Everything is looking good here at the Gemini Sector.

Two weeks ago we made a closed beta release on our forums, and quite a few people got their hands on a beta build of GW.
The feedback we got was invaluable, and we’re now fixing / changing some of the issues that were reported. We’ve been in polishing / bug fixing mode for about 2 months now, but it seems that polishing is never enough.

The most recent feature we added (beta players asked for it), is the possibility to fix the camera to a ship, following it wherever it goes. It was a great idea.

Below, two screenshots of the camera attached to a frigate and to a cruiser. Both ships are travelling in hyperspace between asteroid spots, and the effect around the ships is animated, it looks gorgeous while moving

The third screenshot shows the camera locked around a destroyer. Once locked to a ship, the camera can be rotated to check the ship in detail.

The battle camera was also improved and it’s back in action. It’s a great way to enjoy battles.

Another feature the players requested was different symbols per ship / structure class, so this is what’s shown in the fourth shot.

And finally, in the fifth screenshot, are the game’s achievements. A lot of them to be earned!

If everything goes as smooth as it has been, pre-orders should be available soon

The time has come to show a new gameplay video.
We decided to show a bit how the game is structured and how the multi-system maps work.
Each mission of the game has its own briefing, where your Commander explains what’s going on in the campaign.
This part of the game happens in the control room, where you can check your briefing, current achievements and the galaxy news.
We left this part of the game out of the video… we don’t want to spoil everything.

Once the mission begins, the action starts.

Ingame cinematics show the star system where the mission is taking place; where the enemy is located (if intelligence has that information), and what the objectives are.

Once again, we had to choose one ingame cinematic that wouldn’t reveal much.

Note that the objectives window was also deleted on purpose in this mission.
For the readers that are unaware, there are two types of “maps” in Gemini Wars: single system maps and multi system maps.

In single system maps, there’s no “exit” from the star system, and by exit I mean a wormhole that connects one star system to another wormhole in another system.
(Stargate fans know what we mean)

So, in this video we’re showing a multi-system map which has 3 star systems.
You can see that the level of detail that we implemented works perfectly; we can zoom into ships, stations, structures, and see all the nice details, dynamic shadowing, asteroids, gas, etc.

We can change the active system by clicking on a star. The camera will jump right into it. We can also have a general view of the map by clicking on a button.

Each star system may have more than one wormhole, and so supporting more than 1 connection.

In the video you can see a stargate built in a wormhole. Stargates are massive structures that are quite expensive to build, but that hold a very high strategic value, since they open a door to another star system, which means more planets and resources.
We’re currently in the last phase of the game: adding voice overs everywhere. And without sounding biased, it’s sounding and looking awesome.

We were fortunate to be able to get some great actors playing in Gemini Wars; we even have one actor that played in some episodes of the Sopranos.

What’s left them to get the game out?

Balancing: we‘re still balancing the game; it’s quite big, that’s the reason it’s taking so long.
Some polishing (textures and sounds) and testing; multiplayer testing is also underway.

Be sure to check out the video below:

Gemini Wars – Multiple star system maps

We want to give you a quick update about what’s been happening lately in the universe of Gemini Wars.

We’ve shown a few shots of star systems, planets and gameplay but today we’re going to show how we have the multi-star systems working in the game.

Multi-star systems are shown in later missions of the campaign. As the player is assigned with more important and difficult missions, the gameplay area grows. Instead of fighting in one single system, the ships are now able to jump from one system to another.

This is done by connecting wormholes between different star systems.

Take a look at a screenshot from one mission of the campaign:

This is not how the player will see the game. We’re fortunate to be coders; we can see where the enemy is and where he’s going
The player won’t be able to see where the enemy is, obviously.

There are 3 stars in this image: Imiga, Oshumi and Nxagu.
Each star has its own planets, asteroid fields, wormholes, etc. All of this is running smoothly without any loading or transitions.

Navigation between stars is done by zooming in on the star or clicking on it. The camera will automatically jump to that system, and place the camera in a strategic angle.

In the next screenshot, we zoomed in with the camera in a different angle:

As we zoom in on the systems, objects start to appear and the colored lines that show the wormhole connections fade out.
And as we zoom in even more, everything shows up in detail.
In this screenshot we can see a USF fleet orbiting a massive space station.

Next we’re going to show you a bit of how abilities work.

Battleships are large vessels; expensive but very powerful.
Depending on the technology that’s currently available, different modules can be installed in Batteships.
Each battleship has space for one module, and each module has its different purpose.

In the next screenshot, we can see the menu for selecting the module to be installed on the ship.

Each faction has different modules available, with specific abilities.
A module has a recharge rate until it can be used but when used – and depending on the situation – it can really decide the outcome of an engagement.

And last but not least, you may be aware that Gemini Wars is a highly driven campaign game, and as such we’re trying to narrate the story with as much detail as we can. And nothing better than cinematics to show what’s going on, right?

Here’s a screenshot of one of the cinematics, this one belongs to mission 10 of the campaign.
Of course we’re not going to tell you what’s going on, you’ll see when you get there

And finally, here are some additional screenshots that were posted in our forums.

If you have interest in the game, you can subscribe our newsletter.
We won’t spam you with anything not related to Gemini Wars, and when the game gets into pre-order, you’ll be the first to know.

Check out the interview on RTSguru:

http://www.rtsguru.com/game/424/features/221/Gemini-Wars-Developer-Interview.html

I’m going to talk a bit about a catastrophic effect that we have in Gemini Wars, which can be seen in the screenshots taken in sequence.

The animation is quite slow, to give a really realistic look.
I won’t say why we need this in the game (no spoilers), but we do.

Before we implemented this, we researched a lot on how other people are doing this in other media… in movies, to be more specific.

The only game that I know of that does this is Star Wars, but the way they blow up a planet in there is not quite what we are looking for.

Take a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue3zbBu2Adw&feature=related

First it’s not an “in game” effect; it’s obviously taken in game, but they change cameras, etc.
Our planet blowing is supposed to run while the rest of the game is going on.
With this said, movies to the rescue.

Still Star Wars but now the movie, when Alderaan is blowing into pieces:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDwgsZTQSyM

It’s very similar to the game; it’s obvious that the game designers based their effect on this.
But somehow, even in the movie this doesn’t look real. It’s way too fast; the planet breaks into 1000 pieces that instantly fly out of the camera.

Something like what can be seen in the Armageddon movie is much more realistic – the gigantic asteroid slowly approaching earth.

Second movie: Startrek 2009, where we see Vulcan being “eaten” by a Black hole.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wVEhafuF7A

It looks awesome.

But besides being a technical nightmare to do, it’s not what we were looking for.
We want the planet remains to stay in place like part of the scenario, and not just void where the planet once was.

The Third and last movie: actually series, not movie – Star Trek: Enterprise. The Xindi weapon destroying earth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHCNha9Xxas

Somehow, this looked much better when I saw the series a few years ago.
Everything looks awesome before second 0:43. The explosion is much slower than the one in Star Wars but although I believe it’s still too fast, I think this is the way to go.

Breaking the planet in gigantic pieces, and slowly move them away.

With this as an inspiration, and so many “dead planet art” all over the internet (yes,  there are a lot of people obsessed with dead planets), we came up with what you see in these screenshots.

What we haven’t decided yet, is what to do about gas giants. A gas giant cannot explode this way, so we need to come up with some cool way to deal with them.

Probably a mix of a planet shrinking with some particles in it, but not sure yet.

Signing out from the Gemini sector!

You can read the entire official announcement on the Iceberg Interactive website:

We ordered a test print to check out the quality of the printing, the main colors and effects. Well the result is awesome!

Now we just need to finish the polishing on the comic and complete the subtitles, and it’s done.

Originally conceived as a light attack warship, the Dauntless project later changed its scope to answer the need for a multi role destroyer class ship.

The Dauntless was first battle tested during the Lucius incident.

When the planetary governor of Marxis IV declared martial law due to large scale uprisings, both Alliance and USF sent nearby fleets to assist their supporters.

The USF fleet had four newly commissioned Dauntless destroyers and a few lighter ships. When the fleet left hyperspace near Marxis IV, it was intercepted by Alliance ships.

While the lighter ships regrouped, the four destroyers faced the incoming ships head on. A few minutes later, half the Alliance fleet was destroyed, decimated by the power of the Dauntless’ Scorpion cannons.

The Alliance fleet tried to retreat, but was pursued by the USF destroyers and escort ships. One single Alliance ship escaped the skirmish. The USF fleet lost none.

First of all, sorry for the lack of updates. We’ve been busy here at the forge, and we want to share with you what we’ve been up to.

Most game mechanics are done, our main development is now geared at polishing, adding details and implementing network gameplay.

One of the new improvements is the fighter’s management. Fighters were being released by Carriers on player’s demand, and the only way to select them was by clicking on the squadron icon visible on the top left area of the screen. Although this works quite well, some people found it non-intuitive because everything else in the game was just working by clicking on a ship.

To overcome this, each fighter squadron now has a ship Icon located in the average position of all fighters. Clicking on this Icon now selects the entire fighter squadron. Then, we can simply move them wherever we want, or attack a designated target like we do with any other ship.

Let me show a bit of how this works. The first shot shows a squadron of fighters leaving the bays of a USF carrier:

If you take a closer look, you may notice that fighters are casting shadows over the Carrier’s hull.

On the next shot, an Alliance carrier can be seen along with a squadron of fighters in patrol mode. Notice that there are two icons in there: one for the carrier and another for the fighters.

Here we can see the squadron with the fighters selected after clicking on the icon. With the fighters selected, we can now order them to move wherever we want.

What we have still undecided is what to do with the fighters once they are launched. Currently when we select a carrier, there’s a button to release all fighters in the carrier – the fighters aren’t launched automatically. Once the fighters are launched, the launch icon changes to the docking icon. By clicking on it, the fighter squadron that belongs to this carrier will be called and docked safely.

But what happens if the fighter squadron is lost? Should we have a timer that allows the carrier to “build” the fighters inside it, like a small factory? (BSG series style?), or should the Carrier need to get back to friendly space and stay close to a military station to replace the fighter wings?

If you have any comments on these ideas, or any new idea, share it with us

The next shot is about rendering.

Everyone is probably familiar with sun shafts in Crysis 2 and other fps games where the graphics are pushed to the limits?

Well, this is basically sun shafts in space, and works better when there are a lot of asteroids and gas clouds.

Looking at the shot below, you can see the sun going through the gas and casting a shadow on the gas that comes from the asteroids.

And to finish this blog post with another shot, this one is from a USF commander, briefing the player in the control room.

The control room is the central management for the single player campaign. In it, you can check galactic news, check your achievements, and obviously be briefed by your commander about what’s going on in the war and about your next mission.

Each mission briefing is about 1:30 to 2 minutes long, each with its own animation and voice over, so we are talking at about 20/25 minutes of CGI with voice overs in this. It’s quite an achievement for a small studio like us.