Drifting Skies

Drifting Skies is a turn-based strategy set during the golden age of sail. Following a calamitous fracturing and collapse of Earth's surface, the game allows players to tell the story of the survivors in a new era of exploration dominated by airships.

The game world is made up of moving hexagonal islands, which can connect to each other and break apart as they are pushed around by a global wind simulation. As islands drift around, they reshape the world at a slow but steady pace.

This brings new resources, exploration, and trade opportunities, but may also bring war and conflict to formerly peaceful territories. Adaptability will be rewarded as the landscape shifts; even the most powerful empires may find their position at risk from smaller nations seizing opportunities.

www.DriftingSkies.com

Objectives:

While much remains to be done, we have already spent a few years solving all of the foundational technical challenges, so we are now in position to move quickly.

Our main objective right now is to build early support for the project, and to recruit additional developers to the team before we embark on all of the most interesting work. 

State of the game:

To begin with we have two demo builds available:

One is the Ship Simulation Demo. This allows you to control a fully simulated airship around a 3D cloudscape. You can hunt down AI ships with a fleet of followers, but there is no combat yet.

The other is the World Simulation Demo. This is closer to a toy than a game, it just endlessly simulates a dynamic world of moving islands. They will connect and break apart, but there is no gameplay. This demo is completely unrelated to the final game, it is just a fun way of seeing how the world simulation works.

The main game is very much in progress, but has significant functionality already in place. It is already multiplayer, and handles world generation, display, and turn progression. Actual gameplay is the only major missing piece :P

On The Physics of Sail Powered Airships:

(Much more detail can be found within the readme of the Ship Demo)

The fundamental problem with traditional sail powered airships is that they have no water to push against as their ocean bound brethren do. The force of the water on the hull/keel and rudder of a water bound ship is what enables it to steer and to sail up-wind. The hull/keel and the rudder work together to apply forces that can turn the ship and finely control the direction it moves in. It is the resistance of the hull/keel to sideways movement through water that allows the ship to sail upwind.

The solution for sail powered airships then is to create a substitute for water, ideally something that is compatible with our romantic idea of what they should look like. For Drifting Skies we have chosen to have an invisible 'fluid' that does not interact with most regular matter. So it is impossible to feel its presence unless you use special materials. We do not yet have a satisfactory name for this lifting fluid.