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Game News Underworld Ascendant Update #29: Bestiary Design Principles

Infinitron

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Tags: OtherSide Entertainment; Underworld Ascendant

The folks at OtherSide Entertainment continue to work on the Underworld Ascendant pre-alpha Vertical Slice release, which increasingly looks like it's not going to be out before the end of the year. The game's latest monthly update has some news on what they've been up to recently, plus a short treatise on the design principles of its bestiary, which is appropriately systemic and hierarchical:

As mentioned before, we're holding off on showing our work on the Underworld Ascendant Vertical Slice until its far along and polished. In the meantime, we thought you'd be interested in a peek under the hood at the design work involved.

When you interact with a denizen of The Stygian Abyss in Underworld Ascendant, you're encountering many hours of work involved in bringing it to life... Modeling, animation, AI, and -- what we'll cover a bit today -- a core set of underlying design principles that dictate its role in the game.

The inhabitants come in three main forms:
  • CATALYSTS - Beings who possess robust behaviors, advanced combat tactics, and, if intelligent, can converse, trade, or engage with the player. (Ex: The Lizard Men.)
  • CONFOUNDERS - Creatures who enhance or detract in combat, like The Wailing Haunt or Lich, or act as environmental hazards, like The Ripper or Lurker.
  • COLLABORATORS - Inhabitants with useful behaviors that the player can exploit, like the Earth Clot, a bulky, gelatinous mass that can be prodded down hallways to break traps or act as cover.
One of the core design principles of Underworld Ascendant is to educate the player about the rules of the simulated dungeon world without overt hand-holding. The goal of "teaching players to teach themselves" underlies the game's level design, narrative, and even the combat design.

For instance, there are four tiers of CATALYSTS, whose roles in combat...
  • TIER 1 - Teach the player the basic moves & skills of the CATALYST.
  • TIER 2 - Make sure the player is paying attention
  • TIER 3 - Challenge the player.
  • TIER 4 - Provide a fight to remember.
In the Vertical Slice, the player will not only face creatures from each category, he/she will find that a mix or an entrant from a higher tier can make for a much different encounter.

Next month, we'll give a fresh behind-the-scenes peek at the making of the Underworld Ascendant Vertical Slice. This time, about the game narrative...​

The update also has a list of the new personnel OtherSide have hired over the past few months, two of which are QA guys. Ascendant might not be coming out anytime soon, but it doesn't appear to be due to lack of funding.
 

Zep Zepo

Titties and Beer
Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual
Joined
Mar 23, 2013
Messages
5,233
This game will be a gigantic shit sandwich. I hope you choke on it and then have to kiss your mom with your feces breath.

Zep--
 

Aenra

Guest
This whole thing remains a hobby to me, so i suppose that as such conclusions evident to some by now are only made in retrospect far as i'm concerned; but reading anything from Otherside is a good indicator on how/why money gets wasted on fuck all, how even the smallest of studios can burn away their KS tax-free fortunes on air.
You sit down and think of this.. that these people are burning YOUR money (no, did not contribute myself) because "thinking" and only for 'x' amount of arbitrarily defined hours per day, when supposedly ideas were already in place, when realistically ideas are free and either you have them or never shall, you sit down and add (in terms of logistics and cost thereof) the actual geographical location on top, because one cannae produce """AAA""" from some hickbilly town, oh no siree, has to be -someplace-..

Am sure you can link the dots.
 

Zep Zepo

Titties and Beer
Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual
Joined
Mar 23, 2013
Messages
5,233
Yes /\.

The more I read from these hacks the more I am certain these guys sit around a table circle jerking ideas with each other that no one else gives a shit about. The "Leads" here are old, drunk and seriously out of touch with gaming.

Zep--
 

BlackGoat

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Joined
Sep 15, 2014
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505
Being out of touch with the current gaming scene wouldn't really be a bad thing
 

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