Dev Blog 2: Airships

Hello again, Elysians!  As promised, here is the first of many Development Blogs for Echoes of Elysium and brought to you by the team at Loric Games. The team is super excited to start sharing their work with all of you and hearing what you think.

Over the last month the team has been laser focused on our airships and all things that we are doing to make designing, building, flying and living on them super cool.  Lets kick off by talking about one of the most important parts of the game, AIRSHIPS!

As you know, airships are the core of our game, they are more than just transportation, they are the place that you live, where you do most of your gathering and crafting, and a place that you will call home.  The team is currently focused on the different kit pieces that players can use to build their ships.  Walls, floors, bows, rudders and more are all being designed and placed into the game for us to experiment with.  Here are a bunch of examples of the types of ships that the team have built and flown.

“We have made a dramatic shift away from the standard things you see and do in most survival RPGs.  No more punching trees and building shacks.  Your airships provide everything you need to survive, but it is up to you to design it, build it and protect it.  The sky's the limit, along with your imagination!”
-Jeff, Chief Production Officer

We have also been working the design around airship energy systems and the effect of weight and size when you build and fly a ship.  The design for Liftium ore, a mystical Elysian resource that enables flight, and the push and pull between small, fast ships with limited space and lumbering mining vessels with giant storage capacity - it's coming together well.

Flying your airship.  What would an airship be without a great flying experience?  We have been playing around with a bunch of different control schemes, camera angle experiments, player animations, speed, collision and much more.

“You're going to be steering a variety of ships - some heavy, some fast, some outrageous. I wanted to have the player who's in charge of the helm look like they're really working to maneuver these contraptions. For now, we're blending between four animation states (down, up, left, right) using something called a Blend Tree in Unity.”
-Sophia, Animator

Airship collision is a big part of the flying system that we are working on right now.  What happens when an airship hits another ship?  The ground?  Trees?  Etc..?  How much damage does the ship and its various pieces take? All of these questions and more are being posed, answered and implemented into the game as we speak!

"Making our world feel dynamic is important to us, which is why we're working on integrating a Physics Engine. The first step is to generate collision data for the terrain and all of the static structures, giving creatures, airships, and projectiles something to interact with."
-James, Technical Director

Drydocks are ancient ruins scattered throughout the islands of Elysium that do several things; They can unlock new and interesting airships parts and designs.  They give hints to the mysteries of the past and story moments.  Most importantly, they are the place that you can dock, design, upgrade, build and repair your ships. 

Drydock examples:

Drydocks also help to design the size and shape of your airships.  During your explorations of Elysium, you will find all sorts of drydocks of various shapes, sizes and with different airship part unlocks. We are currently working on the artist look of the drydocks, their size in the game, how they can be upgraded and the tools available to build your fleet of ships.

“We will use this kit to build a variety of clockwork ruins in the game. Our world of Elysium will be getting a lot more clockwork technology in it and this is a big step in that direction.”
-Ilya, Art Director

Building a ship at a Drydock

"Working on airships has been a really great avenue of getting to work with different people across different disciplines on the team, and seeing the results of our work and ideas relatively quickly!"
-Alejandro, Engineer

OK!  I think that is it for now.  We have A LOT more to talk about in our next update.  Would you rather hear and see details on (more!) Airships, or hear about our procedural world generation system, or we could go into detail on the harvesting, gathering and crafting mechanics?  Let us know and we will show it to you!

Until next time.
-J