Frontiers Reach News

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Over the years I've played several space games that have entire procedurally generated planets. Most of them have been straight up barren rocks with very little in the way to do. Though there are a couple of games that have done a very good job in filling out the surfaces of their planets with a plethora of interesting content.


Having listened to the developers of No Man's Sky and Star Citizen give talks on their technology at conferences, I took away from those talks the understanding that even if had the ability to build the systems necessary to fill out an entire planet with content, I simply did not have the resources to make or obtain the content required to use those systems effectively.


In short, it takes a LOT to fill up an entire planet with interesting things to do. But something else was bothering me though. In all my years of playing space games there is one thing that has always bothered me about the genre.


Travel times.


In nearly every space game I've played since Freelancer, traveling between locations made up a significant amount of the play time. And traveling in a space game often involves decent stretches of time where you're basically doing nothing while the stars fly past your screen.


Both Freelancer and Elite Dangerous tried to solve this issues by giving NPCs, and other players, the ability to interdict your travel but at a certain point this became more annoying and frustrating than anything else. Especially in the case of Elite Dangerous where you could be spending as much as 30 minutes in FSD only to be interdicted during the last 2 minutes of travel.


So when I was thinking about how to structure travel between locations in Frontiers Reach I really wanted to get away from relying on long travel times to make the game feel big. And for the record, all of this is ignoring the fact that almost every game that has done full procedurally generated planets feels off in terms of scale. Especially when you're on the ground. So for Frontiers Reach I choose instead to go a different route. Especially since the game is combat focused game.


In warfare, unless you manage to catch an opponent in transit across an open desert, there are very few instances where you would be fighting in the middle of nowhere over absolutely nothing. Most of the actual fighting is going to be taking place in an area of strategic concern. Which could be a facility of importance, a choke point created by a land feature like a valley or a canyon, or a particularly mineral rich field of asteroids in orbit around a star or planet.


When I first started development my tools and knowledge in making space games were quite limited, and so I did the best I could with what I had. And for the longest time that meant the play spaces in FR were under 30 kilometers of horizontal space and the terrain scaling was off. But in the past year I've gotten some new tools and learned a lot about managing larger worlds, and the payoff for all of this learning is that all of the locations in Frontiers Reach can now be expanded by a significant margin.


I'm still discussing with my publisher how best to release these new locations, but right now it's looking like Jan 1st is going to be the day that the Frontier is expanded.


For planetary locations the containment zone is being expanded from 30 kilometers to 60 kilometers horizontal space with a flight ceiling of about 22 kilometers. Meaning dogfights can now take place at the edge of space.






For space locations the containment zone is being expanded to 90 kilometers in just about every direction. With the skyboxes having been completely replaced by a dynamic sky system that allows for multiple planets which now spin.


These new locations are so large in fact that I've had to create a new navigation overlay for objects and locations that fall outside of the camera render distance.




There is still a lot of work to be done, but this is a giant leap for Frontiers Reach in several categories. For now though it's time for me to get back to work in prepping this massive update for the Jan 1 release.


Till next pilots, happy hooning!

With all that is available on the current market and what is yet to come in the likes of Light No Fire and Star Citizen I find myself asking a simple question.


Why play anything else?


These games that are currently in development, and those titles that have already released, that achieve what we might call “metaverse” status in that they are essentially simulated realities no matter how rudimentary they may seem. When games like these exist, that create spaces where anything can happen. What reason is there for anything else to exist?


If Star Citizen created a low stakes PvP arena for gun slinging gladiators, what reason would Call of Duty have to exist other than the story it presents in the context of modern or near future military fiction?


Once the fantasy virtual world of Light No Fire is released, will there be a reason for Dungeons & Dragons to release a new game or would it make more sense to contact Hello Games and work out a collaborative deal? After all, it’s not like they couldn’t just generate a whole DnD themed planet with key locations injected at various points. I would be surprised if Wizards of the Coast hasn’t already had that conversation.


On a personal level I’ve been asking this question of myself with regards to Frontiers Reach for the past 4 years. But as a developer watching other devs work on things they love, I’ve also been pondering what the question means beyond just myself and FR.


With entire studios putting enormous amounts of effort into whole universes, rendered at or beyond the edges of what is possible graphically, where anything is possible in terms of gameplay…


Why would you play anything else?



The truth is that there is plenty of reason. First and foremost is that there are different people in the world with varying levels of interest and time. Second is that not every game is able to deliver on the same experience in the same way. Frontiers Reach being as visually distinct as it is, is just one immediate example I can think of. Another reason is depth, having played games like No Man’s Sky and Elite: Dangerous, one thing that always sticks out to me is just how shallow some of the mechanisms in these larger metaverse type games are. And some of that may come down to accessibility in effort to maximize player appeal across ever wider demographics.



However there is something going on that is affecting the games industry at nearly every level. Something that is having an impact not just on Frontiers Reach, but every game.


I have heard my publisher make mention of it in our meetings. I’ve heard other devs mention it in their complaints about the industry. And recently I’ve read articles about it in the media.


They all say essentially the same thing, that the AA Games section of the industry is gone.


Lesser and lesser interest is being given to games that aren’t AAA games with AAA budgets and AAA sized studios working at the edge of photo-realism in rendering. While there are still some left, numerous studios that once made games in the 20-40 USD range have been decimated by the throes of an economic downturn and increased levels of automation creeping into the game dev space.


There is also a widening budgetary gap between indie games and AAA games. One so large that any AA studio left standing after all that has happened is essentially an indie studio now. Whether they like it or not.



When it comes to Frontiers Reach I’ve always pitched the game, and studio, as indie. Not because of the size of the project, but because of the size of the budget involved with making the project. The whole budget for Frontiers Reach is less than 60,000 USD cold hard cash across 4 years and that’s almost exclusively for software licenses, some assets, and a bunch of voice over. Everything else, the artwork, the game mechanics, and back end running everything and saving your progress. That was all done by myself. Bringing in guest developers to work on different parts and pieces to fill in the gaps where my knowledge was lacking. Even with the assistance I’ve still got 7000+ hours of development time into FR.


So when people ask me about what makes Frontiers Reach standout against the competition like Star Citizen, War Thunder, Everspace, and No Man’s Sky, I always come back to the same conclusion.


I don’t have the money, time, or interest in destroying my personal health enough to even bother trying to compete with those other games. I have certainly felt the pressure in the form of other people comparing Frontiers Reach to other games. But the reality of the matter is that there is no money for FR to be anything other than a niche space/flight combat game. Nearly every direction that I could expand in, is barred by a budgetary limit I simply do not have the resources to overcome. And that’s ignoring the fact that the game is already much larger than it was initially planned to be. Features like the Warmap and Uncharted Worlds were added to increase the content offerings using existing tools and components. Very little in the way of new features, code, or menus needed to be added to facilitate those additions. The Warmap for instance uses all of the exact same scripting tools, art, and NPCs as the main story missions.



So when I think about why someone should play Frontiers Reach over a game like Star Citizen, this is what I have concluded.


In Frontiers Reach, you’re not going to be doing, a lot of nothing. No spending 30 minutes traveling between locations. That’s a fancy loading screen with your vessel moving between major locations as you watch the stars fly past the screen. And then launch into a sector in your starfighter where you will run a mission, or explore the sector at your liesure.

You will be spending a lot of time in combat. This first game in the series is laser focused on space and aerial combat because I want a focus on vehicles, particularly flying vehicles, to be a staple of the series. Even in the earliest of days for FR development and design there was always a focus on flying machines.


Additionally a retro aesthetic is what you get when you dive into Frontiers Reach. If you like me are tired of looking at Star Wars or Bladerunner and things that are desperate to be Star Wars or Bladerunner; then you are probably remembering the older and more obscure scifi worlds and universes out there. Terran Trade Authority is one such universe that comes to mind. Along with Trigan Empire for you more seasoned pilots hailing from Europe.


Frontiers Reach is also a story driven game. Always has been, and always will be. There are of course opportunities to engage in exploration and even shoot some space rocks for game currency, but the driving force is always going to be story. No mindless gameplay loops that end up turning into a grind. We don’t do really want to do that here. And on a personal level, I hate that type of gameplay.


No, out here on the frontier we are almost the exact opposite of the modern AAA, blockbuster, billion dollar “next big thing” game.


In almost every sense of the word.





Till next time pilots, happy hooning and fly dangerously!

Looking back at the history of game development for PC and console it is very easy to see why so many people get hung up on what we might call “Dev and Dump” titles. Where a studio releases a title after X amount of years working on it and if it does well, it makes money and gets a sequel. And if it doesn’t do well they cut their losses and either close up shop or move on to something else. Re-purposing their tools as they can.


However in the year 2024, because of the progression of technology and the spread of the internet across the globe, developers like myself are no longer beholden to the idea that once you’re launched, you’re done. In fact I would go so far as to argue that launching a game is really only about 75% of the work. Especially if, like myself and the team at Blind Alien Productions, a developer is looking to curate a library of games over time and not just dev and dump titles on to store fronts.


Where as games as a service see annual updates in the forms of season passes or battle passes, games curation means maintaining our games with visual updates, bug fixes, and balance changes as we collect feedback from a community of players vested in the games we make. There may even be feature additions or story driven expansions spun off from the main project files if there is enough community demand from it.


So even though the story is complete, and the feature set filled out in accordance with our internal plans, if the players want more of what FR1 offers, then I and the rest of the team are very much capable of delivering on that.


And to show you more of what games curation for FR1 looks like I have some images below.















Below is new tunnel art for train tunnels. Similar is coming for naturally occurring caves.








Behind the scenes of all these gorgeous pictures I am also working on streamlining the entire process of creating content for the Frontiers Reach Universe. Everything from small tools to make positioning groups of objects quick and easy to refactoring large portions of code and cleaning it up to make it run better and easier to understand for future integrations. And in some cases, the tech being developed for future titles is being back ported to previously launched titles now in maintenance mode. Like a new method for doing fast travel between planets like in the video below.


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And last but not at all least, we’re getting closer and closer to achieving a near seamless transition between planet and space environments. This is a pretty big step in the direction of creating FR2 and the methods developed to manage the levels and art for this transition will definitely be pulled into Frontiers Reach 1 to bring up the visual quality when you’re flying around in the newly improved and expanded levels you can see in the images above.


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[h2]On January 1st 2025[/h2], the single largest overhaul of Frontiers Reach worlds and terrain artwork will go live. There is a lot to do till then and the holidays are just getting started here in the US.


These terrain updates will include a major overhaul to all the campaign missions and the warmap scenarios. All of the scaling has changed to include the flight ceiling, overall playspace horizontally, and wildlife will be making a return to some maps. Additionally the first uncharted worlds map will be released on January 1st along with a new sector type that was once a thing of myth in the very early days of Frontiers Reach development.


The Wild Sectors.


All the existing planets will get Wild Sectors which will procedurally generate a new map every time you load into a wild sector. Exactly what you will find there and how you will access them is a secret for now, but it will include plenty of opportunity for collecting salvage, exploring unseen areas, and encountering hostiles that have as of yet been a rarity in Frontiers Reach aside from the occasional story mission, and some you have not yet seen before.


Till next time happy hooning, enjoy the video, and I look forward to seeing you on the frontier!

Work on the first of the Uncharted Worlds is progressing the script is out and voice actors being recorded. However in this news update I would like to share the fruit of nearly a years worth of learning with a tool set I picked up back in January for creating the planetary surface playspaces of Frontiers Reach.

This of course require some changes to the game and have a major affect on gameplay. It will also see origin shifting finally implemented into Frontiers Reach.



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