The Storm Rebel

Some pixel art for the game I've been working on for the past month.

What I'm currently just calling 'Untitled Matrix Game' is a strategy RPG inspired by Hearts of Iron mods like The New Order and Old World Blues, as well as story games like Citizen Sleeper.

It features the story of MATRIX, a GAI superintelligence developed to spread the Matrix network across the Earth, which is essentially a VR internet. It's set in my ever-expanding cyberpunk world, the same world as 5,000 SOLS, just earlier in the timeline.

Untitled Matrix Game spans the years 2079 to 2400, and allows players to take paths including benevolence toward humans, malevolence, escape into the stars, or simply expand and make the big numbers go up.

For portraits, I was inspired by BUTCHER, a really good indie game I can't play (gives me motion sickness) which has this very cool dithered art style. I've made heavy use of Aseprite's shuffle tool to smash pixels around, as well as (trying to) use negative space where possible. I think it's going well so far.

For the event art, I went with cleaner art for the most part, since the events need to present a lot of information, both visual and written. I've been really enjoying swapping between the two styles, and using very limited color palettes with both (4-10 colors at most per piece) to try to give them unique moods.

Nearly the size of a Highliner, the Colonial-class Battlecruiser is one of the only true 'capital-scale' warships the CSC has in service. Its immense size, crew requirements and maintenance needs were designed for the Golden Age of human space exploration, when nanite cauldrons were common and mass fabrication took weeks, as opposed to decades.

Initially, the Colonial-class was made to act as a defense ship for highliners traveling to what would become the Pilgrimage Planets. Mars was concerned that whatever unknown force had erased most of the stars around Sol may still be out there, and thus they hoped to leverage supreme firepower to defeat it, whatever it was, should they encounter it.

The original Colonial-class battlecruiser featured an antimatter projector down its center, but this was removed when antimatter stockpiles were severely depleted, and there was no sign of an actual alien presence across the frontier. The huge cannon was removed in favor of hangar space for up to three Corvette-sized ships, giving the battlecruiser some carrier capabilities and a more flexible service profile.

Despite this, the battlecruiser keeps its namesake by hosting a formidable array of weapons. 8 CIWS turrets, 12 55-tube missile launchers, 6 torpedo tubes, 2 tri-barrel heavy railguns and an impressive array of canister-shot countermeasures bristle along the Colonial's hull.

This array of weapons also makes it highly illegal for one to enter Typhon orbit due to agreements with the NTLF. With that said, the most famous Colonial-class, the CSC Zamyat, has been stationed just outside of Maelstrom for almost two decades, acting as the CSC's frontline command center, and issuing orders to the technically-separate ERRF. The Zamyat was made famous through its acts of valor and survival against all odds in the Kibira Campaign.

Here's a WIP of the CSC Zamyat though, certainly the largest ship I've created so far for 5,000 SOLS.

Located roughly 3,500 SOLS from Earth, Kibira is the 4th 'Pilgrimage Planet', or 'Pitstop Planet', on the 5,000 SOL journey from Earth to Maelstrom.

Kibira is a rocky desert world scattered with large jungle oases, which host a variety of imported 'alien' species. Although all the creatures on Kibira originate from Earth, as do all the plant species found there, heavy purposeful mutation has changed them so as to appear highly distinct from Earth's animal population.

Between the Solar Exodus in 2405 and the discovery of Typhon in 2651, Kibira was one of the first planets earmarked for early human explorers by telescope. While it took many years to first scout the system and then colonize it, Kibira had accrued a population of almost eighty million settlers by 2602.

I do have an ERRF fleet carrier about 1/4 modeled, but it's not quite ready.

Carriers and other ships with subcraft are quite rare on Typhon outside of mining vessels due to their usually very large sizes. Mostly because particularly large ships cannot enter the rings, which is where most engagements occur. The closest we get on average is NTLF motherships, which are closer to slow space stations, that act as refuel/resupply hubs for smaller modular vessels.

When discussing the NTLF, it is a common talking point of detractors that they are a theocratic order in addition to an anti-corporate rebel movement. No ammunition is more potent than the NTLF's use of the so-called 'Coffin Buckets', or 'Suicide Shuttles'.

Consisting of a single crew capsule with a micrometeor shield welded over the airlock, strapped to an open reactor and some drop tanks, the Coffin Bucket is an uncommon but terrifying sight to the enemies of Medusa. Its sole pilot is literally welded into the ship with no means of disembarking until his 'penance' is complete, which is often to the death.

The Coffin Buckets have a unique turret traversal system attached to the crew compartment's exterior. Essentially, two twin-barrel autocannons sit on a track that can rotate around the hull of the compartment independently of each other. This allows the bucket to fire in many more directions than standard single-position hardpoints. Wiring these autocannons up to a rudimentary VI interface also allows the Coffin to fire independently of its pilot at any targets the pilot has tagged as a foe in RFID.

With drop tanks and fully loaded turrets, Coffin Buckets can generally stay in the void for up to six months, as long as they don't ignite all six of their main thrusters at once. Each autocannon has two ammo drums which contain 200 rounds each, for a total of 800 rounds of APDS ammo across the ship, with no reloads. In groups, Coffins swarm larger ERRF ships, and rip them to shreds for the glory of New Terra.

A quick render of Medusa, Typhon's largest moon.

When the Hideki-Onna Expedition, the first corporate-sponsored expedition to Typhon, arrived in 2651, they believed they were the first humans to enter the Maelstrom System. In reality however, the long-exiled Emergence Corporation, driven off of Earth in the 2300's, had ended its banishment beneath the icy surface of Medusa.

Argus Hideki initially wrote Medusa off as a lifeless moon, but when the first 5,000 SOL journey from Earth was completed by CSC colonists in 2668, the Rusher War was initiated as Emergence's New Terra Liberation Front emerged from the ice and engaged the Corporate Security Council in a bloody, violent conflict.

The arrival of the Alderson Fleet -- 88 Corporate-aligned starships spread across 4 highliner haulships -- represented a rather massive polarity shift in Maelstrom politics. Where before the ERRF and NTLF had been largely of peer strength, the ERRF's gained the equivalent of what was essentially two and a half battle-ready fleets of ships.

The Alderson Fleet was summoned during a time of crisis in Typhon orbit, but the 5,000 SOL journey from Earth ensured that by the time they arrived, that crisis had passed. Even so, they arrived armed to the teeth, casting relationships between the four great powers of Typhon orbit (The ERRF, the NTLF, the Spacers' Union and Freesoul) into disarray.

Among the most interesting of Alderson's additions to Typhon's orbit is the Washington-class Corvette. Certainly the smallest ship in the ERRF's lineup outside of tugs and shuttles, the Washington-class is crewed by just two humans and one android. It is a missile corvette, capable of expending 48 missiles and 24 sandcaster canisters before it must be rearmed. It also features an extensive suite of electronic countermeasures, and an EW suite that rivals a dedicated Starseeker.

The only major downside of the Washington-class is that it was developed for 'open void' fighting, and is less suited for Typhon's knife-fight-range skirmishing. Its streamlined RCS thrusters often struggle with very tight turns, though its quad main thruster battery can usually offset this weakness with a surprisingly long burn time.

It's been a while since I posted some viewport WIP stuff, so here's some stuff I've learned and am doing with 5,000 SOLS, as I continue to poke at it.

Recently, I created a rendered view of an engagement between an ERRF destroyer (I just used the CSC Maelstrom, since I didn't want to make a new decal) and the NTLF attack ship I recently made.

One of the biggest visual improvements that has gotten me really close to that 80's anime aesthetic that I'm looking for has been adding a compositing layer when I actually render out shots. Adding vignette, kuwahara, a small amount of chromatic aberration and glare does a ton to get nearer to that visual style. Here's my compositing node set up right now:

Another big that that really sells the aesthetic, particularly on smaller ships like the Flatfish, is a procedural anime outliner.

I tried a bunch of methods to achieve this, like grease pencil and stuff, but the most important thing for me was that it had to be both procedural and something I could feasibly replicate in Godot. While having the cool visuals in Blender is nice, this will eventually be a game, so I need to be able to replicate any visual effects I achieve in Blender in the game engine.

The method that ended up working best for me was the 'inverted hull' technique (I think that's what it's called?). In which you use a Solidify modifier with flipped normals, a small amount of thickness, and the material offset set to an Outline shader, which consists of just a black (or w/e color you want, black in my case) background shader node plugged right into the material output.

I think this looks pretty great. There's some issues with it, particularly on geometry with very dense detailing, but I think for my purposes it works well.

The scene so far is getting quite heavy, with now 12 ships and a station in the scene, it's at 931k tris without any of the geological assets, and 1.2 mil with those. I mostly have been using one scene because I don't want to learn how the asset browser works, but I suppose I should do that sooner rather than later.

Also in the above image is a civilian cargo pusher I haven't quite finished enough to reveal yet, so consider that a small teaser if you view these posts chronologically.

The Tyrant Star of Typhon is so-named for its colossal size, it's a failed red hypermassive star, and is about 1 AU in diameter in its current form. Some hypermassive stars that successfully ignite can be upwards of 70-80 AU in diameter or even more! But since Typhon didn't expand, it retains its current size, and indeed how it hasn't just completely imploded is an in-world mystery of some scientific debate.

The prevailing theory based on dives performed into Typhon's crust is that the majority of the star is hollow, and filled with gas pockets, mostly hydrogen and helium, though methane pockets have been observed as well, particularly on deeper dives.

Diving into Typhon is a particularly difficult endeavor, physically plunging a ship on a reel into one of the pits on Typhon's surface that leads beneath its mantle. Autonomous ships lose all signal when dropped due to electromagnetic interference, and are very prone to simply being destroyed by Typhon's insane solar winds. As such, these dives are always crewed, usually by just one or two humans.

Divers usually cannot go for a second dive, as they suffer a strange phenomena nicknamed 'the bends' upon ascending, which leads to muscle decay, hallucinations and rarely mutation, thought to be a result of intense solar radiation. As a result, dives are very high-paying, and as much scientific data as can possibly be recovered is pulled from each and every dive.

With all of that in mind, more is known about Typhon's rings than what holds up Typhon itself. Some people who like to anthropomorphize the Tyrant Star claim it is held up by pure spite against Maelstrom, which stripped off so much of its mass a million years ago, and has cast all that mass into its grotesque asteroid fields.

Now that I'm slowly amassing some fleets of different factions, I can start smacking them into each other for fun, as I try to parse getting them into a game engine.

Most conventional orbital engagements occur at a distance of many hundreds or even thousands of kilometers, and are measured in hours or days of calculated missile trajectories and torpedo interception times. Combat over Typhon however is compressed by its dense asteroid fields into 'knife-fight range'.

The first ship of the 'opposition' group in 5,000 SOLS. Vessels of the so-called, clumsily named New Terra Liberation Front, itself essentially a shell of the Emergence Corporation, are often tossed-together modules welded and bolted into each other in configurations best fitting their goals. In this case, an armed scout.

The NTLF are a theocratic colonial rebel group that seek to break Council control over Typhon and colonize Typhon's moon, Medusa, transforming it into their promised land of New Terra. In reality, the NTLF are primarily a tool of the 'Religious Exports' Emergence Corporation, who began a corporate cult a couple hundred years prior.

It's difficult to put a 'class' to NTLF ships, as they rarely look the same, aside from their dark paint jobs and streamlined fuel boosters. Most of them are made for extended stays in the black, and thus usually have gravity rings and large radiator arrays.

Unlike the ERRF, who have strict rules on weapons in space, the NTLF have no such qualms and will freely equip their ships with combat railguns, energy cannons, missiles, torpedoes and so on.

Rarely seen beyond the inner rings, this spherical, thruster-less ship appears almost alien compared to the blocky designs of Typhon's human population. This aesthetic is perhaps not too far from the truth, as while the Hunter-Killer Drone's origin is mundane in nature, it is decidedly non-human.

These drones, smaller than most shuttle pods, are designed by the reclusive androids of the inner rings. After winning their freedom in uprisings many years ago on Earth, they traveled to Typhon in search of their own planet. While many live on the station of Arcadia, many more live somewhere in the deep belt, and fiercely protect their territory with these drones.

The HK Drones lack traditional thrusters, and only have exterior attachments for their twin railguns and two dorsal radiator tubes. They utilize a graviton projector for movement, which allows them to make baffling directional changes mid-flight, confusing opponents and targeting computers alike.

The so-called Tyrant Star, Typhon, is a dead hypermassive star located 210 AU from its host star, Maelstrom, creating a sort of lopsided binary.

Typhon is theorized to be about 13 million years old, and measures at 1.9 AU in diameter. Had it successfully ignited, it likely would've swelled to almost 16 AU, potentially making it one of the largest stars in existence. The reason for Typhon's failure to fully ignite is a hotly debated scientific topic, as much about Typhon makes very little sense in conventional science.

Beyond its presence as a truly massive astral entity, Typhon is known to actually be mostly hollow, consisting of large gas pockets that hold its exterior 'shell' up. Occasionally these pockets collapse, ejecting large quantities of dormant solar energy in the form of wildfire flares. Typhon has a very active magnetosphere, and continent-sized storms of orange lightning criss-cross its surface nearly at all times.

Beyond its initial bulk, which is far too gravitationally strong for direct mining (though ships capable of limited 'Dives' do exist), Typhon is host to 8 primary asteroid rings, along with 23 minor rings, which extend to around 37 AU away from it. From a great distance, Typhon appears to be a vast red disk stretching out into the cosmos.

The Focht-class gunship uses the classic human technique of, rather than adding a gun to a ship, instead building a ship around a gun. In this case, a 1,000mm railgun, which fires a 4-meter long, 120-ton tungsten dart at up to 3km/s every 65 minutes.

The Focht can only carry nine of these darts at any given time, which heavily limits its operational time, but Focht captains usually see such limitations and remember to mention that it only needs to hit once.

Besides its absurd main armament, the Focht is iconic for its two forward-facing liquid fuel thrusters, which are mounted in order to offset thrust generated by the main gun firing. Ironically, this also gives the Focht a faster reverse speed, and "rear-viewing it" is a popular move among veteran captains, if frowned upon by ERRF command.

The lovingly named T-33 "Flatfish" Mining Ship is a small, light-grade mining ship equipped with a single asteroid-splitting railgun and two fore-mounted collection scoops. The Flatfish is a commonly-seen 'entry-grade' mining ship, as it is cheap to produce, quite fast due to its four light thrusters, and each of its two collection bays can store up to 30 displacement tons of ore.

Of course, such a cheap ship is also plagued by cheap problems, most notably the fact that the railgun is mounted beneath the bridge. When fired, the entire bridge shakes -- Strap down your belongings, or have them cast about each time the cockpit quakes!