“Each ship in the fleet has a captain and crew, some or all of whom may opt to actively provide assistance or cause trouble. Military ships are generally ready to follow the chain of command, but civilians, who aren't quite so well steeped in a "do what you're told" culture, tend to be more troublesome. And it doesn't look like idealism will be the recipe for success: In the demo, I discovered a dissident on board a new ship, threw him in the brig, and when that angered other members of the crew I applied pressure—"counseled" them—to keep them in line.” - Andy Chalk, PC Gamer

Command your fleet to escape an unbeatable enemy in XO, a sci-fi strategy game for PC: $10 gets you the game! http://thndr.it/1edVHvG

Meet Nick from Skewsound! They’re working on XO’s sound design, and he walked us through the process of creating one of my favorite SFX in the game - the laser weapon!

WE DID IT

NEW ENEMY SIGHTED: keep an eye out for today’s XO ‪#‎kickstarter‬ update for further intel j.mp/XOkck

Watch our 3D artist Brian Davis create a space station in 3 and a half minutes... sort of. Support XO on Kickstarter: http://j.mp/XOkck

Inspired by sci-fi works such as Battlestar Galactica, The Lost Fleet series, and games like FTL, our strategy game will test your skills as a leader in times of great need.

Support XO on Kickstarter: http://j.mp/XOkck

Modeling Newtonian Physics in Space

In most video games set in space, starships move like boats or aircraft. That instantaneous movement is satisfying and familiar, but it's not how starships would move in real life. Lately with movies like Gravity, Interstellar, and Ender's Game, a much broader audience has been introduced to the reality that movement in space doesn't work like it does in Star Wars or in nearly every game set in space. While working on the design for XO, I was reading a lot of hard sci-fi; science-based works like The Lost Fleet series by James Campbell, Leviathan Wakes by S.A. Corey, and the Vatta's War series by Elizabeth Moon. I started wondering why the starships in RTS games don't move like they really would in space. During my research I found this really cool website, which we've mentioned before, that talks about how Hollywood and most video games get movement in space all wrong. It's funny that some classic arcade game – Asteroids, Space Wars, and Lunar Lander for example – model spaceship motion more accurately than most games do today. There are notable exceptions – Kerbal Space Program for one, but I'm not aware of a single RTS game that tries to model Newtonian movement. The more I thought about it, the more excited I got about the tactical challenges and fun involved in commanding starships in battle according to their actual physics. So we made the decision early on to make starship movement in XO as real as possible. Anyone who's taken Physics 101 will recall that an object in motion will remain in motion without an equal and opposing reaction. This means that if your thrusters are firing, you're going to keep moving faster and faster and won't slow down – ever – until you thrust in the opposite direction. In XO, this dynamic forces you to be very thoughtful about engaging enemies, carefully consider how far away you're willing to travel from the rest of the fleet, and changes how you plan and coordinate movement orders. Right now we're not trying to model everything perfectly. For example, at the moment we're not modeling gravity. I'm not convinced that gravity would make for an interesting game experience, and the effort it would take to do it right is high. If we have the time, I'd like to try it and see if it improves the feeling. Forgive the bad pun, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter. We've also decided to limit the gameplay to two dimensions, because as awesome as Homeworld was (and other games of that ilk) plotting courses in 3D and fiddling with the camera detracted from my personal enjoyment of the game (I know, I'm guilty of being Khan and thinking in a 2D plane). For XO, a 2D plane makes the tactical situation easier to comprehend and therefore faster to play, which helps keep the game flowing and the intensity high. Sometimes your ship will need to travel in unusual ways to reach it's destination; the fastest course is often not the obvious one. The first time you see you battleship performing a weird loop, or spinning around as it approaches it's destination it may throw you off (as we saw while people tried our pre-alpha demo a couple weeks back). We've paid a lot of attention to that and worked hard to implement some pretty cool tools that make the experience fun and easy. I've always wanted to be able to coordinate an attack on an enemy force and have multiple units arrive at a certain time from different places. So we've added options to flank left or right, intercept straight on or attack from behind, and then give the player the power to adjust the time it takes for each ship (or formation of ships) to arrive with an ETA slider. As you drag the ETA slider you'll see your course line change in real-time, allowing you to experiment and make adjustments on the fly as befits the tactical situation. With these tools you can coordinate an attack to happen at the exact same time from multiple angles, with multiple groups of forces. You can plan attacks in waves, or plot a course that allows civilian ships to try to punch through enemy lines in a specific amount of time after the attack force. You can orchestrate your entire strategy while the game is paused, and then watch it unfold in real-time. Of course, you'll be able to adjust these orders at any time in case things go awry. And that, to me, is the role of an Admiral – your position in XO is that of a tactician, not a micro manager. When we started down this path, we quickly learned that this was no easy feat; the calculations required were vastly more complex than the way it's normally done. It's taken us months of effort to hone the feeling and accuracy of movement. I'm really happy with the results so far, and I think players are ready for the challenge. - Brian Jamison @jmpdrv

Steam Greenlight Concepts

XO is up on Steam Greenlight! We've launched the game under "Concepts" to get some early feedback, so please take a look and let us know what you think. We'll be updating this page with new screenshots, videos, and more details on features and mechanics throughout the next few of weeks. Visit our page to watch a new teaser video.

XO at the Science Museum

Just a quick update on how things went at the OMSI: After Dark event... We brought a pre-alpha test demo to the Oregon Science and Industry Museum on Wednesday for their adults only After Dark night.  There were 2,160 people who attended (according to OMSI's event planner) which is the max capacity - so it was one-in, one-out for awhile! This was an interesting setting for XO - it's an RTS game after all, and I'd say most of the people who attended don't play a lot of strategy games.  There was a wide range of features to check out, even a lock-picking class in the same room (something I really want to learn now.)  We saw quite a few people sit down and didn't understand that they needed to use the keyboard, which is admittedly a little on us since our control scheme print-outs were hard to read in dimmed lighting.  We need to bring some book-lights for future expos.

It was cool to see some people understand the game with very little instruction, and really important to take note of where players were getting confused.  We learned a lot just from watching everyone play, and we got a chance to try out our new expo gear.  With the TVs 7 feet in the air we didn't have to creep over everyone's shoulders while they played, which was nice. It wasn't an easy decision to spring for the Displays2Go TV rack, but after last night I'm really glad we made the investment.  People were crowding around and the elevated screens made sure everyone got to see what was happening.  We're hoping to make it out to as many indie game events as we can this year, and we'll be bringing this thing with us every time.  We also had a short gameplay trailer looping on the right side - something I just threw together in iMovie this week, but it still worked out great! We're fixing a few bugs and adding a few features for the Game Developer's Collective 1st Annual Indie Night this Saturday, so if you're around Seattle for Emerald City Comic Con, drop in and say hi - it's free!

- Corey Warning

@coreywarning

  P.S. - check out a little write up about us in this week's Portland Mercury!

Postmortem: My First Year At GDC

The dust has settled from this year's GDC. I sorted every business card I swapped, followed up with new friends, and discussed (in great detail) the feedback I received for XO with the rest of the team. Looking back on the past week, I started thinking about what went well, some mistakes that were made, and how to plan for the next big con. Here's what I learned:     Planning ahead: Before leaving for San Fransisco, I researched everything I could find on the Game Developers Conference. Postmortems, tips on networking & pitching your game, and what parties I needed to attend. It helped me set a certain expectation for the week to come, but I learned the most from just showing up and experiencing as many different parts of the convention as I could. For my first year I went with the basic expo pass. My main goal for the week was to show XO to as many people as possible, gain valuable feedback from players and other developers, and check out some unique booth setups for inspiration (we'll be out there showcasing our game soon!) I'm glad I wore comfortable shoes (a tip I read in almost every pre-GDC article out there). I did make the mistake of overpacking my backpack on day 1, however... as cool as it would have been to Streetpass all day, I didn't need my 3DS on me at all times.  Since I didn't know if I'd be able to make it back to the place I was staying between events, I brought a fresh shirt, a light jacket, gum, and deodorant to freshen up before hitting the parties. That was a good call. I also packed a couple pens so I could write notes on the business cards I got. I made sure to jot down a few keywords about the people I met right away since my stack of cards piled up quickly. I ended up staying with a friend who lived about 30-40 minutes away by public transportation. I also had a couple friends staying at the same place. While it was amazing to have free lodging available, I ended up running late every single day. We only had 1 spare key, so all of us needed to leave and arrive together. It's hard to get a group up and moving on time, especially if your schedules are different, so next time I'll want to stay closer and make sure I'm able to come and go as I please.  I've heard that the hostels nearby are extremely fun, but get booked up quickly.  I'd like to try that next year. Also, BART and MUNI are 2 separate things – and you have to put your card in the reader as you exit, or your pass gets voided and you'll be charged for a full trip across town. I learned that one the hard way...   Practice your pitch: This is, without a doubt, the most important thing I did to prepare for GDC. Let's start with the elevator pitch. Here's what we started with: “XO is a sci-fi RTS game with procedural and rogue-like elements.” This doesn't really tell you anything about the game. There's plenty of procedural mechanics out there, and lots of rogue-likes, RTS, & sci-fi games. Nothing here stands out or catches your attention. After several iterations, we went with this: “XO is a hard sci-fi game where you command a ragtag fleet of starships against an unbeatable enemy. You'll be evacuating refugees, scrounging for resources, and assembling your fleet from one jump-point to the next. Your goal is to save what's left of humanity.” This hooked the listener almost every time, and usually led to a full demo run-through on my laptop. While I was showcasing the game, I made sure to share details on what's happening on-screen. Allowing room for questions and feedback is important, and I tried to stop and let others ask questions or share their thoughts as much as possible. The goal was to make my pitch into a conversation rather than a speech. Along with the elevator pitch, I spent a lot of time working to make all of my talking points concise. I had answers ready for questions like, “what kind of game is this” - “what makes it unique/different” - “so it's just like 'THAT OTHER GAME?'” By roleplaying these scenarios with my team, I felt confident and avoided those deer-in-headlights moments when you're hit with a question you don't know how to answer. Role-playing can feel pretty silly, but I promise it's worth it.     Showing off your game: It's easy to let imposter syndrome sink in on day 1 at GDC. It was much bigger than I anticipated – packed with folks from every corner of the game industry, and almost everyone has their own project that they're just as excited to pitch. However, after meeting other devs, I started to realize that I wasn't the only one feeling my way through each day. While it's true that most attendees have their own agenda, in my experiences devs were just as excited to try XO and share their thoughts as they were to show me their own game. Since we didn't have a booth, or scheduled demo space anywhere around the convention, I had to improvise with some guerrilla marketing. We spent 2 weeks building a scripted demo that I could run through in about 10-15 minutes, and if I couldn't get to my Macbook (if it was too crowded, noisy, or an inappropriate situation) I had screenshots and videos loaded in my phone so I could easily show the art style and vibe of the game. My personal opinion is to not force these kind of opportunities. I just made sure I was showing up to events that allowed me a chance to set up shop. The free mixers and meet-ups were perfect for this, and by changing my desktop wallpaper to an interesting screenshot from the game, I also managed to pull some people in while charging my laptop in the hallway between expo floors. On that note: make sure you're fully charged! After playing my game in front of people for about an hour, I noticed my battery was completely zapped. Next year I'll remember to bring a spare. After the first day, I remembered to exit the game and put my computer to sleep whenever I wasn't actively showing the demo, which got me through the other nights.   Meeting with press/publishers/etc: Here's where things could have gone better... I should have been contacting press very early on. As I've heard from several sources, everyone gets booked up quickly. I could have tried waving down those with the red “PRESS” flags walking by, but as I mentioned above, I try not to force these things. At the end of the day, I actually met more press during random encounters than by reaching out via twitter and e-mail ahead of time. This leads to another great point:     Go with friends: If you don't know a group of people that are attending GDC, I would suggest finding other devs to meet up with before heading out. I feel that this should be just as important as contacting press, or setting up meetings with publishers. I was very lucky in this instance – there's a great community called Portland Indie Game Squad here in town, and several members were at GDC all week. We had a Twitter group message going at all times, I played games with friends, and was introduced to twice as many people as I would have been if I was flying solo.  This was the 2nd or 3rd GDC for some of my friends, so tagging along with them was extremely helpful throughout the week.   The parties: Go to Wild Rumpus. Go to Pow x4 (it will be 5 next year). Go to IGF awards. If you get invited to a party and don't have any plans, go. I'd also recommend checking out GameLoading: Rise of the Indies, a great documentary about indie game culture and some of the hot issues surrounding the industry at the moment.  I missed out on Lost Levels, and after hearing so many good things about it, I won't make that mistake again. Every party that required purchasing a ticket ended up being worth the price. I wouldn't freak out if you miss something here and there... I RSVP'd to as many events as I could a few weeks out, but couldn't make it to even half of the ones I put in my calendar, or simply couldn't get an invite. I tried to take as many pictures as possible, tagged my tweets accordingly, and mingled my ass off. I also learned a long time ago not to get too drunk at these things.  Don't forget to drink water, and don't burp in people's faces (this actually happened to me a couple times...)     Even though I had never been to GDC before, and I'm not familiar with the San Francsisco area, I had the bright idea to organize a /r/gamedev subreddit meetup close to Moscone Center. While The Eventbrite page had 200 reservations, only about 10 people showed up. I believe this was due to the venue being about 2 miles from GDC (something that could have been avoided with earlier planning and a small budget) and confusion over which day it was happening. I switched the date from Thursday to Wednesday a week before the event to avoid a conflicting party, which didn't matter in the end since Lost Levels announced their party right after I pulled the trigger. Luckily, I met a handful of very talented people which made the trek out to Zeitgeist worth my time. Now that my initiation is complete, I can't wait until GDC 2016... and most likely every year to follow.  It's also got me very excited for some of the other events we're planning on attending: iFEST, PAX Prime, Bit Bash, IndieCade, and Indie Game Con right here in Oregon are all on the horizon! - Corey Warning @coreywarning

The battleship is one of the most important pieces in XO. It's the closest thing to the hero of the game. This is a one-of-a kind starship; it's your Galactica – from there you command your fleet. The fate of humanity is literally riding on this craft, so we wanted everything about it to be remarkable. We knew it'd be challenging to create a unique, iconic ship. Artists have been designing spaceships for a long, long time now – from the early classics like Buck Rogers and The War of the Worlds to modern works like Firefly and Interstellar. Being fans of hard sci-fi, we set out to design the starships in XO as realistically as possible. We researched every aspect we could imagine, from the fuel they would likely use to the weapons, armor, and even deck layouts. A few websites were a tremendous help, but shedding nearly a century of starship designs that were more fiction than science required a fundamental shift in thinking. For example, most starships represented in popular culture are designed like Earth-bound ships that float in the sea; their decks are parallel to the direction of thrust. They assume magical technology like artificial gravity and inertial dampers. Without those dubious things, every time the ship accelerated everyone would be flattened against the walls. Our human ships in XO are designed more like a skyscraper, with the engine in the basement. When they're accelerating, they provide what feels like normal gravity for the crew.     We wanted a utilitarian look for all the human ships, with nothing wasted on aesthetics, and where function drove design. Because of the cost and weight involved in maintaining pressurized crew areas, the majority of every ship is in hard vacuum. The heavy armor plating our military ships have is angled to help defect or reduce damage from laser and kinetic-based weapons. These hard angles naturally give the ship a threatening form. All of the crew areas are surrounded with water storage to help protect them from radiation and provide an insulating layer. Also, the bridge isn't visible – it's located in the center of the craft where it is least likely to be hit. Protecting the battleship from an obvious weakness like an exposed bridge should be a top priority. Speaking of weaknesses, let's talk about windows. If you had a battleship in space, there's no way you're going to put windows on the thing! They'd be too easy to target with a laser or be damaged by acceleration stress, and looking out a window would expose you to dramatically shifting light levels due to maneuvering. After briefing our artist Brian Davis on several of these key points, he went to work bringing the battleship to life. Brian knocked it out of the park right away; we made some small tweaks, but the design you see is fundamentally from his first concept.     One of the first pieces you might notice is that giant eye in the center of the ship. This is the Control Moment Gyroscope, which helps flip the battleship without using thrusters. This way you're able to quickly swing your weapons around in the heat of battle. We wanted this ship outfitted with weapons which would be practical in space combat. Laser cannons, it turns out, are more complex than they appear. They're only useful if they consume gigawatts of energy. Interestingly, most of that power is waste heat, and if you don't have a way to dump that heat your ship will literally melt! So we added giant, redundant radiator fins to keep that waste heat under control. The battleship can lose three out of its four armored fins and still keep shooting. While laser cannons are great for long range combat, they suffer from a low rate-of-fire – mostly from the need to dissipate all that heat. The battleship's flak cannons are the best bet when it comes to close quarters combat. Battlestar Galactica's flak cannons from the 2004 TV series were something I've always wanted to control. I love the idea of having a ship that could lay down a thick flak screen like the Battlestars were able to do, and was gratified to find that multiple sources cite them as being quite useful in space. The only downside is that they would be easy to dodge given enough time, so they're best suited for short range defense. The same cannons can also be loaded with a non-explosive round. These are sometimes called point defense cannons, and their kinetic rounds are fired at extremely close distances where ships or missiles can't dodge them. The sandcaster is a technology that I've always found particularly intriguing. This goes back to my days playing Traveller, one of the first sci-fi, face-to-face roleplaying games. Sandcasters do just what the name suggests; they cast out sand in huge clouds that block lasers. The sand would also damage ships running into it at high speed, potentially destroying them. There's some debate on whether or not this technology would be effective, but I think it's too cool to leave out.  It's an interesting defensive tool that totally changes the nature of space combat, and opens up possibilities for defensive screening that I can't wait to explore. Those spinal mount weapons you see are particle accelerators. They pack quite a punch, and their range is better than the flak and point defense cannons, all while using less power than the laser cannons and having a greater rate of fire. On the downside, they require the entire length of the ship to accelerate the particle, so there is a limit on how many you can have. Your battleship won't be outfitted with all of these weapons from the beginning. You'll be scrounging for weapons at military caches and depots, from derelicts and wrecks, upgrading or changing your load-out as you progress in the game.     We did have to make one big concession. As far as we know today, there's no way to travel faster than the speed of light, so one of the elements that falls into the hand-waving department is the faster than light drive. We've at least tried to tie it to ideas that are internally consistent – if you have to jump, it would be from one giant mass to another, it requires quite a lot of fuel, and you have to spin up your drives before you can jump, which takes time. The engines that power the battleship are based on what scientists believe fusion drives will actually be like, using deuterium-tritium fusion. The battleship and several other ships in the fleet are also equipped with hydrogen ram scoops, so they can skim the surface of gas giants for emergency refueling (although there will be several other ways to get fuel in the game). We'll talk more about fuel in a future post as that plays a large role in the game.     The easiest comparison for the finished look of the battleship is the original Tron movie from 1982, which we're drawing some visual inspiration from. When we were looking at the Recognizer in the movie, we were drawn to the flat shaded polys. We needed more detail that would translate well in vector and convey the size of the battleship, which you can see when you zoom in close. Using edge detection in Unity3D, we took Brian's 3D model and created the hyper stylized vectorized ship and dropped it into the XO universe. This brings us to what the battleship currently looks like in the game.     We're still early in development, but we'd love to hear what you think about the science behind XO, our visual look, or anything else. We'll be talking quite a bit more about the hard sci-fi approach we're taking in XO in the near future, so be sure to sign up for our mailing list and follow us on Twitter. - Brian Jamison @jmpdrv

Inspirations for XO

Jumpdrive Studios is wrapping up our 5th week of development for XO, and since we haven't openly shared much about the game yet, we'd like to introduce some of the concepts and inspirations we've been working with to create the universe.

Gameplay In XO, you play as the commander of a rag-tag fleet of starships trying to escape an unbeatable enemy. Your job is to save as much of humanity as you possibly can. Every time you emerge from a jump, you'll have to make quick decisions, with few resources and little time before you're forced to jump again to avoid destruction. It will be difficult, and honestly, the first few times you play you're likely to fail. Playing XO is about being a leader in desperate times and making the most of a losing situation. It's a different take on the real-time strategy (RTS) game. Rather than building empires or colonizing new planets, you'll be giving tactical orders and reacting to how those commands play out in real time.

We want to capture the difficulty of being far from home while fighting a war of attrition. You'll have to make the hard decisions; which members of your fleet to keep safe and healthy, who you must leave behind, and sometimes who to sacrifice. Each time you play the game, these social and political elements can play out differently. You could choose to command in a militant fashion and wind up with a mutiny on your hands, or try to take care of everyone's needs and end up being demolished by the enemy. Triaging these competing demands will play a large part on your experience as well as your outcome.

Early Art We're really fortunate to be working with Brian Davis, an artist who's worked with Atari on San Francisco Rush 2049 and many other games. We'll have a lot more to say about our visual style and art as development progresses, but here's an early look.

We'll be talking in-depth about the process of going from concept to finished artwork soon (so make sure and subscribe!)

Conception The idea for XO was dreamed up many years ago, back when I was busy with other entrepreneurial endeavors. We've drawn inspiration from many sources – the 2004 Battlestar Galactica TV series, the Lost Fleet sci-fi book series, rogue-like games such as FTL, World War II convoys, pioneer stories of the Oregon Trail, and even my own experiences running small businesses through two economic meltdowns.

For all of us at Jumpdrive Studios, XO is the sci-fi game we've been waiting for – that's why we're making it. We are building a truly strategic game free of micro-management, that really gives you the feeling of being the commander. It's a game I've desperately want to play, and I've waited long enough.

XO is being built in Unity3D and will be available on PC, Mac, and Linux.

- Brian Jamison @jmpdrv

Global Game Jam 2015 - Recap

What a weekend...

We were happy to sponsor Portland's GGJ site at the Art Institute with PIGsquad.  Friday night was technically our first public appearance, where we announced the launch of our new company, and our first project: XO, to the local community of game-makers and game-enthusiasts. 

There were over 100 jammers on site, all bringing their own talent and ideas to the table one-by-one. After each rapid-fire introduction, everyone started forming into groups for the weekend.  I teamed up with Justin Baldwin and Yori Kvitchko from SleepNinja Games (another indie game studio right here in Portland) and Andrew Pomeroy.  

We were up past 5am on Saturday night, and the result was a 2-4 player co-op game called Umbilicus: Descent Team Delta.  You can download it free on the Global Game Jam site, along with all the other great games made over the weekend. (I would highly recommend checking out Shitty Voltron and He & Us)

- Corey: @coreywarning

Photo credit: Ben Snortum See more here

We'll be speaking / introducing ourselves at Global Game Jam with PIGSquad tonight at The Art Institute of Portland, see you there!