Game News Ultima Underworld-inspired dungeon crawler Monomyth is coming to Kickstarter

[RatTower]

Then why kickstarter? Just release the thing E/A and good luck to you

Isn't financing a project by selling an unfinished version of it arguably worse than giving out a free demo and letting people decide whether they wanna chip in afterwards?
The kickstarter will finance assets I cannot make myself (for example, music) and finance company expenses for the rest of development. I see EA as a pre-release to get a beta build tested on several different machines and to reward those that wanna help with a little discount.
But I guess that's up to the game. EA for a singleplayer game is different from that of a multiplayer survival game I suppose.

You are right in so far though that I did not make realistic plans. However: That was primarily with regards to my academic position. We (that is me and my supervisor) actually thought I could be done by June 2020 (and before that in December 2019 etc etc).
Now besides all the stuff that was going on back then, being that much off the mark is actually quite common. Another guy, who finished his thesis last August, wanted to do so last January.
It's the nature of the beast in academics: You are dependent on reviewers and publications at conferences which have an acceptance rate of roughly 20% (that is, if you go for A ranked conferences).
We made unrealistic plans in that regard and I even pointed that out not too long ago.

That pushed development back. And yes there were also delays entirely due to my own misjudgement in terms of development itself. But remember: I never took money. So I gave myself the permission to be somewhat lenient in that regard. At least as long as I still had academic goals. I know it's not ideal, but then again: No transaction, no harm.
I still pushed for an alpha demo and tried to keep the enthusiasm going with regular updates, but it was always clear to me that serious plans could only be made with the conclusion of my academic position at the horizon.
That time is now. So I'd say, just lean back and see what the next few weeks bring.

If you have any more questions about my plans, feel free to ask.

 

[Burning Bridges]

RatTower, what I wrote was not directed against you personally, nor will I not acknowledge that you have provided a very polished prototype. Maybe you can pull this off .. I wish you luck.

Just don't underestimate the task you have in front of you, or the backlash if you should overpromise.

As to your question, depending on the state of the game one could rather selll it as a modest E/A for a fair handful of bucks than making a kickstarter with lofty goals and then get into foreseeable problems. Those problems could be of financial, professional and psychological nature and the latter could actually be quite severe once you have an army of people putting pressure on you, including yourself. Whereas if you sell a 5$ E/A game everyone by now should know that it may be all they get. There is afaik no moral or legal obligation to deliver years of work if people accepted an early access version with a 2 hours refund window. If they keep it they have accepted the deal.

Don't underestimate what happened the many people before, for example the developer of Rogue System. Or Frontiers (Lars Simkins) who attempted a goal similar to yours. Those are just a few who come to mind but there are hundreds. Countless developers develop a blockade and just cannot continue at some point in the future. If you still need to deliver a product this must be hell on Earth.

Whereas if you already delivered an E/A version you can cancel the project at any time and take the reputation damage. But running away from an incomplete kickstarter will be crushing to yourself and others.

If you want an example how a single developer could run a successful plan I would look at Reentry - An Orbital Simulator (Wilhelmsen Software). The people are very happy with what they get and he seems to have been able to motivate himself for years. Even though that game is far from complete it allows you to fly missions in Earth orbit and to the Moon and he constantly improves it.

I hope this clears up a bit what I meant.

 

[Nyast]

Again, the problem I have with your "arguments" is that you're treating one negative experience you've had and extrapolating it to everybody else. "One day I got scammed by a black man, therefore all black men are scammers". That's exactly what you're doing here and I find that disgusting.

That's fine with me, especially as you are intellectually dishonest in deliberately twisting things I never said. I am just here to lower expectations a little while you try to raise them. If the game is indeed close to completion and "better than some AAA games" then what difference does my post do?

It's not close to completion, as I said there's probably at least a year or two of work remaining. You came in from nowhere, had nothing positive to say, only criticism, you were pretty clear that this dev had no chance of succeeding, and by your own words you don't even want to give him the benefit of the doubt, in fact you almost implied he's a scammer that's trying to take money to finance his thesis.

Warning people that Kickstarter is a risk is one thing, but what you did is basically disrespecting the hard work of an indy dev you know nothing about. It's pretty clear now that you don't see anything wrong with that, so I think we can respectfully agree to disagree and move on.

 

[Burning Bridges]

It's all right Nyast, I think RatTower is the only one who got what I wrote - no point in any more back and forth with you.

 

[Andhaira]

Looks good.

RatTower What kind of system requirements are you going for? Is this made in Unity or your own custom engine? Also will there be any feats/talents/perks for the character building system?

 

[RatTower]

Looks good.

RatTower What kind of system requirements are you going for? Is this made in Unity or your own custom engine? Also will there be any feats/talents/perks for the character building system?

It's running on UE4. Most of it was developed on a mid-range PC from 2015. The character system will have 11 skills, but no perks (I suppose you mean something like the attribute/skill bonuses in Fallout?).

 

[ShaggyMoose]

I never heard of King's Field before; I guess because it was only released for Playstation. Interesting that it was developed by the same team that later made the Dark Souls series.

Game looks worth keeping an eye on, good luck with the Kickstarter!

 

[Andhaira]

Looks good.

RatTower What kind of system requirements are you going for? Is this made in Unity or your own custom engine? Also will there be any feats/talents/perks for the character building system?

It's running on UE4. Most of it was developed on a mid-range PC from 2015. The character system will have 11 skills, but no perks (I suppose you mean something like the attribute/skill bonuses in Fallout?).

I mean something like talents or feats special abilities that give your character a bonus or all them to do something they normally could not (run faster in armor, see in darkness, get a bonus to a skill over and above the normal cap, specialize in a weapon, get a special move in combat like a power attack, etc)

 

[JDR13]

I never heard of King's Field before; I guess because it was only released for Playstation. Interesting that it was developed by the same team that later made the Dark Souls series.

It was a series actually. There were four games total between the PS1 and PS2. They haven't aged well, but they were great for their time. I'd love to see a modern day version of them.

 

[RatTower]

Looks good.

RatTower What kind of system requirements are you going for? Is this made in Unity or your own custom engine? Also will there be any feats/talents/perks for the character building system?

It's running on UE4. Most of it was developed on a mid-range PC from 2015. The character system will have 11 skills, but no perks (I suppose you mean something like the attribute/skill bonuses in Fallout?).

I mean something like talents or feats special abilities that give your character a bonus or all them to do something they normally could not (run faster in armor, see in darkness, get a bonus to a skill over and above the normal cap, specialize in a weapon, get a special move in combat like a power attack, etc)

There is no dedicated talent system like that but parts of what you listed can be done with utility items.

 

[Invictus]

Fallout style perks are nice and all but how about a nice attribute and skill only game for once? All those flash “run up the wall” or “awesome button” perks are very videogamey and modern... this project seems to be a love letter to true dungeon crawlers like Ultima Underworld and Arx Fatalis that had relatively straightforward systems that keep things simple for once

I always think of one of the my favorite series; the Stalker series where your character doesn’t have levels or experience and you basically get tougher and better by finding better gear which in turn gives you better damage, better resistance, etc
It made away with the whole perk ideology of “now you are better at headshots” by literally making you (the player) become better at headshots if you wanted to use that strategy rather than your character magically developing a perk to make them more special and wonderful

 

[TheDiceMustRoll]

Strong potential. I hope this indie immersive sim renaissance ends up better than what happened with RPGs.

I wouldn't even be on this site if it wasn't for Pillars of Eterni- Oh, I see what you're getting at. Imagine what retard is gonna show up next!