Another new video about 5LS has popped up on the Internet! This time it’s a Unity Developer Profile. In the video, the team members explain why they chose to work with the Unity 3D engine. There’s no actual new information about the game, but it’s still worth watching, even just to see how the epic beards are continuing to sprout at the studio :) Watch it below:
Good Game TV Feature on 5LS
Good Game TV is a a series by Australia’s national public broadcaster ABC dedicated to video gaming. In their latest feature, they cover 5 Lives Studios and their upcoming game Satellite Reign. There is a lot of good stuff in this video, including interviews with different team members, a couple of shots of the tools they use (including Unity, Animation, and Motion Capture), and even some (brief) new in-engine scenes. Watch the video below:
Here are some screen captures:
Chris and Dean designing a character
Running animation
Dean talks about how to create a large city with a small team
A new ingame scene with a lot of pedestrians
Neat detail: a drone is shooting a blue laser
Satellite Reign to be shown off at PAX Australia
The latest news from the forum is that the 5LS team will be at PAX Australia this year showing off a part of the game. PAX Australia will take place Oct 31 – Nov 2 in Melbourne. The entire dev team will be there, according to this forum post by Dean:
The entire team are going down actually and we are intending to have the current progress of a portion of the game with us (warts and all) for people to take a look at. :)
-5LS-Dean
So don’t miss out on this if you live in the area! I won’t be able to make it there myself, but I am already looking forward to some good first hand reports from visitors.
Pledging closed – available soon for preorder
Pledging on the Satellite Reign website has now been closed. The Pledge section on the website has been replaced by a Store, where you will currently see a banner that says “available soon for pre-order!”.
The final count is:
Pledged: $786’185 (in AUD, I presume)
Backers: 16’848
On Twitter, the team let’s us know that there is currently a problem with logging in to their site’s forum, which they are working on fixing:
@SatelliteReign: We are aware there are log in issues with the site and are working on a fix.
Also pledging has now ended, thank you for all your support!
On weapon logistics and ammo
A thread on the forum that started out discussing potential weapon logistics (how to transport large and bulky weapons) then turned to the topic of ammo replenish. The question is whether agents should have “infinite pockets” for ammo. Chris from 5LS had the following to say
[…] the agents have 2 slots for weapons to start with 1) the pistol slot that never runs out of ammo and 2) the “regular” weapons that have a finite amount of ammo … if you want your agents to carry more weapons / ammo you will be able to get augmentations that allow you to carry more… but that is a choice you will have to make..
so its more like “deep pockets” rather than “infinite pockets” :P
at the moment you pickup ammo from the enemies weapons that fall to the ground (click on them and the agent will go over and pickup ammo) but I could set it up so that if you alt + click on them you pick up the weapon and start using that one (discarding the one you are holding) …– Chris
Later on, MikeD joined the discussion with a response to some ideas suggested in the thread:
I’d like the crazy oversized weapons to have an unfold animation, so they start much smaller then when the agent pulls em out they go through their unfold animation, that could look really really cool. But as ever its a matter of time constraints, its down our wish list rather than an essential item.
@Liuz I like the idea of using car trunks, even more so if you consider self driving cars, you call up a new weapon load out and its deployed to you via a car, (a little like the shop delivery helpers in Dota).
MikeD
It remains to be seen then whether any of that makes it into the final game ;)
Later on in the thread, the discussion turned to whether the weapons in Satellite Reign should be crazy and over the top, or more realistic. In a comment on the topic, MikeD remarked that Syndicate Wars had fairly crazy weapons, more so than the original Syndicate. Personally, I feel that the weapons could be rather crazy, but they should still be “realistic” in a sense that they should be believable as existing in a future version of our world (unfortunately, the “science” in “science fiction” is often neglected these days).
Furthermore, MikeD hinted at the possibility that the game might support a 320×240 resolution, which would make nostalgics like me very happy indeed :)
Running SR at 320×240, looks kinda cute, might have to put that in as a playable mode :)
MikeD
Dev Diary #08: Steam Early Access release by end of year
The latest Dev Diary by 5LS is up! Weapons, effects and environments are all looking good. There is also some information regarding release plans: We are looking at a Steam Early Access release by end of the year, and alpha and beta releases before that!
Dev Diary #07: Code update
The latest dev diary is here, and it is packed with information about the coding side of the game development. read it here.
Survey e-mails not gone out yet
There’s a thread on the forum where people are wondering whether the survey e-mail (asking backers about their preferred delivery platform, shirt size, name for NPC) have gone out yet. This thread got a reply by 5LS teammember Mitch recently, who had the following to say:
Hey everyone. To clarify, no, you haven’t missed out on any of the surveys, none have been sent out as of yet. We’re all so focused on development that it’s easy to get behind on updates. As Andy suggested, we don’t presently have a dedicated community manager, just the five of us all making the game, so it’s a balancing act between developing the game and getting emails and updates out.
We’ll hopefully be able to get updates and surveys out more readily as things progress. Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about you! :)
Crowdsourcing interview with Brent Waller
Radio New Zealand has an interview up with Brent Waller, member of the 5 Lives Studios team behind Satellite Reign. The interview is mostly about Brent’s LEGO set, but it also discusses crowdfunding in general and Satellite Reign is mentioned. Listen to the interview here.
Dev Diary #06: video preview!
Another dev diary is here, this time it’s a video preview!
Looking excellent so far!
