Sons of Ryke

Design Goals

Flight First Combat

Fun & satisfying flight is the focus of this prototype. Any combat mechanics should support & complement this, not overcomplicate or diminish it. With that aim, I’ve kept the combat simple at this stage, limiting it to slow-fire weapons that force players to risk closely engaging enemies to land their shots. Having slow-firing weapons also allows us to give each shot weight & impact. Firing can have significant recoil, shake the camera & knock opponents out of their flight path when they land. We want to encourage the player to perform strafing runs, circle strafes & generally focus on outmaneuvering opponents, not out-gunning them.

Approachable Flight Model

If you’ve ever played a flight sim you know just how challenging accurate flight models can be. This has a certain charm that rewards patience & careful behavior, but it’s not what I’m aiming for here. I want to encourage players to take risks, perform daring maneuvers & have fun at high speeds. On top of this, I’ve taken a fair few creative liberties with the vehicles of this world & they would have absolutely no chance of functioning with an accurate flight model (I tried this first). Instead, I’ve built a somewhat arcady flight model that manages a lot of the complexities of flight automatically. The goal here is to balance between exciting snappy maneuverability & a strong sense of weight & inertia.

In a typical flight model, the player has to manage 3 axiis of rotation (Pitch, Yaw, and Roll) & with primary, lift & maneuvering thrusters, and 3 axiis of thrust. Managing even 4 axiis of movement independently is tricky for most players, games like Planetside 2, expose all 6, & have a massive skill floor as a result. In Sons of Ryke, I’ve combined axiis intelligently based on player intent. Roll is used almost exclusively for banked turns, so it’s tied to Yaw & automatically accounted for. Lift thrusters will engage as the player pitches, preventing stalls & assisting altitude gain. Finally, sideways strafing is eliminated in standard flight. All said that leaves 3 axiis of movement the player needs to worry about in their standard movement set.

Interesting World

A flight model is only as satisfying as the world it’s set in. If a player is flying through space with no frame of reference, even the best flight model will feel dull. Fast satisfying flight is the focus here & for flight to be satisfying, you need to have a world that’s satisfying to fly through. This means tight gaps, corners & nooks for players to fly in, around & through, as well as a lot of verticality.

Your environment is also the player’s reference frame for how fast they’re moving. We want the player to feel a sense of speed. To do this, we need to create a strong sense of scale. For now, I’m procedurally generating scatter objects like rocks & trees to help establish scale in the environment. Later on, I’ll introduce architecture, active & abandoned, into the environment to help sell the size & scale of the world.