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Complex Evo
🕑 Added 2018-10-16 18:05:00 +0000 UTC We're releasing the new build, it took a long time and it will take some more, but it will worth the wait.Sorry for this long silence, and thanks for the constant support, we worked and thought a lot during these hot months.
Complex is taking a new life and a new line, this is necessary for our motivation and for the game in general.
We would like to call this project Complex Evo (evolution).
Although we will continue to add races and features, improving the multiplayer experience, we're developing a new amazing game mode based on wide exploration, surviving, a story, a dynamic environment and huge maps.
We want to tell a story of migrants, nomads fighting for their life, starting where Homeworld ended (the Eye of Araan has been found).
Our objective is to create an huge free world full of interactive objects, planets, hidden enemies, nebulae and dust clouds, full of derelicts and mysterious areas to explore.
We're trying to make something of really amazing, It's really a new concept of game, based on the HWRM engine and the new features of Complex, improved UI and content; this combination allows us to have a solid base to work on, at the best speed and functionality, so we can respect what we're promising.
-the story
Episode 1…
The episode starts with the final part of the latest video from HW2 (the Eye of Aarran has been found. Karan S'Jet starts through the gate with the Sajuuk and the 3 hyperspace cores). Information about Karan S'Jet will be lost from this moment.
Our story starts 200 years after, Hiigara is at peace, the Hiigarans have improved their technologies, mining for the most.
A scavenger, on a normal mining operation around Hiigara, on approaching a huge asteroid field is hit by a powerful EMP shot of unknown origin and goes out of control. The Scavenger hurtles towards the asteroids.
Alarm activated! The closest Perimeter Station instantly launches a fleet of interceptors and activates the super sensor to investigate what happened there.
It finds a strong signal coming from an unknown area inside a big nebula. The signal is insanely strong!
When the signal is discovered the scavenger regains control of its engine and can stop before impact, the ship and it's crew is safe.
After few minutes the Perimeter Station reports that something of unknown origin reactivated the engine of the Scavenger when the signal was discovered, implying that someone wanted to be found. It turns out to be an emergency help signal.
Someone was searching for a contact. Someone was calling us.
An expedition is quickly organized to head for the mysterious hidden location inside the nebula where the signal was coming from. The expedition consists a carrier, with some fighters and corvettes docked on board.
Once the location is reached, after passing through a dangerous asteroid field, the surprise is beyond imagination: an ancient vessel abandoned many years ago is relaying the signal, masking its origin. The vessel is a famous ship, from a legend which tells of a mothership which 2 centuries ago saved the Hiigarans from the Vaygr menace.
The final location of this Mothership was lost.
This ship is the Pride Of Hiigara (it was abandoned by Karan S'Jet before she killed the Vaygr and entered into the Eye of Aarran, the legend says, it was HW2).
A code red operation is quickly organized to recover the Pride of Hiigara and to discover what has been hidden inside, why the ship is relaying a strong indecipherable signal of unknown origin.
Operations start, a scaffold (HW1, revisited) is sent to the location. Repair operations commence, and the signal is analysed.
On decoding the signal, a shocking truth comes out: The Eye of Aarran was a terrible trap, the Progenitors said, in principle, that “someday someone will bring them the three cores, a big battle between the most powerful races will decide who is the chosen one, who will have the privilege". Now that things have happened they are ready for the final prophecy - only one race, their objective: the extinction of all the other races in the universe.
The Progenitors will jump from the Eye of Aarran very soon, ruthlessly, with massively powerful fleets of ships!
Once decoded and this terrible menace is understand, the Hiigarans discover many new technologies within the Pride of Hiigara, unknown until then. Karan S'Jet lead them to the mothership with the mystery signal, and she is ready to transfer herself at the end of the procedure: to do this she needs the help of the Hiigarans, and the surrounding perimeter stations can do the job.
Karan S'Jet came back from the Eye of Aarran, from exile, she will never tell what happened there.
She discovered and took from of the Eye an ancient secret of the Progenitors, they know this and they will hound Karan S'Jet to the death!
So now the only possibility to save herself and the Hiigarans is to repair the Pride of Hiigara, quickly, and start again, this time not for the Homeworld, but to save their own lives, to survive, to repel the most ancient and powerful race of the universe, and to protect the secret of the universe.
The new Pride Of Hiigara, sets out, ahead is the vastness of empty space. It can transport a population of 10,000 persons. Those left behind will soon die, a sacrifice of millions of Hiigaran, when the Progenitors will come, (Hiigara on the background), it is inevitable, but the race must survive.
Resources are few, and the journey will be long and full of enemies. But the new systems discovered and installed by Karan S'Jet are based on cloaking tech, so the new Mothership can hide itself like a shadow in space, to survive against the odds.
Episode 2...
-gameplay
The free world is the concept, you have a mission: survive, the Keepers are behind you; to do this you have to travel in space, harvesting resources, finding food for your people, discovering new technologies, exploring unknown areas.
Enemies are around and you must be stealthy else they will find you, you have an advanced occultation system on your Mothership, you can use the environment, such as the dust clouds, to be more furtive.
You can also attack the enemy settlements; using scouts you can easily understand how strong they are, do a silent approach, engage a violent battle, kill them improving your skill and increasing your ships experience, steal everything you need for your survival, then restart and hide your trails.
Enemies are automatically generated around you when you interact with them, this system permits to generate the huge world and makes the enemy growing harmonically, you have the impression to move in a dynamic universe that grows, moves and breaths.
-the Mothership
It's your home, it's what remains of your people, it's your last hope.
Exploring the space you have to control your Mothership as never before, you must focus your activities on it, taking care of any aspect of the vessel, any action of the Mothership can modify the game parameters and the surrounding world and viceversa.
We are preparing the most complex, armed and customizable Mothership ever, equipped with tunable powerful engines, upgradable energy reactors, research centers, hangars, lodging and barracks, huge storage capacity for foods/resources, and a lot of weapons and subsystems.
-population and food
This is a story of migrants, nomads, you must keep alive your people and improve your crew travelling in space, so your population is the first factor, the population will grow during your travel and will die in battle.
You must trade and store containers of food in your huge hangar to cover what your population need, also you will be able to produce food by yourself exploring new areas and discovering new technologies.
People also need a place to stay, so your Mothership will improve, you must build accomodations and barracks to make this happen.
-energy
The game environment is dynamic, it means that your ships react differently based on where they are moving.
This means that close to the stars you have more energy for your fleet but you have to improve your shields to avoid to be burned.
At the contrary, exploring remote and cold areas, you have to protect your ship from extreme temperature and the lack of energy.
To achieve this we have implemented a new energy management system, that can handle and list a lot of information such as the hull temperature and the energy consume/production of all systems of the ships.
-cloaking system
Exploring the space, you must be silent and cloaked. The enemies, hidden everywhere, attack you only if they hear you.
A new system based on the occlusion has been developed, it reacts with the engine noise/power, weapons, resourcing, any noisy action of your ships can make you an easy prey for the enemies.
By your side you have tons of technologies to discover, improving your cloaking countermeasures.
The UI can show when you're completely hidden, by the cloak bar, for this feature we are inspired by the submarine games.
-resources
There are tons of resource in the universe, asteroids, debris, mining bases and megaliths, but differently then the standard Complex environment they're hidden, so you must search and discover them, of course you have an advanced set of sensors and a new sonar system, they can be developed and improved.
The sensation that we want to transmit is the loneliness, the loss, you're alone in the infinite space, every step must be evaluated, every risk awake the enemies, any single piece of resource is important for the survival of your people.
Plan, collect your needs, watch the space, set an objective, calculate the distance, prepare your Mothership, travel and collect all the resources in your way.
-stars
One star is present in the map, it provides a lot of energy to your fleet due to the light emission and radiations, but it also damages your ships if they try to get close to it.
Around the star you find the most of resources, megaliths, other interesting and mysterious things, maybe the worst enemies, so get there if you have the technology, the skill, and a very powerful Mothership.
In this case this is a very safe place for growing and hiding.
-unique technologies
They're scattered in the universe, inside the derelicts or owned by the enemies Mothership, you must move your Mothership, search for them, combat and win, in order to salvage and acquire them.
We want the player to move and fight for each new weapon technology, they're precious and they make your fleet unique, so prepare to deal for them, prepare to defend them.
Differently then the standard Complex, the new technologies can't be unlocked simply researching or building a prerequisite, but in Complex Evo the player search for them, fight for them, he must protect them like a treasure, because the technologies can give him unique, rare, powerful abilities, because they can enable weapons and defenses that surprise the enemies.
-dynamic environment
Asteroids moves random around the map, but your sonar system can intercept them, it warns you if they are in collision with your Mothership, be sure to have the engine and/or weapons fully operative in this case.
Stars release flares randomly, very vast and powerful, sure you have a warn from your research center, but your shield must be ready to be activated immediately.
In both situations you understand how much important is to have a consistent amount of available energy.
-planets
Planets can provide for food, the Mothership can dock and take containers of food in exchange of resources.
Planets also are safe zones where nobody can use weapons.
Enter in peace, make your transaction, then you have a limit of time to come back to your travel.
-nebulae
important part of the game, nebulas are huge and full of resources, you need the anti radiation shield for surfing inside them.
There are many types of nebulae, an accurate system can show you how much damage your ship can support based on your shields upgrade and the power of the nebula you're inside of.
The UI has been improved to take care of this aspect, as well as new FXs have been introduced to well represent the radiation damage on hull.
-dust clouds
the dust clouds can help your fleet to be hidden from the enemies, moving through them you can avoid bad surprises but your systems will suffer the lack of energy and the low temperature. Even in this case the UI can show the temperature of the hull, so you can directly see the effect on the energy production, population grow and ship health.
-derelicts
derelicts play a very important role in Complex Evo because they contain the technologies, searching through ancient battlefields you can salvage and discover new technologies opening new lines of upgrades, unlocking new weapons and subsystems.
Derelicts can be salvaged and docked inside the hangar, this means that, destroying enemy vessels, you can salvage the wrecks after the explosion, acquiring new technologies and abilities.
-megaliths
we follow the original line of Complex, no big changes here, so megaliths can be captured, each megalith improves a specific ability (hyperspace, radiation resistance, and so on), they are distributed in space usually near areas of interest, such as nebulae, planets and so on.
-music
this is a very significant part of the game, we need something of epic, tragic, the soundtrack must remember that your people are defending ourselves from a terrible menace, the soundtrack must conduct you through the dark part of the universe, so the Homeworld soundtrack is abandoned, we're collecting electronic epic songs and maybe the whole story will be assigned to only one musician and composer, we're in the final stage of the negotiation.
-RPG
this is a strategy game at first, but we want to highlight the RPG aspect of it, like in Complex 13 there are several lines of upgrades that you can go through discovering derelicts, then building modules.
The difference is that the UI holds and shows your progress in a detailed list so you always know how your progress is for any characteristic, this assign to you a specific role (for example harvester, warrior, explorator, shadow…) and you can work on it, improving it at maximum and unlocking extra features.
This will add variety at the game because an "explorator" will move around the map trying to find resources and technologies, a "warrior" will try to find enemy to engage, an "harvester" will try to join alliances to make always more money for building superweapons, a "shadow" will try to stay hidden inside the dust clouds.
The technologies are limited, not all players can discover and develop the same technology/ability at the same time, this goes to different way to play, different roles, different way to evolve; the replicability and the differentiation are our first objectives.
-AI
The CPU players have been scripted from scratch, they are integral part of the universe now, so expect a completely new behavior, they defend the area and the ships are launched only when a menace invades the area (this save system resources and permits to have the huge world permanently updated), they attack rarely, only when they see your Mothership (because it's not hidden), only when you are a menace or if you have something they are interested for in your hangar (food, resources or technologies).
Also, the attacks take time, so in most of cases you will be advised about the imminent attack, so maybe you can trade or you can prepare the defense.
-development
this kind of development takes more time then the previous versions because we're approaching to a new game style and progression, we know really well the HWRM engine, and this is an enormous advantage, we know the limits and where we can go, we've a new concept of game to handle.
We want to consign a very good first build, playable, satisfying, because we need a real feedback to work on, the build will be available not before the end of November.
It's the longer step, then, we will be able to release builds every 2-3 weeks as usual, until the public release scheduled for March 2019.
The public release will feature the Kadeshi (fully playable), the first episode of the Campaign (the story above) and the huge map (Solar System) with the new game mode fully implemented.
It's a great new challenge, we're creating new material to work and move on.
I hope that even this time you believe in us.
-importance of your pledge
we need voice actors, music, new unique FXs, also the graphic aspect, in later stage, will need to be reinforced.
On my side I must invest more time in this, even a partial stop from my real job is necessary.
You understand how much important is your contribution, what I ask now is to be constant, so do your pledge only if you intend to support us for a reasonable period, the necessary time to realize if our work worth your pledge.
The goal is fixed to 2500, getting to the goal this time is crucial.
Thank You very much, beghins.
Comments
Hello! I recently joined and am very excited about this project. How do I join the Dev forum? Also I received a download of version 13.4 I think that is the same as the Steam upload, am I correct? Is there a Dev version that is Patron only? Cheers!
the public version when will be released?
