KickStarter Monomyth - A first person action RPG/dungeon crawler - now available on Early Access

[DJOGamer PT]

One cool shit you could do to make bodies of water a bit dangerous, is currents. That way if a player (or enemy) goes to a body of water, he would be carried off - it would even be a viable aspect to build a puzzle with (Majora's Mask being the most immediate example).

That always needs rebuilding. Just like geometry/navigation.
It just never ends.

Yeah it kind of annoying to do it every time an object is moved even an inch.

 

[RatTower]

I'm currently experimenting a bit with the buoyancy settings, so heavy equipment pulls you underwater.
Haven't really thought about flowing water yet, but that might also be interesting for waterfalls.

 

[Skdursh]

I'd definitely play this if it lives up to its inspirations. Hopefully it isn't just another Underworld Ascendant. Any ETA on a release?

 

[RatTower]

I'm putting together an open alpha. Originally that was planned for december, but since a lot of stuff came up I'm not quite sure about the new date.
It's slowly getting there though.

For the full release I'm targeting end of 2019/beginning of 2020

 

[RatTower]

Haven't really thought about flowing water yet, but that might also be interesting for waterfalls.

I thought about flowing water this morning. I haven't tried it yet, but I think you could just build a vector field with the help of different volumes.
Fluid simulations are often done kinda like that:

So essentially it's just a box with an arrow and whenever you get in contact with that box, you continuously add movement/force into the direction of the arrow.
You can then go crazy and add several arrows in one box - add movement/force depending on the player's distance to each arrow for extra realism. But I don't even think that will be necessary.
You can just put different boxes next to each other and that should do it. I'll probably take a look at this later. Hopefully I can still show some of that stuff this week.

I also refactored the player's swimming state into a substate of regular movement inputs, meaning you can activate, combine and pick up stuff underwater. You can mantle out of water and equipment pulling you down is already implemented.

Also, who thought that diving in dungeon crawlers was that spooky.
Then again...

Spoiler

That plus underwater currents...

 

[DJOGamer PT]

If you're think of adding enemies to water segments then be very careful. Because on one hand wielding a sword or bow underwater is a bit ridiculous (since even small movements underwater are tiring) but on the other, being massacred by an enemy you can't attack and even outrun can be annoying.

 

[RatTower]

Water is deadly enough as it is, so no underwater combat for the moment.
Even though I enjoyed those segments in KF4. But there you literally walked on the seafloor. And so did enemies.
Same in Thief. Except there it's not really part of the game.

 

[Machocruz]

If you do decide to implement water threats, maybe design it so that you'd have to go to a knife/dagger, which in the real world is pretty much the only chance you have against marine predators, absent spear gun or prod

 

[Machocruz]

Also, who thought that diving in dungeon crawlers was that spooky.
Then again...

Spoiler

That plus underwater currents...

 

[Viata]

Where is my diving dungeon crawler game now?

 

[Big Wrangle]

Innsmouth but you play as a professional diver who previously served in the military.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

why would someone willingly go cave diving

 

[RatTower]

Maybe they are looking for free diving equipment.

Anyway, I implemented that vector field approach.
Needs some fine tuning (also from a design perspective - you gotta scale those currents right), but all in all it seems to be working.

Still gotta brush it up visually.

 

[Avonaeon]

I'd suggest maybe using particles to visually show the current flow. Are you able to swim against the current?

 

[RatTower]

Depends on the current.

The movement input is scaled so the player reaches a certain target velocity.
For the first three current volumes in that gif that velocity is between 300 and 500. You can easily swim against that.
The last one has 3000 and pulls you down, no matter what.

Also there is a weight modifier that affects your buoyancy and swimming speed.
Haven't tried that out yet, but at a certain current velocity, heavy armor should make it impossible to swim against the current.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

By the way RatTower, you talked about ladders recently. How will it be to climb down a ladder (or just climb ladders in general)? Will the player automatically climb down if he is on top of the ladder (which would prevent him from falling down in places with ladders), or does he have to look down and click the interact button (which might not be very convinient in certain situations) or a button prompt will appear near ladders (eliminating the need for the player to notice there's a ladder near him)?

I know this might seem like a really dumb question, but think about a situation where the player is exploring a unknown dark area or even running for his life, which way would play the best if he encountered a ladder?

 

[RatTower]

Currently the Ladder is an interaction object that triggers a separate movement state.
Meaning you get a "mechanism" prompt like with doors but once you interact with it you are placed on the ladder at the according height.
Then you just push up and down to climb. You can also jump off. Might also implement sliding down.

In short: It's pretty much the same as in Souls games.

 

[RatTower]

Still gotta update containers/chests for underwater use. But that's just a minor thing (automatically closing when the current carries you away from it).
Other than that swimming/underwater exploration works pretty fine, so I can get back to level and combat design.

 

[Feargus Jewhart]

That looks great, I've noticed the lighting in Monomyth looks quite nice. The currents look fun and like they could add in great gameplay and could be used to force a player to choose only one path and it's rewards, thus blocking players from cheesing themselves multiple cool items/artifacts/etc.

 

[Beastro]

why would someone willingly go cave diving

Takes a certain personality that gets off on it and is too busy doing it to think things through. My brother was like (comes from a streak on our father's side of doing insane shit) that until he grew up, went caving with his friends on the spur of the moment once without bothering to tell anybody about it and brought whatever they thought might help rather than looking into it.

He's married with kids now and prolly thinks he was insane back then.

 

[Curratum]

Escalated to advertising Monomyth in the angry KS comment section of Ascendant! Otherside can suck an egg.

We kept asking for swimmable water and currents for YEARS. Of course, the clueless hacks didn't manage to implement it.

 

[Max Heap]

I'm not even angry at UA anymore. I'm just baffled that stuff like this can be done in a week if you want to.

 

[Kitchen Utensil]

I'm not even angry at UA anymore. I'm just baffled that stuff like this can be done in a week if you want to.

I think it's simply the difference between a business/job and a passion project.

 

[rbenchley]

I'm not even angry at UA anymore. I'm just baffled that stuff like this can be done in a week if you want to.

I think it's simply the difference between a business/job and a passion project.

You would hope the people doing it as a business/job would be even more capable of implementing these kinds of features than someone working part time on a game as a passion project. When it's your job, you have customers and obligations. The difference is that RatTower knows what the fuck he is doing and the guys at OtherSide do not. A lot of people were excited when guys like Neurath and Spector were involved as designers on UA, but I think the problem is that even though they have deserved reputations as game designers, they appear to be shit project managers and didn't lock down the necessary programming talent to realize their designs. Too many chiefs, not enough indians.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

RatTower

Are you working on this project alone?