From The Depths
Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 10:57 pm
Hello. I'd like to take a lot of your time to talk about one of my favorite games, From The Depths!
It's on steam. It's in alpha, most updates are just bugfixes and a few pieces of new content. ATM of typing this I have experienced VERY little in the line of bugs.
Its a "minecraft" game where you build ships and watch it all get blown to shit by the AI's ships. No crafting system, you just open inventory and pick what you want, so long you have the needed resources gathered from drilling the ocean floor.
This does have more physics than minecraft. Blocks don't magically float, Ships bob about the water realistically, ships can get "flooded" and sink, canons have recoil and rock the ship.
But the thing that makes this game for me is the customization and complexity of what you can build.
AND! the interface is great! All you need to know is on screen all the time and not in a 'in your face' way. All the items in the inventory have nice popups that explain their purpose/how they work/how they're placed, quick and clear with links to in game help page that'll explain everything.
It's also got a lot of good tutorials. Honestly you'll never need to Alt+Tab+Google+Wiki.
I was able to build a lazer easily.
And building stuff is really easy but complex if you want to get specific results.
You can pick one of the simple cannons/lazer/missle to stick to your ship or build your own custom. eg. cannons: plonk the firing piece on a rotatable turret, stick barrels on the front of it till its long enough, add six-way-connectors to give more points to attach things, attach gauge increases to upgrade the caliber, add auto-loaders till your satisfied with the reload speed, add ammo boxes till its got enough for sustained fire, and then add either AP boxes or HE boxes to add some armor penetration or explosiveness.
and that's that. the turret will spin itself and try to point the barrel in the direction your pointing then middle mouse button to open fire(yes, middle click, left click is for your pistol)
Though you'll want to think more than just THE BIGGEST CANNON with 0.20sec reload and max armor penetrations and tons of explosives cause A)that will eat ammo B) unless that's build on a truly fucking COLLOSAL ship it's going to immediately flip your ship over with the recoil or it'll just sink to the depths.
And applying AI to your ships can be very easy so you don't have to aim your guns yourself or make a fleet of smaller ships to follow your flagship.
Well I lie, the fleet thing is a lil hard if you want a decent following fleet
but making AI controlled cannons are as easy as sticking the desired weapon on top of a weapon controller and putting a mainframe next to the controller and hey presto! the gun will automatically point and shoot at any enemies, wont be very accurate, to get it to lead shots or priorities enemies you'll have to add a few extra bits to the AI mainframe.
Game modes are...
designer: basically sandbox, infinite resources, and you can save ship designs and you can spawn any of the AI's ships so you can stomp on some of Deepwater guard's weaker ships OR watch the mighty battleships of the Onyx watch send your hard worked on ship/fleet to the murky depths of Davy Jones locker
Story missions: simple missions with objectives like -defend this outpost- and -speed past the enemy blockade in your fastest ship- and you can either use that mission's ships or use your own custom ships(hint, use your own, the ones they give ya is pretty crap) also these missions will unlock some important parts for you: lazer missile defense, sails, smoke dispensers and the HUGE propeller(its not that big really but you'll need it for your bigger ships).
Campaign: You have limited resources and must gather more, you begin with a dodgy starter fortress and a lil wooden dingy boat and now must conquer the world! you can load in ships you made in designer but you'll still need the resources to build them.
There is multiplayer but from what I read in patch notes there is where most of the bugs and crashes
Now that I've babbled on long enough on the game its time I babble on about MY fleet!
BEHOLD!
The warsong
mostly wood with metal round the most vital parts and one thick AP cannon. was meant just to help me get a foothold in the campaign but proved to be a lil more useful than that
An anti aircraft drone. Yes you can build planes and airships, and I needed something to take them out. its small. its cheap. its quick to build. and it has one big custom missile for high speed interception. fucking slow though...
Kept 3-4 of these escorting a Warsong and they made quick work of any pesky Shrike Coloums. not that bad against enemy ships as well.
A good ship is one that serves as answer to as many problems as possible.
The thunder god is not one of those ships. But! it gives answer to the problem of enemy fortresses my other ships cant even approach.
A huge metal hull carrying a massive artillery gun capable of obliterating fortresses from long range, and fire rate isn't so bad either. spelled the end of the deep water guard and I'm happy with that.
But now on to something more complex. this next thing took me 10HOURS to make and I'm far from finished, but so far it's proving promising, *cues the imperial march music* THE ORB! *crackles of lightning and manic laughter*
Heavy Anti naval gunship
Still in construction, armed with 18 torpedo tubes and 4 anti air missile launchers, Energy Shields for protection, and its main lift generated from a centered ORB(still need to finish the ORB coverings), plus a lot of jet stabilizer to keep it aligned, as great as the orb is at lifting this gunship into the air it is highly unstable and without said jet stabilizers it has a bad habit of flying out of control.
I'll need to improve the lifting potential of the orb and upgrade its engines so I can pump more energy into the shields. possibly stick on an extra 4 anti air missile launchers.
Or I could just make a horde of them.
so next I'll need a plane and a battle ship then I'll experiment with building myself a submarine
It's on steam. It's in alpha, most updates are just bugfixes and a few pieces of new content. ATM of typing this I have experienced VERY little in the line of bugs.
Its a "minecraft" game where you build ships and watch it all get blown to shit by the AI's ships. No crafting system, you just open inventory and pick what you want, so long you have the needed resources gathered from drilling the ocean floor.
This does have more physics than minecraft. Blocks don't magically float, Ships bob about the water realistically, ships can get "flooded" and sink, canons have recoil and rock the ship.
But the thing that makes this game for me is the customization and complexity of what you can build.
AND! the interface is great! All you need to know is on screen all the time and not in a 'in your face' way. All the items in the inventory have nice popups that explain their purpose/how they work/how they're placed, quick and clear with links to in game help page that'll explain everything.
It's also got a lot of good tutorials. Honestly you'll never need to Alt+Tab+Google+Wiki.
I was able to build a lazer easily.
And building stuff is really easy but complex if you want to get specific results.
You can pick one of the simple cannons/lazer/missle to stick to your ship or build your own custom. eg. cannons: plonk the firing piece on a rotatable turret, stick barrels on the front of it till its long enough, add six-way-connectors to give more points to attach things, attach gauge increases to upgrade the caliber, add auto-loaders till your satisfied with the reload speed, add ammo boxes till its got enough for sustained fire, and then add either AP boxes or HE boxes to add some armor penetration or explosiveness.
and that's that. the turret will spin itself and try to point the barrel in the direction your pointing then middle mouse button to open fire(yes, middle click, left click is for your pistol)
Though you'll want to think more than just THE BIGGEST CANNON with 0.20sec reload and max armor penetrations and tons of explosives cause A)that will eat ammo B) unless that's build on a truly fucking COLLOSAL ship it's going to immediately flip your ship over with the recoil or it'll just sink to the depths.
And applying AI to your ships can be very easy so you don't have to aim your guns yourself or make a fleet of smaller ships to follow your flagship.
Well I lie, the fleet thing is a lil hard if you want a decent following fleet
but making AI controlled cannons are as easy as sticking the desired weapon on top of a weapon controller and putting a mainframe next to the controller and hey presto! the gun will automatically point and shoot at any enemies, wont be very accurate, to get it to lead shots or priorities enemies you'll have to add a few extra bits to the AI mainframe.
Game modes are...
designer: basically sandbox, infinite resources, and you can save ship designs and you can spawn any of the AI's ships so you can stomp on some of Deepwater guard's weaker ships OR watch the mighty battleships of the Onyx watch send your hard worked on ship/fleet to the murky depths of Davy Jones locker
Story missions: simple missions with objectives like -defend this outpost- and -speed past the enemy blockade in your fastest ship- and you can either use that mission's ships or use your own custom ships(hint, use your own, the ones they give ya is pretty crap) also these missions will unlock some important parts for you: lazer missile defense, sails, smoke dispensers and the HUGE propeller(its not that big really but you'll need it for your bigger ships).
Campaign: You have limited resources and must gather more, you begin with a dodgy starter fortress and a lil wooden dingy boat and now must conquer the world! you can load in ships you made in designer but you'll still need the resources to build them.
There is multiplayer but from what I read in patch notes there is where most of the bugs and crashes
Now that I've babbled on long enough on the game its time I babble on about MY fleet!
BEHOLD!
The warsong
mostly wood with metal round the most vital parts and one thick AP cannon. was meant just to help me get a foothold in the campaign but proved to be a lil more useful than that
An anti aircraft drone. Yes you can build planes and airships, and I needed something to take them out. its small. its cheap. its quick to build. and it has one big custom missile for high speed interception. fucking slow though...
Kept 3-4 of these escorting a Warsong and they made quick work of any pesky Shrike Coloums. not that bad against enemy ships as well.
A good ship is one that serves as answer to as many problems as possible.
The thunder god is not one of those ships. But! it gives answer to the problem of enemy fortresses my other ships cant even approach.
A huge metal hull carrying a massive artillery gun capable of obliterating fortresses from long range, and fire rate isn't so bad either. spelled the end of the deep water guard and I'm happy with that.
But now on to something more complex. this next thing took me 10HOURS to make and I'm far from finished, but so far it's proving promising, *cues the imperial march music* THE ORB! *crackles of lightning and manic laughter*
Heavy Anti naval gunship
Still in construction, armed with 18 torpedo tubes and 4 anti air missile launchers, Energy Shields for protection, and its main lift generated from a centered ORB(still need to finish the ORB coverings), plus a lot of jet stabilizer to keep it aligned, as great as the orb is at lifting this gunship into the air it is highly unstable and without said jet stabilizers it has a bad habit of flying out of control.
I'll need to improve the lifting potential of the orb and upgrade its engines so I can pump more energy into the shields. possibly stick on an extra 4 anti air missile launchers.
Or I could just make a horde of them.
so next I'll need a plane and a battle ship then I'll experiment with building myself a submarine