Flagship is a RTS (real-time-strategy) game with support for the Oculus Rift that aims to put you in command of a fleet of spaceships. The game is controlled from a first person perspective with the player as the captain working from the bridge of the fleet’s lead ship. Players will command their fleet with the help of the crew and see the action unfold in space around them.
Flagship is looking to raise £95,000 on Kickstarter and it’s currently 39% of the way there. I spoke with one of the title’s developers, Brad Jeffrey to learn more about the project.
Flagship Q&A with Developer Brad Jeffrey
Road to VR: What are your plans for integrating STEM? Do you have a Razer Hydra to prototype with?
Jeffrey: We don’t actually have any Sixense hardware yet, we held off buying a set of Razer Hydra controllers as we were originally expecting the STEM devkits earlier in the year. Unfortunately there was a shipping delay as Sixense updated the design (for the better, I think), but they should start shipping in the next month or so. Unity integration seems reasonably simple, so from there it’s just a case of making the various systems onboard the ship work in a way that feels natural with motion controllers. The most obvious way would be to allow the player to just touch the controls with their hands, though in the case of larger interfaces like the map table, a laser pointer style interface may make more sense. The STEM system also opens up possibilities for offering fully 3D holographic interfaces that aren’t as feasible when using keyboard and mouse.
Road to VR: Who is the development team and what is their dev experience, especially with regards to RTS?
Jeffrey: Urban Logic games is made up of myself (Brad) and my brother Matt. We’ve both been tinkering with making games and mods for about 20 years. Matt is a freelance video producer by trade, but he’s also an experienced musician and 3D modeller. I’m a lead web developer as my day job, and I’ve had experience on mobile apps and data-driven applications. My biggest claim to fame is being one of the lead texture artists on Star Wars Quake: Call of the Force (aka SWTC). It was a pretty famous mod at the time, but that’s going back a few years! We’ve both been fans of the RTS games since the 90s, but space strategy games in particular always left us wanting to get a little closer to the action. We’ve been bouncing around the idea for Flagship for years, but it wasn’t until about a year and a half ago we felt we’d acquired the knowledge and skills necessary to build it.
Road to VR: Will the crew have personalities, strengths/weaknesses, and will you be able to choose, promote, demote, or discharge them?
Jeffrey: The aim is for your bridge crew to have distinct personalities, along with other department heads such as the chief engineer, the bartender, and the wing commander etc. Beyond that, it depends how far we can stretch our voice acting budget. You probably won’t be promoting and demoting individual crew members, for now we’re focusing on ship simulation aspects that are directly connected to combat and strategy. Ships in your fleet will level up providing they survive long enough, but this will probably be a per-ship stat.
Road to VR: Aside from the bridge, what can players expect to do inside of the flagship?
Jeffrey: You’ll most likely only leave the bridge during the down-time between battles. There will be consoles in your ready room dedicated to building your fleet and managing your empire. Engineering will contain systems you can calibrate to get extra performance (think Geordi La Forge tinkering in engineering to get that extra 1% out of the warp core). Other areas, such as the rec-room, will provide a way of getting to know your crew through interactive cutscenes.
Road to VR: What’s your favorite VR game so far? Which version of the Rift are you deving with?
Jeffrey: I’m not sure it qualifies as a game, but I loved Titans of Space. It was one of the first VR experiences that really made me think that this time VR was really going to go somewhere. It’s maybe a bit bare-bones presentation wise, but there are some pretty startling moments in that demo, and a real sense of scale. More recently, the Radial-G demo was really cool. I would have expected a game that moved you around so quickly to bring on motion sickness, but for whatever reason it didn’t at all.
We’re developing on the DK1 at the moment, I haven’t quite been able to save enough to get the DK2, but we’re hoping to get our hands on one soon.
In a Kickstarter update, the developers demonstrate the immense scale of one of many solar systems in which combat will take place: