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Empyrion - Galactic Survival: The space survival game you have been waiting for...?

Discussion in 'Made With Unity' started by EmpyrionGame, Sep 28, 2014.

  1. EmpyrionGame

    EmpyrionGame

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    "Empyrion - Galactic Survival" is a 3D open world, space survival adventure in which you can fly across space and land on planets. Build, explore, fight and survive in a hostile galaxy full of hidden dangers. The game uniquely combines elements from space simulations, construction games, survival games and ego-shooters.

    Hello Galactic Survivalists!

    My name is Luke and I'd like to ask for community feedback about our upcoming indie game title "Empyrion - Galactic Survival."

    Are you also frustrated that space simulations do not offer the possibility to land on planets, while ego-shooters do not allow you to get on a spaceship, leave the planet and explore a vast galaxy? In addition, do you like the gameplay offered by recent survival games as well as the freedom and creativity of games like Minecraft or Space Engineers which allow you to design and build objects such as spaceships and bases freely?

    If your answer is yes, then Empyrion might be interesting for you...Do you think it has the potential to become the space survival game you have been waiting for?

    Pre-Alpha Gameplay Trailer:

    Some Screenshots:












    Main Game Features:
    • Space and planet exploration:
      An absolute free-roaming experience awaits you: fly across space, land on planets and walk around.
    • Survival:
      Survival is key. Try to stay alive in a hostile galaxy. Each planet is different with its own challenges. Food and oxygen are rare – be well prepared.
    • Building and construction:
      You can build everything out of blocks & building parts: motherships, spaceships, space & planetary stations, and facilities such as mining robots & solar panels.
    • Terrain deformation:
      Each planet features a voxel-based terrain. You can entirely modify and deform the terrain. It’s a true sandbox game!
    • Space and land combats:
      Empyrion features a variety of enemies reaching from wild creatures living on planets to intelligent alien races that can attack you everywhere.
    • Single, multiplayer and co-operative:
      Besides single player, Empyrion features PvP and co-operative gameplay.
    • Mining and resource gathering:
      For building and construction, you must gather and mine resources that you find on planets and asteroids.
    • Huge galaxy and open world:
      The galaxy is procedurally generated and features hundreds of different solar systems, each containing several planets with their own characteristics.
    • Simulation of physics:
      Empyrion simulates maneuverability, electricity, airflow, gravity, damage, construction solidity, and much more.
    • Extensive crafting system:
      Using and combining resources, you can craft your own equipment and weapons.
    Offical Website: http://empyriongame.com/
    Twitter: https://twitter.com/EmpyrionGame
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EmpyrionGame
    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/EmpyrionGame
    IndieDB: http://www.indiedb.com/games/empyrion-galactic-survival
     
    Last edited: Dec 16, 2014
    Artaani, XCO, ForgottenCheese and 3 others like this.
  2. jtok4j

    jtok4j

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    Yes, looks very interesting.

    Please note that this brings back memories of Battlecruiser 3000AD, so please make sure that there's a great (No! a Fantastic Tutorial for each area of differing game play) 'cause the Battlecruiser game was way before it's time, with a horrid learning curve...

    Also, do make sure that the quests/missions/stuff to do, actually exists in an obvious way. Bleak terrain, and (this is important ~ ) the ability to get lost when starting off in the game, wandering for an hour or two, through a boring wasteland/landscape with nothing to do will really kill off people's attention to the game. (Trust me, I've ruined a few MMORPG experiences for myself by doing that in the first 2-3 hours of playing them... Didn't realize that those strange "machines" over there were (ahem) transports to the other side of the planet, so you didn't have to walk all the way...)

    and Lastly, use all the free (and ?paid) marketing you can, to get this game out into people's attention. Admittedly this won't be for everyone, so you have a narrow market/interest group to capture their interest in.

    And good luck! :D
     
  3. EmpyrionGame

    EmpyrionGame

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    Thanks for your feedback. Yes, we are planning to introduce a Wikia about Empyrion with detailed information about the game before the Alpha release. Good point also regarding the stuff to do...we will assure that the player does not get bored. We have some nice ideas ;) Yeah, marketing is crucial for our game. Our online presence is quite new but so far the feedback is very positive which is highly motivating for us.
     
  4. TheRaider

    TheRaider

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    how much will you be asking? If you are looking for a significant amount I don't think there is enough polish in everything to run a big campaign.
     
  5. EmpyrionGame

    EmpyrionGame

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    We were planning to ask between 75k and 90k US$ as the minimum funding goal. Do you think this would be a reasonable amount?
     
  6. NickHaldon

    NickHaldon

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    This looks REALLY good! I personally would love to play this. It looks like a really good blend of Minecraft and space games. If you need any more testers I would be more than happy to oblige! I am already envisioning a Hoth type base with Snowspeeders and turrets. :D

    Keep up the brilliant work!
    NickHaldon
     
  7. TheRaider

    TheRaider

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    Based on what you see on kickstarter without big name appeal/good development history(thus existing fanbase) you are heavily judged on alpha/concept art (since everyone has good game ideas) and I don't think you will get close.
     
  8. Darrkbeast

    Darrkbeast

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    Looks great, I think what you're asking for is a reasonable amount. So about the building, I take it you'll be building ship engines and cockpits and other internal parts that make the ships work. Also since you will be landing on planets can you construct land vehicles, maybe even a large ship with a cargo bay with a few land vehicles in there. In any case I like where your going and will follow your development.
     
  9. EmpyrionGame

    EmpyrionGame

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    Thank you very much for all the helpful feedback up to now!

    Regarding the question what you can build in Empyrion: you can build your planetary bases, small spaceships and your large mothership out of blocks and building parts (walls, hangars, etc) like in Minecraft or Space Engineers. The internal parts like engines, power generators, energy cells are crafted by combining basic resources (iron, cobalt, silicon, etc). You will find these resources on planets and asteroids (you must gather and mine them).

    The mothership is your mobile base that is able to fly from planet to planet and warp between solar systems. To access and explore a planet, you utilize your small spaceships that can enter the planet’s orbit and land on the planet’s surface (we are not yet sure whether we integrate land vehicles). The cool thing is that you can have several of these small spaceships in the hangar of your mothership. Build them according to your needs (fighter, transporter, scout, etc)...
     
  10. sowatnow

    sowatnow

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    Nice one, looking good, will look forward to it.
     
  11. primus88

    primus88

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    The game looks really good and there can be so much you can do with it.
    Before starting a KS you should think at how much you can realistically reach. Usually. for sums like this, you should have already a pretty big fan base.I would downgrade the needed cash to 30k, but this depends on your needs. Imagine that after that you could do a steam early access which again will help the game a lot.

    Good luck.
     
    EmpyrionGame likes this.
  12. Whiteleaf

    Whiteleaf

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    This IS the Space simulator I've been wanting! <3 At least from the video perspective it looks very hard-edge, er, you get what I mean, right? Anyways, it's very rough and not smooth. If you go into Project Settings>Quality/Graphics(one of the two) you can change the anisotropic filtering and the higher it is, the smoother everything is.
     
  13. EmpyrionGame

    EmpyrionGame

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    Hey Silver Games. Thanks for your good suggestion. We are using texture-specific anisotropic filtering. For example, for the hull textures of the big mothership and the small spaceships, the Aniso Level was set to 6 (out of 9) in the video. We tried higher values but unfortunately it did not significantly affect the results. I guess our ships and bases look rather rough because they are entirely made out of blocks (like Lego)! But we'll try to tweak it more so it looks smoother. Thanks again!
     
  14. Whiteleaf

    Whiteleaf

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    Alright!
     
  15. EmpyrionGame

    EmpyrionGame

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  16. Kane C Hart

    Kane C Hart

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  17. Omegasight

    Omegasight

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    Give it to me. Now.

    But seriously, this looks like an incredible game, even if you can only get part of it up. I'd like to help in any way I am able
     
  18. jtok4j

    jtok4j

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    Hi,
    Really glad to see that this has hit Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter.
    What I'm a little hesitant to see is all the good-looking screenshots of terrain, and a lack of interaction with stuff. (in the screenshots)
    The best/exciting screenshot was the one with the baddies, which the character was about to interact with.
    I really think that people want a game with things to do, as opposed to travelling around sight-seeing beautiful planets, which are devoid of any life/interaction/ and obvious things to do.

    Keep going and add some screenshots of stuff which can be done in the game to boost the interest level! :D
     
  19. EmpyrionGame

    EmpyrionGame

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    Currently, we are populating the planets - so the player will have more things to interact with: fight against aliens, hunt dinosaurs for food, mine and gather resources, grow plants, explore alien artifacts and much more...
     
    Whiteleaf likes this.
  20. EmpyrionGame

    EmpyrionGame

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    NickHaldon likes this.
  21. Artaani

    Artaani

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    Hello! It looks impressive!
    I am excited by the fact that you managed to implement a ship constructor like in StarMade or Space Engineers using Unity!

    It would be absolutely amazing if you will agree to share an idea how you managed to do that : )

    I am tried to implement similar ship constructor with good optimization, but I have no idea how you managed to optimize colliders of the ships. I presume you are somehow combine several blocks into single convex mesh collider, but I have no idea which algorithm could be more optimized and flexible. Probably Octree or something like that.

    There is another thread on the Unity forum where people interesting about your technology.

    So if it is not a secret and you will agree to share an information, or at least links for articles which you are used when developed this feature, I am will be very grateful.

    Thanks! : )
     
  22. jc_lvngstn

    jc_lvngstn

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    Since unity doesn't handle mesh colliders with rigidbodies any more, I haven't seen any good suggestions on how to handle this with procedural or player built meshes, at runtime. I've seen assets which create convex meshes for you based off of an arbitrary mesh...but aren't fast enough to be viable.

    I guess people could use a different physics engine (bullet or whatever) to handle their physics.

    Another option is to build your own convex meshes from hull pieces.
    I think there is a third option...a compromise. Using groups of both mesh and convex colliders. And then using physics layers to handle some situations. But I haven't extensively tested this. It's a compromise, and if I had to pick I would say that Empyrion goes this route, since players have "accurate" collision with the ship but at times ships don't have accurate collisions with other ships or bases.
    Of course, any "nudge" in the right direction from the empyrion devs would be welcome.
     
    Artaani likes this.
  23. Artaani

    Artaani

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    Thanks for the answer.

    I am also thinking about those changes since Unity 5.0 so non-convex mesh collider no longer can be used on dynamic rigidbody, however I don't think it is a problem, because even earlier, non-convex collider can't collided with another non-convex collider, it means that ships will not be able to collide with each other. Of course maybe they have two colliders, convex and non-convex, but it is also not true, because if we will look at Space Engineers, we will find something like this.



    That means that ships have correct collisions between each other.
    However I do not seen such physics constrictions in Empyrion, but I believe they are using the same method.

    Or maybe they are use Unity 5.0 and old physics which allowed non-convex mesh collider, but it would be sad. This also will mean that physics engine of Space Engineers may do something that Unity can't : (

    Bullet physics also sound not great, since it is very complex to use in Unity. It is raw and have bad documentation.

    I believe good and fast mesh decomposition algorithm could be a solution. But which algorithm is the best - this is a question.

    If you are interesting about that, I am also created a post on Unity Answers
    However no one still not answered. Later I will try to ask developers directly on their email.
     
    jc_lvngstn likes this.
  24. jc_lvngstn

    jc_lvngstn

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    Well, when we've played Empyrion, with large CVs we noticed the collision wasn't accurate at times. Very often the ships seem to collide in places they shouldn't...this is between CVs and other CVs, or stations.
    Honestly, I think they are doing an approximation of the physics shapes when handling collisions between CVs and stations (both just large blocks).
     
    Artaani likes this.
  25. Artaani

    Artaani

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    Yes, also noticed this. Seems so.

    So the technology is not like in Space Engineers. I hope it is not due the different engine and such physics is also possible in the Unity.
     
  26. jc_lvngstn

    jc_lvngstn

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    It's...a tricky problem, and an interesting challenge. But I'll be honest...I would rather not have to solve this challenge. I'd rather just be able to create procedural ships, made up of various shapes, and not have to worry about hacking in a solution, or using a different physics/collision system.
    I think (but I'm not 100% certain) that space engineers is a C# game, using SharpDX and their own custom physics/collision system. I believe it also uses a grid system, based off of block size. Every thing in the ship takes up X Blocks. For collision detection, they can use a grid/AABB whatever system to detect collisions, and handle it appropriately.

    In Empyrion...they are able to handle coarse collisions in some cases between ships and stations, which are "good enough", but also exact collisions like a player running on a curved surface. But...and I hope the Empyrion devs forgive me for this, we love empyrion and got some great hours from it. But Empyrion is not using super advanced systems. We played it EEEARRRLY, and even the terrain was pretty much barren. I'd hazard a guess that the voxel engine is the most advanced part of it. I don't think they have some super advanced solution to the physics/collision problem, I think they figured out how to get "pretty good" results using the existing stuff Unity provides. I think the solution is just not very obvious or what most people do out of the box :)
     
    Artaani likes this.