Some of you have been following the daily image releases on Twitter or visiting the HullBreach Studios website to see the gallery (which is Nintendo 3DS compatible).

Seeing the content doesn't fully put into perspective just how much the HullBreach game universe has changed over the years from the original HullBreach tech demo, through HullBreach Online, and to the upcoming HullBreach: Uncloaked. Thus, I thought I would take a trip down memory lane...

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HullBreach (1996)

The original HullBreach was a playable demo in 1996 for MS-DOS. It was written in the QuickBasic language and didn't get much past being able to fly around Earth, visit spacedock, and fight an enemy vessel. The environment was all sprite-based, with asteroids floating through space and Luna orbiting Earth. The enemy craft would orbit Earth, shooting at the player's vessel.

There was not much of a storyline for the game, but it still formed the basis for the in-depth backstory that has grown in the last decade, involved genetically augmented humans fighting off extraterrestrial invaders and ultimately being victims of interplanetary apartheid themselves.

Since I can't run the original HullBreach on windows 7, all I can provide is a single, blurry JPEG image. Still, this image provides a great comparison between the "then" and the "now". I have inset the screenshot into a rendering of the Manta class ship to show how far things have come in 18 years.

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HullBreach Online (2007)

With the advent of the Wii's Internet Channel and its support for the new HTML5 < canvas > tag, I saw a great opportunity to bring new life to the old HullBreach tech demo as a browser-based endeavor. Today, it's common to see graphical-based browser games that require no browser plug-in all over the place, but I was not aware of any during the development of HB Online.

This game was much closer to my original vision for the HullBreach universe, but the browser did prevent many planned features, like attacking other players' ships with torpedos (which had to be removed when an Internet Channel update removed support for the B button). A Nintendo DSi version came a few years later, well after the SDK community grew around the collection of websites that started with HB Online.

The first spacecraft playable when creating an account was the Shuttlecraft, though a few of the other planned vessels were available for purchase as spacedocks, as well (including the Transport classes and the Sloop classes). These ships were modeled in Google SketchUp, back when Blender was in its infancy. The 3D models were exported as transparent PNGs (top view for in-game and isometric for other depictions).

For HB: Uncloaked, the Shuttlecraft will also be the starting vessel, but it was rendered in Blender and imported into Unity as a fully 3D model. This screenshot of the new vessel with an inset of the old shows the evolution in the 7 years.

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As more content comes to fruition, during the development of HB: Uncloaked, I plan to post more blogs like this. Most will cover the evolution from HB Online, but some will share background insight into the developmental process to assist other aspiring developers.