Ship of Heroes

This video demonstrates the completion and integration of key game code elements, including character leveling/progression, adding augment slots, adding augments, using buffs, and using infusions. Combat is shown with a brand new level 1 character, who then fights again at level three, with powers enhanced by leveling, being buffed, having augments, and using infusions. There is a substantial difference in combat power as a result. The fact that all of these power-enhancing elements are successfully additive is one of the main points of the video. In addition, viewers can see new impact animations for ranged attacks, the level-up process, and enhanced FX for the ranged Fire Blast powerset. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in the Unreal 4.21 engine, and is about to begin its fourth Alpha activity, a character creator Beta, in the near future. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

This is internal footage produced to quickly show our devs how the main level is coming along. Our lead environmental artist narrates as he shows off the latest changes, and we thought you'd like to see them as well. Apotheosis City is now much improved, with street signs, working streetlights that activate based on the day/night cycle, and our custom futuristic road designs applied throughout the city. This video was recorded in-editor using Unreal Engine 4.21.2. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in Unreal Engine version 4.21. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

The 2018 Christmas season is here! This is the second annual Ship of Heroes Christmas holiday video: fighting snow monsters in Apotheosis City. The glowing holiday presents from last year are also available, illustrating our ongoing game integration. The video takes place in the center of Apotheosis City, known as the Arch Park. A team of seven heroes cooperates to defend the city from an invasion of winter-themed interdimensional monsters. As the weaker ones are defeated, more powerful monsters enter the fray. At the end of the video, a short segment demonstrates how infusions look. This video also contains a soft appeal for donations to support the ongoing development of the game. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in the Unreal 4.18 engine, and is expected to launch a Beta version in December of 2019. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

In this video, new hero Nicky Nanite demonstrates the effects of Restorative Nanites powers on other heroes. Restorative Nanites can be picked as a healing and buffing powerset for the Support archetype, or as a less powerful secondary powerset for the Devastator archetype. The primary effects of the powers are health regeneration, accuracy and damage buffs, and recharge rate buffs. The set is useful for both the player and his teammates, as many powers are AoE. T his powerset can be combined with a large number of damage-dealing sets, and is useful in many different playstyles. Most players will choose to take only a fraction of the powers from each of their powersets, so Restorative Nanites characters will vary a great deal. The animations and FX of the ten powers in the Restorative Nanites set are open to revision, since the powers are still early in development. The exact numerical values of effects will also be refined before launch. This is the first powerset we have shown with FX that are solely custom efforts work made specifically for Ship of Heroes using PopcornFX. As such, they are compatible with a true MMORPG, rather than being designed for smaller games. This is the eighth powerset that Ship of Heroes has revealed so far, and the first powerset with FX that adjust to the lighting level, since the game now has a day/night cycle. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in the Unreal 4.18 engine. It is expected to conduct a Beta test of one key system at the end of 2018, and to open to the public in 2019. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

This is a team combat video with a Halloween theme. Two new game mechanics for the future Halloween Events in Ship of Heroes are being revealed: a door-to-door Trick-or-Treat mechanic, and battling exploding pumpkins for loot. The pumpkins spawn due to uncontrolled dark magic suffusing the ship on Halloween. Several new enemies are seen for the first time, including skeletons, werewolves, vampiric mercenaries with super strength, and dark-magic-infused Prometheans. The video takes place in the western part of the Science Park area of Apotheosis City. This is the first SoH video showing combat at night, following the release of video showing the day/night cycle aboard the FHS Justice. The hero team is composed of Ambassador, Green Pants Man, Iris, and Meltdown, all of whom are previously-introduced signature heroes. The scenes in this video were produced during dev testing of Halloween features. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in the Unreal 4.18 engine. It is expected to conduct a login test during December of 2018, and to advance into Beta during 2019, followed by launch. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

This video highlights several improvements to Apotheosis City, including the addition of a day/night cycle with dynamic lighting. Civilian NPCs now walk around and interact with each other. There are cars driving on the roads with their headlights shining, and trains on the train tracks. This time we show off the new features by having Meltdown fly through the city. The dancing was added in response to requests from our community. This is a lighthearted video, more or less replicating the fun that the devs experience while flying around. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in the Unreal 4.18 engine, and is about to begin its third Alpha activity, a login test, in the near future. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

This video highlights several new improvements to Apotheosis City. Civilian NPCs walk around and interact with each other, and cars drive along the road, making the game more compelling and fun. We show off the new features by having Dr. Strikewell take an early morning jog through the center of the city. The setting is the geographical center of the map, the Arch Park portion of Apotheosis City. With these changes, Ship of Heroes has passed a key milestone: we have sufficiently high framerate to produce the genuine MMORPG experience, with large numbers of players and enemies in a big, outdoor environment. In this video, only civilian NPCs are shown. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in the Unreal 4.18 engine, and is about to begin its third Alpha activity, a login test, in the near future. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

The first Ship of Heroes mission map has now been significantly upgraded. Many textures are improved, we've added numerous props with a science fiction flair, and the overall complexity of the 3D space is higher. This map is now fully upgraded to Unreal Engine 4.18 standards, as well. Today we’re comparing the old and new versions of the mission map. You’ll see an icon in the upper-left corner that identifies whether the current segment is from the original video or the newer, revised version. As always, one of our goals is to solicit feedback from the SoH community on their preferences for the environmental art style of the game. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in the Unreal 4.18 engine, and we're about to begin our third Alpha activity involving our gaming community. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

This video shows a number of the improvements we've made to the Ship of Heroes combat system for the upcoming closed Alpha. These include multiple power trays, resizable UI menus, intelligent tab targeting that accounts for both the closeness of the target and whether the target is in front of or behind the player, and a system that automatically re-targets powers once an enemy is defeated. The setting is the starting point for the escorted combat Alpha tests that are about to begin: the Science Park portion of Apotheosis City. To make the new features more visible, the signature hero Meltdown is invulnerable for this video. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in the Unreal 4.16 engine, and is about to begin closed combat Alpha testing in the next two weeks. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

The 2017 Christmas season is here! This is the first holiday video produced by Ship of Heroes that shows a unique holiday event: finding and opening presents on the streets of Apotheosis City. As each present is opened, signature hero Meltdown receives money and/or a gift reward, and a clip shows one of the key moments of the past twelve months of game development. In December of 2016, Ship of Heroes was just a website with concept art. One year later, the game is well on the way to being launched. The video takes place in the recently upgraded Science Park area of Apotheosis City. The clips chosen show the progression of concept art, then an early version of the persistent environment, then the character creator, powers, team combat, character flight, mission maps and instancing, network tests, PAX West, the first Alpha test, and finally the unveiling of full powersets for characters. Heroic Games has had an extremely effective year, and we have honestly revealed exactly what we've achieved. This video also contains the first broad-based appeal that Ship of Heroes has made to the entire community for donations to support the ongoing development of the game. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in the Unreal 4.16 engine. SoH is expected to conduct a second Alpha test during December of 2017, and further testing during 2018. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

Dark Magic Blast is a long-range powerset. It is a primary powerset for the Devastator class, and a secondary powerset for the Support class. The powers include a balanced mix of ranged single-target and AoE attacks. Most attacks have the secondary effect of accuracy debuff, though there is currently one slow, one damage over time, and one immobilize effect as well. There are the three self-buffs, two for defense and one for damage: Dark Shroud, Concentrated Darkness, and Photon Absorption. We believe that after balancing just before launch of the game, Dark Magic Blast will provide both a good solo combat experience and a good team experience, especially in boss fights. All of our powersets will continue to evolve over the next fifteen months as Alpha activities provide tester feedback. For example, we will likely add a life drain power to Dark Magic Blast in the future. This is the fourth full powerset to be revealed for Ship of Heroes, and the first in which the FX and animations were made in-house by our own team members. We believe that custom FX and animations are superior to those acquired from packs in both quality and server load for an MMO with a bandwidth budget. The FX, SFX, and animations shown in this video are works in progress, and we are continuously reviewing and improving what we’ve built in the past with the skills of professional FX and animation personnel that we have recruited to the team. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in the Unreal 4.16 engine, and is expected to begin Alpha tests at the end of 2017. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

This video shows over 100 copies of a highly-customized character running around in a previously-revealed Ship of Heroes game environment. This is a raid test conducted by Ship of Heroes as part of an ongoing program of optimizing and refining the game to ensure the best playing experience. At this moment in time, we are not aware of any other MMORPG built on the UE4 engine that allows 100 characters to be in view of each other while maintaining a commercially viable frame-per-second (FPS) rate for gameplay. Here our devs are using a gaming desktop with an NVDIDIA GTX 980 as the main test computer to illustrate FPS levels. Other desktop and laptop computers also participate in the tests. The character running around is Sword Blossom, one of the signature heroes in Ship of Heroes. Three devs have characters that are standing in the middle on the mission environment (underneath Apotheosis City, in-game) on boxes so they can maximize the number of Sword Blossom clones that they can see. The clones move in a predetermined pattern, both to test large-scale animation use, and to allow visual assessment of lag – one of the first signs of lag is that animations will skip. The devs are testing new techniques to allow large numbers of highly customized characters to be in the same instance or raid together. More analysis will be required to fully optimize this setup, but so far it is working well; no significant lag was encountered in the network test of up to 100 characters, and FPS remained above 30. Even during the stress test portions – 200-300 characters and 100 characters firing a particle-intensive power – FPS results were good. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in the Unreal 4.16 engine, and is expected to begin Alpha tests at the end of 2017. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

This video showcases several upgrades to the Character Creation Tool (CCT) for Ship of Heroes. We also create Ambassador, one of the signature heroes of the game and the leader of the Justice Corps, on camera for the first time. This marks the first use of the “big guy” character model in the CCT. The male models in Ship of Heroes were upgraded back in July. New morphs, especially for the face, are in place, as well as other improvements, including an eye camera for close-ups, a hide helmet option, and extensive selections of powersets and powers for each archetype. Each character created in the CCT has a primary powerset, reflecting what they are best at, and a secondary powerset, reflecting additional powers that are thematically linked. Ambassador is a tank archetype, so his primary powerset is Invulnerability, which gives him strong defense and resistance powers. Ambassador’s secondary powerset is Street Sweeper, a group of powers that are manifested through a short-range gun of the future, with over a dozen offensive powers to choose from. The video reveals 4-5 primary powersets, and 4-5 secondary powersets, each with 10-12 powers, for all four initial archetypes that have been announced for the Beta at the end of 2018. Ship of Heroes is a sci-fi MMORPG currently under development in the Unreal 4.15 engine, but the developers have announced that they will be upgrading to UE 4.16 before the end of Q4. SoH is expected to begin Alpha tests at the end of 2017. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

The Lightning Blast powerset is a ranged damage set available for the Devastator and Support character archetypes. The primary effect of the powers is damage, and the most common secondary effect is defense debuff, though a few powers debuff resistance, and one debuffs health regeneration. This powerset can be combined with a large number of different secondary sets in any archetype that has ranged powers. Most players will choose to take only a fraction of the powers from each of their powersets, so two Lightning Blast characters will vary a great deal. In this video, Dr. Strikewell demonstrates her Lightning Blast powers to a crowd of NPCs drawn from the successful character creator Alpha test that Ship of Heroes just completed. Lightning Blast is secondary powerset for Dr. Strikewell; her primary powerset is Mystic Healing. The animations and FX of the ten powers in the Lightning Blast set are open to revision, since the game is still very early in development. The FX are, for the most part, custom efforts work made specifically for Ship of Heroes, not assets purchased from an engine marketplace. They are specially designed to be compatible with large raids. This is the third full powerset that Ship of Heroes has revealed in 2017. This time we are using nighttime lighting to illustrate the powers, since lightning effects are much more distinctive in low light levels than they are at high noon. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in the Unreal 4.15 engine, and is expected to begin Alpha tests at the end of 2017. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

This is a development video featuring six devs from the Ship of Heroes team testing out some newly-coded features, and then conducting a very short team combat test. The characters shown are not signature heroes in the game; they're just regular heroes made in the SoH character creator to illustrate different elements of the game. The newly-coded features include inviting players to a team, kicking them from a team, holding spots and then recovering disconnected players, XP and dust/money from group combat, and leveling up from a team member's victory. Some additional animations and FX are shown, as are parts of six different powersets. All of these are works in progress, but they do demonstrate that SoH is making steady progress towards an eventual full launch. Ship of Heroes is still in pre-Alpha. The short team combat sequence shows a team size of six heroes and eight enemies. SoH currently enables variable team sizes of up to ten players, sufficient for small raid teams, to practice together in regular PVE content. In the current MMORPG market, this is a unique feature. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG being developed in the Unreal 4.14 engine. SoH is expected to begin Alpha tests at the end of 2017. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

PAX West is here! This video was shown for the first time during the panel discussion on the creation of a new superhero MMO, featuring Heroic Games’ CEO, Casey McGeever. The video shows the creation of a new hero named Supercharger in the Ship of Heroes character creator, and a patrol in Apotheosis City. At the end, Supercharger discovers some Prometheans tucked under an overpass. He goes in to eliminate the threat using his lightning blast powers, and his restorative nanite powers, which we're revealing for the first time today. This video highlights several of the key features of Ship of Heroes: highly customizable character creation and powers allowing each players’ characters to be unique, a positive atmosphere and innovative setting for the game, and the ability to succeed both as a solo player and on a team, including teams of large size. Today we are showing solo play, since our last few videos have focused more on team combat. Ship of Heroes is a superhero MMORPG currently under development in the Unreal 4.15 engine. SoH is expected to begin Alpha tests at the end of 2017. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

The Ship of Heroes combat Alpha has begun! This video shows highlights from the first few runs. In each Alpha run, a six-player team composed of three devs and three supporters who have not played SoH before goes through a prepared sequence of set-piece fights in Apotheosis City. The fights have been made more challenging than street sweeping would normally be to allow enough time for the players to show their unique powers and combat tactics, and for the enemies to show theirs. The Alpha run progresses from the easiest first fight to the final boss fight, and reveals that each of the three enemy groups uses different powers and strategies. Simple button-mashing attacks can lead to problems! In particular, one group of enemies in SoH can ignore taunt and target any healer within a large area. Through the course of the joint Alpha runs, we are receiving important feedback from players and supporters that will guide the future evolution of the combat mechanics. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG under development in the Unreal 4.16 engine, and is going to continue closed combat Alpha testing for the next two weeks. Come visit our site to learn more.

Ship of Heroes is a new MMORPG that combines the best features of hero games and space games. Ship of Heroes takes place in a giant spaceship traveling from planet to planet called the FHS Justice. The Justice has twenty ship levels, each of which can have aboveground and underground playable areas. This video illustrates the sci-fi environment below the surface of the first level, Apotheosis City. Multiple rooms and corridors are shown, including the first layer of a deep section directly underneath the Arch in the center of the city. In addition, three classes of crew are present: security guards in the Arch room, plus scientists and crewmen, all in their work clothes. A major control hub is also visible, as is a security room with a mysterious item kept under lock and key. While all of the art, layout, lighting, arrangement of assets, and special effects shown in the video are preliminary, they do provide insight into the current state of development and the intended art style of the Ship of Heroes. AI for the civilian NPCs in the video has been coded by the devs from Ship of Heroes. This setting is the most current example of an instanced mission map for the game. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG being developed in the Unreal 4 engine, and is expected to begin Alpha tests at the end of 2017. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

Ship of Heroes is a new MMORPG that combines the best features of hero games and space games. Ship of Heroes takes place in a giant spaceship traveling from planet to planet called the FHS Justice. This video illustrates a recent network test conducted by the developers of Ship of Heroes. The test was conducted on March 11th, and developers located in Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, and Texas were simultaneously logged into a rented server. All characters shown were actually logged in and played by devs in real time. Each dev individually activated a power called “Torch” that we coded for this test. No server, login, connection, or client problems occurred during the test. As far as we know, no other pre-Kickstarter MMORPG has published a network test of this kind before. The video also shows Apotheosis City at night. The starry night sky with clouds moving in the distance is a digital recreation of the night sky of Earth that the citizens of the Justice use to make their generation ship feel more like the original home of humanity, Earth. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG being developed in the Unreal 4 engine, and is expected to enter Alpha in 2018. The Kickstarter begins April 4, 2017. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

This is the Ship of Heroes Kickstarter video. You can click he link at the beginning and end of the video to find the Kickstarter page for Ship of Heroes. This video shows character creation, flight as a travel power, and team combat in the new MMORPG, Ship of Heroes. Please view the video and donate to the Ship of Heroes Kickstarter.

Ship of Heroes is a new MMORPG that combines the best features of hero games and space games. Ship of Heroes takes place in a giant spaceship traveling from planet to planet called the FHS Justice. This video illustrates the first combat scenes that we have shown: a short combat sequence featuring a signature NPC hero named Meltdown who has fire-themed powers. Meltdown is a Devastator, a ranged damage and buff class in Ship of Heroes. In this combat sequence Meltdown uses a self-buff, a ranged location AoE attack, a ranged targeted AoE attack, a single-target ranged attack, a shorter-range cone attack, and an AoE heal. The Nagdellian enemies use multiple ranged attacks, and their lieutenant also has the power to call for reinforcements. While all of the powers, animations and special effects shown in the video are preliminary, they do provide insight into the current state of development and the intended art style of Ship of Heroes. AI for the civilian NPCs and for the enemies in the video has been coded by the devs from Ship of Heroes. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG being developed in the Unreal 4 engine, and is expected to enter Alpha in 2018. The Kickstarter begins April 4, 2017. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

Ship of Heroes is a new MMORPG that combines the best features of hero games and space games. Ship of Heroes takes place in a giant spaceship traveling from planet to planet. This video illustrates the general structure, layout, and scale of the FHS Justice, the principal heroship in the game. The bow of the ship contains command and control, and is designed for emergency ramming of enemy vessels. The underside of the vessel has three docking bays, with engines at the stern. Each of the twenty modules in the center contains a different level of the ship, which can have both aboveground and underground playable areas. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG being developed in the Unreal 4 engine, and is expected to enter Alpha in 2018. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more about the game, and about the FHS Justice and her inhabitants.

Ship of Heroes is a new MMORPG that combines the best features of hero games and space games. Ship of Heroes takes place in a giant spaceship traveling from planet to planet called the FHS Justice. This video showcases the current version of our character creator, which is full used to create both NPC characters and player avatars. The Ship of Heroes character creator is so versatile that it is possible for every character to have a unique appearance. In Ship of Heroes, there is no connection between the appearance of a character and the powers of a character. We've already incorporated numerous cutting-edge technical features from the Unreal Engine, including subsurface mapping on the skin to produce a subtle skin sheen, the latest eye model from Unreal, highly customized retinal textures, the most advanced Unreal hair shader for more detailed hair, and even APEX physics for moving both hair and clothing realistically, including capes. In addition, the SOH devs have custom-coded each article of clothing to reduce clipping from costume parts that overlay each other. Over 300 individual character morphs are showcased in this video. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG being developed in the Unreal 4 engine, and is expected to enter Alpha in 2018. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

Ship of Heroes is a new MMORPG that combines the best features of hero games and space games. Ship of Heroes takes place in a giant spaceship traveling from planet to planet. This video shows off the Arch in the geographical center of Apotheosis City, the first playable level. The Arch is a part of the ship’s systems, and it refines Unobtanium dust, which is used as the in-game currency. As such, the Arch is a frequent target of attempted alien invasions. Ship of Heroes is an MMORPG being developed in the Unreal 4 engine, and is expected to enter Alpha in 2018. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.

In this video, five developers from the Ship of Heroes test some new gameplay elements as a team, plus several features from previous videos. Our devs are in the process of custom-building a full mission system, and this content is a portion of that larger system. A team combat scenario with the Prometheans is also included. The characters shown are not signature heroes in the game; they are regular heroes made in the SoH character creator for tests. For example, the character known as “Green Pants Man” on social media makes an appearance. New features include glowing mission doors, glowing mission objectives, and objectives linked to combat progress in the mission. Using the split-screen allows us to show our accomplishments from two perspectives. For example, the glowing mission door is only glowing in the view of the team members that have the mission - not in the view of observers. The players enter one at a time, and each one must click the door in order to enter the mission, allowing teams to split up and do multiple tasks at once. Similarly, team members return from the mission map to the starting point on an individual basis, so they are not pulled into or out of the mission until they want to be. This video also integrates the teaming features shown in previous videos, as well as the custom mission maps revealed in May. Ship of Heroes is a sci-fi MMORPG currently under development in the Unreal 4.15 engine, but the game will be upgrading to UE 4.16 before the end of Q4. SoH is expected to begin Alpha tests at the end of 2017. Come visit our site at https://www.shipofheroes.com to learn more.