Vapourware That Which Sleeps - Vaporware Strategy RP

I hope this meets all of it's goals, my one concern is that it will prove to have little re playability without them :/

 

I think a small update going more in depth about what the next stretch goal is about whenever one is reached could be useful.

 

Demo - The better the KS goes the worse it is for us as far as dev goes - I've had no time to do any actual development the last week. With the KS cooling down in week two I want to get some heads down time to do it.

I think you'll find the game as it stands has a ton of replay value, but if you are the kind of person who wants every game to be on a geographical new map I can see how it might disappoint you. At the very least if we do fail to hit Procedural Generation I am SURE we'll see a ton of new scenarios from the community because of how easy the editor is to use.

Jaedar - Good idea, I'll talk to my partner about putting one up

 

Whatever happened on the 25th, you need more of that.

 

Do you have an artist in mind for the portraits and such?

 

25th was Rock, Paper, Shotgun - the only equivalent bump we can realistically hope for is a Kotaku article which would be amazing.

We do have a portrait artist who has done some of the portraits you'll see in our work - really happy with his work so far. We're still evaluating what style to go with for the map units, wasted so much time on that issue in the last year or so and it keeps coming back.

 

Backed. Eager to play it.

 

Badass avatar icon, glad we have the support of the fine people of Myrror.

 

It's at 27K right now so half the way to reaching the final (and real) goal of this KS. I haven't read this thread thoroughly, but do you guys have a working build that you can send to some internet celebrities like Total Biscuit? That always helps to bring in backers.

 

I provided some links to youtubers to them previous in the thread, excluding TB since he's about to undergo complex surgery. If you have other Youtuber to suggest post links to them here.

 

Work in Progress - if we don't manage to get to it in time we'll probably send them a much briefer demo then we intended in the last week

 

Reimplement the hilariously overpowered Death God, then send a build with that to TotalBiscuit. As long as the game is really easy, he'll praise it. That's at least $100k from his followers down your pocket.

 

A working build that you can send to the press should have been a top priority and probably should have been ready before the KS even launched. I hope it's not too late now.

 

KingDinosaurGames What made you change your mind about competing Old One AIs?

 

Had to hunt this down to see what the question was - so the question was asking about the game itself and I was setting expectations for what we planned to deliver. I didn't want to promise or even promote the idea of Rival AIs because it was merely at the conceptual stage that was unlikely to ever make it in the game due to the assets required. Now that it looks like a reality I'm very excited to be able to talk about this part of the game.

So many things dropped from scope in our development because we focused on "what can a 2-man team deliver in a reasonable time frame and with consistently high quality" so we had to strip out based on content and assets. We didn't want to rely on Kickstarter even for the base game, we leveraged it primarily just to ideally update the assets on map and in combat. However, several concepts that we had lost kept being brought up by the community - procedural generation, endless simulations, and rivals. That was the genesis of the poll we posted for people to prioritize them (I also put Gods and Religions in because it was my own personal favorite feature that had to be stripped).

So now we have an expanded, and much more complex, game than was originally pitched to the community.

You can see we discussed how the idea of competing Old Ones didn't mesh with our ideas of victory, and part of the concern for us was not just the mechanics but also the sheer amount of content to support multiple old ones who have various goals and desires in the game. We didn't want to just throw it clones of the player and have the equivalent of a cold war, instead we wanted to make it a true conflict between foreign, alien beings with vastly divergent interests. Hitting this stretch goal will give us the assets to represent the Old Ones, and also the time to complete the development changes and content generation to make these conflicts truly epic.

I am seriously excited about some of the rival Old Ones, though even more I think "Those That Remained" (representing immortal beings that run nations) have fascinating implications on gameplay. All of the beings introduced through the Rivals stretch goal are capable of assuming your mantle of power, and of battling amongst themselves to grow stronger to attain that goal. Though it wasn't a conscious influence, I keep getting reminded of a Birthright Campaign (did anyone else play that old DND setting?) I played maybe a decade ago - as the empowered kings of the world battled it out to assume greater heights of power.

Sorry about the huge response - design decisions get me excited.

 

Don't you ever fucking apologize for being awesome again, you hear me KingDinosaurGames ?

 

$35414! Rival old ones are now officially a thing! Woo!

KingDinosaurGames - Can you give some examples on the engine changes you'd like to make for the next stretch goal and how they'll affect gameplay? Feel free to get very technical.

 

The game was designed with two phases, an open-ended beginning where you, as the Old One, spread your minions forth into the world to begin to sow chaos and begin to set your plots in motion, and the second part is the world's realization that you have returned and their attempt to respond to that while being plagued by all the scheming and evils that you set loose in the first part. We wanted the game to have a narrative, strategic drift that you struggle against, either by trying to keep awareness down or by crushing the most threatening elements of the world. However, no matter what you do the Chosen One will emerge, the Alliance will form, and the world moves towards a climactic final struggle - though if you've done a good job the form these elements take will be greatly crippled. In addition to this, each game is self-contained, there is no cyclical element that we had originally envisioned - when the game ends it is over and you can start a new one (with one exception, we do currently track corrupted heroes for one Old One's special ability).

We will be removing these dependencies in the logic of the engine and gameplay balance, essentially reducing the imperatives of the second stage of the game and making the entire process conditional on other elements of the world. The Chosen One is no longer a foregone conclusion, instead Prophecies can be randomized and based on their completion the fates will spawn events and champions accordingly - and instead of his death leading to a new Chosen One instead the world will mourn, and seek another prophecy. The Alliance AI will become much more versatile, instead of being a group of Nations that are pulled to a final confrontation with you there may be several competing Alliance AIs, some of which will pursue the traditional path of alliances and conquest to seal you away others to whom survival is their only goal. Crushing an Alliance does not spell the end of the world, much like the modified defeat of the Chosen One it is just another significant event.

We are modifying the way Sages research and discover the Old One, removing the "bonus over time" that comes from the amount of your Ancient Power and increasing the bonuses and penalties that can be gained by actions throughout the world. We're adding additional methods of controlling your rise, adding or removing Ancient Power based on what you've done and also pivoting around controlling certain areas. Together with these and other changes you are better able to manage the level of impact you have on the world, and the world will react accordingly - maintaining its more open-ended simulation status instead of moving into a more aggressive period.

We're modifying the way heroes spawn, allowing you to customize the rate at which they are created and to set it over time as opposed to all in the beginning, modify champions so they can also rise over time, and set it so that heroes and leaders can age, have children, and die. Governments are being modified to respond to situation with Old One influence, it's no longer the end of the world it's just another dark period - they will be able to struggle against the dark with partisans in occupied POIs, form new radical government types, and even descend into the darkness themselves to try and stem the tide of your evil. Populations and resources have greater variability, mines can run dry, new mines can be found, and the AI has an additional quality to describe "Long Term Planning" versus dealing with immediate problems.

I think that covers the basic existing gameplay changes, as you can see we're going for a "The World Hasn't Ended It's Just Ending" feel, where you can draw out the game and experience it more fully at any of the phases. To support this we're making the changes above and allowing the Final Conflict to instead be recurring conflicts as the world and its prophecies struggle to deal with your influence. The way this extends to the modding community is far more significant, taking all these dependencies and making them configurable allows you to even further craft the behavior of the world and its AI, which is itself further augmented to be able to deal with these situations instead of simply pushing for the Final Conflict.

Outside of these mechanical changes we have a lot of Content that we're adding both to make the player's Old One more interesting in periods of occupation as well as letting the Heroes and Leaders of the world go to more extremes. On the Hero and Leader side there are a lot of extreme measures to be taken as the world darkens, with the implications of Ancient Power setting some kingdoms on a path to corruption and ruin and others to pious extremism. With the Agents you'll be able to contend with the difficulties of occupation and put them in the roles of administrators, brutal if you want or try and take a softer touch and convince the populace how lucky they are not to be orc food.

Tl;dr Mechanics to change the flow of the game + content to flesh it out

EDIT: I forgot, we're adding cyclical gameplay - so when you end a game with your Old One (either by being sealed away or being victorious) you can import some of the the settings of the previous world.

 

Will the old way to play still be available, or do you see this as an outright improvement?

 

All of the stretch goals are configurable, either at the Scenario level or through Game Modes.

If you're asking me personally which I prefer, I'm a big fan of the original setup augmented with Gods and Religions but I can absolutely see how the Endless Simulation Enhancements can make for a fun game.

 

I don't want to jynx things but it looks like you guys are on track to pretty comfortably make all of the current stretch goals. You only need to pull a little over 1100$ per day to accomplish that and the worst day you've had so far was still over 1300$. Depending on how big the last few days boost is you may be able to make additional stretch goals. Do you plan on any additional stretch goals or are you gonna stick to what there currently is so as to not add too much more dev time to the project?

If you are open to new stretch goals I would like to humbly suggest adding the first age in as a playable game period instead of a series of questions at the start of the scenario. That way you could play when your ancient evil(although you wouldn't be an ancient evil at that time, you'd be a new evil) first interacted with the world or maybe even play out rising to becoming an evil power depending on the type of old one you are.

 

That's actually part of Procedural Generation, you can jump into the world at any time - not quite sure how well it will play out compared to being a returning evil but the option will be open to people. If it ends up being popular we would probably go through and create some custom content for that age, but that would be pretty far down the road.

Definitely won't be adding any stretch goals that require more development time, we're about at our limit there. So we'd be looking solely at things that require assets - possibly VO, more races, more portraits, etc.

 

KingDinosaurGames has there been much backing via paypal?

 

How did this slip under my radar?

 

Yey rival old one!

KingDinosaurGames you definitely need to make more Kickstarter updates and explain to the unwashed masses that have not yet accepted Yoggoth as their lord and savior why they need to give up their money for the last two stretch goals. Possibly video updates will be required for that lot.