KickStarter Underworld Ascendant Pre-Release Thread

[rusty_shackleford]

what does "immersion sim" even mean?

 

[Thal]

But gameplay can only "emerge" because everything beforehand is carefully handcrafted.

I disagree: Nethack. Emergent gameplay can clearly succeed even with procedural elements. In fact it requires a degree of uncertainty, because then designers do not know what solutions players can come up, because they don't know what they are working with. Then they have to design challenges in a way that they can be completed reasonably, or the player can go somewhere else (another emergent element). The problem with physics based emergent gameplay is that I'd expect solutions to be obvious to plain sight.

My best experience of emergent gameplay from CRPGs actually comes from Oblivion. I'm not sure if you remember but due to enemy level and loot scaling the game was hard on first playthrough. So I stumble upon a cave full of necromancers near Skingrad. I entered the main room with a whole bunch of them and then they would oneshot me with lightning bolts. I tried it a couple of times but it was obvious that I could never beat them.

And then I did the thing that should be the core feature of emergent gameplay systems in CRPGs: I looked into my inventory and checked what I was working with. For a split second Oblivion played like Nethack.

A scroll of Daedroth. It was pretty early in the game so I hadn't actually encountered one during the game yet, but I knew from Morrowind that they were powerful. So I decided to give it a shot, rushed to the end of the tunnel, casted it and turned my tail and ran. I could hear spell effect slowly forming and then, a massive cascade of lighting followed by a thunderous roar. I saw a massive shape leap across the entrance of the tunnel and could hear the cries of pain as necromancers began to die rapidly. Soon, the lighting bolts ceased and it became completely quiet. I knew I had done good but was still wary of the lone survivor who could still take me on. But all I saw were dead bodies. That was 12 years ago and I still remember it. From a mediocre game that could never really replicate the experience. But that's how powerful emergent gameplay can be. I remember it because it was all me. I solved a problem that was unique to my circumstances and which at first glance seemed impossible to solve.

From that we can deduce following things: Emergent gameplay is borne of challenge. There is no point to come up with outside solutions, if the most immediate solution is also viable and executed quickly. I would have never looked into my inventory, if I could have hacked the necromancers to pieces. Second, you have to provide players a chance to acquire a variety of tools which they can then use to accomplish tasks. Emergent gameplay doesn't have to be the defining element of every encounter. That's when you fall back to your core gameplay systems, namely engaging combat, level design and AI. Roguelikes like Nethack are an exception, because emergent gameplay is the core system. Since absolutely everything is random, you'll have to react to your environment and come up with novel solutions. It can get away with bare bones AI, practically no level design and simple combat since other systems are so robust.

 

[Tacgnol]

what does "immersion sim" even mean?

It's a game where you can stack boxes to reach things higher up.

Serious answer: I suppose I would define an immersive sim as a game where the world reacts in a semi-realistic manner and allows for unscripted solutions to challenges.

 

[someone else]

Delay release until it is worthy successor of Ultima Underworld.

 

[Siveon]

Delay release until it is worthy successor of Ultima Underworld.

So... forever?

 

[Max Heap]

So... 15th of November huh...

I'm pretty sure they will (want to) delay it.
The question is how long they can still squeeze cash out of 505 if they already agreed on a release date with them?
My gut feeling is telling me "December", but no longer.

My guess is that's the "official" date to save face in front of the publisher.
Internally they probably know they need more time, expecting negotiations for a new release date around august.
The argument will probably be along the lines of "Now a lot of things are clearer and we can narrow down a concrete date for a finished/feature complete product"
Depends on 505 and if they'll play along. Considering how long Otherside has worked on this they probably cost that publisher quite a bit of cash.

But as I said... it's just a gut feeling of mine that that's what's going on in the background.

Only two weeks off.
That said, the release date might still slip into december, depending on how the next two months go.
Never doubt your guts.

 

[Nyast]

https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=6047.60

2. Have final decisions been taken on how to connect levels, portals etc? If so, what?
Basically it is hub and spoke. Do missions, go back to Marcaul. With the size of the team it was unfortunately impossible to pull off a full continuous dungeon. UA2 as we say.

So here we go, goodbye continuous dungeon, welcome teleporters.

 

[BEvers]

No rivers and no sleeping too. Modern sequels are just going backwards.

 

[Curratum]

It was fairly obvious that there would be no connected, continuous world for quite a while now.

Lack of flowing water and sleeping are the least of the game's issues...

 

[RatTower]

2. Have final decisions been taken on how to connect levels, portals etc? If so, what?
Basically it is hub and spoke. Do missions, go back to Marcaul. With the size of the team it was unfortunately impossible to pull off a full continuous dungeon. UA2 as we say.

I might be wrong, but that seems more like a design rather than a resource issue to me.
The core problem of a "great staircase" is not that its an extra area. It's the fact that people have to backtrack through it all the time without getting bored. So you gotta design your world around the fact that in one level there is constant parallel progression (opening up the staircase) and all the other areas are built around that. Dark Souls handled that really well... this illustration is not entirely accurate but it gives a rough idea concerning the issue:

Spoiler

At the end of the game you can basically walk from the highest tower to the lowest cavern in a couple of minutes. That's your "staircase". All the other levels are built around it. Every opened shortcut further opens the staircase.

Problem with Dark Souls is that its areas are essentially "wide hallways" and Ultima Underworld's maps are pretty open compared to that.
So what you really gotta do is making a "linear" stair case level and hooking in a bunch of open levels. The question is: How do these connect to the stair case and to each other in a useful way? (without becoming hallways again). And that's a really tough nut to crack. Something you certainly won't do half a year before release, let alone two or three months.

One thing you can do are hubs, interlinked with hubs, interlinked with the great staircase. That can somewhat simplify the problem if you cut the world into sections. King's Field 4 partly did that (Oceanfort area was pretty much removed from the rest of the game, interlinked with widda castle, which was interlinked with the egg mines, which lead back to the central tower, which is the great staircase in KF4).
And if you wanna go extra crazy you add a "parallel dimension" teleport area, that acts as a shortcut to all other areas like in KF2. And in the end nobody will know what the hell is going on anymore because you get lost all the time and it's great

 

[Invictus]

I dont mind not having an interconnecting world, we all know that was a bit of a reach given the budget and size of the team and to be honest a “hub” would work pretty much the same as it does in Dark Souls
...but taking away simple concepts such as the underground rivers and sleeping that were such an integral part of Ultima Underworld, I mean why oh why couldn’t those idiots understand

WE DONT WANT FUCKING BOX PUZZLES or fucking magic puzzle boxes

We wanted pretty much an updated Underworld with dungeon crawling and a believable dungeon... not this bullshit

And the ultimate proof is this: take away the Underworld name and I dare ANYBODY to look at any of the screen shots they have shown and say “Oh yeah that is like Ultima Underworld” it looks like any of those pieces of shit cutesy games like Trine with cartoony graphics and soul glow skeletons ffs

I have lost ALL hope this will be even mediocre, there is not a single thing they have shown has made me say “hey that might be good, even if anything else is bad that might be cool”
I mean, I am reaching for something ANYtHING at this point

Oh and this is coming from a guy who held hope for 5 years for Grimoire while evwrybody else laughed and ranted...

 

[SophosTheWise]

6. Will there be flowing water?
As in a current? Sadly no. Early on we played with a bunch of fluid systems and the reality for this game is it wasn't worth the effort or cost. Being us, we wanted to do physics based water, and it was just too damn costly to pull off. As I'm typing this...I just thought of a way of faking it....

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The more we know about the game the clearer it gets that those devs are just building a physics-sandbox withouth any meaningful content.

But yeah, they've apparently never heard the phrase "kill your darlings". Instead they kill everything else and only keep the darlings. That's working out great for them.

 

[Invictus]

Yeah I mean the last game they must played was Portal ffs

It is crucial especially with small teams and budgets such as this case for the teams to try to not to bite more than they can chew; the physics and puzzles are nice but your primary concern should always be the main gameplay mechanics and design of the dungeons itself
Look at Bethesda, their quests and dialogue are atrocious but the actual design of the gameworld is superb, and while the dungeons were dumbed down to be one way the look and design was prett good actually... nobody gives a fuck for “physic puzzkes” if the actual design of the game and gameplay is shitty

If they had tried to stick as close as possible to Underworld, hey even maybe doing a straight up remake, I would have forgiven limitations because of their budget and team size, but see they focused more on stupid shit as burning doors and physically accurate boxes...

You know what? Fuck this shit I am setting this thread to ignore I don’t give a fuck anymore about this piece of shit game

 

[Machocruz]

Would have been nice if they worried about nailing some good 'regular' puzzles first before all this Garry's Mod shit. That alone would have set it apart from nearly every other modern RPG.

Well fuck it. One man made roguelikes are giving better dungeon crawling +simulation + survival experiences than this. Hell, you can probably even find some mods for Skyrim that give you a half-way decent experience like that.

 

[Invictus]

Would have been nice if they worried about nailing some good 'regular' puzzles first before all this Garry's Mod shit. That alone would have set it apart from nearly every other modern RPG.

Well fuck it. One man made roguelikes are giving better dungeon crawling +simulation + survival experiences than this. Hell, you can probably even find some mods for Skyrim that give you a half-way decent experience like that.

Hell yes even the Ultima Underworld mod for Morrowind is better than this shit

 

[Infinitron]

Name a Lizardman: https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=6092.0

Hey there,

I wanted to check if you all might be interested in helping me come up with the final name of a Saurian mediator with the Factions. (The Saurians are the Lizard Man tribe in Marcaul, while the more aggressive tribe that live below are the Chthonians.)

- The character is described as "the voice of wisdom, tempered by patience, hardened by resolve." (Think what a head of the UN would be like if set in The Stygian Abyss or Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird, but with a more evolved sense of humor.)
- It can follow along conventions established by previous names Ishtass, Resherak, Sseetharee, or Iss'leek.
- It should not be inordinately long or ridiculously hard to pronounce.

Let me know what you think? Thought you might have fun with it.

Disclaimer: You will be thanked in credits, if we use your suggestion. We can't promise we'll use suggested names or use them verbatim. Your response implies consent of use in the game.

 

[Sacibengala]

Izzmaeil

 

[hello friend]

Elizardbeth

 

[Nano]

John.

 

[DeepOcean]

From that we can deduce following things: Emergent gameplay is borne of challenge. There is no point to come up with outside solutions, if the most immediate solution is also viable and executed quickly.

Agree 100% with this statement, I always had a problem with Dishonored exactly because of this, no challenge, no meaningful reason to take advantage of emergent gameplay. Arkane, for some strange reason assumed people would feel good with being creative at killing people if there was zero gameplay incentive to do it so when just stabbing them to death worked fine.

I guess they saw those youtube videos of some people doing crazy stunts on Dishonored and assumed most gamers had a boner with doing crazy shit and recording it on youtube, never got the point of calling this futile show off exercise emergent gameplay. Some developers are smarter, like on Devil May Cry series where they, at least, give you scores depending on your performance, it is a crude alternative but works better than let player be "creative" for absolutely no reason at all.

Emergent gameplay only is entertaining if there is a trigger, an incentive for people to seek it, it can be challenge, it can be a new and completely different type of gameplay, a score system, anything that makes choosing the alternative that demands more work worthwhile.

Another point, emergent gameplay isn't an excuse for lack of content, don't come come with Ubisoft "emergent gameplay" that mostly mean, the same copy pasted content where they cynically claim "Go, be creative and try to squeeze some fun of this repetitive, zero effort shit we made."

 

[Big Wrangle]

Name a Lizardman

SsethTzeentach

 

[Sonus]

John.

Smallberries or Emdall.

 

[Wunderbar]

Name a Lizardman

Zuck

 

[RatTower]

Spell casting UI



Also I believe that's the "teleporter room" in the main hub.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=6094.0

Well, I didn't have the chance to post a Weekly Update this Monday, but a lot of exciting stuff has been coming in, and I wanted to share it

As of yesterday, Will pushed a new major update to our fog volume levels in the game, so it looks and performs a lot better. This means that darkness will also propagate like fog in some areas... best to keep an eye out and maybe a torch at the ready. Darkness in general is always being tweaked as well...

Speaking of light and dark, water will now illuminate the light-accepting surfaces around it! While this may not seem like much, we can now rely on water to mask (or illuminate) certain areas...

Tim is also experimenting around with a new type of Tier 1 Skeleton, internally dubbed the "Shadow Skeleton". He has no ranged attack and has lower weapon damage, but he can poison you if he manages to land a hit. He disappears into a puff of smoke when defeated, and has a smoky black outline around his body.

Screenshots (spoilers beware!) are here.