Lightspeed Frontier - A ship-building RPG set in a parody sci-fi universe

[ArkisVir]

Lightspeed Frontier is a game entering Alpha! www.lightspeedfrontier.com/forum.html :

Story goes, you're an average Joe working shifts at a frontier outpost until one day when you've stockpiled enough cash to get an old rusty command pod and see where the solar wind takes you.




But the outer reaches of the galaxy can be a scary place. Corporations have been around for years, and have been monopolizing resources and benefiting from their ill-gotten gains. Also, it can be tough to track down criminals who are traveling at relativistic speeds, so naturally many of them have joined up to have a space pirate tea party out there... complete with guns, anger, and unreasonably high opinions of themselves.




So back to the ships. It's your job to equip yourself with means necessary to make a living out in these parts, and that means fast engines, a well built vessel, and guns. Lots and lots of guns. You will receive transmissions to your space dock for quests to help fund your new fun-loving lifestyle. You will run into pirates who would love nothing more than to pick their teeth with the broken shards of your spirit. But if you're lucky, you can loot their remains for your own gain. All of this to say, your goal is to build the best damn ship in the outer reaches, and here are some considerations for you.


* Ships rely on real (or close to it..) space physics. Your mass and weight distribution are key factors in your ship designs. You will need to balance how much armor you have with where your important ship components are placed.

* You don't have to watch for engine placement that much as all of them will puch your ship foreward perfectly, but they need to be protected from enemy fire so consider that before lunging forward.

* Your guns will fire in the direction that you place them on your ship. Side guns shoot to side, front guns shoot to the front. You get the idea.

* You can heal your ship by going back to your space station. There, the healing arm of life will dispense green nanobot goodness all over you - for a price.







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All grabbed from the forums. Looking forward to see where this one goes! There's a serious lack of good humor in this genre, and I'm interested to see more of what they come up.

- - - Updated - - -

More billboards!

[ArkisVir]

New trailer to highlight some of the new features in the upcoming alpha (which can be signed up for at http://lightspeedfrontier.com)

[Netherspark]

Why do all the ships look like they came from Minecraft?

I hope they get some better graphic styles.

[Dezerte]

That's one cheesy trailer.

[stellvia]

In space, nobody can hear your voxels scream?

[ArkisVir]

In space, nobody can hear your voxels scream?

Stealing that :P



The game is now in Alpha, and you can sign up at the site http://lightspeedfrontier.com

You an pull up the real-time 3D map, use wormholes to travel to other parts of the universe, encounter random baddies, steal their components, and test out the quest system. New builds will be released every few weeks until it's feature complete, then it will move into a more open beta where you can just download it from Steam

Important Edit: Also, I've since joined on to the team to help bring it to completion (I have a game on Steam already and some developers I'm taking with me). It was fun following the game, and even more fun working on it. If you have specific questions though, head to the forums at the site and ask the main dev

[ArkisVir]

Got a new stats and progress screen going, with some other work-in-progress features:



As you progress through the game, you're constantly collecting rare materials to build new, more powerful, modules with, and those modules are obviously used to make your ship more powerful. But as you build a bigger ship, your ship class also changes which opens up more avenues for missions. So the progress bar at the top shows you how many modules it will take for you to hit a certain class. You’ll need to choose which modules you equip carefully though, because if you head into an area filled with other dreadnaughts, you’ll get wrecked if your modules aren’t very powerful.

A lot of the other stats are pretty self explanatory, but all of those will come into play later too. Optimizing your stats for your ship size, and also depending on what missions your trying to accomplish, is key.

[Echnew]

Looks like space engineers. They should probably add some triangular blocks (corners) so the ships could be smoothed out.

[ArkisVir]

Looks like space engineers. They should probably add some triangular blocks (corners) so the ships could be smoothed out.

Yeah good idea. I'm actually working on the game now, so I'll let the dev know. There are some cornered blocks but more wouldn't hurt. Any idea specifically on other shapes you'd like to see?

Here's an example of a ship with some smoother edges, how does this look?



Also, a new zone we're working on:



It's a new explorable area that's only accessible through a black hole.. and once you're in, it's a fight to the death to get out! Here's a screenshot, but the imgur album has the full story:

http://imgur.com/a/yJ9WV

[D3athsting]

Minecraft + Eve?

[ArkisVir]

Yeah that's a good way to think about it. It's definitely more humor focused though so not exactly the same thing. Think the building style of Terratech with the space combat of Eve

[ArkisVir]

So we've had some huge updates since the last time I posted, I'll post a few gifs so you can see:

Battle updates (UI, explosions, aiming, controls)

i.imgur.com/7vjWN99.gif

Asteroid destruction (Just a first implementation.... but here it is!)

i.imgur.com/UEE7Tlb.gif


Last, we are launching a Steam Greenlight campaign on Tuesday, as well as a Kickstarter to help raise funds for tools and other stretch goals (should we reach the goal). Our goal is as much to build a dedicated community who can be a part of development as it is for tools, so even if you can't pledge please check us out! If you can pledge, we have some (we think...) really cool pledge levels. I will post an update on Tuesday. In the meantime, we have brand new forums for people to post feedback and ideas on, so please check it out!

http://forums.lightspeedfrontier.com