Primordials

[Serbianbeast]

Hey guys! I know it's been a while since I payed this forum a visit, but I've just wanted to let you know that I haven't forgotten about you and that I'm working on my new game called "Primordials", developed in Unity3D and PhotonServer. So far we've got some concept art and some ingame renders, but that's all. By the end of the month we'll have plenty more. If you fancy a visit, come see what we've got on www.primordials-online.com

So far this is what I can show you:

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

Artwork 1

Artwork 2

come, pay us a visit at www.primordials-online.com.

Every feedback is more than welcome and people who contribute will have their name mentioned in the final product of course
Some ideas we've got at the moment:
-Classic RPG elements such as leveling up, gaining stats both diablo 3 and diablo 2 style (you gain 5 stats automatically based on your class and 5 more to spend as you wish)
-Talent tree similar to that of path of exile, except that we'll have no "skeleton" or placeholder points such as +10str, +10dex, etc.
-Mounts and mounted combat (as seen in video)
-Open world that changes dynamically so that it adapts to what players do - casting a lot of frost spells would cause that zone to become colder and has harsh winds or snow, slaying monsters in one place would cause them to spawn a bit further, leaving a zone unattended for too long would cause it to become overrun by monsters and demons, etc.
-Free for all world where your only allies are ones you team up with - guilds
-Creating Guild Houses and Forts you can upgrade and defend from other enemies attacking you (be it player or computer controlled ones)
-Crafts such as blacksmithing, tailoring, leatherworking, masonry, carpentry, salesman, herbalism, alchemy, and many more which would actually give you XP on their own and let you become a master smith, with maximum character level without killing a single enemy, which leads us to
-Trade caravans, raiding caravans, naval trading, setting up shops and trading camps
-And custom quests created by players in which you can participate to help traders and craftsmen alike in their quest to reach their maximum potential
-Conquering and defending towns, forts and castles so that you could be the one in charge
-Combining spells into stronger and more complex spells which allow you to further customize your own combat style

We'll be implementing these for sure, but we're also eager to know if you have any ideas of your own you'd like to see implemented in the game by its release, and we'll be more than glad to listen to them. Thanks!

 

[Adiktuz]

Looks nice... to me the village screenshot seems like Skyrim turned Paths of Exile graphics... XD good luck on it...

 

[Serbianbeast]

Aye, well, that is the idea
We're aiming for skyrimish style and top-down view so you got that right.

 

[Deleted member 212788]

Looking fantastic, though some more foliage could be useful, it's nevertheless awesome. (talking bout village). Also, fine choice of resources

 

[Kanadaj]

Looks cool, but 2 things:
1) Either use hidden tags or
2) Lower the image resolution

they are stretching the forum ^^
I like the art style, I wonder how you got the artist

Also, how are you going with the funding? Is it an indie project using your own money for now and later switching to kickstarter or some other form of funding, or already have investors?

 

[Serbianbeast]

It sure is an indie project where all the resources and work are funded by me and a colleague of mine. We're planning on hittin' Kickstarter by the end of January or by middle of February.
As for the artist, he's also a friend of mine from Belgrade. I was really lucky to have him around
Tnx for the reviews guys

 

[marko9]

Wow nice work hope to see more soon.

 

[Serbianbeast]

Just wanted to show you where we're at right now. I know that video is far from representative but you get the chance to see it first, before we do make-up n stuff like that.

Edit: ignore lower-right part of gui, that's from an old project of ours.

 

[GhostWolf]

You should probably upload an actual high resolution video, and not call 240p (or is it smaller?) high definition. As it is, it's too pixel-y to be impressed.

 

[Adiktuz]

I think YT changes the view resolution and allows a toggle for the resolution too...

 

[Serbianbeast]

I'm pretty sure that if you watch it on Yt you should be able to see it even in 1080p

edit: apparently, this is what happens when you import wrongly scaled bones and attach it to model in unity:

Pony rider

 

[GhostWolf]

Yeah, I guess you didn't bother opening it on Youtube, because the 1080p looks pretty much like 144p.

 

[Adiktuz]

From my experience, they do make a difference... but it might take a while... sometimes they really do start out showing as a crappy vid, then as time pass by, they get clearer

 

[Rui]

=O awesome! The first concept art is... the Mouth of Sauron!!

 

[Serbianbeast]

Aye, thanks Rui And yes, that was our main reference for the Draugr race.

edit: Btw, every feedback is more than welcome and people who contribute will have their name mentioned in the final product of course

edit 2: new video of the game footage is online.

 

[Adiktuz]

I'd watch those vids when I go home this weekend... YT is unviewable in the office

 

[Kanadaj]

Well the most I can say atm is that you should improve the visuals:
1) Obviously, you need to improve the map texture but I'm pretty sure you know it as well...
2) That run animation kinda hurts, needs a remaking asap, try using the Kinect motion utility (not sure of the exact name) you can get from Unity Store and a Windows Kinect to get more refined animations. Many people say it's working like a wonder, and while I have no personal experience with it, it should result in more natural animations, further improvable manually and saving time for your modeller. If I remember right, there is such a utility available for free, so you only need a Kinect.
3) For skills like that rain of arrows thingy, try adding a delay to the actual spell impact, and an animation of the character shooting in an upwards angle, with a possibly glowing arrow flying over the center of the target area and exploding before the rain. You can even make the arrows appear to come from that point and have a faster impact speed and lower duration (so it feels a bit more like a burst of arrows), and add a visible indicator for other players (possibly for PvP as well) to improve their interactions with each other, and make it easier for them to grasp each other's area of effect while also enabling clever counterplay in that small delay (0.5-1s isn't that much, but a fast blink can still save them from that kind of attack).
4) In the UI, consider adding borders for the individual skill slots for a clearer overview.

While #3 is just an idea on how to make it look cooler/better, the quality of such animations, the timing of the skills and the feeling of impact they give will have a heavy effect on playability, especially in an ARPG, where the "Action" part demands faster paced action and animations compared to another, let's say WoW-like MMORPG. Yours look like PoE, an (MMO)ARPG, so I suppose that's the genre you are after.

 

[Adiktuz]

IDK if it's a good idea or what, but I'm missing the battles of MU Online...

No cooldowns and such (except from a very few skills + cooldown isn't really high), skills are spammable... or well at least I wanna suggest skills like MU online's dark souls spell or hell file spell or the aqua beam spell...

btw, will there be mounts?

 

[Kanadaj]

It seems there will be, and if there are, I want to ride a dragon eventually *.*

Also, it is true that most ARPGs don't have cooldowns on most spells (except for the ones with more extreme effects) to make combat faster, so what Adiktuz said is not a bad idea at all, since it makes combat more fluid, and causes it to be less about burning all the cooldowns.

 

[Serbianbeast]

Thanks for the feedback guys Well, yeah, terrain is still a work in progress so it will be updated eventually.
Spells will have their effects reworked completely so everything you said is going to happen soon enough
As for the animations, these are all just temporary models. We're going for complete mocap for all characters since everything you see right now is just for testing our skills mechanics etc. Real models for characters are coming during the next couple of months.

Also, my initial idea was that most spells wouldn't even have CD, except for some uber ones of course. Riding is going to be a crucial part of the game so it's going to be more than in it And flying mounts are a most definite option

I haven't seen kinect in action but I'll most definitely take a look at it, thanks for that!

 

[Adiktuz]

Finally... those action games with cooldown on ALL skills is just not so enticing to play... XD

*Flying mounts*
*Drools*

 

[Kanadaj]

Sounds cool, include me in the alpha ;D

Also, here's the link for the kinect recorder asset:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/12620

 

[Serbianbeast]

Thanks Actually, we've found another solution. Temporary but does the job well - it's mixamo. It actually rigs characters pretty well and has tons of mocap anims, which is everything we need for now.

Alpha is still long way down the road but I'll contact you when it's done

 

[Serbianbeast]

Guys, we've gone a bit further in the development and we're starting to work on the server so the time has come to ask you what would YOU like to see in our game?

Some ideas we've got at the moment:
-Classic RPG elements such as leveling up, gaining stats both diablo 3 and diablo 2 style (you gain 5 stats automatically based on your class and 5 more to spend as you wish)
-Talent tree similar to that of path of exile, except that we'll have no "skeleton" or placeholder points such as +10str, +10dex, etc.
-Mounts and mounted combat (as seen in video)
-Open world that changes dynamically so that it adapts to what players do - casting a lot of frost spells would cause that zone to become colder and has harsh winds or snow, slaying monsters in one place would cause them to spawn a bit further, leaving a zone unattended for too long would cause it to become overrun by monsters and demons, etc.
-Free for all world where your only allies are ones you team up with - guilds
-Creating Guild Houses and Forts you can upgrade and defend from other enemies attacking you (be it player or computer controlled ones)
-Crafts such as blacksmithing, tailoring, leatherworking, masonry, carpentry, salesman, herbalism, alchemy, and many more which would actually give you XP on their own and let you become a master smith, with maximum character level without killing a single enemy, which leads us to
-Trade caravans, raiding caravans, naval trading, setting up shops and trading camps
-And custom quests created by players in which you can participate to help traders and craftsmen alike in their quest to reach their maximum potential
-Conquering and defending towns, forts and castles so that you could be the one in charge
-Combining spells into stronger and more complex spells which allow you to further customize your own combat style

So those are some things we'll be implementing in the future, but I'd also like to know if you have any more suggestions you'd like to see in this game

 

[Adiktuz]

I like that dynamic world where our actions can cause it to change...

now it seems like Skyrim+PathOfExile+MountAndBlade... I like it...

btw, what do you mean by combining spells? is it like Morrowind where we can make new spells by choosing the old spells we have?

and for town conquering, will the be guild based?

 

[Kanadaj]

Please consider the fact that I've collected some of the following ideas for a complete game idea of mine that I wish to create in the future, (albeit in a slightly different way), and while I'm leaving out parts of a god knows how many pages long description of that game doc which I don't have the means to create yet, I feel that your game has the potential to use them and that's why I'm sharing them. Also, most of them rely on the first fact that is needed, else you cannot create a reasonably big world to implement many of the other ideas.

World
If you feel adventurous, try procedurally generated world (so it can be ridiculously huge with no download size impact). I pretty much have an entire game system written for this kind of world, however it needs heavy coding and a long testing time, so it may not be optimal for an indie project. However, if you don't have enough content creators, but too many coders, it is certainly an option.

Spells: (I suppose you originally mean something like they have in Magicka)
You can also add the option to build "mosaic spells", so every spell is made of parts and these parts have certain modifiers. For example a spell could be built as:
-Incantation type (destruction/protection/utility)
-Base elemental(arcane/fire/cold/water/earth/air/lightning) - combinations possible (ice=cold+water, heat=air+fire)
-Form formula (example for destruction incantation: (bolt(linear single target)/ball(linear exploding)/nova/cone/circle/instant(targeted)/burst(targeted AoE)/line(wide AoE linear)/impact(targeted, delayed AoE)))
-Cast method (touch, channeled, targeted, rune(trap), self-cast, mind projection (dazzle works, silence doesn't))

Each individual part should have it's own multiplier impacts on the spell, so two example spells:

Example spell 1:
Incantation: Destruction - Base mana cost: 10
Elemental: Heat (fire+air) - Mana cost 4x, less visible, unit-penetrating projectile, base damage 10
Form: Instant - Mana cost 2x, damage 1.5x
Cast method: Touch - damage 2x


Name: Burning touch
Mana cost: 80
Damage: 30

Example spell 2:
Incantation: Destruction - Base mana cost: 10
Elemental: Fire - Mana cost 2x, burning projectile, base damage 15+5 over 3s
Form: Cone - Mana cost 5x
Cast method: Channeled - mana cost 0.1x, damage 0.2x, 5 tick/s,

Name: Continous fire breath
Mana cost: 5x10/s
Damage: 5x3/s
DoT: 5 over 3s

You can disable the not created spell combinations, and also enable the players to hunt for these spell parts. This could also be a form of "high magic" only available to high level players as rare/legendary drops. Of course, the spells are just examples to show how it would work, and some spell parts could have a slider for things like mana cost vs damage, with exponential increment/decrement (so early on 1 point of damage costs less mana than by the end of the slider, for example). This needs some thinking into it, but if implemented well, it may work very well, given that you don't focus too much energy on it compared to other important aspects of the game, as it often happens.

Environment
Make specific environments effect the effectiveness of elemental damage (spells/enchantments), so if there is a huge amount of frost spells cast in an area, it would become colder, but it should also weaken fire and empower cold magic. Also, if it's water based spells and an area becomes soaked, both water and lightning based magic can be strengthened.

As a way to promote the behaviour against the current weather effect, it should also make monsters of the given element spawn with a chance, such as ice elementals in a cold area, or tundra animals - practically things that are weaker to the opposite element, so against these, people would use that, eventually removing the environmental effect. Since this spawn rate is only a percentage, not a complete monster base change, regular spawned monsters and PvP would be easier with the current element.

Guild caravans and manufacturing
Guilds may create huge caravans to go and sell their wares as they move from one place to the other. Things may be bought from the caravan while moving, and after arriving to the target city as well, unless the guild leader determines that he is either only transporting the goods to another location (relocating the guild or large scale guild to guild trade with predetermined resources). To reason this, certain materials should be only found at certain places of the world, which should be considerably far from each other.

While individual players could start caravans as well, I don't feel that they would have enough resources to need it, or may just join to NPC caravans with their goods, protecting the caravan in exchange of transporting their goods.

Caravan guarding
Add monster spawns to active caravan routes (monster power depends on caravan cargo quality and quantity), and a mercenary contract system for players, so players can escort caravans as mercenaries for a preset payment. These contracts are available after the caravan destination is declared, and may be changed for each mercenary individually. NPCs may also be hired, however should be not as effective as players.

When it comes to huge guilds moving an extreme amount of resources from one place to another, it may effect in an extremely tough fight with an extreme amount of guild members and mercenaries.

Special request (assassins)
If you happen add an assassin-type class (if you didn't plan to then ignore this section, tho I myself love to play well-designed assassin classes), at least give it the skills to fight hit-and-run style, since in most games they either burst too hard or are too squishy because the devs want to make them fight the same way others do - and face-to-face combat is not an assassin forte. Especially in a game when targeting is not necessary, the option to turn invisible after an attack isn't that much of a problem in my eyes, since the opponent can still use AoE, spray-and-pray and reflexes to fight this kind of enemy and overpower him. Assassins use poisons and daggers, not two-handed greatswords and such, so no reason to give them "700% backstab damage".

Oh, and all hail the dovahbear

I'm getting tired, maybe I'll continue this wall of text tomorrow

 

[Serbianbeast]

I like that dynamic world where our actions can cause it to change...

now it seems like Skyrim+PathOfExile+MountAndBlade... I like it...

btw, what do you mean by combining spells? is it like Morrowind where we can make new spells by choosing the old spells we have?

I mean that if you combine fire bolt with heroic strike you get a flame strike Pretty much what's explained here http://primordials-online.com/spells-game-mechanics/
But this is still far from done.

and for town conquering, will the be guild based?

My initial idea was that anything you can do on your own, you can do with guild as well, which means that you could either capture a town as a guild or on your own (which will be near to impossible, but doable).

World
If you feel adventurous, try procedurally generated world (so it can be ridiculously huge with no download size impact). I pretty much have an entire game system written for this kind of world, however it needs heavy coding and a long testing time, so it may not be optimal for an indie project. However, if you don't have enough content creators, but too many coders, it is certainly an option.

We were discussing the possibility of a procedurally created world, but we've come to conclusion that it would be too much of work with unpredictable results and the quality of one such world couldn't be as good as one created manually. Besides, we'll have a lot of places we want to create as specific locations we had in mind for some events and such so we'll stick to this model, for now. If we get procedural terrain to be as good as ones we create, we'll switch to that, no question about it.

Spells: (I suppose you originally mean something like they have in Magicka)
You can also add the option to build "mosaic spells", so every spell is made of parts and these parts have certain modifiers. For example a spell could be built as:
-Incantation type (destruction/protection/utility)
-Base elemental(arcane/fire/cold/water/earth/air/lightning) - combinations possible (ice=cold+water, heat=air+fire)
-Form formula (example for destruction incantation: (bolt(linear single target)/ball(linear exploding)/nova/cone/circle/instant(targeted)/burst(targeted AoE)/line(wide AoE linear)/impact(targeted, delayed AoE)))
-Cast method (touch, channeled, targeted, rune(trap), self-cast, mind projection (dazzle works, silence doesn't))

Each individual part should have it's own multiplier impacts on the spell, so two example spells:

Example spell 1:
Incantation: Destruction - Base mana cost: 10
Elemental: Heat (fire+air) - Mana cost 4x, less visible, unit-penetrating projectile, base damage 10
Form: Instant - Mana cost 2x, damage 1.5x
Cast method: Touch - damage 2x


Name: Burning touch
Mana cost: 80
Damage: 30

Example spell 2:
Incantation: Destruction - Base mana cost: 10
Elemental: Fire - Mana cost 2x, burning projectile, base damage 15+5 over 3s
Form: Cone - Mana cost 5x
Cast method: Channeled - mana cost 0.1x, damage 0.2x, 5 tick/s,

Name: Continous fire breath
Mana cost: 5x10/s
Damage: 5x3/s
DoT: 5 over 3s

You can disable the not created spell combinations, and also enable the players to hunt for these spell parts. This could also be a form of "high magic" only available to high level players as rare/legendary drops. Of course, the spells are just examples to show how it would work, and some spell parts could have a slider for things like mana cost vs damage, with exponential increment/decrement (so early on 1 point of damage costs less mana than by the end of the slider, for example). This needs some thinking into it, but if implemented well, it may work very well, given that you don't focus too much energy on it compared to other important aspects of the game, as it often happens.

Actually, this is pretty good, since this way you can not only discover spells that were hidden by default, but actually create your own spells if we manage to find a good way around it. But we'd have to take in mind that even physical attacks and abilities would have to be integrated as well, but this is something that is definitely going on the discussion table with the rest of the guys.

Environment
Make specific environments effect the effectiveness of elemental damage (spells/enchantments), so if there is a huge amount of frost spells cast in an area, it would become colder, but it should also weaken fire and empower cold magic. Also, if it's water based spells and an area becomes soaked, both water and lightning based magic can be strengthened.

As a way to promote the behaviour against the current weather effect, it should also make monsters of the given element spawn with a chance, such as ice elementals in a cold area, or tundra animals - practically things that are weaker to the opposite element, so against these, people would use that, eventually removing the environmental effect. Since this spawn rate is only a percentage, not a complete monster base change, regular spawned monsters and PvP would be easier with the current element.

This was the actual idea from the beginning and most of that stuff is already in plan, but we'll have to discuss some more about how and if spells are going to be affected by the environment as well (two-side interaction).

Guild caravans and manufacturing
Guilds may create huge caravans to go and sell their wares as they move from one place to the other. Things may be bought from the caravan while moving, and after arriving to the target city as well, unless the guild leader determines that he is either only transporting the goods to another location (relocating the guild or large scale guild to guild trade with predetermined resources). To reason this, certain materials should be only found at certain places of the world, which should be considerably far from each other.

While individual players could start caravans as well, I don't feel that they would have enough resources to need it, or may just join to NPC caravans with their goods, protecting the caravan in exchange of transporting their goods.

Caravan guarding
Add monster spawns to active caravan routes (monster power depends on caravan cargo quality and quantity), and a mercenary contract system for players, so players can escort caravans as mercenaries for a preset payment. These contracts are available after the caravan destination is declared, and may be changed for each mercenary individually. NPCs may also be hired, however should be not as effective as players.

When it comes to huge guilds moving an extreme amount of resources from one place to another, it may effect in an extremely tough fight with an extreme amount of guild members and mercenaries.

Caravans and trading routes will be one of the most interesting points in the game since you'll have to become a quest giver to get player guards for your caravan or pay npc henchmen to help you out, but either way you are a moving target for raider clans and bandit individuals. Besides, we'll do the same with naval routes - seas, lakes, rivers since you could also use boats and ships to transfer goods in a slower but more safe manner (more safe, not completely safe )

Special request (assassins)
If you happen add an assassin-type class (if you didn't plan to then ignore this section, tho I myself love to play well-designed assassin classes), at least give it the skills to fight hit-and-run style, since in most games they either burst too hard or are too squishy because the devs want to make them fight the same way others do - and face-to-face combat is not an assassin forte. Especially in a game when targeting is not necessary, the option to turn invisible after an attack isn't that much of a problem in my eyes, since the opponent can still use AoE, spray-and-pray and reflexes to fight this kind of enemy and overpower him. Assassins use poisons and daggers, not two-handed greatswords and such, so no reason to give them "700% backstab damage".

Aye, this is definitely going to be the case since all our classes are made so that you can survive on your own. There are no tanks, dpss, healers etc. You're a one man raid party, but even stronger when in group. So assassin will be dodgy, blink around, fight and be good at it, without even having to use stealth mechanics or burst down all enemies.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for your time man, those were some great advice. I'll present them all to the board, some as confirmation of our existing ideas (caravans, weather affected by spells, dynamic world and conquering/creating forts seem to be most widely accepted ideas so far when it comes to primordials).

 

[Kanadaj]

You're welcome, I've a ridiculous amount of ideas but far from enough resources to make them come true ^^ Well, that is, for now

Also, keep an eye out for the I-Novae engine - while it's still being developed thanks to the dev working alone, afaik some people could already snatch away an alpha access by contacting the dev. The engine is designed to create realistically planet-sized procedural planets - and build a universe with them. However, according to the dev (I've asked it directly) it is capable of generating just a single planet, and the level of detail is enough to create a normal MMO game on that planet, even though the original one was designed for a space sim. It's really impressive, and one can also add custom touches to the world.

The downside is that it's C++ standalone engine, and I doubt it'd work well with Unity because of all the optimizations it needs to run smoothly. Take a look:

Battlescape is already coming in 2014, it's based on the engine so it'll be awesome, and it also means the engine is at least ready to the point where something like this is possible. But you should really contact the dev for details.

Another idea:

True Legendary items
You can add some hidden legendary grade items that are unusually powerful, but have an extremely small chance to drop, and also have an unpublished list of conditions to drop. Let the players think they know the game, and when suddenly finds a weapon of never seen grade and power after 6 months without anyone knowing what he needs to get it (shouldn't be normally farmable since the requirements would be hidden), everyone would want to get it, but without knowing that they need to have a goblin fang, at least 2 cherries and a garlic soup in their inventory for it to drop... That's how legends begin ^^

Since these would be extremely rare and hard to come by, you can really make them interesting even if it breaks the game a little.

 

[Serbianbeast]

You're welcome, I've a ridiculous amount of ideas but far from enough resources to make them come true ^^ Well, that is, for now

Also, keep an eye out for the I-Novae engine...

I've seen that one in action before and it does look impressive, but, as I've said, for our initial release we'll stick to our plan to have premade terrain so that it doesn't change too much. But frankly, if I ever get a chance to create a procedural one with only some keypoints added to it (premade sets for terrain) and integrate it, we'll most certainly switch to that.

As for legendaries: We had something like that in mind, where rumors could lead you to some really forgotten dungeon or tell you stories of what you must have to obtain some ridiculously strong legendary item that'll be mentioned in the lore of the game.

Actually one of our posts mentions "Bonebiter", an axe that's been lost in a battle long ago which will be one of those items, but we wouldn't tell players how to obtain them.

Also, we've got some drastic world-changing events we're not allowed to discuss outside of the studio because those wouldn't be scheduled, appointed or anything like that, but rather a surprise to all players participating primordials. When I say that these will change the course of entire game, trust me, they will.

Btw I hope you'll get a chance to realize that game of your own