Vanguard of the Fallen - My EQ Based RPG Project

Just spent the morning adding ogre female animations, quite the feeling of wasting time with that one, but OCD wins out.

My game may be unplayable. I can't find the sound file for hitting a mummy, was a real satisfying crunch noise and just can't seem to locate it.

your_mum said:

y'all brothers?

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I did see that guys project. Pretty neat. That's much more about just trying to re work EQ than making game. I early on thought about doing what other people have done and just use EQ zones but my interest is in making my own experience, and just using EQ textures and meshes because it's more than I could get done by myself and ever get anywhere near completion.

So much empty space in EQ putting it all together into a seamless continent makes it even worse. I'm trying to make zones not feel small but also not turn into slog fest to run across. Keeping POI reasonably close to each other without turning into a POI theme park.


This week I'm rebuilding some mechanisms behind the scenes for abilities and the hotbar. I made some mistakes early on that I need to now redo. The delineation of responsibilities within the code was not fully appreciated by me. I want the UI elements to only ever be fetching data and I made the hotbar a source of info and that would be all fine and dandy in a single player (though probably still a bad idea) but in a network environment I can't have a feature where server authority is crucial and then be referencing an owning client widget for data. These kind of days/week is frustrating because while the game may come out stronger at the end of it having improved foundation, it doesn't feel like progress compared to making content.

On the content side, have added Wood Elf Females, and Ogre Females and have made some nice progress on Forsaken Grove zone. My goal my first true playable test build is to have the first three zones largely completed and levels 1-10 implemented. I was hoping to do that buy August 1 but I just keep at it each day and try not to waste too much time thinking about if I'm going to hit that or not but it's probably not far off.

Sunday's are play test day and had five people playing for probably 15hrs between them this past week, and overall I was pretty pleased with the response. I may have to implement a DPS meter even if I just use it for alpha because it could help me with balancing. I feel like I'm getting close with level 1-5.

Warden and Rogue are fastest to level 4 coming in around 55 mins.
Shaman and Warrior getting to level 4 in about 65-70 mins.

I had done too much tuning for multiplayer and it was feeling too easy and when we switched back to single player, could tell right away I had overdone it. Reality is real low levels are hard to balance for challenge to a group, and I really want groups pushing to dungeons and harder content. A balancing goal is that the entire game can be done solo but it requires more out leveling content and being cautious/methodical.

Lightning Lord Rule said:

I'm hereby officially petitioning the devs of this game for a "More Brown" button/attack/emote/dance. Any combination of the aforementioned will satisfy this petition.

Potential ideas are:

Button: temporarily resets the color filter for the display to a brown tint.​

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Attack: could be a bard attack that plays a brown noise. This could CC everything in a small radius for the time it takes to find an immodium.​

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Emote: player reveals whiteboard chart of the historical Vanguard sales trajectory.​

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Dance: the character does a <insert racial dance here> for a bit, pauses as if alarmed, then covers their... uh, posterior and runs away a short distance in a panic while trying to hold it in.​

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Thank you for your time, gentlemen.

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Let's discuss this further in the podcast sub section

I implemented a hate meter. Right now my thought was primarily for aiding testing/balance but what are thoughts on things like DPS and Hate Meters ? Does it ruin too much of the magic for the lack of a better term. I tend to be a min/max type player and more information is better but sometimes things like a DPS meter can result in a player only wanting the best when they would have been satisfied with the sufficient had you just given them less information.

If Rogue can out dps the warden by 3% does that mean nobody wants to play a Warden? I think games that sometimes give too much info every class is driven towards being the same, which to me is a net negative.

Kaines said:

While some semblance of balance is important, do not fall into the trap of trying to create a game that satisfies the min/max poopsockers of the internet. You'll drive yourself mad trying to satisfy them. Build the game that is generally fun to play and feels right for you.

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I am going to try do that, I think the bigger challenge for me is if I prioritize multiplayer Fun over solo. I would love for people to play my game but I don't know what percent will have people to play on a LAN with. So I'm doing all this work to make a multiplayer game meant to be played with a couple friends but also would hope someone who would just want to play it alone would have an enjoyable experience.

New Test Build


Key Changes/Updates:
Forsaken Grove zone
Hate Meter
NPC Active Effects bar
More Abilities
Additional Playable race/genders: Ogre Female, Wood Elf Female
Autosaves

Added Halflings this week and level 6 and 7 abilities.
Spending most of the week on first dungeon. Completely new territory for me trying to learn to use modeling tools.

Stonewrought Passage is a fortress built into a mountain side and it's the only way to travel to the next outdoor zone. The empire who built it is long gone and it's currently residence to an orc clan.

Wanting to maintain that early EQ feel and it's quite a change of pace doing this type of work than coding. Getting this dungeon finished and populated will get me close to having Tier I (level 1 -10) done and hopefully get some more people testing it if anyone is interested.