Flobee
Vyemm Raider
- 2,663
- 3,056
I've been thinking about exactly this for a while now. I think you're right, there is obviously pent up pve only demand. Its all over steam reviews for Dark and Darker for example
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Vanguard of the Fallen - My EQ Based RPG Project
- Thread starter Blazin
- Start date
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Guest, did you like the last podcast notification?? Well here's the second one, and for the third podcast! Yep. This Thursday 8-8-24 at 7pm Central
Go here to check out his podcast thread for info on topics and links!Go into the FoH discord and find the Happy Time Fun Hour channel and give it a listen!
Blazin
Creative Title
- 6,851
- 35,792
Trying to get another zone done this week but ate up a few days working on new NPCs was able to get quite a few done. I don't want to disappoint the 30-50 people who view the weekly videos but I should probably slow down the pace to every 2-3 weeks or maybe monthly. Not work on it any less just not spend the time trying to hit an artificial deadline for video updates. Would really like to get all of sub level 20 done before I package another build.
This zone is the Aurelian Highlands its a level 13-17 range roughly and is home to Mino's centaurs and aviaks primarily.
- 5
Blazin
Creative Title
- 6,851
- 35,792
A week ago today I halted building out a new zone as I was working on populating the NPCs and their drops, ended up going down a rabbit hole that ended with me completely rebuilding the combat system. To the player it's not particularly different but the math behind it is completely new.
My first system depended a lot on fancy curves, factors , coefficients etc to try to have Attributes scale appropriately across different values and level ranges. Lots of game work themselves into a corner with the math and usually no way out other than number bloat. I also was noticing that I without intention was turning the game into a loot carousel and I really didn't want that. Those types of games you just plow through gear and you care nothing about it, it comes and go so quickly that it doesn't feel impactful.
I'm not going with a system where Attributes are more impactful (EQ never escaped this issue and rendered attributes meaningless) but that means I need to make them more predictable and controlled. I am removing attributes from gear, classes each now have a data table of attribute increases per level that are fixed. Combat formulas are now driven by variances rather than their raw numerical value. NPCs have a baseline. So for example chance to hit a melee attack is based on the attackers dex versus the defenders dex but the game calculates the variance between the two and determines the % chance prior to the random roll.
There is a battle between two elements, you need the steepness of mob strength to be high enough that a player can't venture too far out of their current range, but if it's too steep then the player can struggle to fight each subsequent level NPC without boosts to their strength. If I want gear to matter then I can't just give the player that increased power just from leveling but have to account for loot sometimes not being acquired because of randomness either of die rolls or the players behavior.
I believe I have a more workable solution that will scale better over the level ranges. Kind of frustrating to be back testing early levels again but hopefully makes for a better result in the end and I can get back to more content.
My first system depended a lot on fancy curves, factors , coefficients etc to try to have Attributes scale appropriately across different values and level ranges. Lots of game work themselves into a corner with the math and usually no way out other than number bloat. I also was noticing that I without intention was turning the game into a loot carousel and I really didn't want that. Those types of games you just plow through gear and you care nothing about it, it comes and go so quickly that it doesn't feel impactful.
I'm not going with a system where Attributes are more impactful (EQ never escaped this issue and rendered attributes meaningless) but that means I need to make them more predictable and controlled. I am removing attributes from gear, classes each now have a data table of attribute increases per level that are fixed. Combat formulas are now driven by variances rather than their raw numerical value. NPCs have a baseline. So for example chance to hit a melee attack is based on the attackers dex versus the defenders dex but the game calculates the variance between the two and determines the % chance prior to the random roll.
There is a battle between two elements, you need the steepness of mob strength to be high enough that a player can't venture too far out of their current range, but if it's too steep then the player can struggle to fight each subsequent level NPC without boosts to their strength. If I want gear to matter then I can't just give the player that increased power just from leveling but have to account for loot sometimes not being acquired because of randomness either of die rolls or the players behavior.
I believe I have a more workable solution that will scale better over the level ranges. Kind of frustrating to be back testing early levels again but hopefully makes for a better result in the end and I can get back to more content.
Palum
what Suineg set it to
- 25,591
- 38,694
Palum
what Suineg set it to
- 25,591
- 38,694
Basically it's 'rogue like' but the core thing is you can sacrifice loot drops in your current run and it gets sent to a cache where you can have it permanently available in the future for new runs. So it becomes a bit of a gamble if you keep pushing after you have a great piece of gear, do you push on with it or send it back to start next run.
Just something I always thought would work well if designed properly with an MMO style gameplay loop where you focused on leveling content and didn't want it to get stale (e.g. what they should have done with classic WoW).
- 1
Blazin
Creative Title
- 6,851
- 35,792
Blazin
Creative Title
- 6,851
- 35,792
Had another meeting with my top executive team and we made another super executive decision. I'm going to try to use a few actual EQ zones. Partly because they are my favorite zones and I want to challenge some of the new things I've learned with modeling to see if I can get it to work. It could have a bonus of being able to add several zones quickly if I can figure it out.
Current Plan:
Add kelethin as an aviak dungeon, I want this to be a pretty contained zone, you don't see the ground more of a dungeon high up. Just terminate to fog below.
Sol b for my Fires of Heaven zone which will be Fire Goblins, Fire Giants, Imps and a few other assorted things.
Sebilis I would like to break up the mesh into several pieces. The top side and disco branch being a froglok dungeon. The lower basement down to trak lair is going to be all undead
The Estate of Unrest will be my vampire/garg dungeon. So think MM but in Unrest.
Was able to test the combat system this weekend and I'm pretty happy with the results I made leveling easier, and in some ways that pains me but I think it's the right decision. Still slow enough that time can be spent in the various areas but not having to stay somehwere to the point of tedium. Now I have to look at loot drop rate because some areas you move through faster and are less likely to get the drops, which sometimes I'm okay with you don't need everything but I don't want people missing half the named.
I had previously put a rule in the spawn manager that named could not spawn on a first spawn, to prevent someone from just closing and loading over and over to get a named to spawn, I've decided to do away with that. If people want to cheese that's up to them, to me loading/unloading is pretty not fun but I don't like adding game play mechanics that are solely created to combat these type of things. Similar issue with people just logging out when in trouble. I'm not going to try to lock that stuff down, people can play things as they please I'm just trying to make something for people to enjoy.
Current Plan:
Add kelethin as an aviak dungeon, I want this to be a pretty contained zone, you don't see the ground more of a dungeon high up. Just terminate to fog below.
Sol b for my Fires of Heaven zone which will be Fire Goblins, Fire Giants, Imps and a few other assorted things.
Sebilis I would like to break up the mesh into several pieces. The top side and disco branch being a froglok dungeon. The lower basement down to trak lair is going to be all undead
The Estate of Unrest will be my vampire/garg dungeon. So think MM but in Unrest.
Was able to test the combat system this weekend and I'm pretty happy with the results I made leveling easier, and in some ways that pains me but I think it's the right decision. Still slow enough that time can be spent in the various areas but not having to stay somehwere to the point of tedium. Now I have to look at loot drop rate because some areas you move through faster and are less likely to get the drops, which sometimes I'm okay with you don't need everything but I don't want people missing half the named.
I had previously put a rule in the spawn manager that named could not spawn on a first spawn, to prevent someone from just closing and loading over and over to get a named to spawn, I've decided to do away with that. If people want to cheese that's up to them, to me loading/unloading is pretty not fun but I don't like adding game play mechanics that are solely created to combat these type of things. Similar issue with people just logging out when in trouble. I'm not going to try to lock that stuff down, people can play things as they please I'm just trying to make something for people to enjoy.
- 2
rhinohelix
Dental Dammer
- 2,983
- 4,855
Love that you are doing this, Blazin, both from a personal perspective for yourself and from my own perspective because EQ was such a great and terrible gaming experience for so many of us here.
AA and Indy gaming is where it is at and something like this (with the assets/rights etc worked out) would be something we all want to play. Vampire Survivors allowed that one guy to build a company and probably made him fairly rich. MineCraft made Notch a billonaire. The sky's the limit! Well, the ground is other limit but we have faith in you!
AA and Indy gaming is where it is at and something like this (with the assets/rights etc worked out) would be something we all want to play. Vampire Survivors allowed that one guy to build a company and probably made him fairly rich. MineCraft made Notch a billonaire. The sky's the limit! Well, the ground is other limit but we have faith in you!
- 1
Blazin
Creative Title
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- 35,792
That is interesting, will have to look at it. I tried things, different ways, as far as file types, I use GLB blender exports for characters so interesting to see they did as well. I use fbx for objects. There are issues with scaling, shaders, etc as I tried to do it different ways. I think professionals with Blender could probably be more helpful with understanding what the actual sticking points are. Because this stuff is so new to me, I resolved it just through trial and error more just figuring out what worked and less understanding of the why.
I should probably post to that reddit but I don't even have a reddit account and after 18 years I feel like keeping that streak going. One of you guys can
I'll take a look at his zone glbs versus what I have and see if there is any difference in the end result
- 1
Edaw
Parody
- 12,903
- 84,809
Blazin
Creative Title
- 6,851
- 35,792
Have been making a push to get first draft of world building complete, all zones are now in. Working on zone connections, level streaming volumes hoping to have all that done by end of week so world will be 100% traversable.
This is a shot from underneath showing the dungeons that are underground
Big green thing is the Aviak Dungeon
This is a shot from underneath showing the dungeons that are underground
Big green thing is the Aviak Dungeon
- 6
Edaw
Parody
- 12,903
- 84,809
