KickStarter Wellspring: Altar of Roots - tactical RPG inspired by JRPGs (formerly Bevontule)

[anvi]

So uh... how do you guys feel about fast traveling? Asking for a friend...

All this stuff depends on the game. If you have lots of back and forth over huge distances then there needs to be some sort of fast travel. EQ does all this stuff best. You can set 2 Bind locations and teleport between them, or to various wizard spires in the world. But there is no fast travel to locations like Skyrim.

 

[anvi]

And you keep talking as if I defended minimaps as a good thing. I didn't and I don't.

You defended it many times. If you are saying they help you see what direction you are going in and yet don't harm exploration then you are suggesting they are a good thing. Yet you don't even seem to believe it yourself. It is like you want to argue without having any argument.

All I'm arguing is that a minimalist minimap like Morrowind's is less harmful towards exploration than quest compasses are, which is the truth.

Still no. They are the same thing, only difference is compass doesn't show the landscape. Therefore it is less bad.

 

[Iznaliu]

Minimaps are useful - here it nicely showed the consolish corridor-based level design, reminding me not to buy. Thanks minimap! :D

This website has consolish corridor-based design, if you count the threads as corridors.

 

[Machocruz]

How about just a regular compass. N, S,E, W. That's it. All other navigational needs can be met with road signs, landmarks, sun position, etc.

 

[Iznaliu]

How about just a regular compass. N, S,E, W. That's it. All other navigational needs can be met with road signs, landmarks, sun position, etc.

I'm not sure sun position would be worth it to implement.

 

[Infinitron]

Took time recently to implement all of the available passive skills for our upcoming demo and wanted to show two of the more 'strategic ones', Shroud and Counterattack. For Bodom, Stealthing plays a crucial role in battle, rendering him untargetable (by direct actions) and giving him, at a minimum, a flat damage bonus to his next attack or skill. With the passive ability Shroud, we wanted to emphasize the damage avoidance aspect of Stealth, and as such, designed it to automatically Stealth Bodom when critically damaged (HP less than 20%) by an enemy attack. Since the effect wears off before his next turn, and can only be triggered when dropping into a critical state from a non-critical one, we feel that it's fairly balanced given its rather steep equip cost. Combined with the passive skill Guardian Angel (Automatically negates, once per battle, a fatal damage instance) Shroud can supplement a more cautious playstyle, still able to deal loads of damage without quite as much risk. Apolith, on the other hand, loves to endure a good beatdown! To help deal with situations where enemies rely mainly on basic, physical attacks, we added the passive skill 'Counterattack', which is pretty much what it sounds like. However, this sort of skill has a lot of potential for abuse, so we added several 'limitations': for starters, it can only trigger 50% of the time and only against enemy attacks directly. Furthermore, the enemy has to be within range and also, 'facing' Apolith--as such, Apolith can't have a chance to counter against every attack that comes his way. This is barely scratching the surface of all the available active and passive skill (as well as the massive number of upgrades) combinations but we're already finding lots of opportunities for some very specific tactics and playstyles (and of course, lots of unintended interactions ). Anyhow, hope you enjoyed the video and we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback below!

 

[Iznaliu]

Took time recently to implement all of the available passive skills for our upcoming demo and wanted to show two of the more 'strategic ones', Shroud and Counterattack. For Bodom, Stealthing plays a crucial role in battle, rendering him untargetable (by direct actions) and giving him, at a minimum, a flat damage bonus to his next attack or skill. With the passive ability Shroud, we wanted to emphasize the damage avoidance aspect of Stealth, and as such, designed it to automatically Stealth Bodom when critically damaged (HP less than 20%) by an enemy attack. Since the effect wears off before his next turn, and can only be triggered when dropping into a critical state from a non-critical one, we feel that it's fairly balanced given its rather steep equip cost. Combined with the passive skill Guardian Angel (Automatically negates, once per battle, a fatal damage instance) Shroud can supplement a more cautious playstyle, still able to deal loads of damage without quite as much risk. Apolith, on the other hand, loves to endure a good beatdown! To help deal with situations where enemies rely mainly on basic, physical attacks, we added the passive skill 'Counterattack', which is pretty much what it sounds like. However, this sort of skill has a lot of potential for abuse, so we added several 'limitations': for starters, it can only trigger 50% of the time and only against enemy attacks directly. Furthermore, the enemy has to be within range and also, 'facing' Apolith--as such, Apolith can't have a chance to counter against every attack that comes his way. This is barely scratching the surface of all the available active and passive skill (as well as the massive number of upgrades) combinations but we're already finding lots of opportunities for some very specific tactics and playstyles (and of course, lots of unintended interactions ). Anyhow, hope you enjoyed the video and we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback below!

Seems pretty good other than the fact that I'm no fan of the combat music.

 

[Infinitron]

Finally got around to replacing our main character, Bodom--to celebrate, here's a short montage of the new model and some of our updated environments! We're still adding the finishing touches to some of the animations and cape physics, but I can say that it feels amazing to have the finalized character mostly in-place! Like always, we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

 

[Infinitron]

Added a little bit more functionality to our waypoint system, including audio support, particle effects, animation-triggered events, ascending/descending and more. You can see this all come together in the video below, which demonstrates the behavior of one of our many superbosses frequenting the continent of Onich! Needless to say, we'd get absolutely trashed by this enemy at this point in the game, so yeah... rain check. Make sure to watch with your volume turned up and let us know what you think in the comments below!

 

[Infinitron]

Spent a day updating some of our fire particle systems! While there are definitely some obvious improvements to be made (smoke could be darker/thicker, lighting could be particle-based, sound effects, et cetera) it's a vast improvement over our previous particle systems. And it's faster too! We'd love to hear suggestions on ways that we could further enhance the effect!

 

[Infinitron]

We're thrilled to show off the final, updated character model for everyone's favorite wise-cracking, treasure-seeking, alchemist-turned-crimelord, Moroch! There are still a few improvements to be made with cloth, animations, eye-blinking, etc., but overall, we love the way he turned out and hope you do as well!

 

[aweigh]

MTG_Derek MTG_Andy

I love the music. Love the graphics.

Love the on-screen enemies that chase you around in the overworld before JRPG-transitioning to seperate battle plane.

I am sold. I am officially aboard the hype train!

one minor nitpick though: be sure to include some option/slider to make the battle animations "play out" at 2x or faster speed. From the videos it seems like we will quickly grow tired of waiting 10 seconds for a rogue to slash an enemies bunghole for the 155th time.

EDIT: BTW is Bodom a reference to Children of Bodom?

 

[aweigh]

(Re-reading my earlier posts in this thread)

Infinitron

Gotta say, thanks for bringing this game and the recent Liluran blobber one to Codexian attention, but this stuff still easily gets lost in the kerfuffle even for a no-life person like me who refreshes this website multiple times per hour.

Also, how about giving oklabsoft and his blobber game some exposure? For whatever reason he hasn't made an official thread yet and his game updates continue to be buried inside the "Shameless Wizardry Clones" thread.

Help a brutha out!

 

[MTG_Andy]

MTG_Derek MTG_Andy

I love the music. Love the graphics.

Love the on-screen enemies that chase you around in the overworld before JRPG-transitioning to seperate battle plane.

I am sold. I am officially aboard the hype train!

one minor nitpick though: be sure to include some option/slider to make the battle animations "play out" at 2x or faster speed. From the videos it seems like we will quickly grow tired of waiting 10 seconds for a rogue to slash an enemies bunghole for the 155th time.

EDIT: BTW is Bodom a reference to Children of Bodom?

Thanks aweigh! We've spent a lot of time developing the features that you have listed and its always good to hear that they are noticed and appreciated!

We've discussed being able to skip animations during battle with the press of a button or having a setting to just automatically skip them; speeding them up is also a valid option. We just haven't had the time yet to figure out and implement the best option(s).

And yes, Children of Bodom is the influence for our main character's name, lol. We were in school then and were taking influences where we could get them. We couldn't think of calling him anything else at this point, though.

Thanks again for the comments!

 

[aweigh]

no prob. i get a definite NWN 2 "vibe" from the videos of the char running around, and even a bit of the music. if you guys implement NWN 2's "cinematic" angle for NPC dialog (i.e. pushing the camera up to char's face profile instead of having them stare at the camera) it'll be vibe-complete!

(not really saying you should do this, just a random thought I had while looking at the videos).

It all very much looks exactly like what it says on the tin: a japanese SRPG's framework shoehorned into an almost Dragon Quest-like overworld + on-screen enemies rushing after you mold, with western fantasy aesthetics.

You could easily replace the current graphics/textures with anime art and there would literally be no problem in calling this a full-blown JRPG, and this is a compliment.

(and yes, I know DQ did not invent on-screen enemies chasing your lead char, and that it's been a JRPG staple as far back as EarthBound on SNES).

I personally love this specific implementation of random encounters for a JRPG-type overworld map as it becomes a fun little mini-game in and of itself in avoiding their rushes or in deciding to get an advantage by bumping into enemies from the side or from behind.

(I assume you guys are implementing that sort of thing).

 

[anvi]

Are you guys WOTC employees?

 

[MTG_Derek]

It all very much looks exactly like what it says on the tin: a japanese SRPG's framework shoehorned into an almost Dragon Quest-like overworld + on-screen enemies rushing after you mold, with western fantasy aesthetics.

You could easily replace the current graphics/textures with anime art and there would literally be no problem in calling this a full-blown JRPG, and this is a compliment.

Thanks! Personally, I think it's more JRPG'ish than anything else, but as we learned during our Greenlight campaign and promotion, people have very differing opinions on what a JRPG is. I tend to think of designations like that as representative of the underlying gameplay/mechanics and less so the graphics/aesthetic, but a lot of people uh... disagree.

I personally love this specific implementation of random encounters for a JRPG-type overworld map as it becomes a fun little mini-game in and of itself in avoiding their rushes or in deciding to get an advantage by bumping into enemies from the side or from behind.

(I assume you guys are implementing that sort of thing).

That's probably one of our most oft-requested features and I think we'll be flayed alive if we don't implement it in some form or fashion. Personally, we always liked the idea of having swappable main characters (IE, don't have all of your characters on the screen, but have a 'main party member' that acts as a proxy, pretty standard) and then having each character have a specific 'engagement skill.' For instance, Bodom can attempt to backstab an enemy on the field (rogue/DPS) which might be a slower, drawn-out action--if he, in particular, succeeds, however, we might do something where that particular enemy (or all enemies) starts combat with less HP. Or we could make it more standard and allow all party members to act first, or any number of things, really, so long as it's a unique mechanic for each character. As another example, our archer/ranged DPS Lynelle could just fire an arrow and would engage the group of enemies it hits, maybe with a slight debuff to the enemies--have to be careful with that one since it's obviously easier to hit an enemy from a distance on the field than it would be to 'sneak' up on them. These types of 'abilities' would obviously be on some sort of cooldown. Again, nothing there is finalized, but just a glimpse of what we were thinking. Feel free to add any other ideas if you want!

Are you guys WOTC employees?

Nope! We've dabbled with MTG a time or two (I suck really bad), mainly just chose the names because MTG = MultiThreaded Games.

 

[anvi]

Oh, cool, that's good. Good luck with your game, I wanna play it. If you devour tactical RPGs in this day and age, you are left starving like a waif.

 

[Iznaliu]

I tend to think of designations like that as representative of the underlying gameplay/mechanics and less so the graphics/aesthetic, but a lot of people uh... disagree.

This is why I don't find the "JRPG" label to be particularly useful in many cases; I've seen people call Dark Souls a JRPG.

 

[MTG_Derek]

I tend to think of designations like that as representative of the underlying gameplay/mechanics and less so the graphics/aesthetic, but a lot of people uh... disagree.

This is why I don't find the "JRPG" label to be particularly useful in many cases; I've seen people call Dark Souls a JRPG.

What kind of monster... would do a thing like that?!?

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Infinitron]

We're excited to introduce our final, updated character model for Apolith, the always-stern general-turned-mercenary and resident tank! We still have a little bit of work to do before I'd call it finished, but it's very close! It's been a long road, but we're thrilled to have our main party solidified! Let us know what you think in the comments below!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Dat walk and run animation

 

[Modron]

Dat walk and run animation

Yeah the comically oversized shoulders basically guarantee some goofiness but I personally am more triggered by long sword on the back.

 

[Iznaliu]

Yeah the comically oversized shoulders basically guarantee some goofiness but I personally am more triggered by long sword on the back.

I don't think it's a huge deal; the sword is of normal size and shape, unlike other rear-mounted swords.