A new rpg from the guys that made Age of Decadence....so see you in 2030 with the full release
Quote:
Our long-term project is a colony ship RPG inspired by Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky. We want this game to feel and play differently from AoD. The core design (turn-based, choices & consequences, non-linear, text-heavy) would remain the same.
Character System
Expect the same 6 stats (Str, Dex, Con, Int, Per, Cha) and 18 skills grouped in sets of three:
It’s a fundamental change that affects every design aspect, most notably content “gating”. If you have 3-4 party members, most likely you’ll have all skills covered.
Charisma will determine the number and quality of your party members. The party size will range from 2 to 5. Experience points from quests will be split between the human party members (a droid will have its own leveling up mechanics and won't cost you any XP), thus a smaller party will be able to gain levels faster.
Party Dynamics
Typically, RPG party members serve a purely tactical role, giving your more bodies to control in combat and access to different combat abilities. In a sense, you’re role-playing an entire squad as outside of combat there is very little (if any) difference between the character you created and the characters you’ve recruited or created next.
It works great in RPGs that are mostly about combat, but calls for a different approach when it comes to non-combat gameplay. The main problem is that party members offer nothing but combat benefits (occasionally, freaky sex to relieve combat stress and party banter), giving you very few reasons to treat party members any differently than the main character.
In short, the problem is that in most RPGs party members are mindless zombies lacking any free will, agenda, goals, etc – the very qualities that separate an actual “character” from a zombie. Thus, our main design goal is to create proper characters that have a will of their own, as well as agendas, beliefs, goals, and other infuriating qualities.
Unlike the player’s character, the party members will have a complex personality & beliefs system that would determine their reaction. Most likely these stats will remain hidden from the player and you’d have to figure out what you’re dealing with by talking to them and observing how they act/react.
We're planning to go with 10 traits (values ranging from -5 to +5) strictly for the purpose of reacting to different situations and the PC's choices.
Religion (-5 means raging atheist, +5 means true believer)
Politics (-5 filthy liberal, +5 glorious conservative)
Loyalty (-5 treacherous scum, +5 loyal to a fault)
Volatile (-5 comatose, +5 always ready to fly off the handle)
Connving (-5 honest abe, +5 Miltiades)
Opportunist (-5 a man of principles, +5 what are principles?)
Idealism (-5 cynic, +5 starry-eyed idealist)
Greed (-5 above money, +5 can quote Gordon Gekko)
Altruism (-5 selfish bastard, +5 For the Greater Good!)
Agreeable (-5 doesn't play well with others, +5 gets along with Hitler)
Feats & Character Levels
Your characters will gain levels using experience points from quests. When you level up, you’ll select feats, unlocking or improving your abilities. The feats will be an important aspect of character development (i.e. they won’t give you minor bonuses but help you develop your characters along specific paths: lone wolf vs squad leader, offense vs defense, gunslinger vs sprayer or gadgeteer, melee vs ranged, which will go beyond which skill to develop, etc) and make as much of a difference as the skills levels.
We want the skills to determine your chance of success with certain tasks and the feats to define what you can do and how you can use these skills to maximum advantage. For example, not every guy with points in Pistol is a gunslinger, not every guy who travels alone is a Jeremiah Johnson when it comes to survival, etc. Basically, the feats will define your character much more than your skills.
Skills & Learn by Using
You will not gain XP for killing, talking, sneaking, picking locks, using computers, fixing mechanical things and such. You will not increase your skills manually. Instead your skills will be increased automatically based on their use.
Instead of counting how many times you did something, we’ll assign a certain value (let’s call it learning points) to each activity (attacking, killing, fixing, sneaking, convincing, lying, etc). So killing a tough enemy or repairing a reactor will net you more points than killing a weakling or fixing a toaster. Basically, it will work the same way as XP but go directly toward raising a skill that did all the work.
Gadgets
While melee builds will be viable, most enemies will use guns. Ranged combat will be dull if everyone just stands there, firing their weapons and dodging bullets. It needs cover but we don’t want to place cover everywhere, which means we need gadgets to make your own cover (among other things):
Depletable energy shield (absorbs x damage)
Reality distortion field (THC penalty against you)
Optical illusion a-la Total Recall (chance that enemies will target the illusion)
Cloaking field aka Stealth Boy
Stasis field (holds enemy, no damage can be dealt)
Brainwave Disruptor (don’t leave your home without Psychic Nullifier)
Expect 10-12 gadgets with 3-4 upgrade levels.
Factions
While factions will get a lot of attention and play a large role, you won’t join a faction but will remain an outsider, free to work for and deal with all factions, which fits the setting better as these factions aren’t guilds but different hubs. However, many quests would have conflicting interests and reputation would play a stronger and more immediate role than it did in AoD, so you won’t be able to please everyone for long.
In addition to your reputation, which will play a much bigger role in the game (the main quest is sort of built around it), we’ll add two important stats that will be affected by your actions: faction strength & morale (your actions might increase or lower both or increase one and lower the other). More on that in the future updates.
Last edited by lolozaur on Sat, 3rd Jun 2017 08:17; edited 3 times in total
They said they were aiming for a shorter development time for this one - probably because they hope to still be alive by the time it is finished. Some time around Xmas 2020 seems likely, given that they are working on a different game first.
@Prudi: indeed, as far as I know they're focusing on a dungeon crawler based on the Age of Decadence's world at the moment, which will serve as a prototype for this (bigger) game. Timetables are unknown as per tradition, all we can do is wait and hope that we're not too old when the magic will happen.
i feel like AOE's development time was long due to all the choices
More like due to changing the engine and art assets from the ground up several times and endlessly posting on the Codex instead of doing something productive.
2017 was a busy year: we did a lot of programming and animation work, produced a lot of art assets, defined locations (quests, places of interest, key characters), factions (leaders, relationships, goals), expanded the Pit’s quests, finalized the systems, and did a lot of work on the first two locations, so we started 2018 in a pretty good shape.
Our main goal for this year is to release a combat demo. It’s a major milestone as it’s practically a game in itself. We do that, it means we have the engine (fully customized for what we need), all systems except stealth, all art assets and animation, interface, and TONS of small things that take a lot of time. It’s a massive amount of work and it took us 5,5 years to reach this point with AoD. If we do it in 2 years this time around, it will mean that we’re right on schedule for 2020 release and give us 2 years to work on quests and locations.
Here is Nick, our programmer, reporting live from his bunker:
What’s done:
- Map grid. In CSG, the tiles are aligned according to the surface angle and look better by not sticking into the ground;
- Non-combat and combat pathfinding. Two separate systems now, which allows smooth movement when exploring locations and good old tactical tile-to-tile movement in combat. Your combat path is also displayed with a nice spline, so no more uncertainty of "where exactly will my character move when I click here" kind;
- Map checking system that spawns warnings if certain map objects are not configured properly - this should decrease the amount of level-design bugs;
- Hierarchical item classes and visual item editor;
- Chargen;
- The flexible structure of character classes that allows adding new creature types with a different appearance, item slots and behavior easily. Implementing new creature type was a big task in AoD/Torque and required writing a lot of code from scratch every time;
- Party system. Better-looking party following, comparing to DR;
- Animation system based on a proper state machine this time. Animations blended with ragdoll, which should help to avoid situations like dead/knockdown characters sticking into the wall;
- Inventory system and screen. Inventory space is now grid-based;
- Character screen;
- Dialogue system, screen, and visual node-based dialogue editor;
- Cover system which provides defense bonuses based on cover type and angle of enemy's fire;
- Combat exit areas - special tiles, Fallout-style, that allow player to flee from combat and execute attached scripts;
- Overhead icons, more informative than in previous games, since they now can display progress bars, numbers, and other useful context-based information;
- Discrete hitbox/collision system. We got rid of the chaotic line of fire and attack results that were animation-based. In AoD/DR the cursor could report you that you are able to hit a target, but then, when you click, your enemy would turn around or scratch his butt, and your arrow could fly past him despite all the odds;
- RPG Camera, replicated from AoD, also includes optional orthographic projection mode;
- Doors (prototype, not final)
- Basic destructible environment;
- Building system (floors visibility, interior/exterior objects)
- Basic combat system (weapons, attack modes, THC calculation, hitting, missing, simple RNG) and combat flow (start, end, combat queue, detecting enemies, advancing turns). No status effects yet.
- Global and local quest variables and game states;
We still don't have:
- Combat and non-combat AI;
- Feats;
- Implants system;
- Learn-by-doing XP mechanics;
- Nice visual effects (laser beams, muzzle flashes, etc);
- Character creation screen and PC customization (currently in progress);
- Combat status effects (knockdown, bleeding, etc);
- Gadgets and grenades;
- Travelling between areas;
- Saving/loading games;
- Options menu;
It will take us probably around six months to finish these tasks.
Good to hear that everything's going relatively smoothly, the art-style looks pretty great (almost Stasis-like in proper 3D). *Starts building a pod to facilitate the long wait*
It's an interesting art style they've gone with. Doesn't really look like an Unreal 4 game at all. I wondered for a moment if they had ditched PBR. It's hard to put my finger on exactly, but it looks kind of flat, the top pic especially. Maybe just because of the abundance of brown.
Some nice behind-the-scenes info, although it would have been more informative if they also detailed their expenses and not just revenue. That said, running my own small business, I know only too well how half a million dollars sounds like a lot of money, until you have to start paying people.
While the intro trailer doesn't have any gameplay footage yet (expect the first footage in 3-4 months), it comes with a sample of the ambient tracks. We'll post development updates on Steam as well, so if you're interested please wishlist or follow the game.
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