Summary: MageWorks was developed as a prototype for VR + Motion controllers in June of 2016. The game puts the player in the position of a mage with a spellbook in one hand and a staff in the other. Players flip through their spellbooks and use their staff to cast the spell. Players can also customize both their spellbooks and their staffs. After customizing their staff using resources found in the environment, players can 3d-print their designs.
Movement: The game currently uses teleport movement, but analogue movement will be introduced back into the game in a future build.
Gameplay: The game is designed to encourage players to unlock spells found in different environments. The spells are guarded by different configurations of castle or fortress style defenses. These attack/defense points are filled with a.i. that are ranged & melee and can be defeated with the player's spells consisting of five different class types:
- Long range low impact
- mid-range location based spells
- short range high impact
- summoning
- defensive walls
When players unlock enough spells, they will be powerful enough to fight the game's boss which is a dragon guarding a vault.
Crafting: Player's will need to collect flowers to create ink. That ink can then be injected into staff drawing designs to empower their staffs unlocking additional mechanics (coming in a future build). Ink can be created by using the VR motion controls to cut, mill, mix, and bottle the ink. Crystals will need to be collected, shaped and equipped to improve spell power. Wood is needed to create staff parts as well. Players can cut, shape, lathe, draw and CNC staff parts to build a staff that fits their design creativity. These custom staves can be 3D printed as well, and the files are stored in the save game directory for use with a 3D printer.
Articles
Was happy to dive into MageWorks and work on cleaning up playability to make the game much more accessible. Crafting has been simplified making it more accessible. AI has been tuned a bit to improve spell combat.
Put your VR legs to the test in the mining cart ride, or play around with different spells you've discovered in the MageWorks study hall.
MageWorks Update v1.1.8
What’s New
- Tutorial Sequence Removed: The tutorial sequence was buggy and causing issues with entry into the game world, so I have removed it. In lieu of the tutorial sequence, there are large spellbooks floating around the mage quarters and workshop as a guide for spellbooks, staff crafting, and map travel systems. The bird's witty banter will be back in a future build to support the story/context, but in a way where players have more control over it.
- Ink is now used to draw the top of your staff design: The old use for ink was spell empowering. However, I feel that feature was too ambitious given the resources available to me, so, requiring ink to draw a new staff design created a sense of equilibrium for crafting resources and assembly methods: Collect lumber to carve the base of your staff, collect flowers to draw the top of your staff, and collect crystals to shape your staff gem.
- The mage quarters have been redesigned. The entry into the game was too complicated, so players now launch directly into their mage quarters and can choose where to head from there. Because of this new logic, the mage quarters is more of a home hub with many portals to check out for mini-games, training, and exploration.
- Fixed a bug with Game Slot entries where slots could not be erased. Game Slots can now be erased or reset if you want to delete your old save game data and start over.
- Cleaned up some bugs with staff crafting. Because the tutorial was sort of buggy, the crafting process would occasionally break as well (or not get configured correctly for normal play). So I have gone through and created a more user friendly gameplay method to craft staves. Ink is now required to draw a custom stave top design. When completing a crafting task, most ingredients are automatically moved to the next station in the sequence.
- Staff gem locations are now fixed in place. This was needed to create consistency with staff collision with other objects in the game. So players can still shape their own staff gems, but they will always be placed in the same location on the staff.
- Players can now view toggle their inventory while holding their spellbooks.
On the Horizon
- New art! Much of this game has been built with off-the-shelf art. My goal is to get much of this game as customized / stylized as possible with a unique look. When everything is programmatically in place, the focus will shift to create buildings and environments that exemplify the theme of the game.
- I plan to bring in the locomotion movement as well. Some players prefer continuous floating movement to get around, while others prefer teleporting. In this build, only teleporting is available. however, I will integrate locomotion into the controls options in a future build. (the hover drone was removed awhile back, and this may get re-integrated, but the future locomotion movement will be its own thing.
MageWorks v0.2.0 Now Available!
NewsNext version of MageWorks is now available on SteamVR and Oculus Touch and includes content updates, bug fixes, and new art!
MageWorks v0.1.8 now available!
NewsMageWorks v0.1.8 is now available and focuses on integrating all spells, new assault area guarding spell discovery locations, and continued improvements...
MageWorks :: Update v0.1.00 now available
NewsMageWorks v0.1.00 is now available and migrating from an alpha status to a more beta-ish build.
MageWorks :: v0.0.17 Now Available on SteamVR
NewsMageWorks update v0.0.17 is now available, and with it comes several new features and improvements getting ever closer to a beta build!
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Its rather strange to have a VR RPG specially since the player movement ideas are way too green at the moment for combat (you know, having to select to where to move, intead of moving naturally, feels counter instuitive), "Magical Duel" Based combats (where two mages combat each other with their spells) its other story though.
The spell book idea its rather neat, and you would consider a generation engine, where the player chose for example:
1.-School of magic
2.- If necesary, Element.
3.- if necesary, Distance
4.- If necesary, "is the spell casted on self Or on others?"
5.- "Streght of the spell" (example: Damage points, healing points)
About the Schools of magics, you would consider something similar to "The elders scrolls" idea of it as its pretty acuratery for most of the spells you would add.
good thoughts. so far there are two types of spell books. combat spell books and utility spell books. combat has stuff life short range, long range, burst, pet and defense. utility has things like hoverboards, flashlights, lockpicks, and portals. the way you've mapped it out would be good for spell crafting. that could be an advanced part of the game or something. or maybe DLC as an advanced spell book of crafting sorts.
will this be rpg like for VR with a story focus or more sandbox. [ or both ].
just curius. [ dont have vr now but a friend will have one soon.]
watching now and hope it will become something interesting in the future.
probably a little of both, but on the casual side. spellbook and staff crafting based on elements & spells collected in the wild. looking into ways VR could give rpg games a different flavor, so not quite sure yet. but there is an inventory system in the works. stats will probably be really basic and focus more on schools of magic rather than traditional stuff like strength, dexterity, etc. this way, people can customize their spell books based on their favorite type of magic.
guess that is right, schools of magic is more realistic as a mage.
Keep up to good work :)