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[Lautaro]

UPDATE 19/04/2016

Nomad Fleet finally released on Steam, read a postmortem here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/nomad-fleet/news/from-early-access-to-full-release

UPDATE 25/06/2015

Steam Store Page is up: http://store.steampowered.com/app/371010/
Also check the latest trailer:



UPDATE 18/04/2015

I started a Greenlight campaign: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=427297728

I also have an Official Website and a trailer:



UPDATE 13/03/2015

I have working prototypes for PC, Mac and Linux that you can download here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/nomad-fleet/downloads


Hi, my name is Jorge and I would like to show you my first PC project: Nomad Fleet.

What is Nomad Fleet?

Is a real-time strategy game set in space with procedural levels. You control a fleet of spaceships and jump from sector to sector while harvesting resources, fighting hostile aliens, trading and researching while being chased by a mysterious alien species that has mankind nearing it's extinction.

Comparisons are inevitable so let's say I have been heavily inspired by Homeworld and FTL.

A bit of the Story

Two hundred years have passed since Earth's destruction.
The few remnants of Mankind survive crowded in their spaceships.
A nomad race, a cursed race.
Dreaming of a promised land and peace, we roam the stars and scavenge for resources while the rest of the galaxy looks the other way.
We have tried before but the Great Enemy keeps chasing us every time we try to colonize a planet or gather in great numbers.
They are the gardeners and we are the weed.
But nothing of that matters anymore because the Great Enemy has returned and we are few, we are spread and we are weak. Is just a matter of time before they can finish the job.
But in our desperation, a glimpse of hope: an Ancient Hyperspace Gate has been found and it appears to be powerful enough to take a whole fleet to another galaxy, far enough to finally outrun our pursuers.
We just need to cross the whole galaxy... and you'll take us there, Commander.

Enough talk! What can you show us?

Here's some gifs and captures showing my current progress:

Human fighters vs Alien Dreadnaught



Hyperspace jump effect test



Galaxy Map




Other info?

- The game is being made with Unity.
- Is my first PC project but not my first game. I have two published Android games (enough to make me realize that I don't really enjoy making mobile games).

Thanks for your time!

[robocognito]

That is pretty cool looking!  Pure RTS combat, exploration or?

[Lautaro]

That is pretty cool looking!  Pure RTS combat, exploration or?

Thanks.

There will be mostly combat, the idea is that you jump to a sector and there's several things you can found, for example:

- An enemy ambush.
- Non-hostile aliens that will trade with you.
- One or more distress signals that you can investigate.
- Resources to harvest (most of them won't be unguarded though).

But the challenge will be mostly combat based with some minor diplomatic solutions to some problems.

EDIT: well, that's the idea for now but it can change in the future. Game development is pretty "iterative" and I welcome feedback and ideas.

[Lautaro]

Working in the dialogue UI now:



The idea is that sometimes you'll be able to solve situations diplomatically or be presented with different choices and outcomes (with a bit of RNG chances) so I needed to code a dialogue window where you can talk to different characters. For example in this screen I wanted to give the option to the player to skip the tutorial and just jump to the next sector.

[quixotic]

Cool project!

Is it just the compression in the GIFs or are you actually going for a "dithered" look? I think the artifacts in the very first GIF look really interesting. Personally I find the text in the dialogue window with the shadowy/tinted top part in the font a bit hard to read.

[Lautaro]

Is just the compression. The only post-process effects that I added so far are Bloom and a bit of Motion Blur. I'm actually not fully decided regarding the looks of my project, I even considered using a toon shader at the beginning.

Thanks for the feedback about the text.

[Lautaro]

Heavy gif incoming!

You can see the gfy version here in case the loading is too slow: http://gfycat.com/FlakyPhysicalCopperbutterfly

Anyway, this is my first test of bombers. They behave pretty similar to the interceptors but naturally are slower and shoot torpedos that are most effective against capital ships (obviously much can change in the future):

[koiwai]

Do you control the units in 2D or in 3D? Looks nice, you have a bump texture of the enemy ship?

I think, in the UI screen, the main text font is not very legible. Also, personally, I would make the text font a bit bigger. Players may neglect long text messages anyway, so, I think, there is no reason to save space with a small font.

[Lautaro]

Do you control the units in 2D or in 3D? Looks nice, you have a bump texture of the enemy ship?

I think, in the UI screen, the main text font is not very legible. Also, personally, I would make the text font a bit bigger. Players may neglect long text messages anyway, so, I think, there is no reason to save space with a small font.

You control them in 3D. In this webm you can see how I would give a normal movement order: http://a.pomf.se/sthtjt.webm

All the ships have normal/bump maps.

Yeah, the UI can be improved a lot. Thanks for the observations regarding long messages.

[koiwai]

This movement control looks intuitive. It's aweseome that it is real 3D, it can be emplyed in many different ways. Simple targeting/shielding certain parts of the ship makes much more sense now. There may be special weapons (~electromagnetic impulse?) that hit all ships in a chosen plane around your ship, or maybe some force fields. 

[Lautaro]

This movement control looks intuitive. It's aweseome that it is real 3D, it can be emplyed in many different ways. Simple targeting/shielding certain parts of the ship makes much more sense now. There may be special weapons (~electromagnetic impulse?) that hit all ships in a chosen plane around your ship, or maybe some force fields. 

Yeah, I have to thank Homeworld for the inspiration though.

Like you said there's a lot of potential for full 3D combat (like getting more damage when hit in a flank or targeting subsystems and turrets instead of the hull), I'm not sure I'll be able to exploit that full potential though. I'm a solo developer and in a few months I'll have to go back to a full time job so the development will slow down. In the meantime, I hope to get a good prototype that I can post here.

EMPs are a good idea but I would have to add a "stunned state" to the AI or something... what I have in mind is to add flak cannons to the capital ships. Some will be just rapid fire turrets but other will shoot explosive rounds that will be quite effective against interceptors and bombers.

And the capital ships already have forcefields, the low quality of the GIFs don't show it much but there's a red shield effect in the dreadnaught when it's hit.

[koiwai]

I see. You already have a lot of different things in place, it's probably doable to make a prototype in a few months. Hope to see more updates, looks very cool so far.

[Lautaro]

Thanks. Yeah, I also believe is doable, I just need to  

[Lautaro]

I made a little battle with my interceptors and record it. Sadly the gifs lose too much quality so here's some links to some short videos in case you are interested:

http://a.pomf.se/kpoorr.webm

http://a.pomf.se/jodect.webm

[Lautaro]

I uploaded new gifs with my battle testing after fixing some bugs. This time I focused on the alien interceptors and the new alien escort frigate:


Skirmish

Bombers vs Frigate

Closer look to the Alien Interceptors

[Lautaro]

I added new ships, you can see them in this link: http://gfycat.com/RareBleakDunnart

They are in order:

- Terran Destroyer.
- Terran Escort Frigate.
- Xeno Destroyer.
- Xeno Bomber.

[Lautaro]

I made a test with 98 ships including intercepors, bombers and capital ships:



There's still space for more optimization but I'll be working in giving more control to the player before that.

I need to code the ability to target several ships because at this moment the player can only order one or more ships to attack a single target at a time, I also need to improve the tactical map so the player can have a general view of the battlefield, a lot of fun stuff to do..

[Lautaro]

Finally, this thing is starting to look more like a game. I got this video that is not visually striking but shows the tactical map where you can see all the ships as icons (people that have played Homeworld must be familiar with this and how useful it becomes when you lead a fleet in a 3D environment).

Also now the ships can be ordered to attack more than one enemy and will attack their "favorite enemies" first (for example: a bomber will go against a capital ship and a interceptor will go against bombers first) and sort them by distance.

http://a.pomf.se/dozncb.webm

[Lautaro]

FINALLY! I have a small working prototype that you can download and play. It has a tutorial and a small sample level (I reccomend trying the tutorial first). The idea of this prototype is to show the basics of the combat because the research, building and resource harvesting features are not ready yet.

The file is 215 Mb and only for PC in case you want to try it. I welcome any feedback although I'm aware of many of the issues (one thing I really want to know is if the tutorial and the sample level objectives are clear for a new player).

Well, you can download it here (I'll update the OP and post it in the feedback section too): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9078240/Unity/NomadFleet/NomadFleet.rar

[Lautaro]

I've been working in three new features: building ships, harvesting resources and docking small ships in the Mothership.

The building feature is already present in the prototype and here's a screenshot of the new harvester (resource collector ship):



Now, I'm working in the docking feature. I hope to get it done this week so I can include it in a new version of the prototype.