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[Mittens]

Hey guys, now that all the work on my mobile games is done I can finally devote my attention to my new game Kingdoms Rise

Kingdoms Rise is being made by me and one other guys who is handling the coding,
it is based on a half-life 2 MOD, also made by us, called Kingdoms Collide.



Kingdoms Rise is a competitive multiplayer sword fighting game set in a world of dark high fantasy.



The game now has a dev blog set up and I would love to get some readers, you can subscribe to it using RSS, check it out here;
http://www.flyleapstudios.com/kingdomsrise/
There is also a video I just posted on that blog, if you want to get an idea of the gameplay (although it's very early and glitchy testing)

I'm anticipating it being pretty awkward updating progress on both the official blog and in this dev blog, but i'll try to keep them in sync because in the past I've found having a TIGS dev blog valuable to keep me motivated

[poe]

Yes

[Chaz]

Those two screenies remind me of of the early screenshots that were put out for DmC. Looking really nice.

[Mittens]

If you watched the video on the blog you would have seen we where testing in the default UDK blank level, which is no good because it's flat white and makes it hard to understand movement (without any static references/ground texture)

So yesterday I made a new box level test map

[ANtY]

how is it going to be better than Chivalry?

[thekill473]

Saw this on polycount ages ago, The scenery looks awesome.

[Mittens]

how is it going to be better than Chivalry?

Chivalry is an asymmetrical class based game, sometimes a fast short sword wielder cannot be beaten by someone wielding a large slow hammer of equal skill. Instead the battle solution is intended to be sought from teammates, other classes or other weapons. Chivalry is primarily set up therefore as a team vs team war game.

Kingdoms Rise however is more of a fighting game than a war game, each individual player will be on equal footing in defeating any other one player with the outcomes decided by skill, not a paper-scissors-rock class match-up.

Kingdoms Rise has no archers, throwing knifes or classes with varied move speeds or healths (ala team fortress), instead the game is more like Call-of-Duty.
Although equal at their core, each combatant will be a hand crafted fighter with a unique and preferential set of abilities and modifiers.

A character builder will also mean your fighter looks how you want, as well as playing how you want.
Art style wise Kingdoms Rise will be stylized fantasy and will feature magic abilities (such as blink) instead of being the same (and only) art style used in this genre so far of historical recreation.

I hope that explains the difference well enough

[Mittens]

Made a new sword, it's a hawk themed katana like blade;

[ANtY]

Yep, that distinguished those 2 games very well, but I have a new competitor for you, dunno if you saw it already
http://www.indiedb.com/games/bladesymphony/news/blade-symphony-is-now-available-for-pre-order

I guess sword-fighting multiplayer games are getting more popular lately

[Mittens]

Yep, that distinguished those 2 games very well, but I have a new competitor for you, dunno if you saw it already
http://www.indiedb.com/games/bladesymphony/news/blade-symphony-is-now-available-for-pre-order

I guess sword-fighting multiplayer games are getting more popular lately

Yeah, Blade Symphony started development shortly after we released our first multiplayer sword fighting game Kingdoms Collide, It's probably the closest thing we have to a competitor.

I haven't really investigated the game much, but some things I can think of saying from the top of my head, based on a surface look;

-Aesthetically our games are very different, they have a very modern japanese style while we are going for a more gothic/western dark fantasy
-Our fighting mechanics are very different, it seems they still have set classes and stuff where we have load-outs and builds.
-Yeah, can't really think of much else, i guess i'll have to actualy play Blade Symphony

[Netsu]

As a person that has been waiting for a good sword-fighting game since Jedi Academy:
-How realistic are the animations, moves and such going to be? Blade Symphony doesn't interest me in the slightest because it looks like a Japanese fighter, but with swords.
-Is the gameplay going to be focused entirely on fighting or will we be able to wander larger maps, choosing the duelling spot and kinda building up the tension with taunts and other emotes?
-Is it going to be 1v1 only? In Jedi Knight I loved playing 1v2 or just getting on a bigger map with 3-4 players and duelling it out one-on-one while the rest watches and waits for their turn (preferably with their arms crossed, because there was an emote for that). Good times.

[Mittens]

I too am a massive JK fan, I was actually playing it today with Paul (the programmer) for nostalgia/inspiration, good times.

-How realistic are the animations, moves and such going to be? Blade Symphony doesn't interest me in the slightest because it looks like a Japanese fighter, but with swords.

One of our main aims in creating this game is to have really spot on animations which look believable and neat at all times, at the moment it's still pretty buggy, but I think we'll achieve the look we are going for soon, see the video at the bottom for our current state

-Is the gameplay going to be focused entirely on fighting or will we be able to wander larger maps, choosing the duelling spot and kinda building up the tension with taunts and other emotes?

At the moment I've only made relatively small dueling arenas, but I'm not making any more maps for now because we wan't the map size/openness to be determined by how the combat ends up being like after we do extensive play-testing and adjusting to it, so my answer is maybe

-Is it going to be 1v1 only? In Jedi Knight I loved playing 1v2 or just getting on a bigger map with 3-4 players and duelling it out one-on-one while the rest watches and waits for their turn (preferably with their arms crossed, because there was an emote for that). Good times.

It's not going to be 1v1 only, we're planning to have the ability for find a match in 1v1, 5v5 and every combo in-between (eg. 2v4)
But we do want to have a focus on tournaments, these would only be playable in even team sizes (unless we have an 'open' team size tournament, but only teams with 5 people would win i assume)

Anyway, Progress Update for today, I made a few sounds, they sound like this;

[ANtY]

Yep, that distinguished those 2 games very well, but I have a new competitor for you, dunno if you saw it already
http://www.indiedb.com/games/bladesymphony/news/blade-symphony-is-now-available-for-pre-order

I guess sword-fighting multiplayer games are getting more popular lately

Yeah, Blade Symphony started development shortly after we released our first multiplayer sword fighting game Kingdoms Collide, It's probably the closest thing we have to a competitor.

I haven't really investigated the game much, but some things I can think of saying from the top of my head, based on a surface look;

-Aesthetically our games are very different, they have a very modern japanese style while we are going for a more gothic/western dark fantasy
-Our fighting mechanics are very different, it seems they still have set classes and stuff where we have load-outs and builds.
-Yeah, can't really think of much else, i guess i'll have to actualy play Blade Symphony

Just so you know from my POV ur game seems much more promising than theirs  

it feels so much better with sounds, good job

[Netsu]

Yep, this video gives me a much better idea of what this game could be, and I like it
What are those arrows indicating?

[Sam English]

This is looking NICE!

[Atrus]

 

[Mittens]

Yep, this video gives me a much better idea of what this game could be, and I like it
What are those arrows indicating?

Haha, the arrows are actually completely broken at the moment, but eventually they will help display the your attack power and direction. So each time you make contact with an enemy you should see your move and their move and the outcome should then make sense (if it didn't already). Just gives people something to look at in those "WTF just happened there!?" moments

First thing I was going to do this morning was draw up a mock up of what I want them to finally look like, so wait out for that

[clockwrk_routine]

wow this is really nice, I love how weighted the combat feels

[Mittens]

Thanks for the encouragement guys,
Here's what I'm wanting to make those ugly arrows in the video look like.

in KR you can attack or defend on any angle in a 360 circle, so when you start you're attack you'd get an arrow like this


or like this, for a different angle


then the longer you hold down the attack button the arrow would grow to show your attack power increasing




We still haven't setled on a style/theme for the UI yet, but I think this simple text and shapes idea will go best for now (we can always replace the sprites with fancy fantasy stuff later on)

Kingdoms Collide had crazy fantasy themed HUD, in hindsight I don't think it worked out so well,

[Uykered]

Yeah, as close to nothing, or minimal is best for maximum immersions.