Different gamers have different tastes, and different expectations when it comes to experience games. In space, there are those who prefer the experience of being a pilot or ship captain, flying ships through the galaxy. And then, there are those who prefer to be in the shoes of a commander or an emperor, commanding large armies or building stellar empires. Paul Zakrzewski is convinced that all those roles could, or should be experienced in the same game. And this is what he’s looking to accomplish with Void Destroyer, to combine space combat simulation with real-time strategy, in the same game.
Void Destroyer has been Paul’s labor of love for the past 4 years. He’s the solo developer of this game. And, he says to see himself developing it and expanding it for the rest of his life, and that that would be a life well spent. Now, he turns to Kickstarter to, I imagine, gain more visibility as his game approaches completion, and also to secure extra funds for art assets. Paul proposes three gameplay modes combined into a single game: you can fly any ship under your command (ship mode); command a capital ship (command mode) and manage your economy (tactical mode).
A lot of gameplay is already developed, judging from the videos. Paul says that Void Destroyer is in fact in “late alpha”, with most of the release features already in. The main focus from this point forward is to “polish, finish the story line and getting and implementing feedback from players”, says Paul. But, there are big plans for stretch goals too, although Paul will only consider those after the initial release. “I would not pursue Stretch goals until after the commercial release as to not delay it”.
Paul Zakrzewski’s Void Destroyer proposal in a nutshell:
- 3D space combat sim and real-time strategy hybrid
- Newtonian flight model
- Fly any ship, command capital ships, manage your economy (research, build, manage)
- Single-player campaign and custom maps generated by Battle Editor (single-player only)
- Highly moddable, including modding tool upon release
- Joystick and mouse support
- Windows PC
- $10 pledge to get the game (digital download)
- ETA: beta in July 2013; release on November 2013.
- Target: $20,000 (July 1st, 6:47pm EDT)
- Why Kickstarter: Help fund 2D art, 3D art, sound effects and music tracks.
This is a very ambitious project. “The goal is to achieve the best space sim ever made.”, says Paul. Now that’s saying something :) And, if Paul didn’t have so much to show already I would have serious doubts that this could be accomplished by a single guy. I mean, there’s a whole space combat sim experience there. And, on top of that you have a strategy layer, which upon completion could rival with other RTS games on the market, including Homeworld, a game which Paul openly says to have been a huge inspiration. And, one can surely tell.
There’s a demo available, if you feel like taking Void Destroyer for a spin. I did took it for a spin and had a good time doing some space dogfight. That part of gameplay feels already quite solid, and good looking too.
Subscribe RSS
18 Comments
Related Articles:
- Void Destroyer Goal Achieved, Final Stretch for new Factions
- Void Destroyer Review
- Void of Darkness: A Little Ship Exploring a Big Universe
- 3D Space Adventure Kinetic Void Needs You to Kickstart
- Strike Suit Zero: Space Combat Action Sim Released
Loading ...
I’ll have to check out the demo later. I always felt like a space sim and RTS could make a perfectly happy marriage… like Allegiance. Now there was a game that was super fun, it’s too bad it never really took off.
Looks pretty good actually, combat looked quite fluid and the rts homeworld like. Will check it out!
Thanks guys – and thank you Adam for posting this.
If anyone has any questions please don’t hesitate.
I’ll be throwing $15 at this next week, just blew a ton of money from my paypal buying SC for Planetside 2 lol. This game looks pretty damn sweet.
-Be advised fleet, Command is relocating.-
This is an interesting concept, but I’m sorry, the demo didn’t advance the cause.
Mouse steering wasn’t supported on the demo (the latest, and it advertised that it supported mouse steering), and you had to download and install a patch that was supposed to solve the problem. Didn’t work for me, and when I couldn’t control the ship, I decided to uninstall the demo. That didn’t work either: it left the shortcut, directory, and main program, all of which had to be uninstalled by hand.
I appreciate that this is an “alpha” release, but these errors are pretty basic, particularly for a game that has been in development for several years.
Sorry for the issues. If you don’t like the state of the game in alpha – please check the game out later. Hope it works better for you.
To my knowledge and tests the mouse steering is fixed. I will look into this again.
The patch is only for those who downloaded earlier. While it has been in development for a long time, this is actually the first patch I’ve done, I guess maybe it is doing more harm then good in terms of uninstall troubles.
Paul
Whooa, looking seriously awesome!
Thanks Benji!
Jeff P – I fixed 2 crash bugs, and made sure tha teh mouse steering works – if yours still doesn’t (with the new installer) then you might have a controller hookeed up to your PC and then that would take precendence. Also I believe I fixed the patch uninstall issues.
Thanks for the quick action. I’ll give it another try this weekend.
will there be y-axis movement for the tactical mode?
Its there already – when “unfocused/unfollowing” an object (F key or move mouse to corners of screen) pressing Q or E will move the Y – works like most RTS maps with WASD but with the added QE for 3D :)
is there going to be a planetary settlement ?
Not at release. Maybe post.
hi m8 you say your thinking of adding a FPS eliment to the game… i am wondering in what context.
i like the look of it am a big space sim and rts fan x3 is amazing at bringing these two concepts together i look fwd to finding out what your game like
regards
Brave
FPS aspects – so currently you can send in marine frigates to invade enemy bases to take them over. This is where the FPS aspects would kick in – when you send in the marine frigates you’d get to participate in the fight to take over the base. Probably via a “mecha” – since in game you are in the command ship – you’d remotely control a mecha – the cool aspect is that a mecha can be upgraded etc :)
That’s the dream. Via limiting the FPS aspects to base invasions only (at the start) this wouldn’t be as complex as full FPS everywhere type deal.
thanks for the question and I hope you enjoy the demo.
I’m really excited for the newtonian flight model. For once I’d like to see a developer that realizes that spaceships are not fighter jets.
Will this game use true Newtonian physics (mass, velocity, acceleration, momentum, etc) in which an accelerating object continues to accelerate without top speed (no need for relativistic effects please)? Another physics concept is how in past RTS games a shot fired from a moving ship does not get the velocity vector of the ship firing the shot added to it, its trajectory is as though the firing ship was stationary. In most space based games movement is governed like naval combat, big slow moving ships because ships are in water, small craft move like planes, in space there is nothing that says a big ship can’t go fast (just a mater of how long it takes to speed up and slow down).
Is there any plan to add large objects to the in game map like massive asteroids or moons or planets? I imagine that to scale planets would be more of a barrier at the edge of a map. Would gravity be taken into account?