Wow, that video actually swayed me on this game. The feeling I got was very much like Shadow of the Beast 1 or 2 or Barbarian 1 or 2 (the Psygnosis version).
When I first saw the game, I expected a more of a Wonderboy in Monsterland sort of experience and critiqued it accordingly (too stiff animations and not smooth enough movement), but in this new context, everything works!
How realistic is this game? And with that I mean, what can you reasonably expect to find in a cave apart from angry bears? If you go seeking gold, that would entail quite a mining operation, and in the new world, gold was more abundant in rivers anyway, wasn't it?
Or are we going full Indiana Jones style underground temples with traps, treasure and mad worshiping tribes people?
Since what everyone here is saying apparently isn't getting through, perhaps an image would help?
Here's a quick edit, which still needs to be reduced further imo, but I hope it shows a bit of what we are talking about:
Another idea would be to post the graphics of this game to Wayofthepixel. I swear that it will get ripped to shreds by the mods on that forum, but they will also be able to give you really good tips (and perhaps even better edits), because they are amazing at what they do:
I hope that mods can allow for an expansion on the economic side as well, since I'm not that interested in RTS but I'm really into city building games (with production chain management, resource management, supply and demand management and traffic management).
Also, building new models to use in-game like Lego is brilliant! (Something Minecraft lacks, imo, with its hardcoded crafting.)
Thanks for the backing!!
Could you describe in more detail what you mean by modding the economic side? We want as much of the game to be moddable as possible. Our original thinking on economy is that "gold" would be an abstraction which let you get access to other parts of the game that you may need occasionally, but not want to invest a lot of gameplay in. For example, if you're really into the military combat game, you would go out questing and killing monsters for gold, then use the gold to buy food. Conversely, if you're really into the farming game you could create a surplus of food to sell to raise money to hire protection for your crops (or to pay off invaders who want to sack your city).
Did you have other ideas for the economy game? How would you like to mod it?
Thanks again for the backing.
Many economy games use gold as a general purpose accelerator that is more difficult to get than the direct means of producing something. Like the food you mention is something you could buy with gold, but cheaper to produce yourself directly. So, to continue with your example of hiring protection by other means than gold would perhaps mean that that outfitting soldiers of a certain level would require leather armor that at the most basic level needs hides from the livestock. Then in an economic scenario, the interesting bit would be adding a slaughterhouse, a tanner and then a leather crafter, which would complete that production chain. And to complicate matters, for example, the tanner might need salt for curing which intersects with another production chain. Then the delivery of all these goods would require a traffic management portion, because you'd need to get swords or spears as well which entails a whole mining operation and that makes things really interesting for those wanting to fiddle with the economic side.
As for modding, well, I saw the farming mini-game prototype and that was wonderful. Do you have anything similar for raising livestock? And if not, can you mod that into the game? And can you mod things that the livestock produces into the game? And in turn, can you mod buildings/crafters which need what the livestock produces to produce other things? Modding whole new mini-games is perhaps asking too much, though, unless you have full scripting support.
Also, if you use gold as the central thing you can purchase anything with, perhaps people would want to "cheat" by say modding a goose that lays golden eggs so perhaps you'd want to analyze every mod that a player adds to their game for a gold/minute ratio that could ramp up monster frequency accordingly.
PS. games which use what I reference above are the Settlers series, Anno series, Caesar/Pharaoh series, Patrician series and the Stronghold games, for example.
I hope that mods can allow for an expansion on the economic side as well, since I'm not that interested in RTS but I'm really into city building games (with production chain management, resource management, supply and demand management and traffic management).
Also, building new models to use in-game like Lego is brilliant! (Something Minecraft lacks, imo, with its hardcoded crafting.)
That dark background with it's super harsh white light and busy pattern does draw quite a lot of attention away from the game view, espeically since the game uses a very muted palette. The standard Photoshop drop shadow also makes the background look quite amateurish.
The game view and portraits look super fab, but the background kills the theme, imo.
In fact, the earliest mock-up with the red hue looked the best to me. Also, that drop shadow makes everything look like a window manager rather than being an overlay with a hole cut out in it which makes you see into a different world, like in the classics:
you won't notice the tiles blurring into eachother as much ;
It has nothing to do with blur. Rather that your game currently looks a bit like this.
For inspiration, go to the pixel art thread on this forum and see how the really amazing guys separate the background from the foreground. Common techniques are more muted colors and reduction in detail, for example.
Explosions and lasers on the current set of graphics are just going to make people get headaches and perhaps even make their eyes bleed and I don't think you want that.
One of the cool things that the new Sim City did was to treat all moving entities as a particle system, essentially seeing the homes as faucets turning on to spill its inhabitants down the streets, flowing into the factories which acted like buckets with localized gravity in them... sort of.*
Maybe that sort of abstraction isn't necessary here though.
Another new idea is the "flow fields" of Planetary Annihilation, if you care to watch that video. I found it really incredible. Maybe these ideas aren't suited here, but perhaps considering them will yield some new inspiration?
* Sort of not cool that the marketing department then stated the exact opposite, but still.
Amazing. Will be interesting to see some gameplay.
And I'll also add to the voices who worry that the background tiles are looking to busy right now. Hopefully you'll tone them down so that only objects of interest pop.
Have you considered tilting the view ever so slightly and having the screen move ever so slightly in the direction of player travel to create a subtle parallax effect? I mean, the 3D is apparently already in place, so why not use it?
Also, the "wave" effect on the crowds in those animated gifs is making me sea sick. The crowds should definitely move (in reaction to player or playfield events), just not in that way.
EDIT: Whoah, just saw the beta video... so maybe a parallax effect will be too much because there's already so much screen shake... which just adds to my feeling of sea sickness... but maybe that's the effect you are going for?
EDIT: Ok, final question, just watched the video again... why do the girls appear in a ray of light, instead of, say, being pulled/thrown from the crowd?
The overground stuff and the map holding view are awesome! It's a huge contrast to the underground stuff which seems very uninspiring at the moment (as from a different game even). I hope you can figure out how to give the caves as much detail and life as the overground!
Sorry if this has been answered before, but is this game going to have inverse kinetics that enables dynamic motion like stopping incoming attack animations at precise angles of impact so that you won't find objects passing through each other in replays (apart from when metal goes through flesh)? Or even morphing into entirely new animations if you can deflect attacks in new directions to create dynamic openings for your next attacks?
Ever since I saw the first Hitman game, I've lamented the lack of inverse kinetics in games like Mount & Blade which feel so canned that combat really isn't interesting on the individual level. I guess Die By The Sword did this, but their implementation was quite clunky.
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