Fractured Universe
by Tony Richards · 01/02/2007 (10:38 pm) · 14 comments
Continuing on with the MMO RPG Contest... a little less than a month left. Sometimes I'm thinking "will we ever finish?!?" but it's been an enjoyable ride.
We've done great limiting scope creep and only concentrating on the necessary pieces for getting a playable game, but we're still a little further behind than I'd like.
The team has dropped to four people... Jervin on sound, Pyro on game design, MrBloodworth on 2d / 3d artwork and myself on the rest.
We've added several great content packs including Tim Aste's Combopacks (1&2), RTS Environment pack, Arteria-Gaming (special end-of-year subscription! yay! Thanks Stevie!) and a few others.
Mr Bloodworth
I've also been working with Allyn "Mr Bloodworth" McElrath and his upcoming medieval interactive props pack. He's been gracious enough to give me an EA license and is also doing some custom work.
One of my favorites includes a multi-skinned coin... my Tribes alias was Sgt. Flame and I've been considering using the name "Games by Sarge" as my company name (if / when I ever get a game published). So, to continue with that theme but not deviate from the medieval setting, the coin was custom made to include Sergeant stripes watermark.
And some others:
The bed animation is great! It settles as if a ghost is laying on it when the player triggers it.
And, of course, no dungeon is complete without the eye in a jar:
And custom logo... impressive! Thanks Mr B!
As the logo depicts, the game is about the reunion of many worlds. Ages ago the worlds had been united through mystical portals, until slowly, one by one, the portals went dark and ceased to function.
For the contest the game will only contain two world, both mostly alike with the same medieval setting, but after the contest the plan is to include a more modern world along the lines of GURPS* Modern or Shadowrun*. The gameplay and basic rules are different, but you get the idea if you've played these games.
*(GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, Inc, Shadowrun is a trademark of WizKids, Inc)
When we first came up with the game idea I was concerned with game balance... a sword vs an assault rifle? But hey, it's fantasy, right? If it doesn't have to be completely realistic then no problem... a hero is a hero (or villain?) and if he can take a direct hit from a sword and survive, who's to say he can't take a bullet in the chest?
Gameplay includes a hierarchical class structure, with each class leading into a choice of two other classes every 5 levels. Each new class is a specialized version of the previous... some leading down dark and evil roads, while others take the high, self sacrificing road. Or, just choose a more jovial, happy-go-lucky path and enjoy the ride.
The spells (powered by AFX) range from mundane cantrips to powerful arcane spells.
Melee is backed by custom and stock motion capture sword fighting and the Medieval Weapons pack available here on Garage Games.
Blender
I'm very happy with using MH / Blender as the primary modeling tool for characters. At times it wants me to throw my computer out the window, but it always pulls through... eventually.
Over the past couple of weeks I've been hitting more roadblocks than I would've preferred, though.
First, after spending hours on the female elf model including skinning and some custom animations, the stupid thing wouldn't export and would simply crash Blender.
Save, save often and save incrementally is my motto... I learned it from a friend that taught me most of what I know about 3d modeling. Why? Well, from time to time using 3d Studio Max, you'd get to the point where it would crash... and worse, it would crash upon opening a model. So, the rule was, everytime you were about to make significant changes, save a new version of the file (i.e. female_elf_04.blend for the 4th saved step).
Well, although I did this, it turned out that even version 1 of the model would crash Blender when I tried to export it... ack!
The solution? Download the source-code, recompile, step through it with the debugger and voila! Of course, I could've scrapped the model and started from scratch, but it turns out that my choice was the right one... any model that I'd imported from MH and applied my normal art-pipeline would cause Blender to crash upon export.
But, what a waste of precious time... over a week was wasted on fixing this bug (which has since been committed to Blender's CVS and should be available in the next 2.43 release.)
But was my time really wasted?
It turns out that although BVH support scripts are available for Blender, they don't do specifically what I'd like them to do.... so, with a bit of C coding, I can now import, edit and export BVH data natively in Blender without the use of Python scripts, and it suits my needs perfectly. I'd not have been able to tackle this had it not been for the previous debugging exercise, so a blessing in disguise maybe?
Characters are still under design, so I'll not hand off any screenshots of them quite yet (especially since they're all still in their skivvies since I've not had time to add armor, clothing, etc to them).
World 1 / Zone 1 - yet to be named
But, World 1 Zone 1 is coming along great.... the beginnings of the first city is well under way and we should begin placing NPC's soon.
I'm still a little concerned about finishing on time, but hey, the way I look at it is this... even if we don't win the 90 day competition, we've done great for such a small team in such a short period of time, and what's more is we almost have a fully functional game and even a small but growing fan base.
At any rate, thanks for reading my blog... hope you enjoyed the screenshots. Happy Hollidays!
We've done great limiting scope creep and only concentrating on the necessary pieces for getting a playable game, but we're still a little further behind than I'd like.
The team has dropped to four people... Jervin on sound, Pyro on game design, MrBloodworth on 2d / 3d artwork and myself on the rest.
We've added several great content packs including Tim Aste's Combopacks (1&2), RTS Environment pack, Arteria-Gaming (special end-of-year subscription! yay! Thanks Stevie!) and a few others.
Mr Bloodworth
I've also been working with Allyn "Mr Bloodworth" McElrath and his upcoming medieval interactive props pack. He's been gracious enough to give me an EA license and is also doing some custom work.
One of my favorites includes a multi-skinned coin... my Tribes alias was Sgt. Flame and I've been considering using the name "Games by Sarge" as my company name (if / when I ever get a game published). So, to continue with that theme but not deviate from the medieval setting, the coin was custom made to include Sergeant stripes watermark.
And some others:
The bed animation is great! It settles as if a ghost is laying on it when the player triggers it.
And, of course, no dungeon is complete without the eye in a jar:
And custom logo... impressive! Thanks Mr B!
As the logo depicts, the game is about the reunion of many worlds. Ages ago the worlds had been united through mystical portals, until slowly, one by one, the portals went dark and ceased to function.
For the contest the game will only contain two world, both mostly alike with the same medieval setting, but after the contest the plan is to include a more modern world along the lines of GURPS* Modern or Shadowrun*. The gameplay and basic rules are different, but you get the idea if you've played these games.
*(GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, Inc, Shadowrun is a trademark of WizKids, Inc)
When we first came up with the game idea I was concerned with game balance... a sword vs an assault rifle? But hey, it's fantasy, right? If it doesn't have to be completely realistic then no problem... a hero is a hero (or villain?) and if he can take a direct hit from a sword and survive, who's to say he can't take a bullet in the chest?
Gameplay includes a hierarchical class structure, with each class leading into a choice of two other classes every 5 levels. Each new class is a specialized version of the previous... some leading down dark and evil roads, while others take the high, self sacrificing road. Or, just choose a more jovial, happy-go-lucky path and enjoy the ride.
The spells (powered by AFX) range from mundane cantrips to powerful arcane spells.
Melee is backed by custom and stock motion capture sword fighting and the Medieval Weapons pack available here on Garage Games.
Blender
I'm very happy with using MH / Blender as the primary modeling tool for characters. At times it wants me to throw my computer out the window, but it always pulls through... eventually.
Over the past couple of weeks I've been hitting more roadblocks than I would've preferred, though.
First, after spending hours on the female elf model including skinning and some custom animations, the stupid thing wouldn't export and would simply crash Blender.
Save, save often and save incrementally is my motto... I learned it from a friend that taught me most of what I know about 3d modeling. Why? Well, from time to time using 3d Studio Max, you'd get to the point where it would crash... and worse, it would crash upon opening a model. So, the rule was, everytime you were about to make significant changes, save a new version of the file (i.e. female_elf_04.blend for the 4th saved step).
Well, although I did this, it turned out that even version 1 of the model would crash Blender when I tried to export it... ack!
The solution? Download the source-code, recompile, step through it with the debugger and voila! Of course, I could've scrapped the model and started from scratch, but it turns out that my choice was the right one... any model that I'd imported from MH and applied my normal art-pipeline would cause Blender to crash upon export.
But, what a waste of precious time... over a week was wasted on fixing this bug (which has since been committed to Blender's CVS and should be available in the next 2.43 release.)
But was my time really wasted?
It turns out that although BVH support scripts are available for Blender, they don't do specifically what I'd like them to do.... so, with a bit of C coding, I can now import, edit and export BVH data natively in Blender without the use of Python scripts, and it suits my needs perfectly. I'd not have been able to tackle this had it not been for the previous debugging exercise, so a blessing in disguise maybe?
Characters are still under design, so I'll not hand off any screenshots of them quite yet (especially since they're all still in their skivvies since I've not had time to add armor, clothing, etc to them).
World 1 / Zone 1 - yet to be named
But, World 1 Zone 1 is coming along great.... the beginnings of the first city is well under way and we should begin placing NPC's soon.
I'm still a little concerned about finishing on time, but hey, the way I look at it is this... even if we don't win the 90 day competition, we've done great for such a small team in such a short period of time, and what's more is we almost have a fully functional game and even a small but growing fan base.
At any rate, thanks for reading my blog... hope you enjoyed the screenshots. Happy Hollidays!
About the author
I am the founder of IndieZen.org, a website dedicated to the Indie 2.0 Revolution where a number of Indie game development studios and individuals collaborate and share a suite of custom built open source game development tools and middleware.
#2
Where did you get the buildings? They look kind of bavarian.
01/03/2007 (2:44 am)
quick question?Where did you get the buildings? They look kind of bavarian.
#4
The foliage and other props and ground textures are from a combination of Todd Picken's RTS Environment pack, Flying Junk's Interior pack, and Timothy Aste's combo packs.
Although the town isn't finished, the inspiration was from Medieval Worlds.com.
01/03/2007 (6:01 am)
@Phil - The bulk of these came from Arteria Gaming's Medieval Town and Castle Pack, although some of the buildings are mine using Timothy Aste's textures (like the first picture, left building).The foliage and other props and ground textures are from a combination of Todd Picken's RTS Environment pack, Flying Junk's Interior pack, and Timothy Aste's combo packs.
Although the town isn't finished, the inspiration was from Medieval Worlds.com.
#5
01/03/2007 (9:30 am)
Nice stuff! I'm interested in the medieval interactive props pack, especially with that bed... 
#7
If not, then maybe I should make one :)
01/03/2007 (2:06 pm)
So I gots to ask - "Does making an MMO (a good one) take like ages man????" Wouldn't something of the scale of AA or Warcraft take 50 artists, 10 programmers and a whole bunch of admin dudes to make, plus some IT guru that can keep the servers alive?If not, then maybe I should make one :)
#8
Fractured Universe MMO has been under development for a little more than two months. We're not going to have what I'd consider a "good one" done by the end of the 90 day contest, but we'll have a great foundation. We'll be alpha testing before the end of this month and we should be beta testing what I hope to be a great MMORPG sometime before summer ends.
We're not going to be competing with the likes of WoW... as a small indie team it'd be a mistake for us to even try... think boutique MMO, not big AAA title MMO.
01/03/2007 (3:23 pm)
@Andy - Fractured Universe MMO has been under development for a little more than two months. We're not going to have what I'd consider a "good one" done by the end of the 90 day contest, but we'll have a great foundation. We'll be alpha testing before the end of this month and we should be beta testing what I hope to be a great MMORPG sometime before summer ends.
We're not going to be competing with the likes of WoW... as a small indie team it'd be a mistake for us to even try... think boutique MMO, not big AAA title MMO.
#9
01/03/2007 (4:25 pm)
So what MMO software are you using? Do you have an SDK to start from? 
#10
But one thing you can do if you are a small team and you want to compete content wise with the larger teams is to take advantage of generated content and player created content. Build a solid foundation which takes advantage of those and you eliminate a lot of your content creation.
01/03/2007 (6:02 pm)
@Andy: Another thing to note is that, while the major houses who are putting out MMOGs have huge development teams, that doesn't have to be the case. MOM, which is a torque based MMOG, was basically a two person project, with some outsourced art and volunteer work from others. But one thing you can do if you are a small team and you want to compete content wise with the larger teams is to take advantage of generated content and player created content. Build a solid foundation which takes advantage of those and you eliminate a lot of your content creation.
#11
Anyway, there are currently about 18 (more in the works) items in the pack now, and most if not all have something "interactive" about them, Or use a combination of different stock torque effects to achieve nice built in FX to the object.
Consider the eye jar, it has transparency, environment mapping, animation and a billboard. The effect is a floating eye that kind of bobs, while tracking the player.
the Intention for the pack is a learning tool, oriented For lightwave users. It will contain full documents about each object, and how to acheave each affect using tutorial style guides.
The look and style of the items you get are meant to work well within Tim Aste content packs, and Apparatus awesome packs.
I hope to publish threw garage games.
Stay tuned for a full blog from me.
01/03/2007 (7:33 pm)
i must say, i have had a blast making those items for tony. I was cobbling around on my content pack when he approached me by irc to gain early adopter status on my pack (I guess he liked the potential =)Anyway, there are currently about 18 (more in the works) items in the pack now, and most if not all have something "interactive" about them, Or use a combination of different stock torque effects to achieve nice built in FX to the object.
Consider the eye jar, it has transparency, environment mapping, animation and a billboard. The effect is a floating eye that kind of bobs, while tracking the player.
the Intention for the pack is a learning tool, oriented For lightwave users. It will contain full documents about each object, and how to acheave each affect using tutorial style guides.
The look and style of the items you get are meant to work well within Tim Aste content packs, and Apparatus awesome packs.
I hope to publish threw garage games.
Stay tuned for a full blog from me.
#12
01/03/2007 (8:55 pm)
Very cool Allyn! I am looking forward to checking it out.
#13
Like J.C said:
This is very important if you want to succeed with a boutique MMO RPG game.
Fractured Universe includes player GM's with customizeable quests (XP and other rewards are handed out by the game rules to keep the game balanced) and we're using a custom version of MakeHuman and Blender as part of our main character art pipeline.
Eventually I hope to have fully player-customizable toons, buildings, quests and other items.... not anything created from scratch, but a good number of options that makes most of the characters and buildings unique.
When it's all done I'd like to compete with the great times I had with my buddies playing pen and paper role-playing games all weekend, except a little less work for the GM's, a lot smoother gameplay and all of your effort can be put into role-playing and having fun without worrying so much about game mechanics.
01/03/2007 (9:41 pm)
@Andy - I'm using all of the GUI's, some of the models, a lot of the ideas and a bit of the engine code from Dreamer's MMO Kit, some custom code, a bunch of content packs and a whole lot of blood and sweat from a small dedicated team.Like J.C said:
Quote:
take advantage of generated content and player created content
This is very important if you want to succeed with a boutique MMO RPG game.
Fractured Universe includes player GM's with customizeable quests (XP and other rewards are handed out by the game rules to keep the game balanced) and we're using a custom version of MakeHuman and Blender as part of our main character art pipeline.
Eventually I hope to have fully player-customizable toons, buildings, quests and other items.... not anything created from scratch, but a good number of options that makes most of the characters and buildings unique.
When it's all done I'd like to compete with the great times I had with my buddies playing pen and paper role-playing games all weekend, except a little less work for the GM's, a lot smoother gameplay and all of your effort can be put into role-playing and having fun without worrying so much about game mechanics.
#14
For example: In FU we have a deep class tree with what will end up being a large number of spells. However, to try to put together the entire class tree right now would just be silly. So instead we narrowed it down to something that is produceable within our given timeframe, and are working with that. Once that is ironed out, we already have what to expand to in place.
Nice post, Tony :)
01/04/2007 (8:58 am)
@Andy - While MMO's are difficult, with the appropriate team and plans much of the barriers to entry when it comes to creating such a game can be difficult. As said, to have the idea to compete with games like WoW or CoH/CoV at the start in my opinion is simply bad business practice. It's best to target a niche market that you know you can penetrate, build your base there, and let your community guide your product. I would say one of the most important things to consider when creating an MMO is to have a set design done, making sure it's realistic. Start small and have the idea of expansion in mind with the design, but make sure its small and realistic.For example: In FU we have a deep class tree with what will end up being a large number of spells. However, to try to put together the entire class tree right now would just be silly. So instead we narrowed it down to something that is produceable within our given timeframe, and are working with that. Once that is ironed out, we already have what to expand to in place.
Nice post, Tony :)
Torque 3D Owner Todd Pickens
Side note, The rock textures in the 2nd to last shot (rts environment pack) were made with the assumption that the mapper would tweak the terrain verts to support the texture. If done well, the textures and terrain geometry come combine to good effect. Take a look at the rock formations in the desert demo from the content pack for reference and email if you need any insights.
Keep up the good work.