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[BlueSweatshirt]

Actually you could just hard code the game to base its time value off of a fixed point in time.(rather than the time the player started the game, etc.)
Maintain THAT! 

[Alex Norton]

Actually, I just had a thought... It wouldn't work. Because things like chest contents are based off that time value, so if one person stays in one area, the chest contents will keep changing... Oh well...

[Netsu]

Actually, I just had a thought... It wouldn't work. Because things like chest contents are based off that time value, so if one person stays in one area, the chest contents will keep changing... Oh well...

Maybe I'm missing something, but can't you generate the chest contents once when an area is generated and loaded into memory, based on the time of generation, and only change the contents when you generate the chest again? So the contents would only change in time when the player isn't there to see it.

[Alex Norton]

A fair enough statement, but there are actually a LOT of things that are generated from the time, and it would become too complicated... No, I think that the time coefficient needs to be unique to the individual game...

However, things like towns and dungeons and countryside will not change with time, so one person playing on one computer can tell a friend where to find a particularly awesome dungeon, and their friend will be able to visit it as well!

[JimmyJ]

The more times I see you say the word infinite, the more my excitement grows. This sounds absolutely amazing and fantastic.

[Alex Norton]

I shall be sure to keep saying it then

Thank you! We're super excited about releasing the demo to you all!

[baconman]

I'm guessing it's because many PGC worlds are determined by a single prime number seed, where Malevolence rather creates an array or list of these prime number seeds instead of a single one, generating and daisychaining these neighboring domains together.

This also keeps areas distinctive from one another, and even when similar in grouping shape, a town of one shape, a dungeon of that shape, and the underwater contents of a lake that shape will always be different outcomes, as well as the other different biomes involved. The reason it's infinite, is because the numerical ranges involved are as well; but it doesn't calculate forever, just adds on where it needs to, due to player progression.

It's truly an awesome concept, so long as there's actual level design, risk/rewards, and gameplay potential in it that doesn't get to the point where a player is intrinsically strong enough to go toe-to-toe with anything and everything. Disposable-but-significant items are a must, on this note.

[Alex Norton]

Thanks baconman. That's what I like about this forum. Malevolence is represented in a LOT of places, but it's only here that people instantly "get" the technical nature of this project, and can see what an achievement it is. An infinite fantasy world is a dream I've had for years, now it's finally coming true.

With regards to character progression, however, we've also come up with a fairly elegant (if we do say so ourselves) solution to that. We outlined it in this blog post:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/malevolence-the-sword-of-ahkranox/news/character-stats

The long and short of it is that you don't have stat scores. You instead have stat percentages. All of your stats added together must always equal 100%. So when you train in strength, your magic suffers, etc. You have a single "stat pool" number which increases as time goes on, and your stats all take a percentage cut of that single number, but it's up to you as a player to stay as balanced as possible.
The difficulty of enemies and power of items, etc, scales with you as you progress, as well, so that you will be able to play infinitely and always be challenged.

[baconman]

What do you guys think of taking this sort of approach to music theory and instrument samplings? Just curious.

[Alex Norton]

We were actually thinking about it when we were contacted by our lead composer, Nicolas. His work blew us away so damn much that we just had to go with him!

http://nicolasleemusic.com/

[Alex Norton]

If you can bear to stand my thick Australian accent for a minute, I've just finished the infinite scrolling biome system and put up a video explaining how the back-end works before it generates the 3D world on the screen:





Just an interesting little tidbit of background information!

[Alex Norton]

I know that most of you on here are game devs yourself, but just in case you're interested, we have a bit of a behind-the-scenes treat for you!

We have 34 people working on this game, and they're located all over the world, and it's an amazing list of talents. But we've been slowly accumulating sneak-peek videos of how each person does their work:

Here we have an insight for our lead composer, taking us through how he created the game's theme music:






And here we have an insight for our lead concept artist, taking us through how she designed a lot of the game's item graphics:






And finally we have our lead modeller working on town buildings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eug34oXO6w


Anyway, just a bit of fun for you and a little insight into the sort of work that's going into this game!

[Alex Norton]

Another small update. Since we're in Australia and can't get Kickstarter, we've started an IndieGoGo account, so check it out and share the link where you can! (I'll put this into the first post, too)

http://www.indiegogo.com/Malevolence

[Alex Norton]

Just in case anyone is interested, I'm looking for a 2D artist to work on this project... Preferrably someone with experience doing game art, but I'm open to anyone. Send me a PM if you or someone you know is interested!

[andy_stoza]

just divorced skyrim.. Marry Me!!!

[Alex Norton]

Alas, ours is a forbidden love... Until December 21, 2012... Then... Then we can be together...

[Alex Norton]

We've got a new blog post up! You can read it here:

http://swordofahkranox.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/what-on-earth-are-we-up-to.html

Basically, we've been busy building the overworld. We're still waiting on the 3D assets from the art department, so we've had to use temporary objects in the meantime, but the 3D landscape is procedurally generating, which is cool. The infinite world exists! Here's a video! (I wish you could embed videos here...)

[Alex Norton]

So we've been doing lots of work on the infinite overworld lately, and it's working beautifully as you can see in the last blog post (linked in the previous post). Only about 10 days to go before I get a week off my day job to sit down and create all of the dozens of 3D models needed to bring it all to life. I can't wait! I'll of course post lots of pics of them on this dev blog as I go.

I highly recommend (if you haven't already) checking out the most recent blog post here:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/malevolence-the-sword-of-ahkranox/news/what-on-earth-are-we-up-to

In the meantime, our efforts with the crowd-funding initiative have been going pretty damn well. We launched the campaign only 6 days ago and already we're 9% of the way there! You can contribute, too, if you like the look of the game, and even secure yourself a pre-order copy when you contribute! We've also got lots of other goodies for people who help us out! So go check out the IndieGoGo site by clicking the image below! (it's like KickStarter, but available to poor sods like me in Australia)

[Alex Norton]

We just uploaded a new pitch video to our IndieGoGo campaign. Please take a look!

http://www.indiegogo.com/Malevolence

[kamac]

By the way, what's the name of your trailer's song?

Cause this trailer has the same song