Comments - bendikstang

Looks gorgeous!
Like the concept!
Nice work.

Thank you!
If you look over the previous post history, this is the result of many, many iterations.
Makes me really happy to read your comment.

Thanks for the feedback!

We will do our best to make the turn based combat fun, fast and responsive and we do feel that turn based combat is the optimal fight system for a story driven RPG.

What we have shown so far is not the actual combat but an illustration of the concept.

:-)

You are quite right. Most of the animations are just rough place holders. We also removed any gui from the combat as our combat is getting a thorough work over.

I have used Vertex Paint plugin for Unity3D to paint dry and wet sand as well as a few green patches. Thasharen water is used for the water, but unfortunatly it does not look as good from afar as it does up close.

Thanks, you got to see the blog post before it was done. :-)

We have the first 4 episodes planned out.
As for length, if we can afford to make longer episodes at the same quality we will pack as much as time allows.

1. Financing. We simply don't have $10M to make everything we want, so we divide it into episodes.
2. No class choices in the first episode. Later you might swap people in your party. (much like NWN)
3. There are 4-6 unique characters in the first episode. Each character is much like a separate class.
4. Yes
5. You may collect several things. (Monsters?)
6. Yes, we plan 4-8 months between each episode. We will try to keep the wait short.
7. Of course.
8.1 The overworld will be part of the story. (This is a Narrative driven RPG - not a dungeon crawler)
8.2 Yes, separate skill tree - some skills might be shared though.
9. Yes, there will be sidequests. We will place them where they fit.
10. You shall be able to talk to all NPCs - some more than others of course. And there will be shops.
11. Dialogue options: Yes, we intend to have some of those. (To some degree)
12. Free beta for everyone!!
13. I wish - but I don't think so.
14. No, again this is about the budget! We will rather give you 5 hours of high quality than 20 hours of reduced quality.
15. No DRM - The game will have online save features so you can play on your PC and continue on your mobile device while on the bus. (You shall also be able to play offline on a single device, but it will then never be able to sync with other devices.)
16. Towns: We have one city, The Desert City (unnamed), in episode 1. There is a Capital City in Episode 2....

( I cleaned up (Deleted) your other questions above after answering them)

Thank you for trying to keep your questions in one post! :-)

Thanks for your questions Bigpather12.

1. There will be a world map with enemies that you can see (no random encounters).
There will also be special points of interest e.g. like a dessert full of monsters.
2. We plan to develop new episodes that continue where the last ended.
3. The Episodes will be Narrative driven RPG about 3-5 hours. Other parts of the game is more open ended.
4. It won't be secret if I answer this will it? :-)
5. Free beta is scheduled some time in the fall.
6. There are several classes.
7. Yes
8. Yes
9.1 Maybe
9.2 Yes, there will be enemies on the world map.
10. Yes, we have several towns planned.
11. We try to make a blog post approximately every week.

Thanks RedOwl and Fully-Metal, we spent some time today discussing alternative names for the Protector Class. We did not find any new name, but at least the Protector is defined as a Magic-Companion Class. Where Magic is used in broad term.

As for Multiplayer. We are designing micro servers where 4-10 people can play together (Close Friends) But the multiplayer gameplay will be limited to the harvesting/crafting area. (Have your girlfriend harvest all your ammo and spells while you go out an save the world.)

We will also introduce a Combat Arena for Combat Tournaments that we hope can be open for multiplayer. I say hope, because we are not sure we are able to make turn based combat play well as a multiplayer experience.

The narrative driven gameplay (all the quest) is designed as a single player experience. After all, you are supposed to save the world and be the hero. But once we get this game out in the hands of players, we might learn a thing or two...

As it stands now, this is what we are aiming for.

@kdooley,
Thanks. I forgot Clerics - As we don't have any defined religion in FoM at the moment, they were off my radar. (If we ever were to have any religions - not saying we will, it will be some ancient ones. In that sense Shaman might be more suitable than Clerics I guess?)

Still, the Protectors are in effect a mix of Bards, Clerics, Shamans, Druids and Mages - all 'magical' classes in various ways. Our Protectors will also have the power to conjure/summon creatures.

What the Protectors all have in common is that they affect the combat indirectly through the Fighter.

LoL, yes at this point we don't have a Brute as a Protector, but if you look at it, the Fighter will stand in front of the Protector and take the physical damage, so one could argue that the Fighter protects the Protector. (But we have no plans to allow the Protector to fight the Fighter? Bad word play, sorry. )

Does anyone have a better name for the Protector Class? (Currently the Hogbunny, the Yellow Wolf and the Little old girl) They are not really Mages/Druids...

Thanks! It was supposed to be simplified compared to most other RPG's, but having written this post, it feels rather complex. I should add that you will start the game, with only one Fighter.

Once you are used to the basic non-magical combat, we will give the player a Protector. Later once that is mastered, the player will get a second combat Pair, and so on.

So you are behind that awesome game! I really enjoyed it. Well done.

Nope, not yet.
We don't feel quite ready yet.
It is in our plans though.

Just uploaded a screenshot to the gallery. We are not quite there, but getting closer. :-)

Thanks!
@SinKing, I did not take a screenshot of the ugly ligthmapping artefacts. The screenshot above is from after I fixed the UV padding. Problem with the smaller pieces is that all lines becomes so strait - the organic in accuracy just dosent tile. On the paintover the path curves irregularly. I could do this with tons of 3x3 and bigger pieces, but the work would be tedious. So...well, I'll show you monday how I solved it. :-)

Please note that at this point we have not added all the good fluff like grass, bushes, rocks and flowers so the landscape looks very sterile.

Thanks!
At this point we are having too much fun making this game. We will post a new update on friday.

@JPMMazur: Agreed!
We will make sure not to break up the gameflow more than absolutely necessary. Have you seen how they did the dialogue in Diablo3? I think they did it very well as it does not break the gameflow but rather just add a narrative layer on top of the hack'n slash gameplay.

Thanks!

It's a very valid question.
We don't know exactly where we will land when it comes to the amount of dialog. We will try to keep it at a minimum while still being able to tell a deep and trilling story. It will also be optional in the sense that you might not need to trigger all the dialogue, but if you like to explore, then there will be depth for you. We will of course try to tell the story with other means than just text. Since it is a game we have lots of tools at our disposal - we just need to use them.

Thanks! The whole team loves RPGs and JRPGs and this will be our attempt on making something we would love to play ourselves.