Development Info New CRPG in the works

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Ashes: Two Worlds Collide

There's a new indie CRPG in the works, <a href="http://ashes.lalista.org/">Ashes: Two Worlds Collide</a>, which promises some old school goodness! Here's a bit about the gameplay:
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<blockquote>Ashes will put you in control of a party of <u>four characters</u> you'll create from scratch. Each character will also has his unique behaviour, and will consequently play a unique role in the story. Aiming to solve a non-linear plot which will involve the exploration of the whole world... and beyond, you'll guide your party and other eventual NPCs. Although the world is rendered and experienced in <i>realtime</i>, <u>combat</u> is <i>turn-based</i> - allowing strategy to play an important part (in the early rpgs, thanks to turn-based combat, you was often able to plan complex strategies that often won enemies far stronger than the sum of the party members). <u>Magic</u> is both simple and complex at the same time: there are various - very specialized - "schools" of magic, each one providing a few spells you can combine. Also, a special "advanced" school of magic called "runic magic" is present, but we won't unveil details about it now.</blockquote>
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Bring. it. on.
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Thanks, <b>Ibbz</b>!

 

[Sol Invictus]

Oh. My. God.

It has me wanting it so bad!

 

[Sabotai]

Sounds amazing to me. I'm very curious to what this italian can come up with. It seems he/she (don't know if Andrea is a male or a female name) can use some help though:

I just opened the site, and this is my first newspost: simply, clearly - I need help. I am working on this project all alone, the engine is ripe and so are most of the game structures, but I can't imagine to create the graphics (2d textures and 3d models), sounds, and so on. Mind well: this is a non-profit project. Why am I doing this? Just because I like it, because I've got a compelling story developed in years and years of paper gameplay, and I'd like to share it with the community and see it "live" on a computer screen. Said this, what I am searching for are 2d pixel artists to work on simple textures, 3d modelers who can work out low poly models on either 3ds max or milkshape. The forums aren't active yet, so here's my e-mail: andreap@instation.it.

So, any graphic artists out there having some spare time?

 

[resle]

Ashes is officially alive, ashes is officially dead.

It's alive, because a spare hour after a spare hour the whole engine has been finished and polished, NPC schedules are implemented and so is the weather system. Interface, seamless world management. All is done.

It's dead, because I couldn't find a single 3d artist.

The way I coded the engine anyhow, would allow to bring the whole thing to 2d quite easily, which is something I am taking into account...

anyway the whole affair saddens me... I look around and there are plenty of teams with a heard of artists and unfinished engines built on a thousand promises and no actual result. I've got something which works and it's complete, but I couldn't find a single artist. Amen!

 

[EEVIAC]

Wasn't there a forum on this board for Ashes? I was wondering what happened to it. I remember that weird psuedo-cell-shaded look in the tech demo distinctly. (I liked the tech demo by the way.)

That's pretty rotten news, resle.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

With the amount of artists out there, there has to be someone willing to dedicate a little bit of time. If I had any artistic ability at all I would help, but unfortunately I don't. Maybe rpgcodex should take up the rallying cry and see if we can scrap up an artist from somewhere....

 

[Sol Invictus]

Don't give up hope! Look for some artists, I'm sure there's some artists bound to be some 3d artists lurking on these boards. The game sounds very, very interesting and best of all is that the engine and NPCs are done. All it needs is a front end, doesn't it?

Besides the RPG Codex you can also try the Deviantart.com forums. It's worth a shot.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Wasn't there a forum on this board for Ashes? I was wondering what happened to it. I remember that weird psuedo-cell-shaded look in the tech demo distinctly. (I liked the tech demo by the way.)

The developers of Ashes at first wanted it, then decided they didn't want it. So, it got removed.

 

[Anonymous]

Use 2D for teh win, woowoo.

 

[resle]

Thanks everyone for your words, but the truth is that it's more or less impossible to hire 3d artists for such a project - motivate them, and keep contacts by mail and other internet means. Consistent packages of low poly 3d models suitable for a RPG game, also, don't seem to exist. Not even commercial packages, which I would happily buy.

Moving to 2d seems a good option, since I can find or rip graphic pretty much everywhere. This is what I thought: I can have a rough 3d game, or a 2d game which will be very polished and implement a heap of nice effects thanks to the fact that the engine, even in 2d, is still OpenGl powered.

For instance: this is nice, but very cartoonish. The best trees I can have, look like lollipops, and the ground shadows are nothing but dark circles.

This is what I can get in 2D (I am currently having a few tests using Ultima 7 graphics)

ps. I want to thank once again Saint_Proverbius for his support, promotion, and the forums (although as he mentioned, at a certain point we didn't need those anymore)

 

[Stark]

the story premise sounds promising.

I'm not a graphic artist so can not offer help. however i'm pretty confused abt the part abt 3d artists. are u looking for 3d artists to draw objects against 2d background? just hope this will clear the doubts of some of the would be volunteers.

 

[resle]

No Stark, I was looking for 3d artists... once. Low poly 3d artists, since as you can see from the *first* screenshot and the other screenshots available on http://ashes.lalista.org , the engine is an OpenGL 3d engine.

Since I can't do 3d graphic, I am trying to port the whole thing to 2d... and ripping sprites from old games :\

 

[JJ86]

It doesn't look like many of the sprites have animations that are too complex, so maybe it wouldn't be too difficult to make new ones. It would be interesting to have a consistent isometric perspective. The one thing about ripping graphics from multiple sources is that you lose the consistency of the perspective, scale, and also of the color palette. I'm sure you could find multiple artists willing to create components like buildings, trees, and other static props but you should probably decide on standards so that there isn't any differences between the work of varied artists. Personally I would like to see the simplicity of pixelart which has a cool style and is popular among 2d artists right now. You could easily find many artists who would be able to create items that would seamlessly blend together. I would be willing to help to create pixelart items and am sure you could find a large base of interested artists.

 

[resle]

Well, I am trying many sources but actually I am quite sure that in the end I am going to extract graphics from Ultima VII and change it's perspective.

Let's have an example.
The twisted perspective of ultima 7 ...

...
becomes the easy-to-manage perspective of FF games

I've got all the U7 graphics already ripped and stored here
http://ashes.lalista.org/allshapes.zip

What I do really need is characters. The character system, as I developed it,
does not allow for a single sprite for the human models. Each sprite is made up
from three segments: head, body, legs, so that when you change dresses, weapons
and so on, the change is reflected on the character itself, not only in the inventory page.

It was very easy in 3d (a matter of multiple textures) but that's quite complex when dealing with sprites...

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Low poly 3d is pretty easy to learn for just the models themselves. The problem would be skinning those models. That can be a bit tricky. If you already know how to use 2D paint programs, though, it shouldn't be much of a problem for you to start skinning models.

For the 3D, though, just download a copy of gmax, and follow the tutorials. It's pretty simple.