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[Gren]

Hey guys, I'm new here. Not just to this forum, but to the indie game scene as well. A very small group of us have been working hard on an ambitious independent MMO project for the past two years. The game we've created is called Grecca.

www.grecca.net



Grecca is simultaneously a throw back to better times in MMORPG history, and an experiment with new ideas in the massively multiplayer realm. Grecca is designed as a layered experience; simple and straight forward in appearance, but with ever deepening levels of complexity to be uncovered. The primary variable in all things is the skill of the individual player; sometimes timing, sometimes reflexes, sometimes calculation and strategy. Your character absolutely can and will develop, and there is a very different and very in-depth crafting system (I stand behind that statement; I'm not just throwing buzz words here). However, player skill will always remain the primary determining factor in almost every tribulation.

Grecca also places a heavy emphasis on Player vs. Player combat in it's most basic, primal form. In essence, every single thing you do in Grecca is competitive in some way; be it fighting, foraging, crafting, and so on. Because the scope of PvP is so broad, there are very few restrictions on how players may express their competitive spirit (polite way of saying "wreck each others shit"); Those that do exist are minimal, and purely for the sake of preventing absolute chaos over the most trivial matters.

If you've been looking at the screenshots, you're probably thinking "Hm, but this looks like a 2d street brawler with Greeks... how could this possibly be as deep and explorative as they claim?" Well, this being the 21st century, we went for the ultra high tech solution: A top down world map. Unfortunately, it's not pictured in the screenshots yet because... well, it's just not. But it exists. Trust me.

At any rate, the reason I'm posting this now is that we could really use some help alpha testing. See, the issue with MMO's (particularly ones that emphasize player vs. player combat) is that you need players and those players need to interact. We have a lot of unproven systems such as real time combat (yeah, timing/reflex-based real time combat, between players, in the middle of the game world... screw latency, no BS) that need testing and we just don't have enough testers to do it.

We're not ready to start just yet, so consider this a post to 'raise awareness' and hopefully warm a couple of you up to the idea of jumping in with us in a few weeks.

A little disclaimer: I realize the "Game Information" section is not complete, and the screenshots reflect a varying degree of sprite quality ranging from "good" to "hmm". The site and the game are both works in progress.


OFFICIAL DATES

Alpha:
April 30th, 2010

Beta:
July 2010

Release:
September 2010

Signups for Alpha are ongoing on the forum, even after testing starts.

[JaJitsu]

looks like a cell phone game, haha.

what kind of skills can ya get?

[Gren]

looks like a cell phone game, haha.

.. You know those are thumbnails, right?

what kind of skills can ya get?

There's two separate categories of skills; combat and non-combat. There are lists of each but they're not finalized at this point so there's not much point in actually posting them.

Suffice to say this much, though: Combat skills consist of skills that either provide passive bonuses to certain equipment or fighting styles, or grant specific abilities to be used in battle. Non-combat skills consist of anything else; crafting skills like blacksmithing or cooking that let you synthesize items for whatever purpose, survival skills such as tracking, stealth, or hunting that help you be less dead. Also, construction and resource gathering are governed by several different skills as well.

But just in case: What I mean by "player skill" is your skill, the guy behind the keyboard (or gamepad, which we support!) This means even if you build a sick ass character, the primary responsibility of winning fights is still on you; the player (with reflexes and strategy), not the character (with stats and skills).

[Gren]

I'm updating this post to tell those who are still interested that we have added gameplay video to the website which can also be found on our youtube account http://www.youtube.com/user/BanboxEntertainment

New screenshots are being added weekly as well.

[george]

I like the look and sound of this a lot, I'll definitely check it out. Welcome to TIGS Gren, be sure to introduce yourself over here.


edit: hey, I tried to register at your forums, but when password requires mixed case (?) and I failed three times on your captcha, ending my chance to register for this session...maybe you're making it too hard? 

[Gren]

Thanks for your interest George, I'll head over to there and introduce myself later today.

I apologize about the registration process on our forum, we have at least 3 bots per day sign up and without the increased security they make it through registration and post hundreds of spam topics before we can ban and delete them. I will take another look at the settings and see if there is another way to handle this.

[george]

My suggestion would be to get rid of phpBB honestly, I think either SMF or vBulletin have much better functionality, skins, and perhaps defense against bots.

[Gren]

We're sort of limited to the boards our hosting service has to offer at the moment. In the future we're going to find something with better functionality than phpbb.

[Gren]

We've had some huge updates recently to the artwork and will be expecting to release open Alpha testing before May. The website also has had a recent overhaul and is much more attractive to look at. Alpha originally was going to be a little bare-bones but now we're expecting to start adding a second culture by next month.

[MalcolmLittle]

Grecca seems promising! I'm especially intrigued by the Clan feature. When do you choose a clan, at character creation or does it happen when the player chooses?

The survival parts, with food and shelter, do add something that we haven't seen in MMOs  in a long time. Is the game mainly directed towards PVP or are there other types of player interaction in the game?

[Gren]

Grecca seems promising! I'm especially intrigued by the Clan feature. When do you choose a clan, at character creation or does it happen when the player chooses?

The survival parts, with food and shelter, do add something that we haven't seen in MMOs  in a long time. Is the game mainly directed towards PVP or are there other types of player interaction in the game?

You'll join a clan in game at a time agreed upon between you and the clan receiving you. There are many types of character interaction in the game. PvP is just the pivotal crux, due to the highly competitive aspects of the game.

[Jonathan]

If you guys really focus on fine tuning the player vs. player combat, I'm sure you could come up with something great here.  I've always felt more at home with the 2D arcade style fighting anyway, so I don't mind that at all.  How exactly is that going to work?  I'm very curious about this.

[Gren]

How does the 2d combat work? It's a real time system using different attack types and blocking or dodging, akin to a brawler game.

[Gren]

More new gameplay videos have been uploaded to www.grecca.net, and I did an interview with OnRPG (currently on the front page) which outlines a few more of our gaming features. We're expecting a huge update this week, and plan to run a long test after that happens.

[BrixxieBee]

This game looks awesome, like a mix of Golden Axe with an MMO :D It looks like it's a lot of fun to play and I like the fluidity of the graphics, their style, and the sound effects all put together. How far along are you guys towards completion (estimation)?

[Gren]

Thanks! We're expecting a huge update from our programmer in the next couple of days and after we get that we'll officially be in Alpha testing territory. We're looking at possibly hitting beta by around July or August and plan to release the full game some time in September this year.

[Gren]

We just performed internal testing on the new client build last night. Things are still a little buggy because the entire client had to be rewritten but the functionality feels much more game-like than it did before. Skills are now implemented, the world map and party systems are in, and the crafting system is being put together starting after the bugs are all cleared out. We're looking at potentially releasing an Alpha build for testing before May, signups for that are still going on on our forums.

By the way, the phpbb signup issue is cleared up now that we updated our forum version. We haven't had a problem with spam since and I turned the captcha way down.

[Gren]

Day/Night cycles, the remaining animation states, randomizing maps and moving background layers (animated water, etc) are now implemented and we're progressively working our way through adding the different skill trees and minigames for crafting/etc. Next on the list are projectile weapons and implementing player created towns, followed by writing in the AI for the animals in the hunting system (although animations for the animals may take a bit longer.)

Alpha Testing has been announced for April 30th.

Signups are still ongoing on the forum and will continue even after release, being the game is developed to be player run, we need as many testers as possible to ensure full functionality of the game.

[Gren]

Alpha testing is underway, we're doing really well so far. We haven't had any major complaints about game mechanics other than not having enough of them coded in yet. We still need more testers though to test the server at full capacity.

This week we're adding in "Full Loot" options, the hunger system and trading.

No major bugs uncovered yet.

We've decided to continue our plans to release the full game in September with a short Beta period in late July or early August of this year. The only changes will be that rather than releasing all four cultures simultaneously, we'll release the full Greccan culture and later release the rest of the cultures as free expansion packs as we get more server space and a bigger player base.

[Gren]

We have very recently updated our client to include many important game functions. Anyone who is interested is welcome to join us.

You can setup an alpha account here:

www.grecca.net/application.html

You can download the client here:

http://home.comcast.net/~jamesblackmon/SetupGreccaSmall.exe

Hope to see you in game soon.