How much is Garriott paying them to name-drop him and Shroud of the Avatar in every single interview?Nothing new? Looks like they have already run out of ideas.
Zep--
Gotta have a clue to have ideas. These guys never had either.
Zep--
How much is Garriott paying them to name-drop him and Shroud of the Avatar in every single interview?Nothing new? Looks like they have already run out of ideas.
Zep--
Gotta have a clue to have ideas. These guys never had either.
Zep--
Zep--
How much is Garriott paying them to name-drop him and Shroud of the Avatar in every single interview?Nothing new? Looks like they have already run out of ideas.
Zep--
Gotta have a clue to have ideas. These guys never had either.
Zep--
Zep--
Making the Magic Happen
In this early stage of Underworld Ascendant development, the fundamentals of the core game systems are a major design focus. We are fleshing out systems for movement, combat, character abilities, object interactions, and more. Right now, I’m up to my elbows in the magic system. The details are constantly changing (here I am, changing them), but the goals and overall approach are constant. So this week, we’d like to share a little bit about our direction for the game’s magic system.
As longtime fans will know, players chose spells in Underworld 1 & 2 by selecting sequences of collectible rune stones. One such sequence could be prepared at a time, indicating a spell that could then be cast repeatedly (while the character’s mana held out). Each rune was associated with a meaning such as “light” or “harm,” and the rune formulas for different spells had a kind of logic based on those meanings. This helped it to feel that certain laws of magic underlay the system, and players could even guess a few undocumented spells based on rune meanings.
The magic system in the original Underworlds was very well received, and a lot of things about it still hold up well today. There are also aspects of it that didn’t work as well, and things people liked which we hope to do even better. So, Underworld Ascendant takes that magic system as its jumping-off point, changing and improving the system where it seems appropriate.
First, as with every other aspect of the game, we’ll be modernizing the user interface. I’m developing systems now to reduce the large mouse-clicking overhead, making casting more streamlined and making it possible to switch prepared spells more smoothly.
Yeah, we'll modernize this a bit...
Other changes in our approach to magic reflect the wider context of what we’ve learned about character progression in our years of development experience. The skill and progression systems in the 90’s took a lot of cues from pen-and-paper RPGs that don’t necessarily work as well through the veil of automation. As a simple example, maybe you have to make a die roll to successfully cast a spell in a tabletop game. You can see all the die rolls, because you’re the one rolling. But on a PC, if you try to cast a spell and it doesn’t work, the veil of automation can make that failed die roll hard to tell from a lost mouse click. So in Underworld Ascendant, the whole character skill system will be getting an overhaul to reflect the last 25 years’ advancement in user experience, and the magic system is no exception.
More fundamentally, we’d like to capitalize on the strong concept of the game’s rune language. As evocative as it was in the original Underworld games, players were ultimately still limited to a set of pre-authored spells. In Underworld Ascendant, we’ll be experimenting with using the runes as a true language for varying different aspects of players’ spells procedurally. For example, some Underworld spells had more powerful versions tagged with the “Vas” rune. But what if you could change the power level of any spell? Maybe change the way a spell is delivered to its target, or how it draws its mana? We have a number of ideas to try out, and these kinds of tests are a great opportunity afforded to us by our early access backers.
Finally, what it even means to be a wizard has changed as our culture has developed new ideals about adventurers of every kind. Gamers in the early 90’s had never seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. We can’t help but be influenced by Thief and the explosion of other stealth-action games since 1998. Truly fantastic abilities in RPGs are no longer the exclusive domain of spell casters. So the whole spell list is being reconsidered top to bottom, to make sure that each character building strategy has its own distinctive style and advantages. Hint:spider climb will not be a wizard spell, but not to worry, they’ll have other options of their own.
Hope you have enjoyed this look into our thought process on magic. Let us know what you think of this design direction in the forums!
Until next time!
Lead Designer Tim
Other Stuff
OtherSide is happy to announce that Joe Fielder, who’s been helping shape Underworld Ascendant’s narrative the last few months, has come aboard full-time as Design Director. Joe’s worked as a writer, designer, producer, and creative director on games like BioShock Infinite, BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea, Lost Within, The Black Glove, BOOM BLOX, and the Medal of Honor series. He’ll be helping guide Underworld Ascendant’s player experience (the place where level design, systems design, and narrative all meet), digging deep into the game’s world-building elements, and more.
Next Wednesday, May 20th from 1pm to 2pm EDT we will be Twitching a play session of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Join Paul, Chris, Tim and Scott as we delve in to this game’s lauded combat system. What are the lessons to learn from Dark Messiah’s motion based combat mechanics? What parts should we aspire to use in Underworld Ascendant? What should we avoid? All good questions that will (hopefully) be answered while we play this classic fantasy game from 2006!
Isn't this a attribute of nearly all kickstarters?
Huh, I've replayed DMoMM 6 times and I never realized you could put an enemy off-balance by blocking with your sword at the right moment.
Howdy folks! This week sees the launch of a new feature for these updates: Answers From the Abyss. This is where we will answer questions posed to us on the forums from backers and followers like yourself, hopefully shedding more light on our development process and satisfying your curiosity on any Underworld Ascendant based subject that concerns you.
Before we get to that, however, we’d like to also announce that starting next week we will no longer be using Kickstarter for distribution of our weekly updates. Instead we will be moving the updates over to a direct email distribution method, which will give us more control of the format and contents of the updates.
We will still post occasional “update digests” to Kickstarter to ensure that folks who discoverUnderworld Ascendant via Kickstarter can still find out what’s going on with the game. But going forward our primary method for giving our backers and followers important information about the game will be via the weekly email updates.
For those of you who have backed the game via Kickstarter or our webstore, or who have signed up to the OtherSide Entertainment forums, you need do nothing to receive these future updates. We already have your email and so you will be automatically added to the distribution list. For those of you who have not backed the game nor signed up for the forums, and who do want to receive weekly updates on the game, we suggest you do one of those things in order to get added to the list!
We look forward to showing you the new look for our updates next week!
Answers From the Abyss
We’ll plan to do Answers From the Abyss every month or so going forward. In the week prior to each Answers From the Abyss update we’ll post in the forums a thread asking for your questions. We’ll pull from that thread the questions we think are most interesting and relevant for our readers and answer them.
So, without further ado, onto those questions!
“How much do you rely on (non-developer) playtesting in development? Are you bringing people in as early as the prototype phases?” –GameOutLoudRob
Some. Early on the team will be doing a ton of playtesting, some of the community, and of course our friends, family and other industry people.
One of the great things about going outside the inner circle for testing is you get fresh eyes. Fresh eyes are extremely important. When you are close to a game, you start accepting the warts and issues, and you have to be reminded they are still issues. Beyond fresh eyes, the more people that touch the game, the more ways we can see how people interact. What we want, and really what is our goal, is for someone to come up with ways of using all of our systems in ways we never thought of.
“What does the team envision for the soundtrack? Something akin to Arx? Something even more minimalist (I hope not)?” – CyberP
We haven’t yet sorted out just what we’re doing for music in the game. That said, we have talked about music being created around the factions and their homes. Dwarven Metal? Elvish bagpipes? Shambler…woodwinds? What do Shamblers listen to? Phish?
It would be great to ‘see’ the thing making the music; a minstrel, a choir, some weird dwarven contraption that plays crystals…
This adds to the whole Underworld experience. Ambient sounds become your symphony, sound and silence become important for gameplay and for atmosphere. And, maybe the deeper you go, the darker it gets, and the quieter it becomes. It’s where the real evil lurks, and you don’t know it’s there until….
“I’m curious how you are looking to scale the difficulty levels? Is it going to be similar to the system in System Shock, where there are certain sub-categories that can be scaled (eg Story, Combat, Puzzle) or is it just going to be one “Easy/Medium/Hard/Impossible” with the possibility of an Ironman mode?” - SirhcOran
This is a tough question, and not one we’ve put a lot of thought into yet. With the open-endedness at the core of Underworld Ascendant’s design, and the fact that most, if not all, situations can be resolved by means other than combat, the usual tropes of scaling the difficulty of monsters, for instance, probably won’t work for us.
Likely our difficulty scaling will entail dialing up the “bad” effects of numerous things across the spectrum of game play, not unlike the system from System Shock you call out. In harder difficulties players might regenerate mana/health slower AND endure greater effects from hot and cold environments AND find monsters to be tougher AND find monsters to have a higher awareness of stealth AND find NPCs harder to trick/sway/haggle.
Again, still early in the process. Once we have the game in a state where we can really start thinking about how we muck with difficulty we’ll surely try all sorts of different ways to do just that, and find the one that works best.
“Why do you think the streaming of the game world isn't used more by game devs in general? And what about the UA case? (well, ok, it's two questions )” - Ianael
In our case, it’s more a technical issue than a process one. With a constrained space like the Underworld, it would still be relatively easy to build it in individual levels with defined connection points, even if those were merged into one big world at run-time. However, a simulation-heavy game has to save a lot of object state, and streaming all of that in and out of memory can be a bit of a chore technically. It may be a solvable problem, but it’s not our top priority.
“Will there be damage types?” – Shadowtiger
Yes, absolutely. Crushing, slashing, fire, cold, etc. Some creatures and things will be more vulnerable or impervious to some types of damage, and players will be able to use this knowledge to good effect.
“How involved is Paul with the game's design?” – CyberP
Very much, and he teaches us things every day. This is Paul’s vision.
CyberP said:
Progression of an Art Concept
This week, Art Lead Dave Flamburis is going to take us through his process for creating concept art. Dave was tasked with concepting out how the natural caverns of the Underworld might be transformed into livable and utilitarian structures. Something the dwarves, elves or even some past race who existed in the Abyss might do. Enjoy!
When starting a new concept piece I like to build up the "skeleton" of the composition. To do this I jump into a modeling program like 3DS Max where it's easy to knock out basic shapes.
Here, we can see a top-down view of the space I'll be concepting. I'm going to set the camera across the diagonal so the lines of force converge on the Catherdral-like form's opening. The cylinders represent rock formations. The yellow components are the base terrain and an overhead bridge. The buildings have strong vertical lines and will be used to develop a signature look to much of the surrounding rock walls.
I'll create a camera with a wide field of view so it mimics an in-game POV and frame the scene out.
Here we can see the camera view from which I'll be developing the composition. I'm using a 75 degree field of view to keep more in line with in-game POV and frame the scene out. I'm using the yellow bridge form across the top of the frame to keep the current focus on the scene's middle-space.
Although the space will be primarily composed of natural components, you can see how perspective and verticality carry through when using classical structures and over-the-top cathedral-like elements. The cylindrical components push the scene up and break up the flatter yellow terrain.
I'm going with a broad composition with depth for several reasons. I'm interested in creating several areas of interest and I also want the option to close in on a portion of the scene.
Once I have the scene elements composed, I'll add a flat grey material to the objects and start a light and shadow pass.
For this piece, I start with no lights at all, just a black scene, and add a single point light. And then another, and another. I'll add a few fill lights to pull out ambient form, but the key lights, which are brighter and colored, are the scene's focal points. So although the previous slide shows a much denser environment, we strip away most of the form and re-add it one light at a time.
The lights are casting shadows and are fully dynamic. I'm using 3ds max's Octane renderer, which allows me to use dynamic shadows directly in the viewport, so there's no need to render out a frame. It's a real-time environment and aside from lack of global illumination, it does a decent job of establishing mood.
Next I'll snag the viewport and bring the image into Photoshop for overpainting.
The rock formations along the back are derived from the cathedral-like forms. There's a dynamic and fantasy aspect to the rocks. However, I left the center entrance more defined for contrast. I want a nice cluster of worked stone around the opening. I'm also playing with the idea of using stalagmites as small columns. Not quite sure if this is going to survive the concepting phase.
At this stage, I want to try out a few color ideas, so the palette is less unified and more experimental. I also destroyed the bridge and started merging the cylinder shapes into terrain. At this point, I also call in the team to give feedback. No need to wait for a finished piece for useful critique.
The team's consensus is that the most interesting part of the piece is the area around the cathedral entrance, so I'm going to expand that more and use those elements through the rest of the piece. Folks also found the lower left of the painting, as well as the deformed bridge, to be confusing and not in line with the more solidly built structures surrounding them. It was also decided to add a clearer "pathway" through the piece so that viewers could imagine walking and exploring through the area.
Here's the final image, where I unify the palette, incorporate the team feedback, and resolve a few other issues.
I want to go there! Imagine the things to discover. What is through the "cathedral" archway? Where do the stairs on the right go? So many shadowy alcoves, SOMETHING must be hiding there, right?
I hope you agree. Thanks for reading!
-Art Lead Dave
OTHER STUFF
For the past few months forumite Santa Clause has been posting into the forums some music pieces inspired by the Underworld. He's redone some music from the original games in an orchestral style, and created new compositions inspired by his imaginings of walking through the Stygian Abyss. We are really enjoying the music here in the OtherSide offices, and we think you will too!
Check them out in the Fan Submissions forum and give Santa Clause some feedback and encouragement.
'Till next week!
The OtherSide Team
What’s in a Biome?
Last week we shed light on how Art Lead Dave has begun concept work on nailing down how the Underworld will look, how we’ll use lighting in the game, and what proportion of natural vs. man-made structures will make up the Abyss. This week we thought we’d talk about what kinds of environments will make up the Underworld, and how the different areas will affect not only the look of the Underworld, but also what can be found there.
Basically, let’s talk about biomes.
We’ve already revealed that we plan for Underworld Ascendant to have a fully functioning ecological system and will be filled with flora and fauna that are established in clearly defined predator/prey tiers, feeding on each other, migrating when food becomes scarce, and proliferating when food is in abundance. This system will be self-sustaining and perpetual.
Well, at least until the player shows up and starts messing with things.
But, the Underworld isn’t going to have just one established food chain with every creature neatly fitting into a specific slot on the chain. Just as in the real world, the Underworld will have different areas, different biomes, each with their own natural inhabitants and each with unique food chain structures.
Not only will this feel more “real” but it also allows us to make different areas of the Underworld unique and different. And just as each area will have a different look, they will also have a different feel.
So, what are the types of biomes we can expect to find in the Underworld? And what types of life will be found in each?
Most of the Underworld is likely to consist of “typical” cavern and excavated areas, the type of terrain one would expect to find in a dungeon crawler: dry to damp passageways, small open areas with all sorts of stalactites and stalagmites, carved out chambers, stairwells and ancient ruins. We can think of this type of terrain as the standard for the Underworld, on which the rest of the biomes will be based.
As such, the typical cave biome will also hold the most variety of life. It’s an easy place to get by, after all. It has water, but isn’t too wet. It’s cool to warm. It has a varying level of natural light (bioluminescence). And lots of room for different varieties of plant, fungus and creature to find a niche and thrive.
Variety breeds stability. We can expect the typical cave biome to have a much more solid foundation to its ecology than other biomes. If one food source dies out or leaves, others can be found with little stress to the system. If a predator starts to become numerous we can expect their predators to whittle down the numbers fairly quickly. Of all the biomes, the natural caves are the most balanced and stable.
The hot caverns biome requires a bit more specialization from its inhabitants. Filled with lava flows and pools, the hot caverns are quite dry and, well, pretty hot. For life to exist here it’s going to have to get creative. Plants or fungus with deep roots to reach as far as possible for moisture; predators who can hunt at a distance from the cooler perimeter away from the lava.
This being a fantasy world, however, means this creativity can take some pretty dramatic directions. Hellhounds and lavabats, for instance, literally have fire in their bellies, with the later actually using lava as a means for digestion. These guys don’t give a whit about the existence of water and thus would be some of the more common creatures found in this biome.
Light will be pervasive in the hot cavern biome, as perpetual as the flow of lava itself. How do predators work in a setting with almost no darkness? What changes in behavior will this cause? Creatures with a natural camouflage might become dominant, like that of the Shadow Beast who can blend perfectly into his environment regardless of the level of light.
We can imagine the Underswamp biome being almost the polar opposite of the hot cavern biome. Here, water is everywhere, and darkness and shadow. Finding sustenance is easy in the Underswamp and therefore is a less important skill to have. Being able to defend against your predators starts to become paramount. And in the Underswamp there are plenty of predators…
With so much food to be found growing in the Underswamp, from lichens and plants to trees and mushrooms, it is here we start to see the first true herbivores and grazers in the Underworld. But, unlike deer or antelope, grazers have to use more than simple speed to avoid becoming someone else’s lunch; though big, the Underswamp isn’t so big that a creature could run for miles to get away from a predator.
Size is always a good defense mechanism, and in the Underswamp we begin to see some truly massive animals, the lurker being a prime example. Other defenses come to light as well, the spiked shell of the stygian turtle, or the mind-numbing gaze of the catoblepas.
With so many things eating them, plants in the Underswamp have developed defenses too. Poisonous mushrooms are a constant danger, of course. Another is gasmoss, globular plants that fill themselves with swamp gas and explode when bitten into. The Underswamp is filled with unpleasant surprises.
The fungal forest biome presents its own interesting quandaries to predator and prey alike. Dark and damp and filled with sound deadening fungal turf and growths, this mock forest is eerily quiet and dangerous. Improved senses are a must for both the eater and the possibly eaten, as well as a digestion suitably disposed towards lots of mushrooms.
Of all the biomes in the Underworld it is hardest to track and hunt prey in the fungal forest. With plenty of line of sight obstructions, and the spongy, sound proof floor, it is hard to stay on target. Predators who specialize in laying traps to catch their food are very successful in this environment, such as giant spiders and their web snares.
The use of darkness can also give advantage here. Though the forest is lit with plenty of bioluminescent sources, these do more to light the source than their surroundings. Those creatures that are most at home in the dark, such as the ghostly famishers and the petulant dire faeries, rule this muted landscape.
And with the pervasiveness of bioluminescence, creatures who can mimic such lights, to draw in those looking for safety, have carved out their own unique space on the predator list. Like that of the Webless spiders whose eyes look like glowing mushrooms but whose jaws inject a lethal poison, or the forest lurker, whose specialized extra tentacle glows at the tip like a welcoming beacon in the dark, not all lights in forest are your friend.
I hope you enjoyed this look into how we are thinking about the environments of the Underworld. The best part of making a fantasy RPG like Underworld Ascendant is that you can really let your imagination run wild as you explore all the wonderful possibilities in a magical world. Stay tuned for more magic to come!
Cheers,
Senior Designer Scott
Other Stuff
Our friends at inXile Entertainment have started their next Kickstarter campaign, and this one is especially close our hearts. The Bard’s Tale IV looks to continue the revival of the dungeon crawler in grand fashion, with party based adventuring, turn based combat and a vivid visual style. Check it out here and join us in backing this revival of a classic game and classic genre .
‘Till next week!
The OtherSide Team
