The Old World: Alpha Trailer & IndieGoGo! news

Introduction

Heyo everyone! A lot of interesting things have been going on both inside the game and outside. I'd like to say that we're fast approaching Alpha.

We also call upon you awesome amazing fans out there that have been following The Old World since its birth but you new fans are just as awesome!

In order to reach our currently planned Alpha release date we require another 2-3 months of full-time development, Here is where you amazing people come in, we have started a campaign over at IndieGoGo. Every little bit helps! Even if it is just sharing this link!

What if you do not get funded?

Do not fret! Because this campaign isn't make-it-or-break-it nor is this project, this will only post-pone our currently planned release date for the Alpha by roughly 3-4 months.

So either way, this game is happening.

Trailer

I've put together a small 2min trailer with the beautifully written music by CitizenMusicUK.

Nitty Gritty

So lets get into some more nitty gritty details of the The Old World Alpha and current development stuff.

These are the currently planned features for The Old World Alpha
- Generated Quests
I may have spoken about this feature previously, but to reiterate these will be generated by various sources (Empires, Bandits, Magical stuff etc.) All depending on the environment & situations that may occur. An simple example being to kill off a pack of wolves that have migrated and are now hunting a farmer's sheep. But these range up to Assassinations, Infiltrating an Empire to steal Research Books etc.
- Semi-Generated Conversation
- Lighting & Day/Night Cycle
- Player Controlled Empires
Just as it sounds, you'll be able to build up your own Empire from Scratch, or Infiltrate one and gain power.
- Generated Dungeons
- Wind System
This system will allow for a more advanced world in terms of game mechanics.(And really neat Sailing boats.)
- Group AI
This AI will take care of smaller groups of NPCs, ranging from such things as handling how a Pack of Wolves will interact with the world, when to migrate in-case their hunting grounds might become depleted, up to larger things like how a pack of Bandits might behave, if they should keep roaming the world pillaging or if they should settle and start an Empire (Probs a really War-heavy, hostile one).
- Magical Energy

During Alpha Planned Features

- Multiplayer

When all of these features have been implement the Alpha will be a fully working and playable one. With in-theory endless amount of content hours because content is generated all the time depending on what happens inside the game.

So! Lets move onto what I've been up to for the past few weeks.

Free from the Grid!

Yes! We are finally free from the clutches of the Grid. If you have been following The Old World for a while you may have noticed that previously you only moved in 4 directions and always moved 1 Tile at a time.

This era is now over! You now have 8 directions of pure freedom and can change direction in a whim.
The change allows for a lot of neat improvements to the game as a whole, combat becomes a lot more speeded, Doodads can be very close together, fade out doodads that are obstructing the character etc.

Lets demonstrate this by a quick concept mockup.

Disregarding the Tree being disproportionate to the character and surrounding environment, this shows off a prime-example of what can now be done.

Something you can also very clearly see in this image are transitions, I'm currently working on better transitions inbetween tiles to make it look a lot nicer.

"Biomes"

I've also implemented ways of calculating different areas to respond correctly depending upon Humidity & Temperature. I wouldn't call these areas Biomes per-say but more like Dynamic-Biomes which can change depending on environmental factors.

Here is an Initial State of "Biomes" for a newly generated world.

To explain this world map a bit more,
Yellow Desert
Brown Warm Steppe
Dark Green Regular Foresty Areas
Bright Green Plaines
Grey Tundra
White Snowy
Really Dark Green Swamp'ish

All these and tons more can be generated and dynamically altered by using the Temperature and Humidity systems. As you can see some parts are very blocky but this was a first iteration of the Algorithm, I'm going to start implementing a smoothing algorithm which should adhere to this problem.

Conclusion

I'd like to take this time to thank all of you for supporting and following the development of this game. The Old World has been in development for nearly a year now (7 days left) and this isn't even the beginning.

There are so many game design ideas I have that I'd love to have implemented in TOW, but for now I'm implementing the most important ones to make it a fun and a truly unique experience for all of you awesome people.

Also thanks goes out to IndieDB for creating and having an awesome service for us Indies!

Cheers!