Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

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LachiusTZ

LachiusTZ

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Emergent gameplay in general is a great thing that devs spend too much time trying to corral
 
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Secrets

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LachiusTZ said:
Emergent gameplay in general is a great thing that devs spend too much time trying to corral
Click to expand...

Game developers need to go back to making games instead of making products for 'the masses'. It stifles innovation for everyone. Devs are forced to make their own version of 'Hearthstone' for example - looking at you, Runeterra, Gwen, Dota2 cardgame.

Or basically every game marketed as a "WoW clone", but it has <x feature> that WoW doesn't have, but WoW now has *because you just gave them the concept and showed that it works for free*
Public quests - Warhammer Online
"You're the hero"-style storytelling - FFXIV
Dynamic scaling - various

It seems like it's more convenient to leech off of others' success by 'one-upping' them than it is to actually innovate. And I mean, the money follows soon after for almost all of these companies... because players are used to it. It's become the norm to churn out beautiful looking shallow games with maybe a small innovation.

It's better, imo, to start coming up with ideas you actually like, and letting players figure out your idea and more importantly, break the idea that you like. Worst happens it fails on its own merits and you learn from it... instead of making a game about zombies because everyone else is doing it.
 
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Rease

Rease

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Secrets said:
Game developers need to go back to making games instead of making products for 'the masses'. It stifles innovation for everyone. Devs are forced to make their own version of 'Hearthstone' for example - looking at you, Runeterra, Gwen, Dota2 cardgame.

Or basically every game marketed as a "WoW clone", but it has <x feature> that WoW doesn't have, but WoW now has *because you just gave them the concept and showed that it works for free*
Public quests - Warhammer Online
"You're the hero"-style storytelling - FFXIV
Dynamic scaling - various

It seems like it's more convenient to leech off of others' success by 'one-upping' them than it is to actually innovate. And I mean, the money follows soon after for almost all of these companies... because players are used to it. It's become the norm to churn out beautiful looking shallow games with maybe a small innovation.

It's better, imo, to start coming up with ideas you actually like, and letting players figure out your idea and more importantly, break the idea that you like. Worst happens it fails on its own merits and you learn from it... instead of making a game about zombies because everyone else is doing it.
Click to expand...
So much truth in one post. It is absurd and exactly like the movie business. We went from new ideas, creating new things and iterating to McDonalds burgers for everyone just one less shitty piece of lettuce here or there. Even with indies this shit is getting rampant. Why only look to older cash cows that have been repeated ad nauseam and not worked instead of looking to doing things like Epic(Fortnight) meaning bust open a new pathway not copy. I doubt it will change though because all the good independent makers keep getting brought under the fold of Sony, Microsoft and fucking EA/Ubisoft. I coupled those last two cuz fuck they ruin everything.
 
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Guurn

Guurn

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Kaines said:
The immersion argument also drives me bonkers. You know what else breaks immersion? Walking into the “dangerous” dungeon that is the home of an entire group of baddies and being able to walk from the entrance to the deepest parts without seeing a single NPC. Just camp groups after camp groups.

Immersion my ass.
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I'd agree that immersion was stronger in raids or even more in the race to raids. I'd argue that camping and limiting the number of people per server built server communities.

Most of us meet everyone we interact with in random groups. Having central locations for that makes it easier and honestly more fun. Those stupid conversations you'd have while fighting a bunch a mobs are highlights. Waiting hours for groups is what sucked. As long as you eventually joined a good guild and had options it didn't matter if everything in one place was full
 
Ukerric

Ukerric

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Kaines

Kaines

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Guurn said:
I'd agree that immersion was stronger in raids or even more in the race to raids. I'd argue that camping and limiting the number of people per server built server communities.

Most of us meet everyone we interact with in random groups. Having central locations for that makes it easier and honestly more fun. Those stupid conversations you'd have while fighting a bunch a mobs are highlights. Waiting hours for groups is what sucked. As long as you eventually joined a good guild and had options it didn't matter if everything in one place was full
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A glorified chat room isn’t what I’m looking for in an MMO
 
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Kaines

Kaines

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TJT said:
Nah, but a need to seek out and interact with other players is.
Click to expand...
Which instancing has nothing to do with when talking about group/ raid content. Those things require other people by definition.
 
LachiusTZ

LachiusTZ

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Secrets said:
Game developers need to go back to making games instead of making products for 'the masses'. It stifles innovation for everyone. Devs are forced to make their own version of 'Hearthstone' for example - looking at you, Runeterra, Gwen, Dota2 cardgame.

Or basically every game marketed as a "WoW clone", but it has <x feature> that WoW doesn't have, but WoW now has *because you just gave them the concept and showed that it works for free*
Public quests - Warhammer Online
"You're the hero"-style storytelling - FFXIV
Dynamic scaling - various

It seems like it's more convenient to leech off of others' success by 'one-upping' them than it is to actually innovate. And I mean, the money follows soon after for almost all of these companies... because players are used to it. It's become the norm to churn out beautiful looking shallow games with maybe a small innovation.

It's better, imo, to start coming up with ideas you actually like, and letting players figure out your idea and more importantly, break the idea that you like. Worst happens it fails on its own merits and you learn from it... instead of making a game about zombies because everyone else is doing it.
Click to expand...

Lol, dunno why you think innovating is what's missing.

But that's not what's wrong with MMO design
 
Ukerric

Ukerric

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Kaines said:
Which instancing has nothing to do with when talking about group/ raid content. Those things require other people by definition.
Click to expand...
The one problem with instancing is that it removes any form of spontaneous interaction with people in favor of curated ones.

In an instance, you only interact with the very specific team you've brought in, no one else (well, except for the /1 for those who haven't disabled it). The only interactions you'll ever have is with the game and the handful of people involved. That's a bit of the first M in MMORPG that's gone.

Everyone has noticed that there is nearly no meaningful difference remaining between a fully instanced MMO and a lobby-based single/party-based game.
 
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Kaines

Kaines

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Ukerric said:
The one problem with instancing is that it removes any form of spontaneous interaction with people in favor of curated ones.

In an instance, you only interact with the very specific team you've brought in, no one else (well, except for the /1 for those who haven't disabled it). The only interactions you'll ever have is with the game and the handful of people involved. That's a bit of the first M in MMORPG that's gone.
Click to expand...
City hubs aren’t instanced. Go interact with people there. Dungeons and actual CONTENT shouldn’t be the sole provence of poopsocking campers. And those who think developers can’t creat more content than players can consume are simply lying to themselves
 
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Ukerric

Ukerric

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Kaines said:
City hubs aren’t instanced. Go interact with people there.
Click to expand...
That's a lobby, except in 3D environment. The interactions there are barely above the level of lobby chat.

That isn't a MMORPG. That's a MORPG.
 
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Kaines

Kaines

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Ukerric said:
That's a lobby, except in 3D environment. The interactions there are barely above the level of lobby chat.

That isn't a MMORPG. That's a MORPG.
Click to expand...
And a game that has content locked out to a large portion of its player base isn’t a MMO. It’s an e-sport with in game viewing.
 
Ukerric

Ukerric

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Kaines said:
And a game that has content locked out to a large portion of its player base isn’t a MMO. It’s an e-sport with in game viewing.
Click to expand...
6d194e950e9da284c712bcba97690ac6.jpg
 
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uniqueuser

uniqueuser

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Kaines said:
And those who think developers can’t creat more content than players can consume are simply lying to themselves
Click to expand...
Then light my pants on fire because they just can't. Even annoying tricks like gating content via keys/attunes or narrowly applicable non-solutions like procedural generation only delay the inevitable, that player consumption will always outpace dev production. God might have created the world in one go and humans are still trying to figure it out, but videogame devs aren't gods outside of their creations.
 
Kaines

Kaines

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uniqueuser said:
Then light my pants on fire because they just can't. Even annoying tricks like gating content via keys/attunes or narrowly applicable non-solutions like procedural generation only delay the inevitable, that player consumption will always outpace dev production. God might have created the world in one go and humans are still trying to figure it out, but videogame devs aren't gods outside of their creations.
Click to expand...
That was my bad. I meant “developers can create” which is what would be needed for a fully non-instanced world. My apologies
 
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Flobee

Flobee

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​
Newsletter #2 is out. I had to crop some pictures for the forum to accept it. I would suggest checking out the team directly
Stream
Discord
Newsletter​

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Welcome to our second newsletter!

For those of you reading this on mobile devices:
Good luck - we tend to be wordy, and this episode’s images are a bit dark.
Also, do you not have PC’s?

For the rest of you, (including those of you enjoying this on forums where this will inevitably be posted):
Good luck - the same applies (though, the images are slightly less brown than last time).
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A glimpse of the starry sky above Night Harbor
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Art​

As we continue to work through the Project_N “Proof of Concept,” we’ve been experimenting with our art direction.

This includes, concepts and texture work that’s being iterated on by a couple of concept artists we’ve contracted.

Art is an area in which we have some very strong ideas for the direction, but will likely be iterating on from both stylistic and technical standpoints throughout the process (note: see the previous newsletter for a sample).

So, keep in mind that the game’s visuals (posted here and on the stream) should still be considered placeholders for gameplay & technical testing, along with random aesthetic test cases.
Despite there being textures, FX, etc… we still just refer to this as “GreyBox” (okay, maybe BrownBox).
And pretty much everything you’ve seen to date are our own handcrafted assets, as we are not currently making use of resources like the Unity Asset Store.

Ali has also been creating some of our own textures in-house, while Shawn has been creating Environment Art in Blender and placeholder FX in Unity.
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Two orc centurions stand guard in an alternate version of our Mini-Crypt Dungeon
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Initial Placeholder UI Functionality​

We’ve implemented:
  • Functioning Chat
  • Combat and Status Text
  • Targeting Window with Health and Mana
  • Player Window with Health, Mana, and Experience
  • Abilities Bar and Cooldown Indicator
  • Moveable Elements
Shakabrah helped us with the UI, and was able to provide us with an initial placeholder framework.

It features moveable UI elements in the form of a chat log, player frame, target frame, and ability bar.

As far as UI Design goes, we’re still talking specifics.

What we don’t like is extremely cluttered screens, excessive sound effects, or on screen instructions to tell you exactly what to do to play the game.

However, we want to give players the flexibility to customize their UI layout and appearance through skinning.

Stay tuned for more information regarding our User Interface.
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Project_N Initial Placeholder UI Elements
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Combat​

We’ve implemented:
  • Tab Targeting
  • Classic Era and Pen & Paper inspired Combat Formulas
  • Auto Attack
  • Crunchy Abilities with Cooldowns and Global Cooldowns (yum…)
  • Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, and Paladin Classes (initial playables)
  • Experience Gain & Leveling
  • Skill-ups for Hand to Hand Combat, Offense, and Defense skills
  • Sit/Stand and Regeneration Rates
  • Death & Respawn
  • Aggro
  • Initial Faction work
We’ve got the foundational elements in place for combat. This enables us to target NPCs and play through the combat loop in a natural manner.

We’re already finding combat fun and engaging, and will be further elaborated on in future updates. This and similar work is moving fast enough that we’ve decided to save the last couple of weeks' work for future newsletters.

A major focus for us has been tooling for Class Balancing and Combat Scenario Balancing.

As always with Project_N, the tools are designer focused and data-centric.

The goal for combat and the tech behind combat is to bring back the intricacies of old-school MMO combat, which we believe have been mostly forgotten since the initial days of MMOs, in favor of streamlining and/or a more action-y feel.
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A ghoul patrols through our Mini-Crypt Test Dungeon
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Foundational Tech​

We’ve implemented:
  • Client, Server, and Networking
  • State persistence
  • Zoning (we are zone based)
  • Day/Night Cycle
Progress on Netcode and the foundational tech has been rapid. We are super stoked with the core systems we have in place so far!

At the heart of the tech is a central queuing and messaging system. This has allowed the individual systems to be very loosely coupled, with thin lines of communication.

The hope is that such an architecture will allow us to scale rapidly and easily add new systems and functionality.

We look forward to posting a Tech-focused newsletter in the near future!
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Project_N Spawn Editor and Spawn Visualization in action
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Design Tools​

We’ve implemented:
  • Data-driven tools & visualization integrated into Unity
  • NPC Definitions & Placement
  • Spawn Points & Spawning Volumes (for mob fields)
  • Spawn Commands: Gotos, wander, repeat commands, etc.
  • Spawn Timers with Several Available Presets (including Zone Based Timers)
  • Currently supporting 5 unique and persistent zones for testing purposes
And what’s combat without NPCs? A strong focus for us is the ability to efficiently build out a large world with varied biomes, NPCs, and other content.

This content needs to not only operate at scale, but also be easily maintainable over the years.

With this in mind, we’ve designed and started implementing our own data-driven tools.

They allow designers to easily familiarize themselves and quickly become very effective in making content without the explicit need for direct programmer support.

Shawn has drawn heavily from past experience in this area, while Ali and Nick have used their more recent experiences in the emulator community to drive these efforts forward at a fast pace.

This has allowed Nick to steadily implement and iterate on zone populations (for multiple zones), create classes and abilities, tweak player and mob tuning, and more… while also providing valuable feedback (and a ton of bug reports), which helps Ali expose properties in the editor, clean up code, and tighten things as we go.
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An orc pawn approaches as The Moons emerge over Night Harbor
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Lore​

Shawn and Astra have been going deep into the history of the world of Project_N and we think you will love where our Lore is going.

There’s a heavy emphasis on history, factions, and other elements that feed a sense of discovery and place.

Our focus is on worldbuilding that’ll allow you, your communities, and us as creators to experience the story of our time together in this world - rather than strict linear narratives with far-reaching deterministic outcomes.

We want to create a world, not a fantasy novel.

Our stories should add to, not overshadow, yours.

We’re also really excited about how well our World Maps have been coming together. It’s been fun for us to see the world and its eras take a more tangible shape.

The maps are being drawn in Inkarnate (and we can’t wait to have cloth versions in our hands) and the lore is being developed in World Anvil. We’re not affiliated with either app, but we do think they’re badass so far.

Unfortunately, Lore and World Development are areas we can’t share a lot about yet, because we want to preserve the mystery, and several aspects are still in flux.

We are hoping to get to a point in which we can share more Lore information in the near future. And as we’ve just gotten started, we still have plenty of time.
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Closing Thoughts​

Thanks from all of us for taking the time to read this. We’ve only been at this for a couple of months, but we’re really excited by the progress so far.

This project is a huge point of passion for us, but we’re also taking it very seriously. This is a game that we really want to make, and we take a lot of pride in being open with you and in having you along.

Please keep checking our progress on the stream, we love hearing from you! The discussions thus far have been extremely helpful. Nick is also hoping to start doing some design and gameplay streams soon, so be on the lookout for that!

Again - a huge thanks goes out from the 4 of us - with a special thanks to Shaka for the help with the UI!

Looking forward to sharing more soon... it's moving fast.
 
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gugabuba

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I hope this turns into something but can't believe they're sharing anything yet. This feels like they bought one of the asset store mmo things and spent 15 minutes on art.
 
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