Hey fellow CAGs, I'm making a survival horror sandbox game, what do you think of it?

R

Rico21745

CAGiversary!
Hey fellow CAG's,

In about February, I started to get a little antsy due to the stuff I was doing at work being mind-numbingly boring. I was also missing doing some game development, my last endeavor being some small XNA games, and then prior to that this Max Payne 2 Total Conversion (free of course)

Thus I set out to build my own game. I started by checking out HeroEngine, but I didn't like their scripting language and I was having a hard time getting things done. Then I decided to give Unity a look, after having tried it a few years ago and not being impressed, I was surprised to find myself enjoying it now.

I now have a small (very small, 3 of us) team of folks working with me to make this game a reality. In about 6 months, we have managed to create what you see in this thread. I'd really like to see what people think, as one thing I've set out to do with this project is to make it a sort of "community created game" meaning that I reach out to the community for things they want to see in the game, and then I grab the ones that look interesting/feasible and do my best to implement them.

I do this, because I remember being a gamer and suggesting things to developers, only to feel like nobody even read them. Wasting my time really. As a developer, I try very hard to respond to most people that reach out with ideas or feedback (but due to time constraints, obviously I can't always get them all).

Here's the trailer I just released this week, showing all in-game footage :)




268x268.resizedimage

​

Multiplatform: PC, Mac, Linux.

Day
Scavenge. Hunt. Explore.

Afternoon
Fend off a group of survivors who found your house. Reinforce the barricades, check to make sure you have enough batteries for your flashlight.

Night
Survive.



Rebirth is a game about survival. The world is in shambles, shattered to the core due to a mix of mysterious events. The air is barely breathable, society has crumbled and governments have toppled. What will you do when your way of life no longer exists and strange beings roam the earth?

Do you have the will to survive?


Features

Community built game - I actively poll the community for feature ideas, scare ideas, and many other things. I want the community to feel like they are part of our development team!


  • Full Body Awareness - Look down, see your legs. Check your body for injuries, listen to your heart and control your level of terror!
  • Persistent world.
  • Procedurally generated scares - Our AI, combined with procedurally generated horror scenarios will keep you on your toes!
  • Living, breathing eco-system.
  • AI with senses, goals and advanced behaviours, such as actively searching for you when they lose sight of you, or going to where they heard unusual noises.
  • Emergent gameplay - Random events scattered throughout the world. Your house may be raided or attacked one day, or you may find a map leading you to a loot cache... or a trap!
  • Survival based gameplay - Scavenge during the day. Find food, weapons, medical supplies, ammo, and scavenge for shelter. Try to survive the night to see the light of the next day.
  • Horror, immersive atmosphere and dynamic scares!
  • Various enemy types, all with different behaviors and objectives.
  • Third Person and First Person ranged and melee combat. Full body awareness when in First Person mode.
  • Craft your weapons and items.
  • Barricade yourself and fortify your house to try to survive at night.
  • Meaningful death.
  • RPG elements - Your character can become more specialized as time passes and they get more experienced.
  • Social game play dynamics: Your most dangerous enemy may be humanity itself. Will others help you, or hunt you?
  • Multiplayer - After most mechanics are complete.


I'll be checking here after work. Please leave me your feedback! Are we on the right track? What would you like to see in the game? We have a "create your own scare" topic in our steam discussion forums on greenlight, where you can suggest anything you find scary. I check it daily!


For those interested in following the game's progress, here are the links to all relevant sites:

Game's Website
Steam Greenlight
IndieDB
 
I like the idea. Looks cool. A few personal gripes from the video - I thought the hand/arm animations when you build looked a little weird... almost alien like. And the sound when you kill a creature is really annoying :(

When you say there will be "Stages" is that like set with no choice? Like in the day you have to go scavenge, then you will be attacked by survivors, then fend off zombies at night? I don't mind the stages (sort of like minecraft) but in something like this I would like more freedom.

Will there be vehicles in the game? Like finding fuel, driving around, etc? And how free will the building/weapons be? I like the idea of being able to pick up anything and using it for a weapon... it is a apocalypse after all!

Anyways, sorry for all the questions, critiques.

This looks great IMO and I will definitely support it when I can.
 
Hey CheapLikeAFox,

The "stages" are not really a requirement of any sort. Basically the idea is that Day and Night do make a difference in the game. At night, things get significantly more dangerous and go more into Horror, so being out in the open leaves you in danger and exposed, but you may find the need to venture out anyway. You will have complete freedom in what you do and when, there is no artificial "stages" mechanic, only a natural day/night cycle that ties into the world, causing different enemies and different events to happen throughout the day.

The hands/animations are very much pre-alpha and in fact the rig for that model is getting redone, so those are essentially placeholder and will be changed.

Regarding vehicles, I'd like to, but its not something I'm shooting for in early alpha. Definitely a feature I'd like to add eventually though, but yeah, if we add it, I'll definitely tie scavenging elements into it, very unlikely to find running cars in a post apocalyptic world.

Regarding weapons: We'll see. You may not be able to just pick up "anything" to use as a weapon, but there will definitely be a nice weapon system built in, with the possibility of modifying weapons you encounter. But I like the idea of maybe picking up objects to use as weapons, let me think about that and see how I can do that in a way that works nicely :)
 
Looks interesting!

nice to have it clarified about the cycles, I wouldn't want them to be preset... what if I want to explore at night cause of the added danger? Or .. knowing that afternoon I'll always be attacked by some people trying to take my stuff or claim my camp area.

I like the idea of picking up whatever for a weapon, like.. a branch that may have fallen from a tree, or that you break off from a felled tree, or trying to toss a tv (not lug it around necessarily, but if I pass by one while being chased I can grab it and throw it at whatever is pursuing me), or other objects!

I'll keep an eye on this, and support when I can! :)
 
I have to be honest, what you're doing is essentially recreating DayZ? With some concepts from Minecraft mixed in? I don't see an original idea in here.
 
[quote name='Ruahrc']I have to be honest, what you're doing is essentially recreating DayZ? With some concepts from Minecraft mixed in? I don't see an original idea in here.[/QUOTE]

You are SO right! Please tell me more about your own stand alone game that you are developing for free.
 
[quote name='Ruahrc']I have to be honest, what you're doing is essentially recreating DayZ? With some concepts from Minecraft mixed in? I don't see an original idea in here.[/QUOTE]

Honestly I'm unsure how to answer this. Do people bother to read the game description before making the DayZ comparisons? There is shooting, there are zombies, there are survival mechanics.

DayZ did not invent those, nor are those the only features the game has or will have. Is STALKER a DayZ clone? It had all of the above. DayZ is also not even close to a horror game, so I'm unsure where this comes from as well, zombies are horror, I suppose?

I honestly do want to know where this comes from. This a game being made in our spare time, by 4 people on no budget other than what's coming out of my pocket. If I wanted to release a DayZ clone, I could release what I have now, and it would still have more features than DayZ (and smarter AI).

The fact of the matter is that the trailer showed only a small subset of what is ready, due to a huge amount of people complaining on Steam about lack of videos. As stated in the trailer, the stuff shown is ONLY what is already done. Pre-alpha = not feature complete.

I suppose so many games out there use alpha and beta as marketing terms for "don't judge our bugs, we will fix all this in the two weeks, before our release, we promise!" that the terms have lost their meaning to folks.

The game is still way early in development, I don't anticipate an alpha this year, maybe mid next year, and I'm only planning on releasing an alpha so I can fund the project instead of dumping my savings into it. I'd really like this hobby of mine to sustain itself.

But yeah it puzzles me a bit. Its not the first time I get this remark. Personally I think it's simply because DayZ is in people's minds, and perhaps its also because we haven't shown all the other features yet. Maybe once we show more as they are ready, I'll stop getting the comparisons. But I think that will never really end with some folks, I just wonder if they think DayZ is a STALKER clone? Or a Doom clone?

A lot more effort has gone into this than DayZ, I'll tell you that. I built this from nothing, DayZ is a mod of an existing engine, hooked up to all their existing mechanics. If I wanted to clone it, I could have done it a lot more easily.


Anyways if you're still not convinced, not that it matters much to me, you can google "Project Conquest". You'll probably run into our very old and unmantained wiki on google docs. This was a very old document showing some of our concepts and Survival oriented ideas, that mind you, have been there and in the works BEFORE DayZ was even conceptualized.

I've been working on this since Nov 2011.
 
Oh and sorry, let me clarify the pricing bit:

If it were just me, I'd probably release it for free.

But I have about 2 or 3 artists who are contributing to the project, one of them is in bad shape financially, and I'd really feel like a jerk going "yup, I know you need cash, but we're giving your work away". If I could afford it, I'd pay him, he's a great guy, but as it stands, my funds are already short enough as it is, where I can only afford to chip in little things here and there, and the rest is me putting in all my spare time when I get home from work.

So in all likelihood it'll be an alpha funded model. Obviously, I'm a CAG, so it will be reasonable (it is an indie game so it will be priced accordingly), and I'll likely provide community members here some free copies and such, who knows, we're way too far away from it, months away, to really start thinking money. Like I said, this is not a money focused thing, this is something I enjoy doing, but the reality is that not all my team members are in the same situation, and as someone who's worked with these great people thus far, I feel like it would be a terrible thing for me to do if I didn't at least try to get them something for their efforts and contribution.
 
Looks like a cross between slender/dayz and a few other games, which is a good thing. Looks like it could be fun i will keep my eye on this topic
 
[quote name='Rico21745']I honestly do want to know where this comes from.[/QUOTE]

It comes from ignorance, bro. There is no true reason for it. You're getting gaming snobs and that's the gross remnants of the hobby. You got people who take the positive energy of the gaming art form and the joy of their experience who then twist it into some mutated form of fascism powered by hate of anything that is remotely like the things they just had. They take their initial experience of say something like DayZ and will now go out and trounce on anything resembling it in some hipster gestapo march to let all others know that what they experienced came first (in their head).

Keep doing what you're positive and progressive thing - you're creating - that's fucking awesome - everyone should create something with the arts at least once in their life - never concern yourself with others that try to compare what you're doing to what they had. It's a recipe for a depresso bomb.

I wish you and your ppl a lot of luck!
 
How is the weapon crafting going to work in this? Is this going to be like "I found a scope and put it on a gun I already had", or is it going to be where you are gathering things like ores and crafting (Skyrim is a closer example of what I'm thinking here). And is it going to be realistic style weapons, or are they going to be slightly crazy like Dead Island's "I put a car battery on my axe and now it electrocutes people!"?
 
People always assume any game is a complete rip off of other games... And dayz is popular at the moment, so anything that looks remotely similar to it will be a rip off of it (while some may be, I'm sure plenty of them are not.)

When minecraft was real popular (though it still is), anything that had a "blocky" hint to it was automatically deemed a minecraft clone. Even games that were around before minecraft ><

Sure a game could be INSPIRED by another, and thus model some of it, but that doesn't automatically mean it's a clone. :\

I agree with Megazell though

EDIT:

Also on pricing, perhaps make a kickstarter if/when you can? I don't know if it'd help way too much cause they do take out money and all..
 
[quote name='Rico21745']Honestly I'm unsure how to answer this. Do people bother to read the game description before making the DayZ comparisons? There is shooting, there are zombies, there are survival mechanics.

DayZ did not invent those, nor are those the only features the game has or will have. Is STALKER a DayZ clone? It had all of the above. DayZ is also not even close to a horror game, so I'm unsure where this comes from as well, zombies are horror, I suppose?

I honestly do want to know where this comes from. This a game being made in our spare time, by 4 people on no budget other than what's coming out of my pocket. If I wanted to release a DayZ clone, I could release what I have now, and it would still have more features than DayZ (and smarter AI).

The fact of the matter is that the trailer showed only a small subset of what is ready, due to a huge amount of people complaining on Steam about lack of videos. As stated in the trailer, the stuff shown is ONLY what is already done. Pre-alpha = not feature complete.

I suppose so many games out there use alpha and beta as marketing terms for "don't judge our bugs, we will fix all this in the two weeks, before our release, we promise!" that the terms have lost their meaning to folks.

The game is still way early in development, I don't anticipate an alpha this year, maybe mid next year, and I'm only planning on releasing an alpha so I can fund the project instead of dumping my savings into it. I'd really like this hobby of mine to sustain itself.

But yeah it puzzles me a bit. Its not the first time I get this remark. Personally I think it's simply because DayZ is in people's minds, and perhaps its also because we haven't shown all the other features yet. Maybe once we show more as they are ready, I'll stop getting the comparisons. But I think that will never really end with some folks, I just wonder if they think DayZ is a STALKER clone? Or a Doom clone?

A lot more effort has gone into this than DayZ, I'll tell you that. I built this from nothing, DayZ is a mod of an existing engine, hooked up to all their existing mechanics. If I wanted to clone it, I could have done it a lot more easily.

Anyways if you're still not convinced, not that it matters much to me, you can google "Project Conquest". You'll probably run into our very old and unmantained wiki on google docs. This was a very old document showing some of our concepts and Survival oriented ideas, that mind you, have been there and in the works BEFORE DayZ was even conceptualized.

I've been working on this since Nov 2011.[/QUOTE]

Yes, I certainly did read the description before I made the DayZ comparison. Did you? All I'm saying is if you take an objective look at what you have listed here, there are a lot of similarities to other titles, including ones that were probably in conception/development long before your game. Let's recap:

[*]Full Body Awareness - Look down, see your legs. Check your body for injuries, listen to your heart and control your level of terror!
-Many, many games feature full body awareness, it's a concept that has been around a long time.

[*]Persistent world.
-Part of what made DayZ so successful was its persistent character/persistent world concept. You logged off and your character disappeared but your vehicles, tents, etc. all remained. If you were not there to defend your camp at all hours it could be found/looted by other players.

[*]Procedurally generated scares - Our AI, combined with procedurally generated horror scenarios will keep you on your toes!
-Sounds a lot like the "AI Director" Valve designed in L4D and L4D2

[*]Living, breathing eco-system.
-This is too vague to really discuss

[*]AI with senses, goals and advanced behaviours, such as actively searching for you when they lose sight of you, or going to where they heard unusual noises.
-Behavioral AI concepts have been around a long, long time in video games, in fact IMHO this should be assumed as standard behavior in this day and age, not a "special feature" to be called out. Much like car manufacturers don't list "seat belts" as a feature on new cars.

[*]Emergent gameplay - Random events scattered throughout the world. Your house may be raided or attacked one day, or you may find a map leading you to a loot cache... or a trap!
-Again the AI director of L4D is a good example of this. It's a poor example but games like Diablo 3 also feature this with its random "events" or even titles like Freelancer with its randomly generated missions. Many games have similar concepts.

[*]Survival based gameplay - Scavenge during the day. Find food, weapons, medical supplies, ammo, and scavenge for shelter. Try to survive the night to see the light of the next day.
-Sounds like minecraft to me. Particularly the day/night collect/survive mechanic.

[*]Horror, immersive atmosphere and dynamic scares!
-Reiteration of above listed points, and again I refer you to L4D. But really you are probably just describing the theme of the game and not any particular mechanic.

[*]Various enemy types, all with different behaviors and objectives.
-Industry standard "feature"

[*]Third Person and First Person ranged and melee combat. Full body awareness when in First Person mode.
-I don't know if Operation Flashpoint (released 2001) had 1st/3rd person view but I'm pretty sure ARMA1 and ARMA2 do.

[*]Craft your weapons and items.
-Again minecraft is a good example here, where you crafted just about everything. Arguably DayZ implemented "crafting" into a survivor game by making you "craft" a working vehicle out of components, also "crafting" (cooking) your own food, etc.

[*]Barricade yourself and fortify your house to try to survive at night.
-Minecraft. DayZ is possibly an example of this concept put into zombie apocalypse genre in that you can lay barbed wire down to help protect yourself.

[*]Meaningful death.
-This was pretty much DayZ's big selling point, and arguably also why it became popular. Permadeath is also not a new concept.

[*]RPG elements - Your character can become more specialized as time passes and they get more experienced.
-Dead Island had RPG elements in a zombie/horror/survival shooter. You could even argue system shock 1 and 2 (released in the 90s) pioneered this concept in a survival horror shooter

[*]Social game play dynamics: Your most dangerous enemy may be humanity itself. Will others help you, or hunt you?
-Again, much of DayZ's popularity also stemmed from the fact that everyone was very vulnerable, making player/player encounters unpredictable and thus fun.

[*]Multiplayer - After most mechanics are complete.

You can see that I honestly did not see one original concept here. DayZ, while it may have had a lot of "inspiration" from other sources, also introduced some novel ideas of its own such as leveraging a very high realism/simulation fidelity to affect gameplay dynamics and player-player interaction.

[quote name='Megazell']It comes from ignorance, bro. There is no true reason for it. You're getting gaming snobs and that's the gross remnants of the hobby. You got people who take the positive energy of the gaming art form and the joy of their experience who then twist it into some mutated form of fascism powered by hate of anything that is remotely like the things they just had. They take their initial experience of say something like DayZ and will now go out and trounce on anything resembling it in some hipster gestapo march to let all others know that what they experienced came first (in their head).

Keep doing what you're positive and progressive thing - you're creating - that's fucking awesome - everyone should create something with the arts at least once in their life - never concern yourself with others that try to compare what you're doing to what they had. It's a recipe for a depresso bomb.

I wish you and your ppl a lot of luck![/QUOTE]

Ignorance? Are you serious? My comment stems more from having a knowledge of prior games and recognizing where these concepts have appeared in the past already. Nowhere in my post did I say it would be a bad game, or that the idea was unsound. I just wanted to know how this game was going to be different than what I had seen before. It seemed to me that the OP was trying to present a fresh new title in "survival horror" when really the whole game looks to be a mashup of previously used concepts. But nowhere did I state that this makes for a bad game, after all execution is half the battle too. However, as far as innovation goes, this game really seems lacking.

Even though the OP claims to have formulated some of these concepts long before DayZ was conceived (which I doubt the OP knows how long the creator of DayZ had been thinking about his mod nor how much work he put into it) but there is no arguing that DayZ beat this game to "market", featuring many of the key concepts here (scavenge for resources and survive, persistent worlds, meaningful death, etc) and that also matters. Even if you think up these ideas independently or before others, if you fail to implement them/release them first, you will still have to play the role of "second comer" and will still need to differentiate your game from what is already out there. This is not snobbery, it's reality and marketing. And if you want to make a successful title, marketing is going to have to play a factor. After all, OP was the one coming to this forum to basically advertise his unreleased product to build hype. He should be prepared to deal with criticism and skepticism.

But believe me, I get it. I have participated to a certain extent in small scale indie projects like this before, and you can really get invested in your work. Don't read so far into my comment that you start seeing things that aren't there. All I asked was how this was different than previously introduced concepts. And IMHO it's good to get the viewpoints of outsiders, who have not invested so much time/effort/money into the project, because it is easy to lose objectivity in situations like that.

As for all the "not appreciating the art of games" and "fascist hipster gestapo" stuff, you're flying way off the handle Megazell. It's incredibly presumptuous, and frankly it's offensive.
 
[quote name='Ruahrc']
Yes, I certainly did read the description before I made the DayZ comparison. Did you? All I'm saying is if you take an objective look at what you have listed here, there are a lot of similarities to other titles, including ones that were probably in conception/development long before your game. Let's recap:
[*]Full Body Awareness - Look down, see your legs. Check your body for injuries, listen to your heart and control your level of terror!
-Many, many games feature full body awareness, it's a concept that has been around a long time.
[*]Persistent world.
-Part of what made DayZ so successful was its persistent character/persistent world concept. You logged off and your character disappeared but your vehicles, tents, etc. all remained. If you were not there to defend your camp at all hours it could be found/looted by other players.
[*]Procedurally generated scares - Our AI, combined with procedurally generated horror scenarios will keep you on your toes!
-Sounds a lot like the "AI Director" Valve designed in L4D and L4D2
[*]Living, breathing eco-system.
-This is too vague to really discuss
[*]AI with senses, goals and advanced behaviours, such as actively searching for you when they lose sight of you, or going to where they heard unusual noises.
-Behavioral AI concepts have been around a long, long time in video games, in fact IMHO this should be assumed as standard behavior in this day and age, not a "special feature" to be called out. Much like car manufacturers don't list "seat belts" as a feature on new cars.
[*]Emergent gameplay - Random events scattered throughout the world. Your house may be raided or attacked one day, or you may find a map leading you to a loot cache... or a trap!
-Again the AI director of L4D is a good example of this. It's a poor example but games like Diablo 3 also feature this with its random "events" or even titles like Freelancer with its randomly generated missions. Many games have similar concepts.
[*]Survival based gameplay - Scavenge during the day. Find food, weapons, medical supplies, ammo, and scavenge for shelter. Try to survive the night to see the light of the next day.
-Sounds like minecraft to me. Particularly the day/night collect/survive mechanic.
[*]Horror, immersive atmosphere and dynamic scares!
-Reiteration of above listed points, and again I refer you to L4D. But really you are probably just describing the theme of the game and not any particular mechanic.
[*]Various enemy types, all with different behaviors and objectives.
-Industry standard "feature"
[*]Third Person and First Person ranged and melee combat. Full body awareness when in First Person mode.
-I don't know if Operation Flashpoint (released 2001) had 1st/3rd person view but I'm pretty sure ARMA1 and ARMA2 do.
[*]Craft your weapons and items.
-Again minecraft is a good example here, where you crafted just about everything. Arguably DayZ implemented "crafting" into a survivor game by making you "craft" a working vehicle out of components, also "crafting" (cooking) your own food, etc.
[*]Barricade yourself and fortify your house to try to survive at night.
-Minecraft. DayZ is possibly an example of this concept put into zombie apocalypse genre in that you can lay barbed wire down to help protect yourself.
[*]Meaningful death.
-This was pretty much DayZ's big selling point, and arguably also why it became popular. Permadeath is also not a new concept.
[*]RPG elements - Your character can become more specialized as time passes and they get more experienced.
-Dead Island had RPG elements in a zombie/horror/survival shooter. You could even argue system shock 1 and 2 (released in the 90s) pioneered this concept in a survival horror shooter
[*]Social game play dynamics: Your most dangerous enemy may be humanity itself. Will others help you, or hunt you?
-Again, much of DayZ's popularity also stemmed from the fact that everyone was very vulnerable, making player/player encounters unpredictable and thus fun.
[*]Multiplayer - After most mechanics are complete.

You can see that I honestly did not see one original concept here. DayZ, while it may have had a lot of "inspiration" from other sources, also introduced some novel ideas of its own such as leveraging a very high realism/simulation fidelity to affect gameplay dynamics and player-player interaction.



Ignorance? Are you serious? My comment stems more from having a knowledge of prior games and recognizing where these concepts have appeared in the past already. Nowhere in my post did I say it would be a bad game, or that the idea was unsound. I just wanted to know how this game was going to be different than what I had seen before. It seemed to me that the OP was trying to present a fresh new title in "survival horror" when really the whole game looks to be a mashup of previously used concepts. But nowhere did I state that this makes for a bad game, after all execution is half the battle too. However, as far as innovation goes, this game really seems lacking.

Even though the OP claims to have formulated some of these concepts long before DayZ was conceived (which I doubt the OP knows how long the creator of DayZ had been thinking about his mod nor how much work he put into it) but there is no arguing that DayZ beat this game to "market", featuring many of the key concepts here (scavenge for resources and survive, persistent worlds, meaningful death, etc) and that also matters. Even if you think up these ideas independently or before others, if you fail to implement them/release them first, you will still have to play the role of "second comer" and will still need to differentiate your game from what is already out there. This is not snobbery, it's reality and marketing. And if you want to make a successful title, marketing is going to have to play a factor. After all, OP was the one coming to this forum to basically advertise his unreleased product to build hype. He should be prepared to deal with criticism and skepticism.

But believe me, I get it. I have participated to a certain extent in small scale indie projects like this before, and you can really get invested in your work. Don't read so far into my comment that you start seeing things that aren't there. All I asked was how this was different than previously introduced concepts. And IMHO it's good to get the viewpoints of outsiders, who have not invested so much time/effort/money into the project, because it is easy to lose objectivity in situations like that.

As for all the "not appreciating the art of games" and "fascist hipster gestapo" stuff, you're flying way off the handle Megazell. It's incredibly presumptuous, and frankly it's offensive.
[/QUOTE]

Ummm, if you would have put even 1/100th of the effort into your original post like you did with this one, there wouldn't be an issue.

You want to talk about presumptuous and offensive, look at your first post.

Just a thoughtless accusation of this being an unoriginal rip off.

Here's a few things to consider - no idea is original. Not entirely true, but if we dissect anything enough we'll find x, y, z things about it that were done before.

Having actually played Day-Z and Minecraft and enjoyed both, I can tell you that even if this game does take elements from either I still would want to play it and from the gameplay video it didn't come off as a rip off of either.

Day-Z is great, but it's a mod of a game with plenty of limitations because the original game just wasn't built for this type of gameplay.

Anyway, lots of people would probably enjoy a game like this even if it were entirely unoriginal. Geez, in that case most big game companies have been making the same game for years.
 
You'll likely have a lot more DayZ comparisons until the reasoning why it's not DayZ is made more clear. You might want to spend a paragraph or two per feature explaining how it's going to affect gameplay.

For example, you mention full-body awareness, you can check your heart, control your level of terror. Why? What does having high terror do in game (if it is an in-game thing). Does the jittering make it harder to aim, do you start feeling delusional if you're too terrified (seeing enemies that don't exist, thinking you have more ammo than you do), or does the screen just get shaky? Video also mentioned something about the importance of batteries and flashlights. Does this factor into the terror thing (ala Amnesia), or is it just so you can see to aim?

Barricading...any insight on how you're approaching that? Is it going to be a physics based thing, or something else? Perhaps a number of items within X distance create a "barricade", are treated as one object with a set "strength"?

The AI...AI's tricky. If you go for true AI and not some "the computer's omnipresent and knows where you are, we just make it a little stupider" thing, how exactly are the monsters supposed to be able to find you. What's to prevent a player from going all "I Am Legend" and setting up bunker in a house, and going all lights-out, no sound in a random room?

I worry that your game may suffer from too many features. In particular the RPG elements thing. Feels a little out of place and unneccessary. Again, mostly curious in how it'd work. If your character can become more powerful and/or more adept at certain tasks, that'd make the game easier, unless the monsters were progressing in power similarly. However, since this is a constant, persistent world, how're you going to deal with players of different progression? If you have a monster that will pose a threat to "high-level" player, it would wipe the floor with a new player....I'd think simply having a larger cache of supplies would be progression enough.
 
[quote name='CheapLikeAFox']Ummm, if you would have put even 1/100th of the effort into your original post like you did with this one, there wouldn't be an issue.

You want to talk about presumptuous and offensive, look at your first post.

Just a thoughtless accusation of this being an unoriginal rip off.

Here's a few things to consider - no idea is original. Not entirely true, but if we dissect anything enough we'll find x, y, z things about it that were done before.

Having actually played Day-Z and Minecraft and enjoyed both, I can tell you that even if this game does take elements from either I still would want to play it and from the gameplay video it didn't come off as a rip off of either.

Day-Z is great, but it's a mod of a game with plenty of limitations because the original game just wasn't built for this type of gameplay.

Anyway, lots of people would probably enjoy a game like this even if it were entirely unoriginal. Geez, in that case most big game companies have been making the same game for years.[/QUOTE]

This times a thousand. Thank You and more power to OP.
 
Hey guys, thanks for the support.

Regarding the discussion about DayZ comparisons and whatnot, my last reply to that sort of comment is this: DayZ is not original in any way shape or form. DayZ is a combination of a bunch of other games, just like all games out there. DayZ is a mix of RE:Operation Raccoon city and Arma 2, if you want to start doing the "X game is a mix of y and z games".

I challenge you to find a game developer that is stupid enough not to learn from other game successes and mistakes. Every game out there is influenced by one game or another. People can draw up the comparisons they want, I can't stop them, but if you are expecting some variation of DayZ from this, you will be disappointed in the end result when you play it.

I am not shy about saying which games influence me when looking at the direction of the game. I blatantly state STALKER, Silent Hill, I am Legend, and The Road as influences. Yet somehow people really do equate zombies + survival = omg dayz.

If the features list isn't enough for you, then by all means continue waiting until I show more footage. Barricading works like in the trailer, that's all gameplay, none of it scripted. Enemies do have senses, they are not omniscient, the AI *is* better than most games out there because it is being built to make sense, not to arbitrarily kill you.

Going into features clarification a bit:

Enemies have hearing and vision. No, they don't have smell, that's a stupid buzz word lots of developers like to throw around. How do you model smell into a gameplay mechanic the AI can use? Do other developers ever elaborate on it, or simply throw it out for people to wow at? How many games have you masking your scent, or even give you control over it?

Enemies search for you, can detect obstacles. If they see you, then lose sight of you, they go to the last place you were at and search for you. This is part of their AI. Same with sound. Make a noise? They go to the place they heard the noise at, IF they are in hearing radius, then investigate using their senses. This can be used to distract them. They also have a "stickiness" attribute which allows me to specify how aggressive an AI is when trying to find you. The more sticky, the more time they are willing to spend trying to find you before giving up and going about their business.

This is just the start of the AI, too. My goal is to have the AI planning, this means giving them long and short term goals, independent of the player. AI will fight each other, AI will scavenge, AI will do things while you are off doing your own thing.

How do I stop people from holing up? Simple, I provide interesting enemies and mechanics that make it harder for you to do so. Light is something I want to have play a large role in gameplay at night. The enemy you see at the end only comes out at night, he stalks you and hunts you down. He dislikes the light, hence only coming out at night. Of course the flashlight and light at night will deter him coming near you. But then, there are other enemies I have in the works that will be able to manipulate artificial light to prevent you from holing up too long.

Same with hunger and thirst. These are deliberate design decisions created to prevent "camping". You can go grab food and water and hoard it, but eventually you'll run out and need to find more. This means going out and scavenging.

These are not features thrown in there to emulate a game. They are design decisions on my part to influence the player without forcing them to do things. Just like the day and night cycle, as I explained, are meant to influence your decisions, not force you into some gameplay style.

All the mechanics are being thought out. My goal is to kill the player, but to kill the player fairly. If you make good decisions, I won't drop an anvil on your head just to make you die.

I'm currently working on the procedural building generation and persistence. Once I have that in a nice stable state I may throw a video on my site (not on Steam, probably). I'll probably also showcase some of the AI stuff in a video, which will show the sound & vision stuff I mentioned in the post. The planning AI is something on my roadmap so that probably won't be in a video anytime soon.

Anyways I welcome feedback and ideas. What I don't welcome is pointless "I feel this is a clone of X + Y + Z + W games" without giving constructive feedback as to why, and how it can be improved. A large part of the goal I have for this game is to implement community suggestions into tangible gameplay. Horror ideas, gameplay ideas, those are all things I often read up on and try to implement when I make a pass at gameplay stuff.

This goes for CAGs here too. If you have gameplay ideas or feature ideas post them. Even if they seem unrealistic, I can sometimes take the concept and use it somewhere else at some point. I want to make this a community built game, as much as possible.

The end result is to have a fun game. Not something that I claim is "art", not an "8 bit indie game" nor a "nostalgic game". I don't really want to play any of these games, so I don't intend to make one. Could I go and make an "original game concept"? Sure, I could make a game about staring at ducks. Nobody's done that one before.

Would I want to play that? No. I make the games I'd like to play. I make them because nobody has made them yet. Nothing will stop me (maybe unemployment, if it ever happened, heh) :)
 
[quote name='Rico21745']I want to make this a community built game, as much as possible. [/QUOTE]


Going to nitpick this out of a pretty well thought out post.

Want a community? Need a player base for that first. That means alpha/beta builds for testing. You have a serious game in the making with a small staff, it will be a lot of work.

Show us your game, don't tell us your ambitions :D

It will take time, but hopefully your hard work pays off.
 
[quote name='j-cart']Going to nitpick this out of a pretty well thought out post.

Want a community? Need a player base for that first. That means alpha/beta builds for testing. You have a serious game in the making with a small staff, it will be a lot of work.

Show us your game, don't tell us your ambitions :D

It will take time, but hopefully your hard work pays off.[/QUOTE]

Yeah I'm aware of how much work this is. I'm a software developer for a living, so I'm very aware of project management, and the SDLC (software development lifecycle) in general.

The team size is a conscious decision. With what I have, I can easily recruit a bunch of people. The main thing is more people doesn't mean more productivity, specially in an agile virtual team like ours where we don't meet face to face.

I have turned down quite a few offers to help already. I am looking at expanding a few more spots, but my goal is to actually keep the team size rather small. If it grows too much, I'll spend more time managing it than programming in features.

The community is being built already. Alpha means feature complete, a lot of people misuse the word. Rebirth isn't feature complete yet, not by a long shot, so I wouldn't qualify it as alpha as of yet.

Community involvement can happen before playable builds are out as well, I'm getting lots of that already. I have forums and communicate with the community through my site and Steam and get their feedback and ideas. This is a great time to do it, as I can experiment without worrying about breaking people's builds or savegames, not something you can ignore after releasing something to the public.

That isn't to say I won't release public builds for alpha, that is the plan, but I'm not going to release something that doesn't meet my expectations since there's really no time crunch here. I'm footing all the bills for this project out of my pocket, no publisher or investor pushing for dates, so I'm good :)
 
So it's been a while since I popped in here, I just wanted to let you guys know that work is still progressing steadily and that I've actually released a couple of free games since I started just to try a few different things out. These free games are the result of me participating in a few Game Jams (small games built either by myself or a small team of strangers over a weekend). Both games were built in 48 hours or less but are meant to be fairly fun and good despite the short dev time. 

These games are both free, consider them a gift to the community, I guess, a way of giving back some money other CAGS have saved me over my time on the site ;-)

My first game, which I created for the Asylum Game Jam 

The Unknown - Procedural Horror Maze game​

  ​

The Unknown is a procedurally generated horror game made by a one-man team (me). Each playthrough is different and is only limited by the amount of content I could make in 48 hours, so I encourage you to play through it a few times to really see everything and get the full effect. It’s meant to be very replayable. Due to the nature of the game, sometimes you'll get an easier playthrough than others. The goal is to collected enough gold offerings to get past the obvious obstacle in your path. 

Download it here!

My second game, created for the recent Global Game Jam 14

Clumsy Wrex - (Try) to control a T-Rex and try NOT to level the whole city​

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A game where you physically control (or try to) a T-Rex who doesn't really mean to destroy your whole city, he’s just sort of clumsy.  It’s meant to fit the theme by offering things from a different perspective in disaster movies, so while you are rampaging through the city and sounding menacing, subtitles show that you're  really quite polite and non-violent.

Controls are physically simulated so you actually control the torso and arms of the T-Rex to try to remain upright AND walk to your destination. People have described it as such: 

"T-Rex twerking simulator 2014"

"QWOP meets Octodad"

"T-Rex breakdance simulator"

If you have a good laugh playing the game, it's accomplished it's job. Try not to take it too seriously ;-P

Ye olde download link, chaps. 

So I really hope you guys enjoy both of them and give me your feedback! I may create a new thread for them just so others on the forums see it, as I figure CAGs love free games, so why not!

 
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