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KickStarter Monomyth - A first person action RPG/dungeon crawler - now in Beta

Ysaye

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May 27, 2018
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In terms of utility/general spells I would go:
1. Teleknesis spell (As you have mentioned)
2. Wizard's eye /astral form spell (as others have suggested above)
3. Invisibility spell (time based)
4. Underwater breath extension (with water being time based)
5. Featherfall (as oposed to flying)
6. Magic arrow (general attack spell but can also cut cords, knock switches etc.)
7. Summon Attack Minion*
8. Unlock door / chest
9. Enchant weapon
10. Increase movement and action speed

* If time implement properly....
 

PrettyDeadman

Guest
Ability to become a vampire but also a werewolf, even more powerful than any of the species but without any of their weaknesses.
 
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Invictus

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
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Messages
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Mexico
Divinity: Original Sin 2
If you are going to implement offensive magic spells I would suggest doing scalable spells rather than stronger versions of the same spell effect; it makes characters progression to feel more rewarding where your spells grow with you and your character’s skill rather than getting just a higher damage version of the same spell
 

V_K

Arcane
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at a Nowhere near you
One other thing to consider, depending on your physics engine, is to have combat spells have utility uses when cast onto environment instead of enemy or self:
Fireball - burn wooden barriers or chests (with the chance to damage the content);
Ice spell - freeze water so it'd become walkable;
Stun - jam trap mechanisms temporarily;
Heal - grow vines or repair suff (bridges, for example);
etc.
 

Sinatar

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 25, 2014
Messages
569
In terms of utility/general spells I would go:
1. Teleknesis spell (As you have mentioned)
2. Wizard's eye /astral form spell (as others have suggested above)
3. Invisibility spell (time based)
4. Underwater breath extension (with water being time based)
5. Featherfall (as oposed to flying)
6. Magic arrow (general attack spell but can also cut cords, knock switches etc.)
7. Summon Attack Minion*
8. Unlock door / chest
9. Enchant weapon
10. Increase movement and action speed

* If time implement properly....

If there ends up being a food mechanic then a summon food/water spell would also be needed.
 

Machocruz

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
4,318
Location
Hyperborea
Spell selection and usage one of the areas where CRPGs have declined the hardest, with Bethesda's dumb ass leading the charge off the cliff. This game will be apart from the herd and ahead of the curve if you have spells that are more than just offense and stat buffs. Not to mention a must buy in the current design climate
 

Metro

Arcane
Beg Auditor
Joined
Aug 27, 2009
Messages
27,792
If your 3D dungeon crawler doesn't make use of 3D space, you should rethink your level design. And then add a bajillion utility spells. :cool:
This is still a one-man project. It just seems people are expecting way too much from this game.
 

V_K

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at a Nowhere near you
Spell selection and usage one of the areas where CRPGs have declined the hardest, with Bethesda's dumb ass leading the charge off the cliff.
While I don't disagree with the first part of your comment, TES, up until Skyrim, was actually a series with an unrivaled variety of utility spells. And even Skyrim has a good utility selection compared to, say, Bioware titles or Diablo-likes.
 

Machocruz

Arcane
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Spell selection and usage one of the areas where CRPGs have declined the hardest, with Bethesda's dumb ass leading the charge off the cliff.
While I don't disagree with the first part of your comment, TES, up until Skyrim, was largely a series with an unrivaled variety of utility spells. And even Skyrim has a good utility selection compared, for example, to Bioware titles or Diablo-likes.
Maybe. I'm just still butthurt about no teleportation or flight spells after MW.
 

RatTower

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Apr 24, 2017
Messages
468
I quickly compiled a list of all the spells I read so far. Some very nice suggestions! Thank you for that!
Took a few liberties here and there so the ideas fit better with the current architecture of the game.
I also ranked them by the effort it would take to implement them and marked the ones that may potentially be prone to error (with a note on what I think would be the problem).
Under Construction:
Teleknesis
Arcane Trap
Wizard's eye
*Blink / Passwall / Dimension Door (get stuck)
Light

Require no refactoring:
Magic Unlock
Magic Lock
Magic arrow
*Summon Minion (AI reaction)
Rust
Dispel
Switch Place
Force Shield
Slow Time
Berserk

Require minor refactoring:
Invisibility
Create disguise/illusion
Underwater breath
*Featherfall (go out of bounds / get stuck)
Haste
Summon food
distract enemies
*Levitate (go out of bounds / get stuck)
*Grow Vines (go out of bounds / get stuck)
Charm
*Levitate Object (general physics issues like getting items stuck)
*Lock In Place (general physics issues like getting items stuck)
Reveal
Purify Water / Food
Recall
*Polymorph (AI reaction / player getting stuck)
Avoid Hazards
Move silently
Calm

Require major refactoring/work:
Freeze Water
*Create Wall (AI passing through wall via UE nav-links)
*Disarm (Animations)
Control Air/Water/Fire/Earth
water walking
Vampire vision / Sense Enemies
Learn weakness
*Create Rope (go out of bounds / get stuck)
Enchant Weapon
*Animate Object (AI)
Push Enemy
*Spider Climb (go out of bounds / get stuck)
Enchant weapon
*Magic Grab (Physics/Animation/AI)
*Grappling Hook (go out of bounds / get stuck)
Enrage
*Scare (AI chain reactions)
*Confuse (AI chain reactions)

All of these are pretty nice. However, once I'm selecting the final spells it might be a good idea to think of alternative ways to activate their effect (at least for some). Otherwise the mage would become pretty unbalanced.
Meaning, it would be nice to have certain potions or items that have equivalent effects (invisibility potions or a bear trap instead of an arcane trap). Some things can be achieved through certain playstyles already (like moving silently, or distracting enemies - even though those features are currently deactivated).


Are the spells standing alone on their own or do they build up upon other spells, like ability / spell trees?
Standalone so far

Is this a Dungon Survival RPG or not?
That's actually a good question. It is a dungeon crawler (partly) in the spirit of UUW and UUW had some survival mechanics. Not like a rogue like or anything but some.
Food mechanics would probably cause limited stamina. The question is, whether this will actually cause a sense of urgency or just be annoying. Implementation-wise it would be no problem.
 

RatTower

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Apr 24, 2017
Messages
468
Quick update:

The arcane trap spell is done.

E687CFFC1F7C74758D93307A977674440A7002E6


"Blink" is done as well. It will probably be a late game spell since it's rather powerful.
It allows you to slip through prison bars, portcullises and even cracks in the wall by teleporting you just a few feet straight ahead.

Wizard's Eye should be interesting to fully implement.
For the moment, I'll try to limit myself to spells that are actually useful within the alpha area.

I also want to come up with a couple items that have similar effects as the spells.
Which actually gives me a nice catalogue of gameplay options that aid a more feature driven level design.
 

RatTower

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Apr 24, 2017
Messages
468
Currently working over various sections of the alpha level again.
Turns out having a ranked list of your spells actually has a profound and positive impact on level design.



The mentioned design workflow is a bastardization of Feature-Driven-Development, where you describe the features of a software product through a triplet <<action><object>::<result>> (e.g. "<Set> <the profile picture of an account>::<new profile picture>" etc)
For game design this means that objects are entities within the world that have a simulation aspect. Most prominentily enemies and doors, but also puzzle mechanisms and other parts of the environment.
Actions on the other hand are anything the player (or some other entity) can do within the world. From simple stuff like moving forward to more complex stuff like setting a trap (which can again be an entity in itself).
The catalyst for these actions - whether it is casting a spell or using an item or just pressing a button on the keyboard - is absolutely secondary.

Now technically you could take every entity/object in the game and list all their actions and create a HUGE table on the results these actions would cause with every other entity/object.
But since that table will likely end up way too large it's sufficient to do that with the player actions. More precisely with the major game changing ones, i.e. spells, attacks and item combinations.
Now obviously such a table comes in very handy when we're talking about level design, since it provides you with a catalogue of "features" you can methodically stuff into a level, respectively a subsection.

In effect this means a fully gameplay-driven level design, which is very much like Ultima Underworld 2's design philosophy. In fact, that game was so focused on gameplay-driven level design, that it sometimes abandoned the concept of a cohesive world and essentially provided you with a set of "challenge rooms". This becomes the most obvious in the academy level, which in my opinion is - ironically - also one of the weaker levels, since the more abstract game design concepts, like exploration, take the backseat there.
So you gotta be careful with that whole idea of building your levels entirely around that feature catalogue.

Nevertheless, the catalogue is still very useful since it provides you with cornerstones while designing a level subsection.
A while ago I mentioned two general problems I had with level design:

[...] You can technically merge these concepts, by designing many interlinked horseshoes resulting in a sort of pseudo-open area. Or you make one open area and tack on the horseshoes. Or you do some other sort of combination, but the question is, whether the result can still carry over the strengths of its inspirations (all of which are highly abstract - cause, for example, what is "rewarding" exploration?). That in itself is experimental already, but fitting it into gameplay-driven design is another story - which is essentially necessary, cause otherwise you'll just have a nicely arranged set of hallways with nothing to do in them.

[...] I will probably modularize level sections more clearly during design in the future. I can still link them together later (according to that whole horseshoe/open level strategy).

With the list of spells I came to the conclusion that during the on-paper-design-phase of a level (so before even touching anything in-engine) you can follow an eight step process:
  1. Find the theme (e.g. cave/ruin/castle/sewer - maybe add an adjective like "flooded mine" or "haunted ruins" or everyone's favorite "poisoned sewer")
  2. Come up with around 4 or 5 locations for that theme (e.g. the throne room or the prospectors' quarters, the kitchen or a hall for rituals, etc)
  3. Get down a rough look: For every location make a small drawing - scribblings are fine; this shouldn't take you much longer than 10 minutes
  4. Come up with a list of things people can or could do in these locations (mine for ore, ride a minecart, cook in the kitchen, catch a fish in a lake yadda yadda yadda). This is a brainstorming process. Just write down anything you can come up with. Now you got a list of actions and objects again. You can already see where this is going.
  5. Now take all locations and assign them with a couple of these actions/objects (like three per location should be fine). Ideally these actions/objects are already covered by the feature catalogue mentioned above. However this is not a given thing. We are going at the problem from the other side. As opposed to UU2's academy level. On the other hand this means that we may have to complement our catalogue with new actions/objects. Which of course means additional work.
  6. Now you can go crazy and design actual small maps for the locations. And you can design those with the assigned features in mind. So the result becomes more than just a pretty hallway. And what you can also do now is applying the horseshoe principle of level design, or the open design as you see fit, as long as you design around the features you first assigned. You'll find very soon that the whole process kinda develops its own dynamics, because you realize that certain features in certain places also imply other features that automatically come along. For example you design, let's say a room with a door that can be lockpicked - if your feature catalogue also provides destructible doors this automatically means there are already two solutions for the problem - if there are explosive barrels behind the door, you got three, but only if you have a way of blowing them up etc etc. So as you can see, you automatically develop a much greater design than what you originally prepared for a single location.
  7. Once you're done with your locations you can connect them through a hub, horseshoe or onion skin layout however you see fit.
  8. In the end you can polish over the whole thing, with location-spanning challenges, mini-storylines or connected puzzles. You can also go crazy on the connections between your locations. This is essentially a entirely separate design pass, because you can apply the same principles of feature driven design on an higher layer. Say, you have a feature in one location that opens a door in another location, which leads you again to another location. Classic example: The floodgate scenario where you look for the maintenance room, open the gate, and then dive through the flooded room to a higher room that could not be reached before.
And this is how I do it now.
You can btw also use this design process to quickly come up with areas for pen & paper games. In fact let's come up with something right now:
  1. Theme: Haunted Church
  2. Locations: Tomb, Hall, Belltower
  3. Look: (You know how these things look like)
  4. List of actions/objects: People could go there and ring the bell, climb the tower, read a sermon, pray, visit the dead, wake up the dead, get eaten by the dead, banish the dead, sprinkle holy water on themself and others, bury people, find hidden secrets about the priest, talk to ghosts, steal holy artifacts, loot graves, dig up graves, read about what caused the curse, lift the curse, etc etc
  5. Assign Locations/Features: Tomb: Dig up the dead, get eaten by the dead, find hidden secrets about the priest // Hall: read a sermon, steal holy artifacts, read what caused the curse // Belltower: Ring the bell, lift the curse, talk to (bell tower) ghost -- As you can see this step can also be helpful for establishing a gameplay driven story ... so much about gameplay hindering writers by the way. They are just going at it from the wrong end if you ask me.
  6. Design Maps: (Again, you know how these areas could look like layout wise - the tomb could have a natural cave in it, that allows for digging, it could be a maze with zombies walking around - the belltower might have broken stairs the require you to climb etc etc)
  7. Connect Locations: You can connect these areas through a courtyard for example.
  8. Polish: In the court yard there could be a hidden entrance to the tomb, which may be under the hall - the belltower could be locked, the key may be somewhere in the tomb
And before you know it you get something that's very close to Thief's "Return to the Haunted Cathedral" - which wasn't even my intention, but since that's one of my favorite missions I might be subconsciously biased.
Either way - I believe it's a solid approach. Unfortunately the alpha level doesn't fully subscribe to this principle and feels a little rough in some places - which is, why I am working over parts. Probably not everything though. The region in the screenshot from the tweet is in fact one location with several features.
In the future I'll probably go entirely with this process, so writing it down properly actually helps a lot.
 
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RatTower

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Apr 24, 2017
Messages
468
Just a really quick update today:

Wizard's Eye spell is done. I made it interact with arcane traps so it's good for something besides exploration.



The subsection I've been working on for a few days should be done today or tomorrow. Then I'll work over the rest of the alpha map (which is already too big for a regular alpha).
Once that is done I can finally transform everything into static meshes and get better static lighting going (which should also help with stealth).
 

V_K

Arcane
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Messages
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Location
at a Nowhere near you
Just a really quick update today:

Wizard's Eye spell is done. I made it interact with arcane traps so it's good for something besides exploration.



The subsection I've been working on for a few days should be done today or tomorrow. Then I'll work over the rest of the alpha map (which is already too big for a regular alpha).
Once that is done I can finally transform everything into static meshes and get better static lighting going (which should also help with stealth).

I'm starting to get excited about your level design. Please don't screw it up.
 

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,235
E687CFFC1F7C74758D93307A977674440A7002E6


Suggestion: increase NPC rotation speed considerably. Deus Ex-tier AI goofyness right here.
perhaps better yet make him rotate (slowly) during the pain animation, and then rotation speed while running is cranked up. Should come across much more natural.

Super excited for this game. Not a fan of the HUD though. Both aesthetically and functionally (just four hotkeys for inventory?).
 
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RatTower

Arcane
Developer
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Apr 24, 2017
Messages
468
Visually the HUD's been a pet peeve of mine for quite a while. Both layout- and style-wise. Concerning the number of hotkeys, I hope playtesting will show how many are ideal.
They were designed around combat and currently even have a cooldown of, I believe, 1.5 seconds, so you can't pour down 10 potions in the blink of an eye.
You can also equip regular tools, like lockpicks, on there though.

Concerning animation and movement there is still quite a bit of work.
Lately though, I was mostly busy with level design.
 

Invictus

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
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Divinity: Original Sin 2
I really hope we get an Arx Fatalis kind of HUD; health, magic and maybe a few screen indicators
I usually mention Dead Space as one of the very best HUD systems ever; no need to go to separate menus or immersion breaking screens since everything is pretty much available at a glance
 
Self-Ejected

unfairlight

Self-Ejected
Joined
Aug 20, 2017
Messages
4,092
I'm curious how you intend to make decent combat in such narrow and flat maps, but I hope you'll do well.
 

RatTower

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Apr 24, 2017
Messages
468
I asked Raphael Colantonio (former president of Arkane Studios) if there was a post mortem article on Arx Fatalis, discussing why it failed financially. His response:



I believe this information could be quite useful for Monomyth as well.
Does anyone have an idea who might be interested to cover that story?

I already suggested the codex of course :obviously:
 

Ysaye

Arbiter
Joined
May 27, 2018
Messages
771
Location
Australia
To my shame I have never played Arx. You should never assume that your reason was the same as all those who are also in that same basket but I think there was a few (probably stupid) factors to me not getting it:

(1) I always misread the first word as "Arse" - that should only ever be followed up with "Feminine" or something like that - first impressions are key and names are important I suppose.
(2) Colour and Morrowind - At the time I was blown away by that game and open (outside) world (with a beautiful sky and lots of strange vegetation and a cool soundtrack) was the place to be - not in a world driven underground because of a dying sun.
(3) Magic System - and I suppose this is the risk between trying to make something immersive versus a fun game, but the game sold itself on casting runes and that to me didn't sound like fun, but more of a hassle. I bought a PDA early on in life and just imagining writing letters was not appealling.
 

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