Finding The Enemies

An important aspect of protecting the bee colonies is detecting enemies as early as possibly so you can intercept the most dangerous ones with your drone.

The drone is always going to be your best weapon available so making sure you're in the right place at the right time is critical to keeping the bees safe.

Introducing Sensors

In Drone Warfare enemies are detected using a variety of sensors. The drone itself as well as the drone case where the drone is launched from each have their own sensors which are represented as sensor circles when viewing the in-game overhead map.



If enemies come into range of the drone case, or the drone flies near to an enemy, then they are marked as "detected" and shown as red dots on the map. Detected enemies are then relayed to your drone's HUD and shown in its scanner panel (located on the right of the HUD):



Zoomed in:



Sensor Turrets

Using just the drone and drone case sensors would leave a lot of the map uncovered, meaning you'd have to rely on sight alone to locate undetected enemies.

That's where Sensor Turrets come in. These can be deployed around the environment by using your drone to build them in locations that maximise enemy detection.



Sensor turrets also provide another function which is monitoring and relaying data about the bee's nest itself. You'll need to build a sensor turret near to the nest for the drone's HUD to report data about the nest's health (and also show its location on the overhead map):



The scanner panel in the HUD also needs 3 or more sensor turrets to be built before it can come online:



Bear in mind turrets can be destroyed, or rendered useless by enemies or environmental conditions, so they may need replacing if the drone's HUD is suddenly not reporting what it should!

Effective Detection

Having enough sensors to effectively (and efficiently) cover as much map area as possible is critical to maximising protection of the bee colonies under your care.



There is a cost to building turrets so you must decide whether to deploy traditional defences (machine guns, SAMs, etc) or passive ones like sensors.

Distance from the drone case is another important consideration when building turrets, which I'll cover in a future post.

Thanks for reading,

Faster Time Games.

Handheld Gaming

With this year's releases of Windows based gaming handhelds, and of course the upcoming launch of the Steam Deck in 2022, I really wanted to see if Drone Warfare could run on these platforms.

Drone Warfare provides gamepad support already (Xbox and PS4/5 controllers) and so should work well on these handhelds which offer similar control inputs.

The big question is if the game can actually offer enough FPS to run optimally on this class of hardware. I've been targeting a GTX 1060 class GPU for the PC version, so optimising the game to run on these devices may prove to be a challenge.

First though I'd need a device to work with and target optimisations at.

I'm hoping for a Steam Deck devkit from Valve at some point, and have a retail one ordered for Q2 2022, but that's going to be a while away.

So I picked up an Aya Neo via their IndieGoGo campaign earlier in the year.

Aya Neo

And it really is a thing of beauty!



I got the lower specced AMD Ryzen 5 4500U version (rather than the Pro which has a Ryzen 7 4800U) and features integrated Radeon Vega graphics and 16GB of LPDDR4x RAM.

The screen is 800p and accepts touch input too, so it's a pretty similar form factor to the Steam Deck, albeit lacking the touchpad inputs as well as the additional GPU horsepower that the Steam Deck has (I believe we're talking > 50% more because of the RDNA2 GPU in the Steam Deck compared to the Vega GPU in the Aya Neo).

Optimising

So how to get Drone Warfare running on the Aya Neo?

The 800p screen of the Neo (and Steam Deck) is actually a great performance provider compared to standard PCs which usually target 1080p or higher resolutions.

The lower resolution allows for low draw distances in scenes, and we can also get away with smaller textures. We can also tweak the LOD (Level Of Detail) of the in game objects as there's no need to see them as clearly when in the background.

Fortunately I'd already implemented a comprehensive selection of graphics options that can be enabled/disabled in game, including AMD's FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) technology.



By trialling different FX options, I've been able to work out a good mix of effects and performance that currently allow the game to run around 30fps on the Neo.

There should be more performance to gain in the future (it's still early days development wise) but I already love playing Drone Warfare on the Aya Neo. It's going to be a great help when iterating through build testing as I can take it anywhere!

"Annnd Action!"

Here's a short clip (GIF) taken from my digicam:



The clip shows the game running with storm conditions enabled which are the most intensive in the game.

You can view a better quality (and longer) version of the above footage on YouTube. Please note that the sound captured by the digicam is pretty tinny so apologies for that!



The Future

It's going to be great seeing how Drone Warfare runs on the Steam Deck. I should hopefully be able to enable more effects AND deliver more performance.

I'll also be implementing touch input for the in game interface which will enable more usability than just the gamepad alone.

I'll post more updates regarding these in the future once further progress has been made. :)

Anyway, this is probably my last update for 2021 so I hope everyone has a safe, joyful, and peaceful Christmas holiday!

I'll catch up with you all again in 2022!

Cheers,

Faster Time Games.

Tactics

I've been looking at introducing tactical elements when attacking enemies that go beyond just unleashing your weapons and avoiding theirs.

By implementing defences for certain enemy types, some forethought is going to be needed when engaging them.

Enemy Classes

All enemies in Drone Warfare take the form of insects you find in nature, although they are usually much, much, larger than real life examples.

The current build of the game only features butterfly enemy types and of these there are 4 base/natural classes which have different stats (health/armour/speed/weapons/threat level) and are easily identifiable by their colours (Blue, Red, Green, and White).

Introducing the Prototypes

If you kill enough of the base/natural enemies then there's a chance that another class of enemies might appear - the prototypes:



Enemy prototypes are earlier versions of the natural looking enemies and have a chrome/metallic appearance to them. They are usually much tougher, and sometimes larger, than their base siblings.

The prototype versions of the butterflies also include missile flare countermeasures which are pretty effective at mis-directing your drone's missiles. Unleashing a full salvo of missiles at a prototype only to find them all wasted because of the countermeasures is pretty annoying to say the least! :)



Insectoid Classes

If the prototypes aren't challenging enough then prepare for the Insectoid classes! Each insect type includes an Insectoid class which is basically a boss level version of that enemy.



Insectoids usually come with special abilities or weapons. In the case of the butterflies, this is an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) defence that generates a spherical wave that quickly expands out from its center.

If the drone is caught in the wave then the HUD disappears and there is a temporary loss of flight control. This is similar to a nearby lightning strike during storm conditions (see the previous post).



The EMP is triggered by a damage limit. If the enemy receives enough damage in a given length of time, then the EMP is launched which disables the drone and any ground turret caught in its wave.

Couple that with a fairly decent health recharge rate, along with missile flares, and these insectoids can be pretty tricky to take down!

Thanks for reading,

Faster Time Games.

Time And Weather

Development is progressing well with the implementation of various weather effects and time of day conditions that can change the gameplay in Drone Warfare radically.

Clear/Sunny



Clear conditions present the ideal (easiest) state of each scene/environment in the game. View distance is unrestricted and the honey bees are out in force searching for their favourite flowers to harvest pollen and nectar.

Fog/Mist



With fog/mist conditions the view distance is restricted which forces you to rely on your sensors and in-game map to determine threats beyond your view range. However the bees still forage for nectar similarly to how they would in clear conditions.

Rain



Rain conditions also restrict view distance, but this time there is also a limit to how many bees are foraging for flowers. This affects how quickly the nest replenishes its nectar reserves which in turn restricts the nest's ability to birth new bees.

Rain drops can also randomly hit the drone causing damage from the impact, albeit limited.

Night



Exploring and defending the environments in Drone Warfare at night time can be the most restrictive. Night missions may include any of the weather conditions highlighted in this post, however these are also compounded by the night vision desaturating all colours from the scene. This makes it difficult to prioritise enemies by sight alone.

The honey bees won't forage for flowers at night time either so the nest is particularly vulnerable.

Storm



Storm conditions in the day or night are the most hazardous. The honey bees will remain in their nest due to the driving rain which is also a danger to the drone itself. Rain drops will hit the drone more frequently, and with greater force, resulting in more damage.

Even worse are the lightning strikes. Distant strikes may glitch the display, however nearby strikes will interfere with the drone's systems. This results in temporary loss of flight control, the HUD disappearing, and the screen whiting-out.

Loss of flight control can cause the drone to drop like a stone so it's recommended to keep some altitude during a storm, particularly when flying over water!



Until next time,

Faster Time Games.

Missiles and Clouds

Spent this last week fixing some of the many issues I've got in my to-do list. Some of these problems manifested in the footage I recorded for the trailer a couple of weeks ago:

1) Missile zig-zagging



You can see the messed up missile trails caused by background threaded movement logic which was out of sync with updates on the main thread. A better implementation of how the background thread processed before updating the main thread fixed this, and also fixed the ghosting seen with UI missile indicators (rotating triangles around the missiles).

This clip shows the fixed missile trails:



2) Ground mist effects were clipping the terrain.

Not easy to show this in an image, and not that exciting anyway, so I won't try. However I've implemented a different shader for the mist particles which has mostly resolved the problem and improved the visuals in the scene where these effects are located. I'll still look into improving these further in the future though.

I've also reduced the number of particles generated by these mist clouds (but increased their opacity to compensate) to reduce overhead when flying through them.

3) Implemented a vacuum effect when collecting resource clouds.

Previously the cloud remained in place as the drone flew through it, but now follows the drone as it dissipates:



It's work in progress but gives the player some additional feedback (there's already sound FX) that they flew through the cloud successfully and collected its resources.

4) Improved the narrative handling logic.

This enables the narrative and vocals to continue to play even if the player has completed the mission by returning the drone to the dronecase. There is still the option to ignore the narrative and leave the scene early, but previously the narrative actually stopped without finishing which left the player hanging if they were reading/listening along.



Cheers,

Faster Time Games.

State of the Game - Summer '21

It's been a while since the last update (there was an update?) but here we are in Summer 2021 and it's time to talk about where the game is at.

I started working on Drone Warfare (DW) in early 2018 alongside a separate (unannounced and still unreleased!) VR title. Although time was split fairly evenly between the two games it's fair to say that DW development is now in its 3rd year (cue The Simpsons "So Far" meme).

DW is a 3D shooter and tower defence hybrid. You pilot your bee drone against a wide variety of enemies all hell-bent on destroying bee colonies you've been tasked with defending in different environments. To help you the game provides weapons galore as well as tower/turret defences to deploy.

That's the plan anyway.

With the game's focus on defending bees I wanted the player to be involved from a bee's perspective, and be able to fly a drone that for all intents and purposes looks like a bee, but obviously isn't. Welcome to the H-Bee-01 prototype drone:



Being able to control and fly the drone in a detailed interactive environment, as well as directly attack enemies, is perhaps the most important thing I feel the game needs to get right. So this has been my primary focus so far.

It's taken quite some time for me to get the flight model into a state where it feels natural enough to learn yet complex to master, and so rewards repeat plays. It's still WIP, and no doubt will be until the game's release, but I'm actually, finally, "happy" with it after tinkering for so long.

And that's a good place to be - I can actually get on with implementing the rest of the game!

The "tower defence hybrid" part of the description is where the game starts to become something different. I want DW to deliver what looks like a warzone on a micro scale with multiple battles between defenses and attackers happening throughout each of the game's environments.

Enter the turrets.



These can be built anywhere in the environment except directly on the ground. Rocks, tree trunks, logs, etc are all game.

With so many enemies attacking you quickly learn that turrets in key positions help turn the tide against overwhelming odds.



Let's defend those bees!

Cheers,

Faster Time Games.

Hi all,

Following the end of the Steam Game Festival, the first Drone Warfare demo is now closed.

Thank-you to everyone who tried out this early version of Drone Warfare!

Apologies for the demo being controller only at this stage, I'll implement Mouse + Keyboard support as a priority moving forward.

I'm planning a new demo soon which will introduce the Tower Defense aspect of the game alongside ramping up the challenge presented by a wider variety of enemy creatures!

Thanks again for your time and interest in Drone Warfare,

Faster Time Games.

Hi all,

The Drone Warfare demo is now available to download and play during the Steam Game Festival through to Feb 9th 10AM (PST) 2021.

As mentioned previously, this is a pre-alpha version of the game and features a rough narrative and some simple enemy waves to get a feel for the flight and combat mechanics at this early stage of the game's development.

Please note the demo requires a controller to play (e.g. Xbox/PS4/Switch Pro), and the minimum requirements are pretty steep.

Feedback for the demo can be left in the Demo Feedback discussion group - let me know your impressions to how it plays!

Thanks for your time and interest,

Faster Time Games.

Hi all,

A Drone Warfare demo will be available from Feb 3rd 10AM through to Feb 9th 10AM (PST) 2021.

This is a pre-alpha version of the game and features a rough narrative and some simple enemy waves to get a feel for the flight and combat mechanics at this very early stage!

Please note the demo requires a controller to play (e.g. Xbox/PS4), and the minimum requirements are pretty steep. These are necessary for playing at 1080p/30fps with some of the higher-end VFX enabled.

K+M support will of course be in the final game, as will every performance improvement and optimization I can think of! :)

All feedback is most welcome and I'll setup some discussion groups for this purpose just prior to the demo going live.

Let's defend those Bees!

Cheers,

Faster Time Games.

Every game needs its starting point and in Drone Warfare that's the "Dronecase".



This is where your tiny bee drone is launched from and you can see it in motion in the following video:

https://youtu.be/kk-bZCubqIU
As well as being the launching point for your drone, the case will also show a record of which upgrades and modules you've implemented (although this isn't shown in the video).

I'm planning a fully fledged upgrade tree for Drone Warfare so players can enhance the flight dynamics, weapons, and other (unannounced) features of the bee drone as the game progresses.

Thanks for watching & reading!