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jO
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« Reply #120 on: March 09, 2013, 03:24:32 AM »

Raptors will also have no outline.
And they will, as many other creatures, serve as a mount - if you can convince them in the first place to not eat you.

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« Reply #121 on: March 09, 2013, 04:30:34 AM »

The concept and the setting are wonderful!
I hope the pixelart for the hexagon map will get better for the final release. Good work!
« Last Edit: March 09, 2013, 04:35:56 AM by nss_aries » Logged

eobet
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« Reply #122 on: March 10, 2013, 03:42:56 AM »

You know about Pioneers since you replied in that thread, so now I must ask:

Have you thought about doubling the size of the hex grid, so you can 1) re-use the pixel art characters you already showed instead of having to create shrunken duplicates of everything and 2) put as much character in the actual landscape itself as you have in the art you already shown?

I think Pioneers show that having a larger grid, especially in a setting like this, makes it more immersive.

EDIT: Super quick and dirty mock-up...

I just wanted to show that I think you should have the same side perspective on mountains and forests as your characters, but push them up from the tile center so that the character's feet is on flat ground with scenery in the background. And this could then also work for (my examples) chasms and rivers of lava which have to be from above (and which could be dangerous tiles to enter). Plus, it would have the added coolness of hiding the feet of the characters when surrounded by tiles with tall grass or forests.

It's just an idea to try to get your concept art, scene art and map art to be as close together as possible...
« Last Edit: March 10, 2013, 05:26:39 PM by eobet » Logged

jO
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« Reply #123 on: March 11, 2013, 12:33:40 AM »

You know about Pioneers since you replied in that thread, so now I must ask:

Have you thought about doubling the size of the hex grid, so you can 1) re-use the pixel art characters you already showed instead of having to create shrunken duplicates of everything and 2) put as much character in the actual landscape itself as you have in the art you already shown?

I think Pioneers show that having a larger grid, especially in a setting like this, makes it more immersive.

EDIT: Super quick and dirty mock-up...

I just wanted to show that I think you should have the same side perspective on mountains and forests as your characters, but push them up from the tile center so that the character's feet is on flat ground with scenery in the background. And this could then also work for (my examples) chasms and rivers of lava which have to be from above (and which could be dangerous tiles to enter). Plus, it would have the added coolness of hiding the feet of the characters when surrounded by tiles with tall grass or forests.

It's just an idea to try to get your concept art, scene art and map art to be as close together as possible...

Oh wow, thank you very much for putting so much effort into getting your point across.
To answer your question; yes, we have thought and talked a lot about the intended distance and size for our map gameplay.

The reason why we chose to go so small is that we really want to focus our game around the feeling of a long term expedition. Instead of moving a couple of meters, as it is usual for a typical roguelike, we want the player to feel like he is travelling a long distance when moving from one field to the other.
If we'd go too close with out perspective we'd loose that feeling, and potentially end up too similar to a classic roguelike; something we want to avoid.

I really like Pioneers and especially how Eigen treats the artistic side of Pioneers. However, Eigen is focusing much more on the individual person or a small group that the player is controlling, where our focus lies more in the management and control of a large trek, with a lot of porters, pack animals and such - we are on a completely different scale, and this needs to be reflected in the visual representation of our map.

I perfectly know what you mean when you say we should try to bring the feeling of those close up shots more into the map gameplay. What we want to achieve is a mix of this really large scale feeling of the map, and then go in regular intervals (combat, exploring temples, visiting villages and other locales) much closer, up and personal. This way we'll hopefully be able to strike a good balance between the two and create a coherent experience that feels personal, but also has the large scale feeling of an expedition that lasts for multiple weeks (in-game time ;-)

With all that said; thanks so much for your feedback, it means the world to us  Gentleman
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« Reply #124 on: March 11, 2013, 02:40:45 AM »

The reason why we chose to go so small is that we really want to focus our game around the feeling of a long term expedition. Instead of moving a couple of meters, as it is usual for a typical roguelike, we want the player to feel like he is travelling a long distance when moving from one field to the other.
If we'd go too close with out perspective we'd loose that feeling, and potentially end up too similar to a classic roguelike; something we want to avoid.

I think the way you have it should work very well. As you say, it needs to feel like you are travelling for weeks across vast stretches of territory.

Quick question: will the expeditions have goals, for example to retrieve a particular artefact, rescue a lost explorer, find the source of a river or map a certain territory? Or optional objectives (Phileas Fogg style wagers perhaps!)? Or will it be completely open? Just curious...

Every time I read this thread I practically salivate. Cannot wait to try something playable.
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« Reply #125 on: March 11, 2013, 03:41:38 AM »

Although the large tiles eobet drew look mighty fine and would fit the game stylistically, I agree smaller tiles work better in this case. Just looking at the map image I can tell these are vast landscapes and great distances between stuff. I think it comes down to this:

Large tile = more details = less abstract = realistic/implied scale
Small tile = less details = more/completely abstract = vague/unspecified scale

the key being abstraction.

If you draw a tree, then everything else will be measured to that. If the tree is 20 pixels wide, then moving 100 pixels can in no way be a week's worth of travelling. But if instead of a tree you have something that represents a forest without specifying its measurements, then moving 100 pixels is what you say it is. Terra Incognita/The Curious Expedition is clearly using the latter approach. I went with something in-between with Pioneers. Stuff is semi-realistically drawn but still quite abstract [no forest is just 1, 2 or 3 tree(s)] so the rather low amount of distance you can move in a day doesn't feel too unrealistic, I hope. This may have not been the wisest choice but I can't go back now Smiley
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jO
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« Reply #126 on: March 11, 2013, 04:25:35 AM »

Quick question: will the expeditions have goals, for example to retrieve a particular artefact, rescue a lost explorer, find the source of a river or map a certain territory? Or optional objectives (Phileas Fogg style wagers perhaps!)? Or will it be completely open? Just curious...

Yes, there will be a big main goal for every expedition, with retrieving a famous treasure being the likely candidate (or finding El-Dorado)

Finding river sources is also a goal, but an optional one. Whenever you encounter a river, you can try to find it's source. If you do so, you'll get a lot of fame (which is used for unlocking new options when equipping a new expedition) AND you get to name the river.

Also, exploring certain territories of the map is a sub-goal; sometimes you'll get hints that e.g. a certain native village can be found within an area of the map - which is then marked, so you can "focus" your explorative efforts on this area if you are interested in finding the village.

We are currently working on what you describe as a "Phileas Fogg style" challenge - the intend of this is to put a bit more time pressure on the player to keep going and not stick too long within a certain territory. The inspiration is certainly the rebel fleet from FTL, however it will be presented and work a lot different than in FTL. But you can, as in FTL, work against it by trying to delay the advancement of the rival expedition.


the key being abstraction.


Very nicely put, Eigen, thank you  Gentleman.
Also, yes, sorry, obviously eobet did the tile artwork, which keeps stunning the shit out of me whenever I see them.
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« Reply #127 on: March 11, 2013, 11:14:11 AM »

How did I not see this? Very cool!
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JLJac
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« Reply #128 on: March 12, 2013, 07:56:05 AM »

Sir, first of all let me say that I adore your project. Too few games have exploration as their actual goal, and the ones that do are often poorly executed. This is strange, as exploring is a lot of fun, and should really have the same, if not greater, potential as a player driving force as blowing things up. I remember me and my friends exploring the areas you're not supposed to go in games back in the day, and of course there never was anything to see once you reached the place you set out for. If you create a game around exploration, and actually deliberatly placed that pot of gold we were hoping for, it would be wonderful!

I also love your setting, creating places that never existed, mixing Africa with India with dinosaurs! And then putting historical figures in there, creating a strange alternate history.

What I'm not as happy about is your change of name. Terra Incognita really struck the right chord in my opinion, whereas "The Curious Expedition" seems... blunt. I find it blunt in two ways. First, it's just literally stating what the game is, such as if Mario would be dubbed "Colourful Jumping". Second, the word "curious" seems to be be thrown around quite a lot when it comes to steampunk/early sience/that kind of stuff. It seems like it forcefully tries to set the tone for the entire game, but misses it with a bit - indicating something too goofy and cartoony. I know you wrote that another game was released with the name Terra Incognita... but I'd still consider going back to it. Or keep looking. "The curious expedition" sounds to me a bit too much like a children's board game.

So, praise and complaints done, now a question(that I hope you haven't answered in the devlog but I've missed): You write that the player will encounter tribes, but what about undiscovered high civilizations? I know nothing like that happened in the late eighteen hundreds, but in the 14'th century some huge political units in south america were discovered, which must've been quite an encounter.

Oh, and a suggestion: If you need more female characters I'd like to have Marie Curie on my team. I'd love to see how the tribal warriors and wild animals cope with uranium rifle rounds.
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jO
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« Reply #129 on: March 12, 2013, 08:35:20 AM »

... What I'm not as happy about is your change of name. Terra Incognita really struck the right chord in my opinion, whereas "The Curious Expedition" seems... blunt. I find it blunt in two ways. First, it's just literally stating what the game is, such as if Mario would be dubbed "Colourful Jumping". ...

... You write that the player will encounter tribes, but what about undiscovered high civilizations? I know nothing like that happened in the late eighteen hundreds, but in the 14'th century some huge political units in south america were discovered, which must've been quite an encounter.

Oh, and a suggestion: If you need more female characters I'd like to have Marie Curie on my team. I'd love to see how the tribal warriors and wild animals cope with uranium rifle rounds.

First off - thanks a lot! I really like your Project Rain World, so getting that positive feedback from you means a lot.

The name...yes, that is something that we are struggling with a lot. We're also not 100% happy with the new name, but I guess no name will ever fit perfectly. The jury is still kinda out, and even if we now decide ultimately for the Curious Expedition, that does not mean that we won't be changing it in the coming future. For now we decided to leave the name thing behind us, since we're much more eager to work on the game itself :-)

On high civilizations - so far we have not really ruled that out at all. We're currently developing all kinds of different native tribes which will have porters with unique abilities and options within the villages. That ranges from small tribes of peace-loving vegans to more phantasic birdlizardmen that only eat raw fish.
Really portraying a high culture will in the end depend on how we are able to combine the surroundings of the area the village is located with the village itself. This could mean that a high culture has a lot of monumental temples built all over their area or similar large structures. I hope that we'll be able to give some more concrete examples of some of the tribes we've been working on in the near future.

Actually, you are the second person that requests Marie Curie :-)
I've been thinking a lot about which female character we should add to our cast, and she is very high on the list. As you say, there would be a lot of cool options for radiation and things that we could hook her up with.
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« Reply #130 on: March 12, 2013, 11:34:53 AM »

Since you've said you could change the name again, why not picking another latin term? I like 'Terra' (besides latin, both 'terra' and 'incognita' are words in portuguese as well, so the name sounds really cool to me =] )...maybe you could try some words such as 'mysterium', 'ferox', 'silvestre' (thanks Google Translate Wink)
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« Reply #131 on: March 12, 2013, 02:01:24 PM »

Hey, hope I'm not too late about this, but the 1:1.1 hex grid is the best Wink
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JLJac
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« Reply #132 on: March 12, 2013, 11:35:57 PM »

Oh, I see how you're thinking about the name. Better move on from an unresolved problem than allowing it to get you stuck.

On high civilizations I guess that you'll have to portray them in one way or another either way, as even if you don't want them to actually be around you'll want their ruins. I think that when creating a sense of mystery it's important to have some sort of coherence, to give little glimpses indicating that there actually is something to discover. I don't know if you ever watched "Lost", but I think that's a great example of mystery done wrong. In the beginning it seemed awesome, because strange things were happening and everyone was trying to piece them together. Then, after a while, you realized that there was no coherence to the events, that they were just random weird stuff that were thrown in there one by one. That totally destroyed the sense of mystery.

Where I'm going with this is here: If you want to create mysterious-feeling ruins of a high culture, you have to generate some aspects of that high culture. Something small like "these guys have slope-angled walls and are obsessed with birds" would be just fine. The quirks could just be picked from a list at random.

So - if you want ruins it might be a good idea to do some work on generating high cultures, and if you're doing that maybe it would take you one step closer to having them alive in play?

One thing that would be really awesome would be to have cultures in different stages of build-up/decay. Think of the easter islands, when they were discovered a few tiny tribes of cannibals and egg-scavangers were squatting among the ruins of giant temples and stone heads built by their ancestors. If I remember correctly the discoverers initially outruled that it was the same people who were the architects. That's a pretty cool mysterious scenario!

Really looking forward to seeing those more concrete examples of tribes you're talking about! To what degree are their cultures/appearances randomly generated? Can't wait for the birdlizardmen.
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« Reply #133 on: March 12, 2013, 11:45:05 PM »

Another reason you might want to consider switching from Terra Incognita is this: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/terraincognita/terra-incognita-a-retro-inspired-rpg

It's been getting quite a bit of publicity on gaming-related sites, especially since the announced that the game will be coming to the Wii U.

If I were you, I'd consider changing it to avoid confusion in the future.
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« Reply #134 on: March 13, 2013, 01:23:26 AM »

Oh man, this game has everything. It has dinosaurs and dapper gentlemen.  My Word!

IT IS A JURASSIC GENTLEMEN SAFARI

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jO
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« Reply #135 on: March 13, 2013, 03:03:46 PM »

Oh man, this game has everything. It has dinosaurs and dapper gentlemen.  My Word!

IT IS A JURASSIC GENTLEMEN SAFARI

Thanks for that magnificent quote!

Update: I've been updating the initial post with a new ingame shot. Also, we have now officially made the switch to the new name, "The Curious Expedition". (sry JLJac  Wink )

Also, we have a proper website now : www.curious-expedition.com

Not much to be found there yet, we plan to extend it in the future.
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« Reply #136 on: March 13, 2013, 04:16:37 PM »

If only there was a 'gentleman' mode which activated every April 1st that replaced all the OK buttons with "Jolly Good", the Exit buttons with "Cheerio", attack buttons with "'ave at him!" etc.
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« Reply #137 on: March 15, 2013, 04:47:12 PM »

If only there was a 'gentleman' mode which activated every April 1st that replaced all the OK buttons with "Jolly Good", the Exit buttons with "Cheerio", attack buttons with "'ave at him!" etc.
Why only on April 1st?
Every day is a good day to be a gentleman Gentleman
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« Reply #138 on: March 17, 2013, 10:21:45 AM »

This is really cool!
Love how the logo looks like that of a Disney movie Smiley

I would strongly encourage you to keep a consistent resolution though. I think it looks really out of place when you use a really tiny highres font along side low res pixel art.
Especially when retro bitmap fonts look really sexy Smiley
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jO
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« Reply #139 on: March 22, 2013, 12:20:52 AM »

Updates!  Beer!

We're still working on a version that can be played without us sitting next to the player for a public demo. The main thing we need to work on for this to happen is improving the feedback and interface of our game systems.
One of those systems, maybe the biggest one, is the camp interface that you see whenever you decide to take a break from travelling. Here you'll be able to use and inspect your items or manage and feed your trek units.
When camping, the units of your trek will form groups, depending on their type, current morale and other factors. Having too many small groups means that your units don't get along very well, which can become problematic.

In this trek the porters, soldiers and specialists don't really get along very nicely. They all have formed individual groups.



In this shot a large group formed around the campfire. The units of this trek seem well motivated and get along just nicely.



Your units, especially the specialists, will talk about things from time to time. This maybe be relevant to the current game state, comment on your actions or just be something that adds more character to the individual unit (be careful about Freud commenting on your playstyle, this can be very unsettling)



Some rough draft at an improved HUD for the unit resources. Red = Health, Purple = Morale, Green dots = Hunger. This amount of information will likely be displayed when hovering over a group with your mouse.

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