Skywatch #22 - Development Update

Good afternoon all and welcome back to the July edition of the Lost Skies Skywatch.

Another busy month for us at Bossa HQ. We’ve been ploughing through a massive list of improvements, new features, tweaks and bug fixes that have been gathered over the last few months from us, our friends at Humble and the OpenDev community playing the game. On a personal note, I always find these parts of the development process the most enjoyable - the chance to play a functioning part of the game and tune it little by little to make it the best it can possibly be. It’s the process where every member of the team can make a real difference.

The Skywhale

I know Luke teased the Skywhales on Discord a week or so ago - so I feel I have to start with that this month. What can I say, they’re epic in the skies - you can hear them from far away before they gradually appear in the distance. These ancient creatures hold a vital resource - but you'll need a ship and the appropriate equipment to reign them in (see the harpoon down the page). They’re still early in development and I haven’t actually come across one in the sky yet in my game but I know others have and the sense of awe you get, even when we have seen them in development is great. There's still plenty more work to do on them - but it’s another step in making the world of Lost Skies feel alive.

Ship Building

Ship building, and having the ship as your base, really is something that draws people into Lost Skies. It’s a place where you can lose yourself trying to create your perfect vision. For that to be enjoyable the tools to build the ship need to be easy to use while giving you the flexibility to create that vision. Over the last month, we’ve been working on one of the big pieces of feedback around making bigger open-plan deck areas with less pillars - it sounds simple, but trust me, it’s not! Here’s a preview of a deck with no pillars

Another thing being worked on is Double Sided Material Panels - giving the user the ability to make walls, panels, decks and ceilings within their ships that look different from each side. Something again, that just gives you that feeling when you’re building your ship that it’s yours and you’re not constrained by the tool limitations.

The video below shows that being implemented but is obviously lacking any UI and UX the feature will need before release.

Making the ships look nice is also a necessity and our art team have been putting together some lovely stuff that can be placed on the ship when building it. Below you’ll see some of the new assets that you’ll be able to implement as part of your ship.

And below are the concepts for the harpoons you can build and place as well Ship Figureheads that can be placed on the Bow

And last but not least for Ship Building we’ve been working on the VFX for some of the guns/cannons. As you can see we’re evoking the power these weapons have

Skytravel

After building your ship you’re going to want to fly it - and again that needs to feel as you’d expect. There’s lots of physics going on here - but we want the materials you build the ship with and the equipment you add to it will be big factors in how nimble, agile, and strong it is. We then have to get that feeling across to the player when they’re flying their ship. So a lot of work has been done in this area over the last month.

We’ve also been working on how the weaponry feels once in battle and the damage that they dish out. Again, we want the players to feel the power (weak or heavy) depending on the weapon choice and also be fun to use. So lots of effort has gone in here too.

UI/UX

As much as it’s not a back-of-the-box feature the UI and UX are massively important to how we enjoy the game - so it’s something we’re working on constantly throughout the development process. This month we’ve been improving the Build screens, unifying the flow a little to reduce those clicks and button presses

And here’s a first crack at the Ark Computer - which will be a hugely important tool throughout the game.

Windfalls

One of the big barriers in Lost Skies between regions is weather. Taking a small ship and trying to cross into a new region just isn’t going to happen. You need to search for resources, find schematics and build and craft parts for your ships to make them strong enough to take on the weather you’ll encounter. The windfalls are part of the epic travel that climaxes to your time in a region and the story of a new region beginning. These are really hard to build visually in a world like Lost Skies - that has a dynamic cloud system that isn’t just using a normal skybox - but we’ve managed it and that’s started being added this month as well.

The above is only some of what we’ve been working on this month but I’m going to hold some back to do a bigger update on the Sky Bosses.

I hope you enjoy and see the progress the team is making with all the hard work we’re putting in.

Until next time - Anthony