Exilian
Game Design and Project Resources: The Workshops Quarter => Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley => Topic started by: PaperBagCrusher on April 22, 2016, 03:45:20 AM
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Hey everyone one of the site managers invited me to share our game with you all and I thought it would be a great idea! The name of our game is Isles Of Arthanos and in short its a first person RPG similar to The Elder Scrolls with optional co-op, combined with a very advanced and user friendly level creation mode where you can design new levels along with quests and NPCs which can be compared to Dungeons & Dragons in a lot of ways. We have a demo build on our website that is free to download. We have youtube tutorial videos as well that you should check out if you want to try the demo. We'd love for you to check it out and give us some feedback. I'll get more in depth about the game design at the bottom of this post but I think its time for some screenshots :o
Demo Link : http://www.islesofarthanos.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/islesofarthanos/
Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVkVYLRBDeJm050muWK1KUg
(http://i.imgur.com/FezWGDkl.jpg)
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OVERVIEW
Isles Of Arthanos is a first person cooperative RPG with a focus on user generated content and challenging game mechanics. The goal is to create a game that will constantly evolve and expand that could potentially provide thousands of quality play hours to be experienced individually or among friends.
FEATURES
Level Editor
The level editor is a robust toolset that allows players to design their own worlds and game experiences. This editor does most of the heavy lifting involved in content creation to save time and empower player creativity. For example, we can randomly generate high quality terrains that intelligently place forests grassy plains and rock formations literally at the click of a button. These worlds can be shared and downloaded among the community. Players don't need to download any additional software in order to create levels, the world editor is part of the game itself.
Mod Support
With mod support players can create their own unique art assets, stories and gameplay with third-party tools and scripting.
Cooperative Multiplayer
Isles Of Arthanos allows for many different cooperative experiences that depend on how the level is designed. Some levels can resemble an open world co-op experience with many quests, a smaller horde style co-op experience with side-quests, or even raid style content. The scale of the co-op experience depends on the level design.
Skill Based Gameplay
Gear and stats are not the sole determining factor of success in Isles Of Arthanos. Players will have to use strategy and skill based battle tactics in order to defeat enemies. A simple example of this would be blocking just before an enemy strikes to negate the damage.
No Insane Grinding
We don't believe in forcing players to do tedious tasks in order to progress their character. Characters will level up and reach their maximum stats fast, the main form of progression comes from learning new skills and abilities in the world and combining them into unique strategies that may or may not prove to be effective.
Enhanced Skill Progression
When a player learns a new skill or ability they will not automatically be an expert in that skill. Each skill will have its own skill tree that can be leveled up with skill points and used in different ways. For example, a fire spell may have 5 different categories to pour skill points into. Common categories for a fireball spell would be projectile range, area of effect damage, burn damage over time, regular damage, and reduced mana costs. You could spend a lot of skill points on a fireball spell and cast the ultimate fireball, or you could spend less and cast a very specific type of fireball useful for a specific type of situation. Players do not have an infinite amount of skill points, this prevents a character from being an expert in all skills. Players will be able to forget skills they do not want anymore and will then have to earn more skill points to invest in something else. Skill points are independent from a characters level and can be earned after a player reaches max level. They can no longer be earned once a character has reached the maximum amount of points allowed. Everyone has their limits.
Equipment System
Equipment is broken up into multiple different parts allowing for a large amount of combinations. Pieces will be broken up into hands/lower arm (left and right), shoulders/upper arm (left and right), headgear, feet, top layer armor that covers chest and legs (plate armor and loose clothing), lower layer armor that covers chest and legs (tight fitting clothing and chain-mail).
Hunger System
Keeping your character well nourished will boost your stats. Being moderately fed will keep your stats neutral and being malnourished will cause stat reductions. Players will not die from being malnourished.
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Hi, welcome to Exilian
The game looks great, I play a lot of these type.
The world looks like a cross between Skyrim and Gothic 3 so that's pretty awesome. The armour has great aesthetic and the modular system for it sounds like it'll be a lot of fun to get the look just right.
Given you're looking for feedback:
How are you managing the pacing of power progression? From reading what you have here, it seems like the initial leveling process is a power spike then once you hit max level quickly the power reward drops off significantly and, let's be honest, +5% damage per skill point isn't all that interesting to unlock.
Are the armours sidegrades? Bonuses and penalties for each type with different armours being better at different things? Or there's one best heavy and one best light armour?
What kind of stats are there? A SPECIAL system or hp, mana, stamina or something new?
Is the world populated? Are there NPCs and quests or is it freeform exploration with encounters and dungeons? What kind of enemies are there?
Thanks for posting and good luck with it :)
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Hey thanks for the reply I'm glad you think the game is interesting.
So in the beginning your base stats will change drastically which are health stamina and mana, the goal is for you to not feel super powerful by the end of that because you wouldn't have had time yet to collect and master all of your potential skills. So not all of the skill trees are going to +5% damage rewards. Just some examples for the fireball spell you could choose between AOE range, burn duration, damage, and mana consumption. That spell is fairly straightforward, but its not just spells that you can pour skill points into but passive abilities too. So for example, with the two handed weapons passive ability some of the tree options could be the ability to cast spells while wielding a two handed weapon, the parry ability allowing you to knock an opponent back if you time it right, increased blocking efficiency with two handed weapons, and maybe even knock down chance. So some skills will have more interesting trees than others for sure.
So there will basically be different tiers of armors depending on what materials they are made from. Once you get to the highest tier for the most part they will be side grades that may be better in different situations or play styles. So weight will slow down movement and the speed of attacks, enchantment slots will be important for more custom play styles, and obviously the amount of armor is important. I would like to add durability into the mix but me and Kevin are still going back and fourth on that.
The worlds will definitely be populated. Once we get the custom character creator in you will be able to design custom NPCs and what their stats, faction, role, and dialogue options are. There will be quests as well which is why I was comparing it to D&D because you can tell your own stories through the level creator and play through it with your friends.
As far as enemies are concerned it definitely won't be just humans. I haven't decided on all of them yet but I definitely want to do undead, a hostile orc like faction, vampires and demonic entities. Modders can add in their own enemy types as well.
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This does indeed sound rather bitching.
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This does indeed sound rather bitching.
Be sure to show some friends! We are really trying to spread the word. It's pretty hard since we weren't able to have a fan base before going into Kickstarter and people have less faith in new start-ups in general these days.
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Tried to reply earlier but i got locked out for some reason.
Great answers, thanks :)
Durability is something a lot of people like and it goes well with crafting, personally I don't like it but am I right in thinking that it could be a feature modded either in or out? Or perhaps even as an in-game option?
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Do I hear "RPG game intended for modding" here? My ears are rather pricking up. :P
Will take a look at the demo soon!
Also welcome to Exilian, hope you stick around! I'm the executive officer of our committee, I'll drop you a message about the various other stuff we do/how else we can help you out if that'd be useful :)
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@Clockwork So we don't want modding to change the core features of the game that way the experience is consistent for all players and also to ensure compatibility. So some of the programming stuff will be a little limited in that sense. It will mainly be for coding AI and quest functionality.
@Jubal Thanks make sure you checkout our Youtube tutorials that way you will have an idea of what to do before you start. And definitely would like to stick around getting pretty good vibes so far.
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That's fair enough. Looking forward to seeing how this progresses.
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Been having a play around with the level editor, it's good fun! I can't seem to get houses to end properly, and I've not worked out how to put upper floors in, but it's a nice system and it looks very pretty! I'm enjoying having the wolves follow me around too, though it's a bit odd when they walk through each other.
Also, I've dropped you a PM, you should see it in your "messages" inbox on here :)
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@Jubal A lot of the bugs can be fixed by saving the level, returning to main menu, and then re-opening it. I'm also going to respond to your PM soon.
Our first devlog is up on our youtube channel you should definitely check that out :P
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So we've got a new kickstarter video, this one is shorter and more to the point.
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Vote for us on Steam Greenlight! We are only doing a concept page right now so votes will just help other people see the game.
Greenlight Link : http://goo.gl/rYvZ0w
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Thanks for the links - will try and get a review of the demo written in the next few days :)
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We actually just put a new demo build up on the kickstarter, my twitch, and the website. It has some bug fixes and a big new feature (a transform widget). So now you can move things based off the camera view and the transform widget if you prefer that.
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Downloading the new build now :)
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Just a heads up it seems like the best way to run it is on medium settings and just turn up graphics settings manually instead of switching presets. At least until we get some of the bugs figured out. Also start in edit mode instead of play mode in the new build a new bug has surfaced :balrog:
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I've been running things on low graphics generally so I can actually have a decent play with building things.
A few thoughts & observations:
- In edit mode, I want to be able to move the camera faster most of the time, it can be pretty slow flying around trying to build any sort of decent sized village.
- In playing mode, it's the reverse, I often find I need to move slightly slower so I can keep running around without running off cliffs/bridges regularly.
- The tools aren't always very responsive for some reason, it can take me a few attempts to switch between height and flatten tools for example.
- When building/extending foundations it's often unclear in which direction they will end up being extended, which can be extremely frustrating.
- When extending a house from a foundation (eg when building at sea) it always seems to create a 2 by X building with one storey and one of the roof fronts missing, even if I tried to create say a 5 storey tower.
- On some small buildings the rooves don't appear at all.
- I'd actually put saves of islands etc in the game's own folder rather than in AppData - a lot of people don't actually know how to find the AppData folder or have it hidden, and people will presumably be likely to want to share their islands!
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You can actually change the flying camera speed with the mouse wheel, I might have forgot to say that in the tutorials D: It does say it on the first help screen that automatically pops up though.
I've never actually tried creating a building from a foundation before.
Some of the other things sound like something else went wrong and caused that stuff to break. In that case I would try saving the level and then re opening it. I think we might have another build up today which has a bunch of bug fixes and allows you to change out the roof pieces and triangle end pieces.
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There's a new build on the website should be more stable. In other news, we are #1 in the Steam Greenlight Concepts section so thanks for the support. This will hopefully help more people find out about the game.
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Just realised I hadn't gotten round to upvoting you on Greenlight - done that now!
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We've got a pretty large update to share. There's a devlog on our youtube channel to sum it up. But basically we have like 100 new architectural building pieces that allow for a ton of building variation now. We've also started working on inventory, a food system, 1st and 3rd person character views, and setting up actions in the game which is what we will use to design quests eventually.
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Glorious stuff, looks lovely! :)
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is the kickstarter backing standard per currency or is it based on a single currency like USD?
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is the kickstarter backing standard per currency or is it based on a single currency like USD?
I think kickstarter will just convert your currency to whatever currency the project uses. Our kickstarter actually failed though so I've updated the thread to reflect that. We are going to work on the game for another 9 months and then try again. I saw earlier you had a question about quests and yes players will be able to create their own complete RPG experience including quests. The possibility for extra free content is one of our main pitches.
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This looks and sounds great! I'll be sure to try out the demo soon when I get a chance.
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I'm glad you are interested! I would wait a little while though the build on our website right now is not the one from the latest video. We will be uploading that soon and I'll post here so you can know.
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The new demo build is up on our website be sure to check it out. There's also some new stuff that wasn't in the video :gollum:
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Good to see it going so well :)
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We are back with another devlog! It's been about 4 months since our last one so we've got plenty of new features to talk about.
DEMO LINK : https://goo.gl/egd4TL
NEW FEATURES
- Basic Combat
- Fully Featured Inventory
- Equipping Weapons and Armor
- Setting Up and Looting Containers
- Nature Visual Enhancements
- New Environmental Objects
- Building Prefabs
- Various Optimizations
- NPC Conversation Trees
- In Game AI Logic Setup
- Trading
- AI Facial Customization
- Ability To Setup Quests In Game
- Enhanced Level Generation Via Biome Distribution
- More Terrain Stamps
- New Website
- New Demo
- Discord Server (link on website)
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Fantastic, I'll download it pretty soon - currently a bit swamped with organising Exilian's annual convention :)
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Aaaah I'd forgotten about this, wish I had time to give it a try. Looking grand.