Gunship-X -- The Hard Road

It's been a while since I've posted a blog about my still-in-development-under-a-working-title-game Gunship-X. I figured I'd remedy the recent lack with a big one since it's been such a long time...

First off, I'm not going to bother with my usual code-centric stuff. I just can't muster the enthusiasm after all the work that's been going on in the last couple of months. So... Instead I'm focusing on broad class and loadout overviews and a little on new features and whatnot in the game. There are three videos for this blog, none of which is particularly long (since I have bandwidth limitations), each of which focuses on a particular class.


I played around with annotations for this vid, but really can't be arsed adding them to the other ones, so...

First thing to note in the vid is the new (half-finished) texture for the gunship (courtesy of my mate Diametrica). Even with the colouring slightly off and so on it's looking substantially better than just the flat grey/blue/red colouration that I had on the ships before.

Next is the new map, Reprisal -- of the new game mode Domination (basically a capture point-style gameplay where you must hack various control points to capture them -- scoring points for your team doing so). It's all stock art from one Torque pack or another but it's looking nicer at least.

Also of interest is the fact that the reticle now appears in third person view and shows exactly where you're aiming your guns. It ceases to rotate when the weapon does -- effectively indicating the extent of the rotation the underchin turret is capable of.

The reticle's heat/charge/power display is no longer a horizontal bar graph but instead a circular gauge that wraps around the reticle itself. Similar code is used on the (currently placeholder) heat display in the top-left corner).

Weapons for the Assault are pretty nailed down at the moment. The autocannon's undergone some tweaking to make it a bit more effective at medium range, but is otherwise a pretty standard "lead hose"-style weapon. It's spread is initially pretty bad but tightens up if you sustain fire, eventually narrowing to something that's relatively accurate.

The Plasma Caster is a proximity-detonated, short-range weapon that can't be used underwater and can't be fired into water. It generates heat while firing and will overheat if you fire too many shots too quickly (preventing you from firing for a few seconds when it does so). It's a nasty close-quarters weapon since you don't have to be particularly accurate with it.

The third weapon for this class is the Missile Launcher -- which can be fired with or without lock. The missiles do quite a bit of damage but are baffled fairly easily by countermeasures, stealth systems, and the like. This is the Assault's primary long-range, anti-gunship weapon -- but it hasn't got much ammunition so you have to use it intelligently or you'll shoot it dry without ever hitting anyone.

Last item for the Assault is its countermeasure launcher -- a defence item that allows you to avoid missiles and distract turrets -- which has recently undergone a bit of a change. Instead of firing off four countermeasures in a single launch, it instead fires eight off in quick succession. This makes it more effective against turrets and the like but means that short-range missile fire is marginally more effective (assuming, of course, that an attacker can manage a lock).

Finally, shown is the basic control point model and effects and how a player can capture it by simply hovering within range of it. Note the (placeholder -- always placeholder) HUD at the top of the screen that shows the current status of all capture points on the map.



Primary weapon for the Strike is a gauss driver -- a shotgun like weapon that launches multiple high-velocity projectiles each time the trigger is pulled. Like most shotguns, it's best employed at short to medium ranges where more sub-munitions are bound to hit.

The Strike's secondary weapon is the AMP Gun -- an energy weapon that launches bolts of energy that inflict damage on whatever they hit. It's an energy-based so there's no worries about running out of ammunition, but it does tend to overheat pretty quickly. Short, controlled bursts of fire are required for best use.

The special/tertiary weapon for the Strike is the SPEAR launcher (gotta love those acronyms) -- a super-heavy torpedo launcher that is able to fire three types of specialized warheads: cluster, decoy, and kinetic.

Kinetic SPEARs have a red trail and are much faster than the other types of SPEARs. They also ignore hardened armour and defensive shielding and so are highly effective against fixed defences like turrets.

Cluster munitions are yellow-trailed missiles that explode into about 20 submunitions on impact, creating a massive cloud of damage that is highly effective against gunships but largely ineffective against fixed fortifications.

Decoy SPEARs have a blue trail and generate fake gunship images on the enemy LADAR. On contact with any relatively solid surface they detonate, creating an emp effect that temporarily disables automated weapons and LADAR systems, and that can blind players that get too close.

The Strike's special/defensive ability is its Steath System, which allows it to cloak itself for short durations. Though this removes it completely from enemy LADAR and prevents missiles and other automated weapons tracking it, it doesn't completely render the ship invisible (since, during playtesting we found that it made the Strike a nigh-unstoppable killing machine =)). Using the stealth system also slowly overheats the ship's thrusters, preventing it from high speeds while under cloak.



The Support class is still one that we're futzing with to get it feeling right, so anything here is subject to change as we playtest and find problems and issues and whatnot and rectify them.

So...

The primary weapon for the Support class is a beam weapon called the particle lance (which some of you may remember from the old tank vids). It's an energy-based weapon (so no need for ammunition) but it's heat-limited. Every second the beam is on requires one second of the beam being off to cool down. Unlike other energy weapons, this one doesn't overheat though. If you hit the maximum heat it just shuts down instantly. It takes a small amount of time for the weapon to start firing after you pull the trigger though, so no gratuitous half-second beam spam for you. =)

The beam itself is charge-based. Though it causes relatively little damage at first, the longer the beam is held on a target and the shorter the range, the greater the charge the target receives -- and thus the greater the damage they sustain. Multiple supports can even choose to coordinate their fire against a single target, rapidly increasing the charge against it even at long range.

The secondary weapon for the Support (at least at the moment anyway) is another energy-based weapon called the Flux Trap. It doesn't do much damage and the projectiles (little globs of energy) don't travel very far unless you hold fire down to charge them up some. Unlike other projectiles, however, they have no maximum lifespan. They'll simply float about until they hit something or something hits them -- at which point they explode -- temporarily blinding anyone who hits them with static and drastically reducing the velocity of anything mobile in their area of effect.

Flux Traps make great little mines. You can lay them about a turret or whatever and they can really ruin someone's day. That nice little strafing run on an enemy position suddenly becomes a painful experience on why you should never remain stationary in front of something that will shoot at you.

The third item of the Support is its special class ability -- a system that allows it to deploy (and upgrade once we work out the kinks) static ground-based fortifications. There are three types of deployables (which we call GEAR -- yes, another acronym): combat, defence, and support (none of which have finished animations, but that's what you get from a vid of mid-project development).

Combat GEAR (the only one shown in the vid) is basically a fixed turret armed with a single autocannon (identical to the model used by the Assault gunship). It's shielded and pretty heavily armoured but dumb and can be taken out from a distance relatively easily unless guarded/assisted by players. As it's upgraded, the combat GEAR gains additional weapons, armour, and sensors which make it significantly nastier.

Defence GEAR is, as the name implies, defensive in nature. It generates a spherical bubble of monodirectional force that allows you to shoot out of it, but not into it -- forcing players to either come in close (and thereby be attacked by combat GEAR or the like) or to be unable to attack. Defence GEAR also blocks the placement of enemy deployables within a considerable distance. As it gets upgraded, it gains additional abilities that allow it to slow the movement of enemies moving through the bubble and to interfere with the thrusters of those that enter the bubble itself.

Support GEARs are relatively simple deployables that repair and re-arm any friendly entity within their range. As they are upgraded, they too gain additional abilities, that allow them to damage enemies, temporarily buff the health of allies over their normal maximums, and so on.

As you can see in the video, the GEAR system uses a simple RTS-like deployment system where the player sees a hologram-style image of what he's going to deploy. This image is colour-coded so that valid placements are green, invalid placements are red, and blocked placements (ie. placements that would normally be valid but are too close to other deployables or blocked by a defence GEAR) are yellow.

The fourth (defensive) ability of the Support has yet to be determined. At the moment we're thinking of shelving a defensive ability in order to add deployable sensors or something along those lines.

More blogs/updates to come... Next time with actual gameplay I promise. =)

Incidentally, to whoever's out there in GarageGames website land... Can we add a &fmt=18 or &fmt=22 to the URLs for youtube videos since the low-quality/low-bandwidth ones are ugly as sin.