Way back in 1996, I created a tech demo in MS-DOS called HullBreach. It was originally inspired by Ambrosia Software’s Escape Velocity game series and the ships from the movie Independence Day. In this demo, there was a simple textual introduction about a war between Earth and another planet, then the player could fly the ship around Earth and the Moon and fire upon an enemy ship of the same appearance and perform simple actions when docked at Earth.

Fast forward to November of 2007, I launched the browser-based space game HullBreach Online, targeting the Internet Channel on Nintendo’s Wii console with full support for the Wii Remote to control ships. It also worked on all Internet browsers except for Internet Explorer (due to its lack of canvas support) on computers. The game’s launch marked what would eventually grow into this community, with those accounts still being connected. A few years later, the game would expand to have support for the Nintendo DSi Internet browser for a “lite” version of the interface but all the same functionality.

Over the past 18 years, so much has happened with Internet browsers and the standards behind the programming languages used to create the HullBreach Online that it mostly became unusable, sitting as an unchanged relic from a generation ago. During this interim time Robert Gump (a.k.a. Skunkman), Randy Freer (a.k.a. Arch_Enemy), and I, founded HullBreach Studios with the plan to create a fully 3D sequel for the Wii U console called HullBreach: Uncloaked. With the failure of that console and numerous other projects for HullBreach Studios, the game sat in a developmental state with few playable features and several early 3D models.

I’ve finally made a decision after all these years to shake off the digital dust from the unfinished project and create a mobile app version of HullBreach Online for iOS, using pre-rendered sprites from the originally-planned sequel and building upon the plans for that game with modern features like particle effects, positional audio, multiplayer missions, offline play, etc. Since this new version of the game (or should it just be called HullBreach Online 2 at this point?) will incorporate this community, that means I will have to build upon what we have here and support newer account features like multi-factor authentication, single sign-in, etc.

Here’s an early screenshot of how the gameplay may look. However, it could change considerably as the project progresses.



As an additional note: I am also fixing up the original browser-based game so that it will work on modern browsers. Many aspects of it are up-and-running again, but there is still a little work to get trading posts and missions fully running. I’ll probably add in some more content to keep things fresh in that version, as well.