No name for the game as of yet.
This is a sandbox mmo with a focus on massive pvp, siege warfare, and controlling territory and resources. Set in a medieval type setting. It blends elements of games like Eve, GW2, and Shadowbane.
Screenshots at the bottom, link to a playable download about halfway down this post.
The state of the game is that this is the result of 3 months work, with almost all of that time spent putting in core functionality required to be able to iterate on the gameplay.
This is a quick rundown of functional features that more or less work, minus any real polish. Most of these have backend systems that are fairly well flushed out and not just prototype code.
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Huge open world. Starting map is 64 terrains of 1000x1000 size each. Terrains are dynamically loaded as you move around the world. Around 180,000 trees in the world, 30,000 other misc objects. Customized systems for placing colliders on trees/other objects as they come into range, which was is basically a workaround for a long standing issue with large terrains with lots of trees in unity.
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Combat system based on status effects. Single target/aoe damage that can be applied to players, structures, anything in game. Passive and active effects. Items can trigger effects (equip a weapon, a buff gets applied). World areas can have persistent effects, weather damaging buildings, etc…
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Siege warfare. Structures are destructable and claimable. Currently catapults are in, as well as balllista’s but ballista’s only damage players/npc’s. To claim a structure you have to take down at least one wall, get inside and use the keep stone to claim it. Once claimed ownership goes to your guild, keep is healed, you can now open/close the gates, etc…
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Territory. Structures that can be player owned have a corresponding territory around them. Eventually this will give some benefit, such as being able to collect taxes from other property owners in the control radius, etc…
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Harvesting and crafting. Everything in game is acquired by crafting. Currently there are around 10,000 harvestable resources (rocks and trees) on the starting map.
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Guilds. Players can form guilds, and you have to be in a guild to capture a structure.
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Housing. Right now there is just one house model that can be placed. You craft the blueprint then you can place it in the world. No real functionality yet tied to housing.
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Npc’s. This is decidedly not a pve game, but there are npc’s. Currently the starting town has guards, and they will kill players on sight who are aggressive, or bandits that wonder to close to town. One of the capturable keeps has bandits that own it, which you have to fight through to capture.
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Pvp. The game is all about the pvp. It’s kind of like Eve in the sense that guild members can attack each other and turn on each other. If you want to not damage your friends and get healing from other players, you have to be in a group with them.
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Ships and naval combat. Ships are basically semi functional right now. You can craft them, launch one from a dock, have friends on board as well. But expect them to be a big buggy. Future plan is to make ships a core part of the game and a primary means of travel between maps.
One thing about this game is that everything is server authoritative. We don’t treat your client differently then other clients. If you open the door to your house, that’s a request that goes to the server, get’s recorded, and then broadcast out to everyone in range (including you), and then it opens. Ditto for players turning/firing siege equipment, etc…
What to expect from current gameplay.
Dont’ expect it to be fun right now, that’s the next part I’m working hard on. There are a lot of animation bugs, probably the first thing you will see go wrong. Npc’s and players have a habit of getting stuck walkng when they should be idle, etc…
Models are not strictly prototype, but they aren’t what to expect at release, or even in an official alpha release. A lot of the future work will be on making more strategic keeps, double walled keeps, lots of new structures with strategic value, etc…
World is fairly empty once you go outside of town. This will be fixed fairly soon as we put in several thousand npc’s. While this isn’t a pve game, they do have a purpose of adding strategic elements and providing crafting resources, etc…
For those that want to try it out, some random notes to help you get started.
First, this is the link to the windows client, yes it’s just a windows build for now.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/gamemachine/pvp_mmo.zip
Basic controls:
F - use/activate
I - inventory/equipment
C - crafting window
K - chat window
For help using chat/guild/grouping commands type /help in the chat window. Right now there is no guild ui, it’s all command line driven.
The guards in the starting town will kill you rather quickly if you attack anything in their range. No death penalties so no big deal, but you have been warned.
Most every skill drains one of stamina or magic. If you go below 100% the bars will show, otherwise they are hidden.
Be prepared for bugs. Most of what you see is what was needed to test and round out core functionality. So there is one weapon of each type, usually just a couple of skills available. Skills will auto equip for you right now based on what weapon you equip.
You start out with nothing. Go find some rocks/trees and click F to gather a few resources. Recipes are very easy right now (listed at the bottom).
Feel free to pvp/gank all you want. Putting up a ballista around town and ganking new players is fun, but remember you won’t live through the experience as the guards will make short work of you. Try setting up a ballista along a road out of town:)
There are 3 capturable keeps. There are no in game benefits from having one right now, other then you are fairly safe inside one from other players. The F key works on the gates to open/close them, just get fairly close.
Keeps that can be captured and are not yours will have a blue beam of light that goes up into the sky every few seconds. If you own it, the beam is green.
To equip a weapon you need to drag it from your inventory to your main slot,which is the bottom left one. To change weapons you need to drag the one you have equipped out, just drop it outside the UI, then drag in the new one. No this isn’t really by design, just an unfinished area.
Cheat codes
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If you just want to zip around the world and check it out, open the chat window and type in /speed followed by any number up to 40. I suggest around 20, fast enough to get around, but won’t give you a headache.
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If you want to get back to home base, or if you fall through the world or otherwise get stuck, or you are getting owned in pvp, just type /stuck.
Crafting recipes
I created a quick gist of the available crafting recipes.
This is straight from our db seed file we use to create them. General format is you have the id followed by a number of item[number] and item[number]_quantity lines. Those correspond to the resources and how many of those resources you need to add to the crafting container, and they need to be in the order stated in the file. Once you add them then hit combine. If it’s an invalid combo just clear it and start over, it won’t eat your items if the combo is bad.
Placing a house
Once you craft a house, click on it in your inventory to activate placement mode. use the mouse to move it around until the base turns green, that shows it’s in a placeable location. Shift left click to place it. Shift right click to cancel and put it back in your inventory. Right click to rotate it while it’s in placement mode.
Deploying siege weapons.
Click on the item in your inventory and your skill bar will be replaced with a deploy and cancel button.
Deploying a boat
Once you have crafted a boat, find a dock and go out at least halfway, preferably towards the end, and click on the boat in your inventory. It should launch next to the dock. Hop on and use F key to toggle controlling it, and normal movment keys to move around. Be warned that a lot of the mesh for boats, particularly the sides, have no colliders. Making physics compatible boat hulls is actually a real pain, it’s on our list.
Want to get involved?
I’ll be making a posting in the collaboration forum shortly.
