KickStarter Underworld Ascendant Pre-Prototype Thread

[Zep Zepo]

I can't believe they are still showing blank white cubes and shit in their "demos/prototypes/bullshots".

You know the food pyramid isn't an actual monster in the game, right?

Now it is...

Zep--

 

[Infinitron]

whateveeeer. We all know the end product will be "we couldnt get the dyamnic eco-system to work" "we had to scrap the physics stuff"

Do we? I don't know - they seem to have elevated those elements to the level of absolute pillars this time around.

It'll certainly be amusing if the opposite ends up happening - an ecology simulator attached to a minimalistic dungeon crawler.

 

[Zep Zepo]

whateveeeer. We all know the end product will be "we couldnt get the dyamnic eco-system to work" "we had to scrap the physics stuff"

Do we? I don't know - they seem to have elevated those elements to the level of absolute pillars this time around.

It'll certainly be amusing if the opposite ends up happening - an ecology simulator attached to a minimalistic dungeon crawler.

I think you're finally seeing the true colors here, bro. It took you a while to come around, but I knew you had it in you!

Zep--

 

[Alchemist]

I can't believe they are still showing blank white cubes and shit in their "demos/prototypes/bullshots".

This whole thing is a fucking joke.

Zep--

They are about a month out from finishing their Kickstarter - you really expect any kind of quality graphics at this early stage? Usually a sensible approach is to get the gameplay systems into a solid state (with simple programmer art) before making things pretty. They have a long ways to go yet and making good art assets takes a ton of time.

 

[DawnrazorDCLXVI]

It feels like theres a Looking Glass "good old days" retrospective every other month.

"did I ever tell you about that time I scored 3 touchdowns during the big highschool game? THOSE WERE TEH DAYS"

Eh, not really. Obviously it was a bit more in the news during the Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter campaign.

http://ultimacodex.com/2015/04/otherside-entertainment-is-looking-for-an-art-lead/

OtherSide Entertainment Is Looking For an Art Lead
BY WTF DRAGON · APRIL 6, 2015

OtherSide Entertainment have posted a job opening to the Gamasutra job boards; they are looking to hire an Art Lead to help create visual benchmarks to drive the art quality of Underworld Ascendant.

We are seeking a talented Art Lead, with a passion and background in building inspired 3D game worlds. This individual will work collaboratively with our team to create the visual look for Underworld Ascendant. Thiey will be a talented game artist in their own right, able create art at a very high bar of visual style and execution. They will also have the leadership skills to direct a small team of artists, guiding their work, and getting the best out of the art team.

Responsibilities & Skills:

• Will be responsible for creating visual benchmarks and driving the quality for art. Sets high quality and style expectations for “AAA” caliber Indie studio games.
• Should be fluent in the creation of inspired 3D game worlds, fantasy especially. Also fluent in creating art for 3D engines and pipelines, including Unity.
• Strong collaborator with engineers and designers towards a shared goal.
• Able to effectively direct the creation of art developed both internally and outsourced.
• Able to visually sell and communicate the game to the outside world.
• Have at least 5 years’ experience as a game artist, including in a lead art role

So if the above matches your skillset, and if helping to create the spiritual — and actual — successor to the Ultima Underworldgames sounds like something you would consider fun/awesome, you should probably apply for the job while you still can!

I will up my pledge $300 to see this done in Sprites and 8-bit.

Add a dot after the '3.'

 

[Darkzone]

whateveeeer. We all know the end product will be "we couldnt get the dyamnic eco-system to work" "we had to scrap the physics stuff"

Do we? I don't know - they seem to have elevated those elements to the level of absolute pillars this time around.
It'll certainly be amusing if the opposite ends up happening - an ecology simulator attached to a minimalistic dungeon crawler.

Their "eco-system" is barely a bare bone, currently it is still nothing from what i see or they are hiding many things. With an good ecology simulator we can make the dungeons on the fly.

 

[Infinitron]

UPDATE: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/othersidegames/underworld-ascendant/posts/1202670

How I Came to Love Lava (and why you should too)
Last week Chris talked about how we want to build a living, breathing ecology for Underworld Ascendant in which players will be able to adventure and explore. This week, Chris wants to discuss how we can burn it all down...

Lava. In games lava is most often usually done simply as a static river or pool of red liquid. Deadly to step into, but otherwise just a passive barrier to walk around.

Which is weird. Actual lava is an odd substance. It destroys pretty much anything it touches, but at the same time creates land. It is most often flowing, unpredictable, and violent. Sure, there are slow flows on the big Island of Hawaii. But as a game element, how much fun is that? It’s only good as a jump puzzle or perceived danger. So how can something like lava be used in a game world in a more interesting way?

There are two types of lava we will want to play with, basically thick and thin. Thick lava with high viscosity flows slowly and builds up on itself. This type is called A’a’, Hawaiian for stony rough lava.

A flow of A’a looks like, well, stony rough lava. It’s painfully slow but there is inevitability to it. It’s also known to throw out lava balls of up to 20 feet in diameter. Nothing like lava that throws boulders. Already this lava is more interesting than just a barrier obstacle.

Taking it further, what can you the player do to slow this down A’a if it’s making its way towards an inhabited area of the Stygian Abyss? Is there magic that can slow it down? A way to divert the flow to a different place? Rumors of some creatures that live in these types of flows that feed on the matter that the lava consumes? They might not be happy about being diverted away from some rich fertile areas of biological goodies.

The second type of lava are fast flowing rivers of death. This is called Pāhoehoe, for smooth unbroken lava. Really makes you want to live on the big island doesn’t it? This type can move very quickly; in some eruptions it has been clocked north of 120mph. Try running from that.

This type of lava can burrow directly through rock, or creating new rock overnight, such as lava tubes. What kind of new areas could this unlock for the player? Ancient ruins of civilizations from the before times? An undead graveyard? Chances are whatever it is it was buried for a reason.

We look at the ecology of the Abyss as a living thing. This includes a volcano, with the lava flows forming an almost as a living breathing entity, and one that dynamically changes the landscape of the world.

There are challenges when dealing with fluids and games. To do a fully-formed real fluid simulation is very expensive on the processor power. Good thing this is a game and we can cheat some! A simplified approach has been done pretty successfully in some other games for water flow for instance. Minecraft’s water system is cool to play with even though it is not complex. It understands basic flow, and gravity.

Will and Jeff in about a month are going to sort out how we best model lava for our game. This R&D has a bunch of other uses: water, avalanches, oozes, jellies and anything else that may need to follow fluid behavior.

Peace,

Chris Siegel, Sr. Producer

Next Wednesday, April 22nd from 2pm-3pm EDT we will be twitching as we play Stalker: Clear Sky. Why Stalker: Clear Sky you ask? Well, this game has a robust faction system that we want to investigate as we develop our own factions. How does their faction system handle player chaos? How dynamic are their faction quests? What levers are there for the player to pull to change faction attitudes towards the player and towards the other factions? All questions we will be answering ourselves in the months ahead, so let's see how others have tackled these problems. Join Paul, Tim, Chris and Scott on this playful investigation, and get some insights into OtherSide's design process!

 

[Sulimo]

Next Wednesday, April 22nd from 2pm-3pm EDT we will be twitching as we play Stalker: Clear Sky. Why Stalker: Clear Sky you ask? Well, this game has a robust faction system that we want to investigate as we develop our own factions. How does their faction system handle player chaos? How dynamic are their faction quests? What levers are there for the player to pull to change faction attitudes towards the player and towards the other factions? All questions we will be answering ourselves in the months ahead, so let's see how others have tackled these problems. Join Paul, Tim, Chris and Scott on this playful investigation, and get some insights into OtherSide's design process!

So it'll be like MCA playing Arcanum but not shit, hopefully. Can't remember much from the stalker faction system, was it any good?

 

[Azazel]

Clear Sky was an atrocious game. The faction system could have been great but, like everything GSC ever did, it was utterly half assed and broken.

 

[CyberP]

A lot of negativity in this thread. Can't you fuckers give them the benefit of the doubt? I lost some faith in the project, but I haven't forgotten who they are and what they are/were capable of. Just hang tight and wait and see as the project evolves. I don't see what justifies this criticism.

 

[Infinitron]

A lot of negativity in this thread. Can't you fuckers give them the benefit of the doubt? I lost some faith in the project, but I haven't forgotten who they are and what they are/were capable of. Just hang tight and wait and see as the project evolves. I don't see what justifies this criticism.

Note: On the RPG Codex, asking "why is there so much negativity in this thread" is usually an invitation for more negativity

 

[CyberP]

Zepo's gonna Zep--

These people need to restrain themselves a little, is all. Have a little faith, and if it turns out shit you can pull out the "I told you so" one-liner. For now, they have a good track record for deliverance so treat them as such.

 

[mindx2]

Zepo's gonna Zep--

These people need to restrain themselves a little, is all. Have a little faith, and if it turns out shit you can pull out the "I told you so" one-liner. For now, they have a good track record for deliverance so treat them as such.

Nah, then it wouldn't be the Codex. The contrary opinions and sometimes outright hostility help keep the fanboyism down. I'm a big fan of these guys but I appreciate the criticism they are getting. Hopefully, they hear it and learn because regardless of said opinions there is a ton of useful info to be found here.

 

[CyberP]

there is a ton of useful info to be found here.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Zepo's gonna Zep--

Um..yeah..kinda surprised you're not a prosper-naut with that many tags...


so.. for now you are just



What is your pledge to butthurt ratio?

Zep--

 

[CyberP]

Zip it, Zippy. I'm not interested.

 

[Sonus]

there is a ton of useful info to be found here.

If you completely eliminate the concept of taking suggestions or concerns and implementing/applying it directly to the game, there is still a ton of useful information here.

 

[Infinitron]

Clear Sky playthrough: http://www.twitch.tv/otherside_entertainment/v/4261375

 

[Zep Zepo]

Zep--

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/othersidegames/underworld-ascendant/posts/1210076

It's Getting Hot in Here!

In our last update, Chris talked about lava in all its different forms, and how it might be used inUnderworld Ascendant. Well, where there is lava there is inevitably fire, so this week Jeff would like to discuss how fire will work in the Stygian Abyss:

WATCH THE WORLD BURN
“Some men just want to watch the world burn.” -Alfred (Michael Caine), The Dark Knight

Last week Producer Chris waxed eloquent on how flowing lava is a major part of our thinking for the environment of Underworld Ascendant. Lava does more than flow, however, it also burns.

Other things burn too, like fireballs.

We want the world of UA to react as much as possible like the real world to such events, which means making anything that should be able to catch on fire, actually able to catch on fire. There are two parts to this. One is the logical level… how do things catch on fire and how does that fire burn other things. That gets into a general damage system, which is something I’ll write about more in the future. The second part, though is making burning things look like they are burning. I put some time in on that this week and have had some promising results.

To understand why this is tricky, you need to understand how game engines typically simulate fire. The basic technique for fire is called a “particle system” and was invented by the Lucasfilm Computer Group (which later became the CG arm of ILM) for the movie “Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn”. It was fairly primitive by today’s standards, but no one had done anything like it before.

You can view a little documentary about it HERE.

Particle systems have become more sophisticated over the years, but the technique is still basically the same. A particle system is an optimized render of a whole bunch of little tiny polygons or “particles”. Each particle is obeying a set of very simple physics rules to move it every frame. Anything that moves like a fluid is well represented by a particle system. Smoke, fire and fog are all things that particles represent well. The NVidia examples of water and fluid Chris shared last week are also particle systems, just made up of a lot more particles packed a lot more densely.

A good looking fire typically has orange and red particles for the flame itself as well as grey particles to simulate the smoke. Here is a particle system simulating the flame of a torch from a scene Will is working on right now:

Particle systems use controlled randomness in order to simulate the unpredictability of the motion of particles in nature. One place that randomness is used is in deciding where a new particle starts out. Your typical particle system uses a simple geometric shape like a box, cone or sphere and starts the particle at some random place inside it. We call this shape the “emitter”. Will’s torch, for instance, uses a cone emitter.

In most games, burning things have to have particle systems specifically set up for them when the level is built. Like Will’s torch above, the emitter is specifically chosen, sized and positioned to produce a good looking flame that you believe is coming from the torch. Even moving things, like a fireball, have the particle system carefully configured for size and shape and only the position changes during game play. In the Underworld however, where anything that can burn might burn, it would take a great deal of time and effort to set up individual particle systems custom configured to look good for every object. Instead, this week I wrote some code that can make any 3D object look like it is burning without having a custom tailored particle effect.

To make an object seem to burn, I need to create fire particles at the surface of that object. The surface of any object is defined by one or more meshes of triangles, so those meshes become my emitters. The process for creating each particle goes like this:

1. Randomly choose one of the burning object’s meshes.

2. From that mesh, randomly choose one of its triangles.

3. Randomly choose a point somewhere on that triangle.

4. Tell the particle system to create a particle there.

The end result, as you can see in the little movie below, is flame (or any other particle effect) that seems to come from the surfaces of the object. The randomness makes it dance around, coming from different parts of the object moment to moment, much as a real fire would.

PLAY
With this technology plus the damage system, players will be able to start fires with their fire spells, burn bridges with lava, set creatures ablaze, and generally torch the underworld. Will they use it to solve problems, or create new ones for themselves in the process? That, will be up to them.

Jeffrey Kesselman, Lead Engineer

Last Wednesday we Twitched our play-through of Stalker: Clear Sky. The purpose of playing this particular game was to investigate the faction system the game utilizes and spark questions and ideas on how we will implement our own faction dynamics.

HERE is a link to the 1st of 4 videos of the session.

It didn’t take long for Paul, Chris and Tim to realize how a faction system based solely on combat and antagonistic behaviors can quickly become repetitive and one dimensional. And having EVERYTHING a player does have an immediate impact on a faction, good or bad, is probably not a good thing; let the players breath a bit as they explore and try new things!

All in all a good session that left us with some real questions to chew on. Join us soon as we play other games we think we can learn from as we continue our design of Underworld Ascendant.

We’ve started up a new poll on the forums and we’d like your input! Underworld Ascendantwill have a class-less based character system which will allow players to customize the skills of their avatar in any direction they like. So, which direction will you take yours? Let us know!

Head to the Poll HERE and have your voice heard.

The OtherSide Team

 

[Zombra]

no joker quotes plz

Cool that they're working on an emergent fire system, though.

 

[Zep Zepo]

no joker quotes plz

Cool that they're working on an emergent fire system, though.

But ...but...*sigh*



Zep--

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Is this not the first time that they have mentioned a classless system?

 

[Infinitron]

Not the first time, no

 

[Unkillable Cat]

It's a good thing that they're thinking about the "ecology" of the Abyss, because I was struck last night by a random thought that hadn't occurred to me in 23+ years...

Where did the Abyss get all its wood from?

During the times of Sir Cabirus it makes sense that they imported it all from outside, but what about AFTER Sir Cabirus kicked the bucket and the Abyss was sealed? Trees need sunlight to thrive, not a lot of that going on in the Abyss. There are also parts of the Abyss that are hostile to wood like the Lizardmen encampment that's humid and damp, and then there's all that lava... Wood has a shorter lifespan in the Abyss than usual. That means that the demand for wood is a constant.

The only trees I ever saw in the Stygian Abyss were trying to kill me. They can't be the sole source of wood in the entire Abyss...can they? And where do THEY come from?

What about magic? IN MANI YLEM isn't exactly going to conjure up a pre-cut batch of 2x4s, is it?

Wood should be a luxury commodity in the Abyss by all laws of sense.