-time Frontier preview. All of this will lead to some slight updates to the approximate timelines towards the token launch and other future sales. Do keep in mind that, naturally, the dev timeline is not set in stone and is prone to changes.
We couldn’t be more excited to bring you this awesome news! Stay tuned to our socials, as there’s lots more we have to share on the way to bringing you these two awesome titles and all the other amazing things the PlanetQuest Multiverse has to offer.
This post contains outdated information; for up-to-date information, see our latest Master Plan & Greenlight Process.
