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Indie Project Resurgence - cRPG inspired by Fallout and Arcanum

Joined
Dec 9, 2014
Messages
17
cRPG inspired by Fallout and Arcanum, what could possibly go wrong? Well, everything. I'm sick of the hype with the Kickstarters. I hope all the best for the project, by what I hope most is that they build a game that stands on its own feet and doesn't rely on the nostalgia of the grandfathers in the genre. Make a game with robust mechanics and a coherent story and let it promote itself from then on. Don't try to sell it as Fallout or anything else.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,882
cRPG inspired by Fallout and Arcanum, what could possibly go wrong? Well, everything. I'm sick of the hype with the Kickstarters. I hope all the best for the project, by what I hope most is that they build a game that stands on its own feet and doesn't rely on the nostalgia of the grandfathers in the genre. Make a game with robust mechanics and a coherent story and let it promote itself from then on. Don't try to sell it as Fallout or anything else.
There is a world of difference between inspired and spiritual successor. What is wrong by being inspired by some of the best games of the genre?

Musicians do their music all the time by being inspired by previous works of art. And they always say what inspired them when asked and nobody complains.
 

hoverdog

dog that is hovering, Wastelands Interactive
Developer
Joined
Jul 8, 2010
Messages
5,589
Location
Jordan, Minnesota
Project: Eternity
RT/TB hybrid combat?
Not even once.
Arcanum, Fallout Tactics and X-COM Apocalypse were good enough for me. All three are good games, but DESPITE the hybrid combat.
Commit to TB or RT or die.

Worked for MM6.

You felt like a genius when you figured out you could just spam arrows in RT, then enter TB and let the poor sods slide down the hill they struggled minutes to get up onto.
That's what I mentioned - exploits. Granted, MM6 was all about exploiting this shit out of the game and that was actually the most fun - but it's a singular case and completely detached from this game.
 

Maschtervoz

Learned
Joined
Feb 5, 2015
Messages
106
dialog_wip-825x510.jpg

These guys need to get their shit straight in regards to visual design, because those two characters look like a decent woman having a chat with a furry's sparklewolf recreated as a Korean MMO character. In various other pieces on their site you can see the clash between the competent stuff and overdesigned neon animu shit.

Also, art aside, something about the graphics reminds me of fucking NWN2 and that's never a thing you want your graphics to do. I guess it's still in development, but that eerie lifeless and artificial feeling is definitely there and it's triggering me.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,804
Ok i've read what is provided:

pros
- developers with experience. Sure some of them have stains like colonial marines but let's not confuse AI writing work with other types of work, none of them did AI nor any part of game that was considered bad.
- their site is slick, to sleek even for indie.
- good key list features
- mentioning Arcanum and Fallout as inspiration is always good thing especially if those are experienced devs, so they probably know that making game like that isn't really easy thing to do.
- seems like they will put gameplay demo in hands which is more than 99% of other "dev teams" are trying kickstart with.

cons

- lack of any content to show beside few concept art (albait rather nice art)
- none of them made RPGs, toolwork, writing, C&C, backend is hard work and requires experience.
- none of them were game designers. Which could be as well + if we look what they were doing earlier...

TLDR seems reasonable. I hope they can knit max 10 person friends team working mostly for food and get something like 300-400k.
If they will have good demo they can go even beyond $1mln.


Making both real-time and turn-based combat is the worst idea ever. It never, ever works.

Precisely. You have to design and balance two very different combat systems that have different strengths and weaknesses. It's a fool's errand.

Fallout Tactics. And it worked really well. Mind you also that i am not a fan of real time combat and i liked it in FT.

Like someone said earlier. To make real time combat you need to decouple your turn system from AP system or whatever currency of time you use and base your real time system on turn based one not the other way around.

They do have different strengths and in FT they both worked well. Huge battles and hard encounters i played mostly TB, trash mobs and ambushes mostly in RT

RT/TB hybrid combat?
Not even once.
Arcanum, Fallout Tactics and X-COM Apocalypse were good enough for me. All three are good games, but DESPITE the hybrid combat.
Commit to TB or RT or die.

the fuck m8

Arcanum had shitty RT and TB combat, both were fucked. No reason to defend it for me either
FT had ligitimate good RT and TB combat due to creating RT combat on TB not the other way around.
I love TB but FT did justice to hybrid combat i can't complain.

Though one game out of all other isn't really good answer for kickstarter
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
The art, though not necessarily to my taste, is pretty, and it's nice that they have a reasonably experienced team, but as Perkel notes, none has experience in the relevant genre. That -- combined with the "two kinds of combat in one!" -- gives me serious concern that they have no idea what the scope of the work will be, or how hard it is to make this kind of game. They're at the stage of development (concept art and background lore) where it is easy to look great and move quickly, so it's easy to look promising for now. TBH, I think they'd be better off making a jRPG with a little bit of C&C, which really seems to be where their heart is, rather than trying to make a wRPG with dialogue trees. Still, maybe they'll defy the odds!

--EDIT--
Not only do we want to make Project Resurgence the first successful episodic RPG . . .
Branching semi-linear storyline for discovery at your own pace
??
-EDIT2--
Our goal is to temper all of our fantastical elements with an air of grounded realism
I am not sure, but I think this may be the greatest metaphorical knot since Snorre Sturlusson's days -- "elements" being tied to "temper[ing]" (fire), "air," and "ground" (earth). (If only they could have somehow workedin water.) I guess it's possible it's just a terrible mixed metaphor, though.
 
Last edited:

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,804
The art, though not necessarily to my taste, is pretty, and it's nice that they have a reasonably experienced team, but as Perkel notes, none has experience in the relevant genre. That -- combined with the "two kinds of combat in one!" -- gives me serious concern that they have no idea what the scope of the work will be, or how hard it is to make this kind of game. They're at the stage of development (concept art and background lore) where it is easy to look great and move quickly, so it's easy to look promising for now. TBH, I think they'd be better off making a jRPG with a little bit of C&C, which really seems to be where their heart is, rather than trying to make a wRPG with dialogue trees. Still, maybe they'll defy the odds!

Apperently with kickstarter they will give people playable demo with something like one hour of content.

Sink or swim as they say.

Perkel You should read what games they've actually played on the forums.

You don't have idea how much shitty games i played in my life. Still some of those shitty games had parts which i considered good and worth remembering. Part of being critic is to know your shit. If you play only best games you are handicapped and sometimes you can miss something worthwhile.

I consider Dragon Age origins mediacore to bad game and yet i can safely say that their spin on mages (and fade) was really interesting worth imo exploring in other games (though they managed to fuck it up later in game). Combat even shitty RT was way more interesting to play than recent teh Pillars of Balance.

Their main inspiration is fallout and arcanum and those two are best cases which we could expect to source their design on. If they wanted free publicity they could just say "we want to make dragon age".


Like MRY said though making RPG is something more than making platformer. It needs not only right attitude but also hard work and especially tools in backend so your won't be pilled up under shitload of text to implement or debug.

You can't go just Well we will use UE4 or Unity and everything will work in 2 years w promise !

TLDR. Don't get hyped but don't miss this since it could be something worthwile. At least they have something that 90% of all kickstarter dev teams don't. Experience in making games and working in games business and probably demo to show off their slice of game and how it will work.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,882
The art, though not necessarily to my taste, is pretty, and it's nice that they have a reasonably experienced team, but as Perkel notes, none has experience in the relevant genre. That -- combined with the "two kinds of combat in one!" -- gives me serious concern that they have no idea what the scope of the work will be, or how hard it is to make this kind of game. They're at the stage of development (concept art and background lore) where it is easy to look great and move quickly, so it's easy to look promising for now. TBH, I think they'd be better off making a jRPG with a little bit of C&C, which really seems to be where their heart is, rather than trying to make a wRPG with dialogue trees. Still, maybe they'll defy the odds!
Except they said they got a working build with all the basic systems and are polishing it for the 1 hour demo. I would say they are beyond concept art and background lore.

Also they got at least 2 writers.
 

Keldryn

Arcane
Joined
Feb 25, 2005
Messages
1,053
Location
Vancouver, Canada
It could end up being decent, but I'm thinking that it probably won't even get finished.

The Creative Director and co-founder of the company got a degree in game design (a Masters from Full Sail, LOL) and then decided to start his own studio.

I did two semesters of one of those game design programs back in 2003, and I worked with people at EA and Rockstar who completed the whole program. Those programs are no substitute for actual game development experience.

The rest of the team doesn't come off as terribly impressive, either. Frankly, they should have said a whole lot less in the team bios and probably left out the "achievements" sections altogether. Also, don't write things like "X years of AAA/indie game development" as though the two are in any way equivalent.

That isn't to say that it is impossible for a fairly inexperienced team to make a game like this and have it turn out good, but the odds are slim.

Also, there is a distinct vibe of design-by-committee (emphasis mine):

Manuel: As co-founder of Nectar Game Studios, what's different about this new company?

Rob: I think company culture is hugely important to the success of any studio, and one of our big things is that the team comes first. We don’t want any of our guys worrying about their job security and stuff like that; I mean how can you continuously be creative with that stress looming over you? Another thing I feel strongly about is that NGS is an ego-free environment. I built this team around the idea that nobody’s opinions are better than anyone else’s and that goes the same for me. We also believe strongly in representing diversity and being progressive wherever possible. Women and minorities are under/misrepresented in games and game development, and we want to do our part to change that.

That is absolutely the wrong approach. It sounds all warm and fuzzy, but at the end of the day, you need one person with a clear vision of the project who has the balls to say "thank you for your suggestion, but your opinion is stupid and we're doing it my way. Get on board or go do something else." This is likely one reason why they've made the incredibly stupid decision to include two separate combat systems (RT and TB).

It's also hilarious that he talks about not wanting the team members to worry about their job security when none of them are getting paid to do this in the first place. He's going to need to raise a good $300-400K per year in order to keep his team working on the game full-time, and I guarantee that this will not happen:

Rob: We’re actually planning to launch our Kickstarter in the next few months, provided everything goes smoothly. If we are successful, we hope to release Episode 1 in less than a year.

Unless their game is mostly feature-complete right now and they're shifting to filling out the content, there is zero chance of them finishing an episode in that amount of time, unless it's about an hour of gameplay.

The "progressive" stance is important enough to put on the front page in the "inspirations" section:

Not only do we want to make Project Resurgence the first successful episodic RPG, but also take a much more progressive stance in the diversity of our characters and storylines. No chainmail bikinis, stereotypical minorities, or women as one-dimensional sex objects.

:decline:
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,804
--EDIT--


??
-EDIT2--

I am not sure, but I think this may be the greatest metaphorical knot since Snorre Sturlusson's days -- "elements" being tied to "temper[ing]" (fire), "air," and "ground" (earth). (If only they could have somehow workedin water.) I guess it's possible it's just a terrible mixed metaphor, though.

Changed opinion.

Episodic RPG ?

That is like red alert to bail out...

As for grounded in reality. It means usually fantasy tropes probably being tied to realism of real life which isn't exactly new thing (whole fantasy movement even in late 80').
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,882
It's also hilarious that he talks about not wanting the team members to worry about their job security when none of them are getting paid to do this in the first place. He's going to need to raise a good $300-400K per year in order to keep his team working on the game full-time, and I guarantee that this will not happen:
One of the two heads to this studio is a guy that has stable 8700 people watching him play Fallout 1 on twitch and knows everyone on twitch that is anyone including TB. They will all promote his KS like crazy.

If the demo is good and the pitch video is good, you will see lots of money coming their way.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
Except they said they got a working build with all the basic systems and are polishing it for the 1 hour demo. I would say they are beyond concept art and background lore.
Shakespeare said:
GLENDOWER. I can call spirits from the vasty deep. HOTSPUR. Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?
When there is evidence of the working build with all the basic systems, etc., then I'll take them to be well beyond the concept art stage. For now, the only thing they're showing is concept art and a mockup.
ArchAngel said:
Also they got at least 2 writers.
But neither has done this kind of writing before. [EDIT: My skepticism here arises from having spent many years working on over-promised and never-delivered indie RPGs.]
As for grounded in reality. It means usually fantasy tropes probably being tied to realism of real life which isn't exactly new thing (whole fantasy movement even in late 80').
I know what it means, I just thought it was either a neat achievement -- to mix three elemental metaphors together in a sentence about elements -- or a bit of messy writing. I can't decide which, but it delights me either way.
 

Ninjerk

Arcane
Joined
Jul 10, 2013
Messages
14,323
The art, though not necessarily to my taste, is pretty, and it's nice that they have a reasonably experienced team, but as Perkel notes, none has experience in the relevant genre. That -- combined with the "two kinds of combat in one!" -- gives me serious concern that they have no idea what the scope of the work will be, or how hard it is to make this kind of game. They're at the stage of development (concept art and background lore) where it is easy to look great and move quickly, so it's easy to look promising for now. TBH, I think they'd be better off making a jRPG with a little bit of C&C, which really seems to be where their heart is, rather than trying to make a wRPG with dialogue trees. Still, maybe they'll defy the odds!

Apperently with kickstarter they will give people playable demo with something like one hour of content.

Sink or swim as they say.

Perkel You should read what games they've actually played on the forums.

You don't have idea how much shitty games i played in my life. Still some of those shitty games had parts which i considered good and worth remembering. Part of being critic is to know your shit. If you play only best games you are handicapped and sometimes you can miss something worthwhile.

I consider Dragon Age origins mediacore to bad game and yet i can safely say that their spin on mages (and fade) was really interesting worth imo exploring in other games (though they managed to fuck it up later in game). Combat even shitty RT was way more interesting to play than recent teh Pillars of Balance.

Their main inspiration is fallout and arcanum and those two are best cases which we could expect to source their design on. If they wanted free publicity they could just say "we want to make dragon age".


Like MRY said though making RPG is something more than making platformer. It needs not only right attitude but also hard work and especially tools in backend so your won't be pilled up under shitload of text to implement or debug.

You can't go just Well we will use UE4 or Unity and everything will work in 2 years w promise !

TLDR. Don't get hyped but don't miss this since it could be something worthwile. At least they have something that 90% of all kickstarter dev teams don't. Experience in making games and working in games business and probably demo to show off their slice of game and how it will work.
I meant this thread: http://nectargamestudios.com/forum/threads/whats-your-favorite-crpg-series-and-why.4/
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,882
I was expecting some negativity when I posted as this is Codex afterall but considering people here adore fallout, arcanum and like isometric rpgs I was expecting a bit more optimism lol.
Anyways maybe devs find this topic and turn some of the criticism into useful feedback.
I am still optimistic at least until I play that demo.
 

Drowed

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2011
Messages
1,676
Location
Core City
Despite the certainty that the combat would be a clusterfuck, I even kept some interest until I read the word "episodic". Lost me there. Would not Kickstart it, but maybe I would buy it in a bundle or steam sale. I'm not really confident that they could deliver a good game, even with so much namedropping and all that about their inspirations.
 

Keldryn

Arcane
Joined
Feb 25, 2005
Messages
1,053
Location
Vancouver, Canada
One of the two heads to this studio is a guy that has stable 8700 people watching him play Fallout 1 on twitch and knows everyone on twitch that is anyone including TB. They will all promote his KS like crazy.

The fact that the other co-founder of the studio has a few thousand people watching him play Fallout on twitch does not mean that he knows how to make (and complete) a game. It takes more than promoting a KS to raise money -- the people that it is being pitched to need to be confident enough that the team can pull it off. I'm aware of the game, I like that genre, but I currently have no intention of backing any Kickstarter that they launch.

If the demo is good and the pitch video is good, you will see lots of money coming their way.

If the demo is good and the pitch video is good, we'll see some money coming their way. If they're going to push for releasing a complete episode within a year, they're going to need to lock down their development team full-time, as they will not finish the game with people working 5-20 hours per week on it. Given that neither of the studio heads have any prior game development experience outside of their game design programs, they're going to make mistakes, and those mistakes are going to cost them time and money. Novice game developers dramatically underestimate just how much time it takes to polish a game into a product that is suitable for release. You just can't get the last couple of features in, the last bit of art added, and the last bit of dialogue implemented and then spend 2 or 3 weeks fixing bugs and tweaking things here and there. Well, you CAN do that, but the game will be shit.

The guys at Obsidian and inXile know their stuff, and their KS projects were delivered late and somewhat buggy. The guys at Double Fine know what they're doing, and they went way over-budget and delivered late. Richard Garriott was one of the pioneers of this genre and the whole industry, and his game is way behind schedule as well.

It's going to take these guys 2-3x as long as they think it will to finish one episode, and they're most likely going to run out of money before they get there, at which point several team members will have to bow out because they need to find a steady paycheque.

In my opinion, they should be releasing a feature-rich, playable demo before they even start talking about a Kickstarter. Get a demo out there, promote it, let the community talk about it, and get some feedback. If the buzz is negative, re-work the demo and release it again once it's improved. Keep doing this until there is some genuine excitement about the game, and then launch a Kickstarter.
 
Joined
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Messages
4,099
Location
Chicago, IL, Kwa
Eh. I'm not too worried about potentially shitty writing or combat. I've loved plenty of cRPGs guilty of such, but I think the only episodic games I've even mildly enjoyed were TT's first two Sam and Max, and those were decidedly 6/10 or so.
Seriously, episodic C&C heavy wRPG? Do these guys even understand what the words they're using mean?
 

MoonlitKnight

Educated
Joined
Nov 11, 2014
Messages
60
Long ago, a deadly black Mist spread over the world of Lumen and forced the people to flee underground. They split into five tribes, and lived independently until the Mist began to recede over a thousand years ago. Upon returning to the surface, they found the land blackened and scarred, littered with towering spikes of black onyx and pools of luminous liquid. Slowly, life returned to the land, as it always does. The entirety of the known world consists of the southeastern tip of a large continent, and the five islands off its coast. Everything else is still shrouded in Mist. The grand capital of Dehrgada City has been built on the mainland, combing the culture and aesthetics of all 5 tribes.

This is where our story begins, and a legacy forged that forever changed the world
Inspired a lot by Fallout I see
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
The grand capital of Dehrgada City has been built on the mainland, combing the culture and aesthetics of all 5 tribes.
:incloosive:

Edit:

Not only do we want to make Project Resurgence the first successful episodic RPG, but also take a much more progressive stance in the diversity of our characters and storylines.
Abe_e3efae_248989.gif
 
Last edited:

Keldryn

Arcane
Joined
Feb 25, 2005
Messages
1,053
Location
Vancouver, Canada
I was expecting some negativity when I posted as this is Codex afterall but considering people here adore fallout, arcanum and like isometric rpgs I was expecting a bit more optimism lol.

Well, I have as much game development experience as several of the team members that they have featured (including AAA), and more than either of the studio heads. Plus more than a decade of professional software development on top of that. I'm not certain that I could organize a team, successfully fund a Kickstarter, and deliver a high quality finished product without running out of money.

I need to see more than naive idealism in order to be optimistic about a project, and naive idealism is all that I'm seeing from the guys running the show there. Also, as I said above, the fact that the project lead states that his opinion is not better than anyone else's is a huge red flag. That doesn't mean that the lead won't consider other opinions (that senior animator with 15 years of experience absolutely has a better opinion on issues regarding animation than anyone else on the team), but the guy with the guiding vision ultimately has to be the gatekeeper of what gets into the game, and that requires having an ego. The "my opinions are no better than anyone else's" approach is not the mark of an effective leader.

Eh. I'm not too worried about potentially shitty writing or combat. I've loved plenty of cRPGs guilty of such, but I think the only episodic games I've even mildly enjoyed were TT's first two Sam and Max, and those were decidedly 6/10 or so.
Seriously, episodic C&C heavy wRPG? Do these guys even understand what the words they're using mean?

I had considered the idea of taking the "episodic" approach to making my own CRPG, as it is one way of packaging the content into more manageable sizes for a small team to work on. Ultimately, I ruled it out because it doesn't work for the kind of RPG that I want to make. One could still take this modular approach, but rather than releasing a string of "episodes," you could steadily release modules containing new locations and quests that would eventually give you a large, open world. You would need to either level-scale the content (ugh) or design your game with a much more gradual power curve than you see in most CRPGs.
 
Self-Ejected

Excidium II

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jun 21, 2015
Messages
1,866,227
Location
Third World
Gathered so far:

Episodic
Progressive stance on diversity
Shit art style
RT/TB hybrid
Writing that makes PoE look good

Current verdict: garbage
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
In my opinion, they should be releasing a feature-rich, playable demo before they even start talking about a Kickstarter.
Are you new to Kickstarter? It's about selling a dream and when you sell dreams, demos tend to get in the way. Do you think Obsidian would have gotten 4 mil if they released a feature-rich demo first?

I was expecting some negativity when I posted as this is Codex afterall but considering people here adore fallout, arcanum and like isometric rpgs I was expecting a bit more optimism lol.
Because it sounds suspiciously like name-dropping. They may have really liked Fallout and Arcanum but it seems the design is based on Shadowrun, Dragon Age, and Pillars.
 

Keldryn

Arcane
Joined
Feb 25, 2005
Messages
1,053
Location
Vancouver, Canada
In my opinion, they should be releasing a feature-rich, playable demo before they even start talking about a Kickstarter.
Are you new to Kickstarter? It's about selling a dream and when you sell dreams, demos tend to get in the way. Do you think Obsidian would have gotten 4 mil if they released a feature-rich demo first?

No, I'm not new to Kickstarter.

I'm saying that I think there is a big difference between "hey, we're the guys who made some of your favorite games that you still remember fondly, please help us raise the money to make another game like those ones" and "hey, we haven't actually made a game before, but we liked the same games that you did and we're going to try and make one that's a lot like all those games, please help us raise the money to do so. Did we mention that the game will reactive and let players make choices?"

Obsidian's feature-rich demo was Fallout 1 & 2, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale 1 & 2, KOTOR 2, and Neverwinter Nights 2.

These guys at Nectar are selling a dream, but who the hell are they again? Oh, two guys with game design degrees and no actual game development experience. One of them plays games and broadcasts it on the web. Big fucking deal. When people have seen and loved your work, you don't need a demo reel. When all you have are big ideas? Well, let's see if you can do more than talk and write design documents.
 

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