I'm extremely thrilled and happy to finally be revealing "my own" game, Star Fighters!
I've been working on this game during my free time over the last four years, and have spend over 2,200 hours (i.e. 13+ man-months) building it in Unreal Engine 4. The PROTOTYPE of the game is now available for anyone to download on Steam by visiting its product page (note: look for the "Download Demo" link on the right side) or starfighters.gg which will also redirect you to the Steam product page (^^).
What is Star Fighters?
Star Fighters is a cross-platform online multiplayer game. It is intended to be enjoyed by ANYONE with any half-decent machine capable of playing videogames (even low-spec PCs or mobile phones!), and the game format was chosen specifically so that it could be played with every control interface currently available for gaming; from keyboard-and-mouse to gamepads and even touch interfaces.
The "Prototype Reveal" Trailer
The concept for this game was actually conceived all the way back in 2011 when I became certain that the future of gaming lied with cross-platform gaming (i.e. that we should be able to play the same game with ANY of our friends, regardless of the platform on which they play games), and the game format is heavily inspired by XPilot which I had played in college in computer labs back in 1995 (...which I later learned was inspired by Thrust, which was apparently inspired by Gravitar, which was likely inspired by Asteroids which was undoubtedly inspired by Space Wars).
Screenshot of XPilot
The reasons for choosing the XPilot / Space Wars format were:
The game needed to be simple enough for everyone to be able to play, and be playable with even the simplest input interface (i.e. the mobile touch screen)
The game needed to be simple enough to run on every machine used for gaming. In other words, the game couldn't depend on flashy graphics, high resolutions/framerates or complicated logic calculations.
The successes of games such as Angry Birds, Candy Crush and League of Legends, which all "borrowed" core gameplay elements from older games (Tanks, Bejewled and the WC3 DOTA Mod, respectively) but made them "better" by building them for the 21st century audience, convinced me that the same could be achieved with the Space Wars format; one of the OLDEST videogames with real-time gameplay
Ultimately, my aspiration was (is?) to make this a ubiquitous game that anyone can play casually or seriously, like how Solitaire or Minesweeper were during the (good old) 90s; games that you could play mindlessly to kill time and enjoy yourself.
Try it in Windowed Mode!
In fact, I recommend playing this game in WINDOWED mode in the corner of your screen when you're bored at work (ideally w/ friends ^^). Boss key not included (you know you're old if you get this reference)!
What is this Prototype
As I mentioned earlier, this is the PROTOTYPE of the game. This Spring 2021 build represents only 5% of my full vision for a "commercial release version" of the game. Just to list the biggest parts that are missing which come to mind:
The game is meant to be a "full spectrum" cross-platform game, meaning it should be playable on EVERY system you could reasonably imagine. Listing them explicitly, the target platforms would include: PC/Mac/Linux, ALL PlayStations (including the Vita! ^^), ALL XBoxes, All Nintendo systems, all Smartphones and Tablets that a normal person would buy, all Game-streaming services AND Smart TVs. But alas, this prototype only supports PC, Mac and Linux systems. (A Mobile client also exists as an early prototype, but I have no practical way to maintain and distribute it)
The game should have much more content & polish. Right now there are around eleven (11) weapons and six (6) ship types, only one (1) map, and the weapons & leveling systems are barely balanced. There should be at least four times more content available for launch, with a constant stream of newer and unique/crazier weapons/items and maps being added. Oh, and it should look MUCH prettier than this. (I had to make all of this myself, and I honestly have NO ART SKILLS)
The gameplay systems are VERY basic, and only include the bare minimum features needed to convey the BASIC IDEA of the game. And it only includes a one-dimensional gameplay loop. The full design includes multiple additional gameplay loops that are layered on top of the current loop that serve to amplify and deepen the strategies and meta-strategies that people can explore while playing the game. Call me crazy ambitious, but the idea was to provide enough depth for people to continue playing the game for DECADES, and not mere months or years.
An early iteration of Star Fighter's game loop
Oh yeah, and NO MONETIZATION. Ultimately, monetization for this game is designed around Ammo Points (APs), which are needed to use the more powerful weapons in the game (in this prototype, it's needed to fire rockets and missiles); the concept is actually borrowed from World of Tanks, although this game wouldn't be nearly as aggressive as WoT in trying to make people spend money; the game SHOULD be balanced so that it is playable/enjoyed without having to spend money, as long as you are playing deliberately/smartly (i.e. no mindless spamming of homing missiles!). As I said: This game wants to be like Solitaire and Minesweeper; and both were free games.
So, the overall lack of features, and its current simplicity is not due to the lack of ideas. It is just due to the lack of time (and, if I'm being honest, my lack of skill/expertise to build all of these by myself). If I were to build all of this by myself, at the current pace it'd take another 20 years, so... ;)
The Journey
Honestly, this was a much longer journey than I could have imagined when I first started tinkering with Unity3D ten years ago.
Despite my computer science background, and having occasionally dipped my toes in computer programming since I was a kid, I found myself working a strictly "business-oriented" job (i.e. "BizDev") by my mid-30s. But, all of us in this industry secretly want to make games. One day, in 2010, I was listening to the Capcom-Unity podcast when my boss at the time (Christian Svensson who is now my boss's boss) was the guest. As he was answering a listener's question, "how do I get into the games industry", he shared that anyone could download Unreal Engine 3 and learn to make games themselves, and I downloaded UE3 that weekend to start experimenting.
And while it turned out that UE3 was not the right tool for me at the time (UE3 was primarily designed for shooters (IMO), and I was simply not ready to jump into the deep end of game engines), it ultimately led me to Unity3D, and by 2014 I had a working version of Star Fighter's predecessor, .Pilot (pronounced "dot pilot") that I built in Unity3D. But .Pilot had tons of technical limitations, and I never intended for it to be made available for public consumption. It was also fundamentally a P2P game (i.e. no dedicated servers) and simply wouldn't have survived the open internet (i.e. hackers). And, for a while, that's all it was; just an interesting side project.
.Pilot (2014)
But in 2017, in my early consulting years, I decided to try re-making the game "from scratch", but this time in Unreal Engine 4. After all, Unreal Engine is THE prestigious "professional" tool in our industry, and I really wanted to learn how to use it. So, bringing all the learnings from my experience building .Pilot, and with the intent of learning UE4 once and for all, I started building Star Fighters. It was made in C++, with the goal of making the underlying tech as robust as possible (remember I said I wanted the game to last "decades"? ^^). A lot of work has actually gone under the hood to optimize the bandwidth/performance of the game & to create a unique gaming experience for players.
A perk of being a solo-developer: Pen-and-Paper Project Management still works ^^;
And by the end of 2018, a little less than 2 years later, 90% of the work that you see today was complete. But, the consulting workload, my later joining PlayStation, subsequently moving to Japan, and the non-stop international business trips that my current job required made it impossible for me to complete this prototype.
Then COVID hit, and ironically gave me the opportunity to bring it across the finish(?) line to finally introduce this to you folks.
What to Expect
First, yes, this IS just a prototype. But it is also intended to be "complete" enough with a fully-enclosed and functioning gameplay loop. Yet it's buggy as hell! Seriously, testing a multiplayer game as a solo developer was by far one of the hardest parts in making this game.
From one of the earlier multiplayer tests.
I was using three separate computers and running multiple copies
on each machine to run a bandwidth test.
That said, while the game is "intended" to be a "Games as a Service" product, this is likely as far as I will be able to take this game. As enjoyable and rewarding as this whole experience has been, and tempting as it is to continue adding more content and improving the experience for those who may appreciate the game, I doubt I can continue to work on the game as I have until now. Finding 2,200+ hours to work on this was no simple challenge, and there are too many other things I've wanted (and need) to do that I've had to put aside for this game in recent years, including:
Leaning Chinese (my next ten-year project!)
Writing these blogs again (Vox Clamantis in Deserto!! lol)
PLAYING MORE VIDEOGAMES! (because my career actually depends on it!!!)
Still, I might make an exception when Unreal Engine 5 releases later this year. I definitely want to see if I can convert the project to UE5. (Not that this game needs the tech!)
I'm going to miss wrestling with my own code on these monitors
Thanking Folks...
Credit and thanks where they are due... I need to thank my friends Leo and Sungsoo for always being there when I need their help. Leo (aka uberLAB), for delivering good music for my ideas whenever I need them. All music and sound you hear in this game were provided by Leo, and it's important to note that Leo actually HATES making sound effects, but grit his teeth through it just for me. And thank you Sungsoo for always helping out with server infrastructure. The Leaderboard is all his work, and was the one feature that would have taken me way too much time to figure out how to implement on my own!
One of Leo (uberLAB)'s albums, Fatima Crisis
And, as I've already said last year, thank you Epic Games for making this powerful game engine available for me to use, for free. As finicky as this engine turned out to be, I am honestly amazed at how well it all holds together. And the final product quality + performance is simply amazing.
FINALLY, folks are welcome to steal my ideas, or "be inspired" by what you see in Star Fighters. After all, and as I said earlier, this was inspired by another game that was inspired by another game that was inspired by another, etc. BUT(!), if you do, might I ask that you also give me credit, please? ;)
The Discord channel for Star Fighters can be found at: https://discord.gg/UtkRTxwpnF
Enjoy!
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