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- #151
I'm seriously considering making a spiritual successor.
- Thread starter Xeropace
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The problem really is that those who love Borderlands style drops will play Borderlands, and those who love Diablo style drops will play Diablo. The reason people played (and some continue to play) MS:C was that level of uniqueness which made it all fun (and probably the fact it's free with a purchase of HL1).
In terms of considering scope, considering this project has no dedicated modeller, mapper, texturer, sound engineer, artist or any other role which in big-name titles would have a whole team it's better to be different than try to emulate what already exists in the market. Xeropace is brilliant at what he does, and I've tremendous faith in his ability to learn and develop, but even famous indie developers like Edmund McMillen (of Binding of Isaac and Meatboy fame) has to divide his time between the coding tasks and almost exclusively 2D art asset development. The mere fact he's working in a 3D space pretty much doubles the amount of art assets necessary, and I'll be the first to admit my limited skills aren't enough to help for the magnitude of the task.
The practical upshot is rather than attempting to compete with what's already there the focus should be on unique and divergent gameplay, which, though players might progress beyond the content relatively quickly, recognizes this as a universal truth of the model, and instead hopes that players will continue to play afterwards not for the sense of progression of gaining new loot necessarily, but for the enjoyment of the enclosed environments the game shows it's strongest social elements in. There was a lot of time in MS:C which I, and others, would spend just hanging around chatting to one another, not doing anything particularly goal-based. Sure it doesn't have the mass appeal of open-world non-instanced MMOs, but everything felt slightly more meaningful for the difference. It may be the case that initial "full releases" (post-beta) only have 8-10 hours of gameplay, with higher skilled gamers getting end-game equipment in half that, but in terms of achievement that would create a strong base upon which the game could then expand if people liked the design.
To be a pessimist, there's always the chance that MS:C, being a niche game, has a design which appeals to a customer player-base which simply doesn't exist in large quantities, or will be otherwise impossible to reach. Following the Borderlands/Diablo loot model simply guarantees MS:U will never be able to compete, and thus will be ignored.
In terms of considering scope, considering this project has no dedicated modeller, mapper, texturer, sound engineer, artist or any other role which in big-name titles would have a whole team it's better to be different than try to emulate what already exists in the market. Xeropace is brilliant at what he does, and I've tremendous faith in his ability to learn and develop, but even famous indie developers like Edmund McMillen (of Binding of Isaac and Meatboy fame) has to divide his time between the coding tasks and almost exclusively 2D art asset development. The mere fact he's working in a 3D space pretty much doubles the amount of art assets necessary, and I'll be the first to admit my limited skills aren't enough to help for the magnitude of the task.
The practical upshot is rather than attempting to compete with what's already there the focus should be on unique and divergent gameplay, which, though players might progress beyond the content relatively quickly, recognizes this as a universal truth of the model, and instead hopes that players will continue to play afterwards not for the sense of progression of gaining new loot necessarily, but for the enjoyment of the enclosed environments the game shows it's strongest social elements in. There was a lot of time in MS:C which I, and others, would spend just hanging around chatting to one another, not doing anything particularly goal-based. Sure it doesn't have the mass appeal of open-world non-instanced MMOs, but everything felt slightly more meaningful for the difference. It may be the case that initial "full releases" (post-beta) only have 8-10 hours of gameplay, with higher skilled gamers getting end-game equipment in half that, but in terms of achievement that would create a strong base upon which the game could then expand if people liked the design.
To be a pessimist, there's always the chance that MS:C, being a niche game, has a design which appeals to a customer player-base which simply doesn't exist in large quantities, or will be otherwise impossible to reach. Following the Borderlands/Diablo loot model simply guarantees MS:U will never be able to compete, and thus will be ignored.
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- #153
Which is why I suggested pic related.Have uniques for the deds, and randoms for the super deds, uniques with randoms and mods for both, and everyone is modded, ded, and happy forever after (at least until Disney does a remake of it).
I agree with Thoth. I do want to bring out a point about Diablo 3 though.
With the expansion and recent updates, itemization has been hugely improved upon.
Most (not all yet, sadly) unique items have a unique ability.
Example: Homonunculus - A Zombie Dog is automatically summoned to your side every 4–6 seconds.
This gives a good incentive to create a play style focused on zombie dogs.
Now naturally you will at some point find a better off-hand, it is only a level 29 item.
You can also, however, find higher leveled instances of the same item.
This allows you to keep that build and play style you so enjoyed from the early levels and still have it be viable in late levels.
Analogy:
Who doesn't like the Great Axe? High risk high reward.
If you hit, you deal loads of damage.
But of course you just found that nice Dark Sword which guarantees a hit for even more damage.
What if you could go back to try to get a Great Axe at later levels and find that it had scaled to your level, such that it is still viable.
With the expansion and recent updates, itemization has been hugely improved upon.
Most (not all yet, sadly) unique items have a unique ability.
Example: Homonunculus - A Zombie Dog is automatically summoned to your side every 4–6 seconds.
This gives a good incentive to create a play style focused on zombie dogs.
Now naturally you will at some point find a better off-hand, it is only a level 29 item.
You can also, however, find higher leveled instances of the same item.
This allows you to keep that build and play style you so enjoyed from the early levels and still have it be viable in late levels.
Analogy:
Who doesn't like the Great Axe? High risk high reward.
If you hit, you deal loads of damage.
But of course you just found that nice Dark Sword which guarantees a hit for even more damage.
What if you could go back to try to get a Great Axe at later levels and find that it had scaled to your level, such that it is still viable.
Or make something like the dark sword use more mana.
Or make make the big axes hit more than one enemy horizontally.
Or go back and make weapons use different amounts of stamina for normal attacks+special attack.
Or make make the big axes hit more than one enemy horizontally.
Or go back and make weapons use different amounts of stamina for normal attacks+special attack.
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- #156
I suppose you've forgotten the utter community wide freak out that was had when I added the measly manna charge to that to prevent an exploit... And secondary attacks do take more Stamina - but unlike most games, a lack of Stamina doesn't stop nor slow your attacks - only your ability to run (and more recently, dodge), so it's generally not much of a penalty.
in msc
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- #158
Ah, I thought you were suggesting ways to fix the balance in MSC. 
Arc attacks might be one of the low-level functions that a coder could work up that's likely not built into the Unity engine - namely a sweeping function to damage mobs in order within a cone - without the overhead of ray tracing several degrees in an arc.
Looking at the duck imprinting, I'm also wondering how collision and slide boxes work under that system. One of the low level functions we don't really have, in MSC, is teleportation for players that doesn't risk sticking them inside mobs or map portions. The one we have for NPC's, simply involves teleporting them, seeing if they can move, and returning them in the same frame, should they not be able to (and even that's not 100%). Half-Life's client movement prediction makes this more difficult with players.
Arc attacks might be one of the low-level functions that a coder could work up that's likely not built into the Unity engine - namely a sweeping function to damage mobs in order within a cone - without the overhead of ray tracing several degrees in an arc.
Looking at the duck imprinting, I'm also wondering how collision and slide boxes work under that system. One of the low level functions we don't really have, in MSC, is teleportation for players that doesn't risk sticking them inside mobs or map portions. The one we have for NPC's, simply involves teleporting them, seeing if they can move, and returning them in the same frame, should they not be able to (and even that's not 100%). Half-Life's client movement prediction makes this more difficult with players.
Thothie said:
This is luckily very easy to implement in unity via the animation system and 3d colliders.
- Thread starter
- #160
Yes, you can easily use a more physics based combat system. Currently I'm just doing very short raycasts from the players PoV, similar to melee weapons in Half-Life.
The problem the physics approach was when you look up/down, your body is now at a different angle and affects your reach. Plus looking straight up in an FPS game, would mean the character would have to bend 90 degrees at the spine to still attack straight up. Which looks weird. I'm unsure of how a game like Chivalry: Medieval Combat does it... I can only image there's different animations when one is attacking in such a direction. Or just does it all in the first person.
Currently the third person animation is a 'close enough' representation of a player's attack, with the raycast being triggered at the right point of the attack. The ray fires from that player's camera position, towards the way they are facing, not the pivot of their body or whatever.
So I don't really know how to use the physics collider based approach very easily. Sure, if it was a third person action RPG style game but not so much when it's first person. It'd work fine for spell/skill hitboxes, just not 100% sure on attacking... Well, unless I move the damage code to the first person view and just keep the current third person 'close enough' look, but that would mean simulating the first person view on the server... Eh, not an awful idea to be honest. Raycast melee weapons are a bit old school now. Was thinking out loud there, apologies.
As for teleporting. I've given every entity so far a parent 'capsule collider' for broad scale predictions. Capsules can be used to "CapsuleCast" (think much more expensive raycast) and get any colliders of your desired type in them. So yea, I could easily say "CapsuleCast at (X,Y,Z) did I hit any walls/entities? No? Great." Not sure what to do if you do collide Shift it a bit in a random direction (or get some heavy maths involved to calculate a safe position based on the hit colliders).
With the current path finding system in Unity, things snap to a nav mesh and will not even be allowed inside other colliders I don't think, I haven't tested what happens if you put them inside a solid box... I know they avoid each other (it has built in obstacle avoidance which is pretty cool). This will make physical effects more awkward (have to disable path finding whilst they fall then renable it once they hit the ground again).
The problem the physics approach was when you look up/down, your body is now at a different angle and affects your reach. Plus looking straight up in an FPS game, would mean the character would have to bend 90 degrees at the spine to still attack straight up. Which looks weird. I'm unsure of how a game like Chivalry: Medieval Combat does it... I can only image there's different animations when one is attacking in such a direction. Or just does it all in the first person.
Currently the third person animation is a 'close enough' representation of a player's attack, with the raycast being triggered at the right point of the attack. The ray fires from that player's camera position, towards the way they are facing, not the pivot of their body or whatever.
So I don't really know how to use the physics collider based approach very easily. Sure, if it was a third person action RPG style game but not so much when it's first person. It'd work fine for spell/skill hitboxes, just not 100% sure on attacking... Well, unless I move the damage code to the first person view and just keep the current third person 'close enough' look, but that would mean simulating the first person view on the server... Eh, not an awful idea to be honest. Raycast melee weapons are a bit old school now. Was thinking out loud there, apologies.
As for teleporting. I've given every entity so far a parent 'capsule collider' for broad scale predictions. Capsules can be used to "CapsuleCast" (think much more expensive raycast) and get any colliders of your desired type in them. So yea, I could easily say "CapsuleCast at (X,Y,Z) did I hit any walls/entities? No? Great." Not sure what to do if you do collide
Shift it a bit in a random direction (or get some heavy maths involved to calculate a safe position based on the hit colliders).With the current path finding system in Unity, things snap to a nav mesh and will not even be allowed inside other colliders I don't think, I haven't tested what happens if you put them inside a solid box... I know they avoid each other (it has built in obstacle avoidance which is pretty cool). This will make physical effects more awkward (have to disable path finding whilst they fall then renable it once they hit the ground again).
Xeropace said:
Well if you nest the collider inside the part of the player model that rotates, the collider will stay relative.
You can then make a simple animation to fit the firstperson animation and then attach a script with an OnCollisionEnter event.
EDIT: But you'd have to have a way of synchronizing first- and thirdperson animations. :roll:
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- #162
I already have a way to sync those two animations. Like I said, the third person one just has to be "close enough" so that other players understand what happened. The first person/actual player animations are more important so that the game feels fluid and gives feedback at the correct time.
Only issue I have with physical colliders from a gameplay point of view is the balance. Does every attack deal damage to everything it collides with? Do certain weapons/skills have a maximum limit (with daggers being 1, great swords being much more), does damage scale down with number of people hit? Does it do different damage based on what part of the blade hits (if you clip the hilt of a sword, it's not as dangerous as the centre mass). Also, as discovered in Jedi Knight II, set your sensitivity really high, then spin on the spot whilst attacking and become a whirlwind of doom that hits everything a hundred times.
I would like to do physical colliders though, it's much more fun from a gameplay point of view (plus you can ragdoll bodies better, as you can just apply a force to them based on the swinging direction).
Only issue I have with physical colliders from a gameplay point of view is the balance. Does every attack deal damage to everything it collides with? Do certain weapons/skills have a maximum limit (with daggers being 1, great swords being much more), does damage scale down with number of people hit? Does it do different damage based on what part of the blade hits (if you clip the hilt of a sword, it's not as dangerous as the centre mass). Also, as discovered in Jedi Knight II, set your sensitivity really high, then spin on the spot whilst attacking and become a whirlwind of doom that hits everything a hundred times.
I would like to do physical colliders though, it's much more fun from a gameplay point of view (plus you can ragdoll bodies better, as you can just apply a force to them based on the swinging direction).
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- #163
Might be easiest to deal with those sorts of issues by providing the client with more information about the mobs than you'd normally need - and let it resolve the various hit/damage mitigation issues. I suppose, if you were paranoid, you could periodically check if the server agrees, which might lead to the occasional teleportation/resurrection due to lag, but could be tolerable. Though the JK2 bit seems it could be mitigated by hit cool-down, and a lot of those "issues" seem more like opportunities.Xerospace said:
It probably is hard to balance.
But diminishing damage doesn't sound like a bad idea.
Damage to a specific target could be something like Main_Damage / Number_of_Targets_Hit_So_Far * Weapon_Slash_Factor.
The weapon slash factor for a Great Axe could then be, maybe, 1.1, while for a dagger it would be 0.7.
The math would probably need some fine-tuning.
But diminishing damage doesn't sound like a bad idea.
Damage to a specific target could be something like Main_Damage / Number_of_Targets_Hit_So_Far * Weapon_Slash_Factor.
The weapon slash factor for a Great Axe could then be, maybe, 1.1, while for a dagger it would be 0.7.
The math would probably need some fine-tuning.
ceriux
Adventurer
So.. Did this project die?
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Maybe school started up again and it died. Shame I was wanting to fight red cubes.
- Thread starter
- #168
I don't go to school, I work full time.
To put it short, I fell out with Unity for a while. Doesn't help that the networking solution I'm using is in beta so it keeps changing a lot.
I still have all the server code and game code. I'm just waiting for a better time to continue it. I don't really have the time to do it all as there's so much coding to do, but also maps, models, textures, animations. It's not really a one man project sadly.
To put it short, I fell out with Unity for a while. Doesn't help that the networking solution I'm using is in beta so it keeps changing a lot.
I still have all the server code and game code. I'm just waiting for a better time to continue it. I don't really have the time to do it all as there's so much coding to do, but also maps, models, textures, animations. It's not really a one man project sadly.
It's interesting, reading this thread as I'm at a similar point with a project I'm working on these days. Over a year in I've found it near impossible to attract a new audience, and with that no new talent. Which leads me with two options, continue on making updates to an older engine that's stuck on PC as it would be too difficult to port, not to mention the legal red tape. Or start a new project with minimal starting talent, possibly alienating what audience I have.
Between the above project, school, and a career it would be difficult as much as I want to see this game/mod flourish. Even with all that I would do what I could to help support this mod. Heck, even the crazy idea of using the lore/layout/gameplay mechanics to create a 2-D/Isometric RPG on a platform such as android for free (Not F2P). It's a platform sorely lacking on good quality RPGs, and it could help promote this version of the game.
My main strengths being:
-Coding C/C+
-Texture/environment art work
-BSP mapping/modeling (Which outside of HL1/Source engine is mostly useless these days)
For reference my current project, I've been working on a racing game overhaul at: http://www.4x4evolution.com
Between the above project, school, and a career it would be difficult as much as I want to see this game/mod flourish. Even with all that I would do what I could to help support this mod. Heck, even the crazy idea of using the lore/layout/gameplay mechanics to create a 2-D/Isometric RPG on a platform such as android for free (Not F2P). It's a platform sorely lacking on good quality RPGs, and it could help promote this version of the game.
My main strengths being:
-Coding C/C+
-Texture/environment art work
-BSP mapping/modeling (Which outside of HL1/Source engine is mostly useless these days)
For reference my current project, I've been working on a racing game overhaul at: http://www.4x4evolution.com
- Thread starter
- #170
Hey FuzzyFish, haven't seen you in a while! Good to see you actively working on something. I think everyone should have a hobby/project, be it physical or software.
Sorry if my reply suddenly gave people a glimpse of hope, I have not picked this project back up. I am however, working with Unity again and planning various ideas, for various games.
The truth of it is though, if I did do a MS Remake Remake (?) it would be a totally separate game. Similar in most game-related respects but separate in locations, lore and characters. Basically, I want to make a persistent character dungeon runner.
It's still most likely not going to happen though, as the work load is too great. I am currently working with an artist for a small god game prototype but it's costing me over £70 for a single basic asset. Even a player character would cost me hundreds most likely
Sorry if my reply suddenly gave people a glimpse of hope, I have not picked this project back up. I am however, working with Unity again and planning various ideas, for various games.
The truth of it is though, if I did do a MS Remake Remake (?) it would be a totally separate game. Similar in most game-related respects but separate in locations, lore and characters. Basically, I want to make a persistent character dungeon runner.
It's still most likely not going to happen though, as the work load is too great. I am currently working with an artist for a small god game prototype but it's costing me over £70 for a single basic asset. Even a player character would cost me hundreds most likely
I still peek in from time to time, lot of great times with this mod.
The idea of making this into a simple top-down 2-D game amuses me but it's not my content/IP to work with. Not too much time for games these days. (Boo/hiss)
The idea of making this into a simple top-down 2-D game amuses me but it's not my content/IP to work with. Not too much time for games these days. (Boo/hiss)
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http://www.alaska.net/~radigan/MS/History.htmlVomika7 said:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4384
http://www.msremake.com/Files/informationsheet.html
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6765
...and here is the novella itself:
http://www.msremake.com/Files/Lanethan.htm
- Admin
- #174
Or, all of that and a bag of chips, all in one place: http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev4/lorez_JAN2015.rar
