Infinity: Battlescape – the Game with No Loading Screens

Ever wanted to play a procedurally generated multiplayer space sim where you can wage war with hundreds of other players with no loading screens? Well you’ll soon be able to on PC with Infinity: Battlescape.

Infinity: Battlescape

Infinity: Battlescape is on Kickstarter and has already raised over $60,000 out of their $300,000 goal in just 2 days. It’s currently being developed by a small indie studio called I-Novae Studios who created their own engine just for this game, and their team consists of virtual reality and game industry veterans who’ve worked on games including Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Unreal Tournament 3, Microsoft Flight Simulator 10, and Forza Motorsports 2.

In this game, you join one of three competing corporations of the Starfold Confederacy that are fighting to control the procedurally generated solar system full of planets, moons, asteroid belts, and other celestial phenomenon. The main goal is to destroy your enemies and their infrastructure with your powerful capital ships armed with weapons of mass destruction. You’ll also have an army of smaller spacecraft such as bombers, interceptors, and corvettes.

For each match, each team is allocated a certain combination of space stations, planetary bases, factories, and AI controlled defense turrets. Each player will start off with a moderate amount of credits which they can use towards ships and equipment. Every few minutes a factory will spawn a cargo ship which will then carry over raw materials to the nearest space station or planetary base to process into credits. The credits will be split evenly amongst the team, but if the cargo ship is destroyed, the credits will be lost forever. Credits can also be donated to other members of the team.

Light to Medium Spacecraft

These small ships will be controlled in the 1st person, with twitch based newtonian controls which provide players with high speed battles in space. The team has implemented a flight model that makes each planet a unique experience based on drag, thrust to weight ratio, atmospheric density, and turbulence.

• Interceptors – Standard, fast, sleek, and highly maneuverable, these are used to destroy light enemy spacecraft.
• Fighters – Just like interceptors, they are quite fast and maneuverable, however, they don’t have the ability to attack infrastructure (this will only be available if the $500k stretch goal is reached).
• Bombers – Bigger than the fighters and with less defense capability, a group of them can cause heavy damage to enemy capital ships and infrastructure.
• Corvettes – These are the bangers of the four ships. Basically tanks, these are armed with independently targeting turrets which allow for a 360 degree arc of fire. They don’t hit as hard as the bomber, but a group of them can take out weaker capital ships with ease.

Capital Starships

These large ships are the heavy hitters of the fleet and will be controlled in 3rd person. Each weapon on the ship can individually be controlled to target different enemies, or they can be focused on a single enemy. There are three types of capital ships:

• Destroyers – they are the smallest of the three and are the most maneuverable ships that have light weapons and can protect the fleet from fighters and bombers.
• Cruisers – These have heavy weapons that can demolish infrastructure and capital ships, however, they are vulnerable against bombers that have long range weaponry.
• Carriers – These are mobile spawn points capable of launching refueling, and refitting small to medium spacecraft. Each carrier has a finite amount of spawnable ships, but its squadrons can be replenished at a space station or base. It is the least equipped of the three in terms of weapons and is quite vulnerable when alone.

The I-Novae Engine

The team realized that there wasn’t any technology available that would let them fully realize their vision of a seamless transition from the surface of one planet to another without loading screens. So they created the I-Novae Engine which is a revolutionary new game engine that cuts out these annoying pauses in gameplay.

If you want this game to come alive, here is the Kickstarter.