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March 2021
Not much to tell this month, working on landscape layouts all the time. Also working on combat stats scaling in between when I can't stand to see landscapes anymore for a bit
But I want to remind all Ultima fans out there:
Nox Archaist
has been released a while ago and you should definitely check it out! Head over to their website and get it!
Amazing game, I absolutely love it and I am sure every old school Ultima fan will enjoy it as well!
I can't wait for the April Update of "I did things." as these totally legitimate developers continue to hope nobody else remembered there's supposedly more than one person working on this and how "we" "we" "we" "we" and "the whole team" turned into "I" "I" "I" and "I" soon after the KS concluded and the money was in hand.
The landscape design is a constantly ongoing task that I sometimes enjoy and sometimes hate.
Imagine this: You are stuck in an area and want to get a certain feel and it's just not getting where you imagine it to be and you spend more and more time on it, remolding it over and over, edging closer and closer to that elusive picture in your brain... "This branch needs to go here, no wait a few inches over, that feels better, YES! that's it!" over and over until the whole picture is right. Then you suddenly doubt yourself, "Did I just spend too much time on that small area? They won't notice this anyway ... but it just FEELS better, right? Yeah but you could have gotten a nice looking area by just randomly placing that stuff as well, nobody cares when they chase a Goblin through here. Yeah, but now I am proud of it. You idiot, it's just a part of a forest... you'll be done in 2030 if you keep that up.. shut up"
That's my state of mind when worldbuilding. Maybe I need a therapist, who knows.
A huge part of the last month was working on the details of the storyline and quests. This work is a bit less dangerous for my brain than worldbuilding. I am trying to tell a compelling story without designing myself into a corner by wanting to do something I know I can't translate into actual gameplay. The budget is super limited and I manage to stay realistic. "No feature creep, no false promises" was my goal from the start and I stick to that. That, maybe, sounds boring or unambitious, but it's not, believe me. The ambition is to do the very best I can, not to try to do what I definitely can't.
I am really excited about it and I hope you will enjoy it as well. Not much more to say without spoiling anything. Just wanted to let you know what I was doing in April.
That's it for now. I hope you all have a wonderful May! Stay healthy!
Before I go I want to make you aware of a Kickstarter project one of our backers brought to my attention. I think some of you might be interested as well:
LOST EIDOLONS is a turn based RPG, which is actually already fully funded and will be released in 2022. The team tries to get some additional funds through their Kickstarter campaign to enhance the game further. I think it looks cool and promising. Check it out!
I guess it's confirmed that the dev team has shrunk down to 1. A pity there's absolutely nothing to show for this wonderful story and the masterful development process they've deigned to share with us.
You know how it is when you got 100% motivation for something, then you do it and it actually works out and you are "in the zone"? It's a great feeling right? Well, I was "in the zone" with writing the last few weeks and I could not be happier about it.
Don't get me wrong I had written a draft of the full story arc a long time ago and worked on parts of it in detail as well, but really fleshing out the story is something I had put off for a while because I was not inspired to do it for a while. Well I am happy to report the inspiration came back and I made gigantic steps forward with the story, quests and dialogues.
My respect for authors who write compelling books grew immensely ever since I started work on the Corven storyline. But then again, writing for a game has an additional factor: "Can this technically be done? Does it make sense within the confines of the gameplay mechanics?" There are restrictions which have to be considered.
I also do not want to be too long winded with dialogues. It's easy to get lost in writing an interesting dialogue but I don't want there to be pages and pages of dialogue to read in Corven. I think it's better to be succinct without sacrificing too much. While some might appreciate having a lot to read, I also think that many players would get tired of it, skip it completely and so instead of providing a lot of story through text the story would get lost completely for the "interested but impatient". I strife for a good middle ground.
Inspiration for storytelling in Corven
You all know that I love Ultima obviously, but in honor of the 35th anniversary of Dragon Quest I want to out myself as a huge Dragon Quest fan as well. I was always interested in JRPGs but could not get into them for a long time. I don't want to get into my story with JRPGs too much, so to sum it up: I always thought they were too childish and just not complex enough. I got into them quite late...
Anyway, why am I writing this? Because I want to inspire you to play Dragon Quest VIII, the reason I fell in love with the genre, and to use it as an example for incredible story telling with very little text compared to something like Planescape Torment.
At first glance DQ VIII seems like some childish little anime game. The art style is objectively fantastic of course but for a "hardened" western RPG fan it just seems so, well, childish. If you let that fool you, you miss out on an incredible game and maybe even this incredible genre in general.
Let me very quickly sum up just the first couple of hours of the game, the first town and a bit beyond. Just so you get an idea:
It starts out with you traveling with a talking, walking toad, an intelligent horse and one other human. The toad is actually your king and the horse his daughter. They were cursed by a wicked mage.
Already sounds like a childish fairy tale right? Well, not so fast, let me continue: Your quest is to find the mage who did this to them. It brings you to the first town in the game. There you find out that the same mage burned down his old masters house, killing him in the process. You can still see the burning remains of the house. In order to find out where he went next you need the services of the local seer / fortune teller. Unfortunately he "lost" his crystal ball and is unwilling to tell fortunes anymore. You find him drinking in the local bar. Something is obviously weighing heavy on his heart. His young daughter tries to cheer her dad up but she can't. She sends you to the waterfall cave where she thinks the crystal ball was lost. After retrieving the ball the fortune teller is not at all happy about it and it is revealed that he threw away the ball on purpose and does not want to offer his services anymore because he once helped track down the parents of a little girl who then were killed. The little girl is actually his adopted daughter now. He could never get over the guilt he feels for his actions...
With some motivation of the daughter he will help you after all, give you vital information he sees in the crystal ball and you move on just to find another victim of the mad mage who he paralyzed and then sadistically stabbed to death. Fortunately for you his soul was trapped in a statue where he was killed and so he could give vital further information. His sister, who is grief stricken and angry, will join you on your quest form then on ...
This very short summary should show that in this seemingly childish game you encounter, in my opinion, very dramatic and intriguing situations and overall a story which, if you pay attention, will make you want to know what happens next. You want to find that wicked mage and make him pay. You don't only see the physical harm he has done but also the harm he has indirectly caused to people who knew the victims. The emotional damage he caused is made very clear in the short dialogues. It's truly a masterpiece and you should play it (on PS2, or even better 3DS or maybe a PS2 emulator on your PC). Once you are done with that play DQ V (a very good version is actually available on iphone and android) which has even more impressive story telling and DQ XI, the newest game in the series.
Again, why am I writing this? Because my goal with Corven is to achieve emotional storytelling by taking not only Ultima, especially Serpent Isle, as an example but also games like Dragon Quest VIII (and V and XI).
PS: I am very aware of the shortcomings of older JRPGs, like often very empty worlds with very little attention to detail when it comes to world design, but that's not the part of those games I am inspired by, so no worries.
Backer portrait art:
Here is a work in progress portrait of one of our backers, Suntgoma. He said he would like to be an Alchemist and that's what he will be
I don't know about the rest of you, but from name-dropping Planescape Torment and then comparing it to a small and rather tame JRPG twist, along with the "Ultima-inspired" intro story that already gives the player character a backstory and determined motives, I am fully convinced that there will indeed be writing in this game.
Just as an offhand, has anyone ever made a video game adaptation of The Eye of Argon?
There are developers you follow for the games and developers you follow with popcorn. If any game shows up here, which is doubtful given how moveable objects was a big event to share, that will be extra butter.
There are developers you follow for the games and developers you follow with popcorn. If any game shows up here, which is doubtful given how moveable objects was a big event to share, that will be extra butter.
Oh, yeah, I knew this guy had done something previously. Morrowind's relatively easy to develop in if you know the limitations and don't try to do something crazy. Though I don't know how easy it is to make .nif models. If you ration your time properly, like half an hour each day, you should be able to do something like that in a year or two, less if you have other people, more if you're making original models. Though I guess blazing through 80 hour JRPGs can bite into that time...
I hope everyone from the US had a great 4th of July weekend! We were on vacation for a few days and it was nice getting away from everything for a little bit.
I worked almost exclusively on working out dialogues and doing rough implementations of quests with placeholders. This will go on for a while until I have to do something else to keep myself sane.
2 sentences, but a LOT of work, like everything. Don't be surprised when this is next months update as well.
I like having as much as possible worked out before I implement it. Of course, if actually playing the rough implementations shows that adjustments are needed they will happen, I won't strictly stick to a script. But having a solid detailed script, not just a rough layout of the story, helps a lot and in the end saves a lot of time.
I also have the final version of Suntgoma's backer portrait ready for you. If you want to see the original photo and the "work in progress" art check out last months update.
Suntgoma received his 3000x3000 resolution version already
I am completely engrossed in writing dialogues and story details, like I said in the last update. This might make this the most boring update ever.
However I am working on something big that will help the project immensely next year. I might be able to announce it soon. Yes I just announced and announcement... sorry.
See you soon in the next, more interesting monthly update!
Yes I have been working a lot on Corven of course, still mostly dialogue and story details. It's just so much easier for the workflow when all that is ready to go when implementing more NPCs and quests. Other than that I was scripting spells/abilities.
BUT I have huge news which deserve to be the focus of this update:
Because of circumstances which have nothing to do with Corven I will be able to work on Corven full time without the distraction of a "day job", starting May 2022!
(for the pessimists among you: no, that does not mean I decided to live under a bridge with a generator and my PC)
It's almost impossible to overstate just how great this is for the development of Corven.
I am looking forward to this new phase of my life and all the additional time I can commit to Corven!
I usually don't talk about my private life on here, but since this directly affected the project I have to. My wife got Covid several weeks ago, unfortunately not one of the many mild symptom cases, she got them all basically. High fever, shakes, bone aches, difficulty breathing, painful coughing, ... Unfortunately I got it as well and my symptoms started about a week after her. Same symptoms as she had. And it felt like it took forever for both of us. Our son, luckily, had like one sneeze and that was it for him with Covid.
Today is the first day I feel healthy again. We both beat it, we are fine. But during those weeks, I obviously could not work on anything.
I am not writing this to start a covid discussion or get sympathy, I just had to inform you what was going on.
If someone would ask me what covid was like. I once a a bad flu (real flu) as a kid. It was exactly the same but 3x as long.
Or watch episode 1 of season 2 of the show "What we do in the Shadows", called "Resurrection". After the vampires have Topher Delmonico resurrected by the Necromancer he is a very agile zombie. The way Topher then runs rampage in the vampire's house is EXACTLY how it feels Covid acts in your body. Also how he seems to finally be dead, just to jump up again and run amok... yeah, Covid 1:1
Ok, enough of the zombie sickness... Before it struck I was working on the dialogue system. I was fine how it worked for the user, but I wanted to change several things on the backend to make implementation way faster and easier for me. I got quite far and am happy with how it's turning out. I will finish those adjustments once I start work back up, very soon.
We also have a new backer portrait, Bowen Bloodgood:
If I could live in this world, I would settle in or near Treynic. Coast on one side, sweeping hills, forests and meadows on the other. Far away from that unnerving volcano and not too far from the capitol, you know, in case I need to buy something exotic.
Anyway... I have been mostly working on implementing (main-)quests in and surrounding Treynic. It is the area you will first see after you managed to get off the starting island (Veroen). I had done some rough quest work there before if you follow these updates, but now it's about the detailed implementation of all aspects of those quests. It's coming along very well and working without many issues... it's a bit scary to be honest. Just waiting for the next little thing that will cost me a week or two to figure out, as punishment for the smooth implementation so far.
That being said, the world building, design, of the area still needs a lot of work. Just not feeling like doing that side of development at the moment. I am still a bit burned out from all the world building I had done earlier this year. But luckily there is so much to do otherwise that I won't get bored
I plan on concentrating on the worldbuilding side of development again once I can work full time on Corven. Then I will feel good about sharing new screenshots. I am also looking forward to tackling some of the more complex systems not yet implemented then.
Hope you are all doing well! Thanks for your continued interest in the development of Corven!
Very short update about what I have been up to the last few weeks: I am still working on quests in and around Treynic. Implementing quests is a long process. But it's going really well. At the same time I am further refining this area in terms of world building. Smooth but very time consuming process, like everything when making a game
Backer "Searing" will be the blacksmith in Treynic:
I hope this year will be better for everyone! If your 2021 was already great, then may 2022 be even better for you!
Honestly the biggest news for Corven this month is that I did a lot of research and put together the perfect PC for development (in my price range) and recently ordered it. I rarely game these days, but it would also be a great gaming PC of course.
Being able to compile quicker alone will be a huge improvement already, but every aspect will run better with this new hardware.
I wanted to wait for the chip shortage to ease up more, but if I wait any longer I might as well not buy it all... it looks like most of 2022 won't change much in that regard.
Most important components you might be interested in:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900 X
GPU: Nvidia RTX 3080 (I thought about going with the Radeon rx 6900 xt since, other than raytracing performance, it's faster, but most people game on Nvidia and I like to know that if Corven runs on my PC then it runs on most)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance DDR4 64 GB (lots of RAM is extremely important for development, especially also for compiling)
MB: Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master
and of course fast SSD drives.
I will keep my old hardware and the goal will continue to be for Corven to run smoothly on my old PC. That old PC runs with a Nvidia 1070 just for reference. I think having this as lower end hardware requirement in the end is very reasonable.
I can't express just how much I am looking forward to developing on this new hardware.
First of all: I am working full time on Corven starting next month already. This is a dream come true and it took many many years to achieve this kind of freedom, to do what I actually want to do as a job.
Arguably the least important consequence is that I have more time for things outside the development itself again, and so we are back on Twitter and Facebook. Links will follow. The original Twitter link is restricted by Twitter for some reason, so it might be a new twitter handle.
Ok before we come to the real news a little impression of a snowy area, as previously seen in the Backer chat on our Discord.
And here is a new video of that area, just showing a part of the island "Thaur" in the north to give you an idea of the region, the atmosphere... In the video you will also hear a new track, a remix of a tune you probably know if you are an Ultima fan
UIX:
(new artwork for Corven)
Ok, now for the real news.
I have worked for months, not just the last two, on adapting the UIX Redemption plot for Corven.
I realized how disappointed many Ultima fans were when I cancelled the UIX mod in favor of Corven. My reason was obvious, I have no desire to step on the foot of a big publisher and their IP when creating my first standalone game.
However, this game is not called Ultima, this is not a remake of existing work. This is a brand new game inspired by Garriott's work. There is no copyright issue.
So, Ultima fans, you will get your UIX Redemption, but it's called Corven - Path of Redemption!
It will have some adjustments to make it more accessible, in terms of story, for new players. People who have no knowledge of old Ultimas should be able to get into the plot without having to do research first.
The cat is out of the bag. I sincerely hope this will make fans happy. You will just have to live with the fact that you won't recognize names other than Lord British and that the land you used to know looks a bit different now. But did it not always change over time?
Portraits:
Here are two new portraits, the first is for "Ultima Codex" owner, Kenneth Kully aka "Wtf Dragon". I thought it would be fitting to make him a bartender in Corven, you know, the guy who hosts people, knows all the stories around, has all the news....
Before:
Finished Portrait:
And another backer, ZugVader on Discord, will be a Paladin in the game:
Before:
finished portrait:
I hope you all have had a great start into this new year! I also hope you enjoyed this news update.
Now it's more than obvious they're aiming to have EA shut this down.
"Whoops, money was all spent because it was nearly complete, honestly guys! I just can't show it because C&D!" Easy way to make $40k off of ~$300 worth of assets shown - if your Virtues are negotiable, and then it truly would be a Lord British game just like Shroud.
I am working on the "Cape of Heroes" area including "Trinsic". Still too soon to show screenshots or a video, but it's coming along nicely. Beside that I was also working on integrating new dialogue, updating the UIX dialogue we had etc.
I am hard at work with Cape of Heroes still, all aspects of it, worldbuilding, quests... I will show some of it soon. It's going very well, but time is just rushing by.
This has been the most frustrating time in development so far. I guess it can't always go smooth
First of all I got stuck on a problem scripting a cutscene. It took me a good while to figure it out and it almost drove me crazy. I learned a lot fixing it but the disadvantages of being a mini team come to light in situations like this. In a big team if someone gets stuck doing their job many others can work on other things at the same time, not so much in our case.
I also gave the update to the newest Unity version a shot. It broke too many things. I worked on trying to solve it all, but realized the time lost vs. the payoff is not worth it. The newer render pipelines are nothing I need, I am very happy with the look I achieved and I will stay on my current version throughout development. Another lesson learned which is good but cost time.
Finally (all problems come in 3s) our 2D artist founded his own company and is not as available anymore as he once was. I am looking for a good replacement which will take time. I have no doubt I find another talent willing to work with us, so don't worry.
After all that, development is on track again now!!
I guess I had to suffer a little. It's just part of the process.
On a happier note, here is a new backer portrait, Frank:
After some issues I wrote about in the last update everything is back to normal and development is progressing at a good pace.
I think it's no surprise that most of my work the last month was worldbuilding and quest scripting. I am quite excited about how the world is turning out, but I am biased of course. If you like what you saw so far you won't be disappointed by everything else I have built so far. Screenshots coming soon.
This might sound cheesy, but it's truly exciting for me to create the continuation of the story of the series we all (or most here) love so much. My motivation is at 110%
I love the excuses. Lets have some fun. First off, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the transition to bold-faced use of Cape of Heroes without any quotes. EA's IP preservation team in legal will surely love those details. Richard Garriott is involved? That makes sense - that's what got his Ultimate Collector shut down in about 3 months from actual launch.
I am hard at work with Cape of Heroes still, all aspects of it, worldbuilding, quests... I will show some of it soon. It's going very well, but time is just rushing by.
Wasn't that supposed to be Shroud of the Avatar? The game Lord Brexit bailed from for this, and then from this to his NFT fuckery? These people even had MassivelyOP print an article specifically for this! What an amazing state the MMO genre must be in lately.
First of all I got stuck on a problem scripting a cutscene. It took me a good while to figure it out and it almost drove me crazy. I learned a lot fixing it but the disadvantages of being a mini team come to light in situations like this. In a big team if someone gets stuck doing their job many others can work on other things at the same time, not so much in our case.
Mini team? So far all he's been able to tell us about is his blunders and show off the commissions he paid an artist for and not much else but push a spiritual authentic sequel to Ultima. Should anyone tell them that the writing and setting that Richard has been known for was mostly written by teams of other people since Ultima IV? Before then it was a little leaning on plagiarism. Oh, I get it now. They're going that far back in Ultima development where Richard later pretended that he made Ultima all by himself and it was completely original and the entire RPG genre sprouted out of his backside. (Also See: Avatar (1979))
I also gave the update to the newest Unity version a shot. It broke too many things. I worked on trying to solve it all, but realized the time lost vs. the payoff is not worth it. The newer render pipelines are nothing I need, I am very happy with the look I achieved and I will stay on my current version throughout development. Another lesson learned which is good but cost time.
I see absolutely nothing was learned from UIX: Redemption's development.
Finally (all problems come in 3s) our 2D artist founded his own company and is not as available anymore as he once was. I am looking for a good replacement which will take time. I have no doubt I find another talent willing to work with us, so don't worry.
You mean someone was paying a la carte as they go and didn't have asset production secured in ink? I know I shouldn't be surprised from the same talent who took months to make a demo of moveable objects, but sweet Jesus, this is why I follow these shitshows. The amount of money people will throw towards My First Unity Project Online University has been... well, the appropriate adjectives are owned by another company.
Just like the IP they are using - it IS now an authentic Lord British game.
I know I have said it before but it's still true: it's incredible how time flies.
I could have sworn the last update was just three weeks ago, but here we are.
What am I doing? Putting my head down and working like crazy. That's really the essence of it. Being annoyed with scripts not working like they should. Getting a huge part of a quest done in no time but then getting stuck for days on a detail that just won't work, making my head hurt to a point where I am convinced that I have either lost all sense of logic or the script turned evil and is slowly trying to drive me into insanity on purpose.
I am constantly world building as well of course. By the way, I am doing parts of foliage auto-generated with parameters I set before of course, but I go over every part of it and adjust manually what I don't like. I can honestly say that no part of this world is not either completely or partially designed manually. Nothing is just left up to chance.
Sometimes I go too far and catch myself doing it. I obsess over the placement of a bush or rock and have to shake myself out of it and realize that when playing no one will truly care if this or that object is an inch further to the left or right.
Instead of showing anything about the game's actual progress here's another commissioned backer portrait.
Stay tuned until December for the same level of detail about October and November!
The initial goal was to be done by the end of the year, but that obviously did not happen. I worked relentless on the game, no vacations, nothing, but still I am far from done. I was too optimistic.
After all the experience I gathered over the last 2 years I reevaluated the time it will take me to be done. It will be by the end of 2024. There is no sugar coating it, this is just how it is. I don't want to string you along month by month, I want to be honest.
There is no problem in development, everything is going as smoothly as is can. Of course there are problems which get me stuck from time to time, I wrote about some of them here, but nothing major. I am not trying to make excuses I am just being realistic. If anyone is really disappointed by that then I am truly sorry! I want to do it right and not rush the second half of development.
Some might say I should just get more people to work on it but I very intentionally did not do that and won't do that. Working on something without payment is something I can not force anyone to do. If someone like that decides to leave I can not stop them and then half-done work by that person needs to be picked up by someone else, most likely me, and by experience I can say that is sometimes worse than if I would have done it by myself from the start.
Again, there is no problem, no project or private issue, no other excuse other than that I am working on it and am not fast enough. Nothing changed, just the time-frame.
My first vacation in years will be summer 2023, when I travel back to Europe for the first time in a loong time.
I hope you all understand and are not too disappointed.
