- Summer Release Update - 24 June 2017
Hey folks. I wanted to give a quick update on the next Airship Commander release! Things have slowed down quite a bit in 2017. The main reason for that was the team had to get day jobs to support our families. For my art partner (who's also a new father) that meant pretty much the end of their involvement. For me however, my passion for military steampunk airships duking it out over smoggy cities remains undiminished. I've been steadily making progress on weekends and evenings, with most of my energy going into picking up the asset/art slack. This has meant I've been spending a lot of time far down the rabbit hole of 3d modeling, texturing and animation. The next release will include the first pass of those asset swaps. Two good examples are below: Vessel Augment Prop (old): Vessel Augment Prop (new): Strategic Room (old): Strategic Room (new): Beyond the new authoring burden of creatin…
- Summer Release Update - 24 June 2017
Hey folks. I wanted to give a quick update on the next Airship Commander release! Things have slowed down quite a bit in 2017. The main reason for that was the team had to get day jobs to support our families. For my art partner (who's also a new father) that meant pretty much the end of their involvement. For me however, my passion for military steampunk airships duking it out over smoggy cities remains undiminished. I've been steadily making progress on weekends and evenings, with most of my energy going into picking up the asset/art slack. This has meant I've been spending a lot of time far down the rabbit hole of 3d modeling, texturing and animation. The next release will include the first pass of those asset swaps. Two good examples are below: Vessel Augment Prop (old): Vessel Augment Prop (new): Strategic Room (old): Strategic Room (new): Beyond the new authoring burden of creatin…
- Proof of Life! - 28 February 2017
Hey folks. It's been too long since an update so I wanted to send a quick note. A few utterly self-inflicted crisis ate most of the last two weeks. Then this week is the Game Developers Conference, which tends to be a -75% productivity debuff applied across the entire industry. Excuses, excuses. The hardening sprint has made SOME progress despite those roadblocks. Airship Commander is now using the latest versions of Unity, SteamVR and the Virtual Reality Toolkit (the backbone of the touch controls). A couple of untextured props are looking better and the main deck of the Raptor is sporting much improved textures. We're currently in-progress on integrating the Interdiction and Escort mission gametypes into the Strategic Campaign. They're actually proving a little tricky from a design point of view. Let's look at Interdiction. The idea here is that if an enemy controls a Strategic Waypoi…
- Proof of Life! - 28 February 2017
Hey folks. It's been too long since an update so I wanted to send a quick note. A few utterly self-inflicted crisis ate most of the last two weeks. Then this week is the Game Developers Conference, which tends to be a -75% productivity debuff applied across the entire industry. Excuses, excuses. The hardening sprint has made SOME progress despite those roadblocks. Airship Commander is now using the latest versions of Unity, SteamVR and the Virtual Reality Toolkit (the backbone of the touch controls). A couple of untextured props are looking better and the main deck of the Raptor is sporting much improved textures. We're currently in-progress on integrating the Interdiction and Escort mission gametypes into the Strategic Campaign. They're actually proving a little tricky from a design point of view. Let's look at Interdiction. The idea here is that if an enemy controls a Strategic Waypoi…
- Closing in on half-way! - 13 February 2017
Hey folks. We're working on the 0.5 release for Airship Commander. On our original timeline, 0.5 would be roughly half-way to the full release, and we're excited to be nearing such a milestone! The team has been spending a lot of time playing the game, and it's looking like we're going to take February to develop a "hardening" version. The goal isn't to add very many NEW features in a release like this, but rather polish, solidify and improve what's already present. We're thinking of a couple of angles of attack: - Audio: The sound experience for Airship Commander has a huge amount of room for improvement. Some features are working great like the High Pass Filter on the explosions (gives distance ones a cool "booom" effect). Others work but don't really accomplish much (UI SFX for example). Lastly there's loads of SFX that are just missing (mine explosions, robot VO). - AI: The AI still…
- Closing in on half-way! - 13 February 2017
Hey folks. We're working on the 0.5 release for Airship Commander. On our original timeline, 0.5 would be roughly half-way to the full release, and we're excited to be nearing such a milestone! The team has been spending a lot of time playing the game, and it's looking like we're going to take February to develop a "hardening" version. The goal isn't to add very many NEW features in a release like this, but rather polish, solidify and improve what's already present. We're thinking of a couple of angles of attack: - Audio: The sound experience for Airship Commander has a huge amount of room for improvement. Some features are working great like the High Pass Filter on the explosions (gives distance ones a cool "booom" effect). Others work but don't really accomplish much (UI SFX for example). Lastly there's loads of SFX that are just missing (mine explosions, robot VO). - AI: The AI still…
- 0.4 Airship Commander is RELEASED! - 4 February 2017
Hey folks! The latest version of Airship Commander has been released! Airship Commander 0.4 Changelist New - Strategic Campaign Prototype: Hunt the enemy capital ship while protecting your own. - Missile Combat in Core Combat Loop: Anti-vessel missiles have been added to the Falcon and Raptor vessels. ALL vessels have been equipped with point defense. - Fleet Customization: Spend resources acquired by participating in the Strategic Campaign to customize the airships in your fleet. - Order Friendly Squadrons: Use the Order Gun mode to first select the friendly, then select the enemy it should target. - Miniatures: A collection of each airship miniatures are available in the Strategic Hub. - Capture Gametype: Send a rowboat to capture the tower, protecting it from missiles during it's journey. - Sargasso Scenario: The old "mission select" scene with the floating wrecks is now a stand alon…
- 0.4 Airship Commander is RELEASED! - 4 February 2017
Hey folks! The latest version of Airship Commander has been released! Airship Commander 0.4 Changelist New - Strategic Campaign Prototype: Hunt the enemy capital ship while protecting your own. - Missile Combat in Core Combat Loop: Anti-vessel missiles have been added to the Falcon and Raptor vessels. ALL vessels have been equipped with point defense. - Fleet Customization: Spend resources acquired by participating in the Strategic Campaign to customize the airships in your fleet. - Order Friendly Squadrons: Use the Order Gun mode to first select the friendly, then select the enemy it should target. - Miniatures: A collection of each airship miniatures are available in the Strategic Hub. - Capture Gametype: Send a rowboat to capture the tower, protecting it from missiles during it's journey. - Sargasso Scenario: The old "mission select" scene with the floating wrecks is now a stand alon…
- 0.4 Airship Commander Overview - 1 February 2017
Hey folks! We're very close on the next Airship Commander release, 0.4. It's a doozy, with four new major features: - Strategic Campaign - Missile Combat in core Airship Combat Loop - Player Fleet Customization - Issue Orders to Friendly Squadrons In addition there are tons of polish, optimizations and bug fixes. We've put together at video that outlines each of those better than I could with words. Check it out! https://youtu.be/ItX_Ku3BH4M If all goes well the update should release in the next day or so. Thanks again for your continued support and attention!
- 0.4 Airship Commander Overview - 1 February 2017
Hey folks! We're very close on the next Airship Commander release, 0.4. It's a doozy, with four new major features: - Strategic Campaign - Missile Combat in core Airship Combat Loop - Player Fleet Customization - Issue Orders to Friendly Squadrons In addition there are tons of polish, optimizations and bug fixes. We've put together at video that outlines each of those better than I could with words. Check it out! https://youtu.be/ItX_Ku3BH4M If all goes well the update should release in the next day or so. Thanks again for your continued support and attention!
- 0.4 Going Into Test! - 25 January 2017
Hey folks! Airship Commander 0.4 has hit feature complete and is going into test. If all goes well it will release in the next week! 0.4 is a MASSIVE update. We're working on a video to preview all the 0.4 features, and cannot wait to show you all the new ways to play. It contains as many new features as all the previous updates combined, and dramatically expands all the activities players can partake in. There is one bit of news that might not be welcome to everyone: we're dropping non-touch controller support. As we continue to embrace all the cool mechanics touch allows, it's become a major task to mirror that functionality for keyboard/mouse or xbox 360 controller. As an example, the new strategic layer is all about grabbing miniatures and placing them on multiple maps. Creating equivalent controls requires us to essentially restart from scratch on the UI and input mechanics. This i…
- 0.4 Going Into Test! - 25 January 2017
Hey folks! Airship Commander 0.4 has hit feature complete and is going into test. If all goes well it will release in the next week! 0.4 is a MASSIVE update. We're working on a video to preview all the 0.4 features, and cannot wait to show you all the new ways to play. It contains as many new features as all the previous updates combined, and dramatically expands all the activities players can partake in. There is one bit of news that might not be welcome to everyone: we're dropping non-touch controller support. As we continue to embrace all the cool mechanics touch allows, it's become a major task to mirror that functionality for keyboard/mouse or xbox 360 controller. As an example, the new strategic layer is all about grabbing miniatures and placing them on multiple maps. Creating equivalent controls requires us to essentially restart from scratch on the UI and input mechanics. This i…
- New Campaign Structure for Airship Commander in 0.4 Release - 15 January 2017
Hey folks! Thanks for checking out a quick preview of Airship Commander 0.4. The team came back from the holiday break more fired up than ever and we're happy to show off two work-in-progress features that we're planning on including in the next release. When thinking about the second campaign for Airship Commander, something quickly became apparent. While the Narcopope Campaign that shipped in 0.1 accomplished what it set out to do, we felt like there was a lot of areas to improve upon. The first area we targeted was mission structure. The Narcopope campaign is a combination of 15 hand-crafted "missions," but they're pretty much locked. Nothing the player does (except dying) has any impact on future scenarios. Giving the player agency over the types of scenarios and fights they embarked upon appealed to us immensely. Thinking back to Wing Commander Armada, we started to wonder if havin…
- New Campaign Structure for Airship Commander in 0.4 Release - 15 January 2017
Hey folks! Thanks for checking out a quick preview of Airship Commander 0.4. The team came back from the holiday break more fired up than ever and we're happy to show off two work-in-progress features that we're planning on including in the next release. When thinking about the second campaign for Airship Commander, something quickly became apparent. While the Narcopope Campaign that shipped in 0.1 accomplished what it set out to do, we felt like there was a lot of areas to improve upon. The first area we targeted was mission structure. The Narcopope campaign is a combination of 15 hand-crafted "missions," but they're pretty much locked. Nothing the player does (except dying) has any impact on future scenarios. Giving the player agency over the types of scenarios and fights they embarked upon appealed to us immensely. Thinking back to Wing Commander Armada, we started to wonder if havin…
- Quick Post-Holiday Update! - 8 January 2017
Hey folks! After a great holiday break the Airship Commander team is back to work cranking on the 0.4 release. There are three major features being developed and we plan to start showing them off in next week's announcement. We're continuing to focus on giving the player things to do beyond gawk at the battle vistas, and these brand new elements certainly accomplish that. We can't thank all of you enough for enabling us to realize our little steampunk fantasy. It's been an unforgettable journey and the best is yet to come!
- Quick Post-Holiday Update! - 8 January 2017
Hey folks! After a great holiday break the Airship Commander team is back to work cranking on the 0.4 release. There are three major features being developed and we plan to start showing them off in next week's announcement. We're continuing to focus on giving the player things to do beyond gawk at the battle vistas, and these brand new elements certainly accomplish that. We can't thank all of you enough for enabling us to realize our little steampunk fantasy. It's been an unforgettable journey and the best is yet to come!
- Airship Commander 0.3 Released! - 14 December 2016
Hey folks! We've just made the Airship Commander 0.3 release LIVE! The build notes: New: Destroy Capital Ship scenario. Spawn from your own Warhawk, traverse the battlefield, and destroy the three critical hit locations on the enemy capital ship. Anti-CapShip and Anti-Airship missiles now available. Anti-CapShip gun: Man portable weapon that paints critical locations on the enemy CapShip to destroy with missile (keep on target for 5 seconds to fire). Point Defense gun: Man portable weapon that paints incoming Anti-Airship missiles to destroy with point defense projectiles (just touch target to fire). Bird gun: Man portable weapon that can be used to destroy robo-birds flying around airship. Rowboat Pointer: Used to designate the target of raiding rowboats (moved off player gaze) Tooltips added to Steering, Altitude, Map, Waypoint, Gun, Change Deck, and Option props. Chaperon Toggle: Tog…
- Airship Commander 0.3 Released! - 14 December 2016
Hey folks! We've just made the Airship Commander 0.3 release LIVE! The build notes: New: Destroy Capital Ship scenario. Spawn from your own Warhawk, traverse the battlefield, and destroy the three critical hit locations on the enemy capital ship. Anti-CapShip and Anti-Airship missiles now available. Anti-CapShip gun: Man portable weapon that paints critical locations on the enemy CapShip to destroy with missile (keep on target for 5 seconds to fire). Point Defense gun: Man portable weapon that paints incoming Anti-Airship missiles to destroy with point defense projectiles (just touch target to fire). Bird gun: Man portable weapon that can be used to destroy robo-birds flying around airship. Rowboat Pointer: Used to designate the target of raiding rowboats (moved off player gaze) Tooltips added to Steering, Altitude, Map, Waypoint, Gun, Change Deck, and Option props. Chaperon Toggle: Tog…
- Quick Update on Airship Commander 0.3 - 12 December 2016
Hey folks. I've got Marty Feldman eyes so that must mean the next Airship Commander update is getting close to release. Spending 8 hours a day in the HMD takes it's toll :P. We're down to three bugs so it shouldn't be long now. Thank you for checking in on these updates and following Airship Commander!
- Quick Update on Airship Commander 0.3 - 12 December 2016
Hey folks. I've got Marty Feldman eyes so that must mean the next Airship Commander update is getting close to release. Spending 8 hours a day in the HMD takes it's toll :P. We're down to three bugs so it shouldn't be long now. Thank you for checking in on these updates and following Airship Commander!
