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

[Ysaye]

"Monomyth: The King Fatalis of the Underworld"?

 

[RatTower]

As announced in january:




There is still the defense, likely in late march. Unfortunately that got pushed back, even though the thesis went out on the 1st of february, but what can you do.
So that will probably bite a little bit of time off my schedule. I'd reckon, one or two weeks.

And then that will be that. Afterwards I can fully focus on getting the legal structure ready for the kickstarter.
Talking of which, I will probably not use RatTower as a company name (I'll keep it as username though).
It will be something a tad more generic for various reasons. I thought about something like "Immersion Interactive" or "Immersive Interactions" or maybe even "Immersive Simulation Software" to shorten it as ISS.

Either way, I still got a little time to think about that.
I also applied for a consulting program that would basically guide me through the company launch and assist me in legal matters.
I'd also get a little bit of cash there to cover minimal expenses over the next three to four months.
My application will be decided upon in the coming weeks.

Aaaanyway, for the moment, my contract is terminated and I focus on development.
Then comes the defense.
Then comes the company.
Then comes the kickstarter + public demo.
And depending on how well Monomyth does in crowdfunding I'll decide on the next steps.

In terms of a subtitle I considered "Monomyth: The Apocalyptic Age", because of the setting.
But I haven't really put that anywhere so far. Perhaps I will save it for something like a "Gold" version.

 

[Wunderbar]

Why bother with a subtitle? Simply "Monomyth" sounds good enough.

 

[V_K]

Talking of which, I will probably not use RatTower as a company name (I'll keep it as username though).
It will be something a tad more generic for various reasons.

Like what reasons?

 

[OctavianRomulus]

When can I give you money already??

Also, Monomyth is just fine.

Oh, and will there also be a level editor for fan maps? Perhaps even a stretch goal?

 

[RatTower]

Why bother with a subtitle? Simply "Monomyth" sounds good enough.

Basically just thinking out loud.
Should there ever be the need to distinguish between versions it's probably the way to go, but other than that I don't really think there is a need for it either.
"Monomyth game" is a perfectly fine search term as well.

Like what reasons?

I just thought it would be a good idea to pick a name that relates a bit more to what I'm creating

 

[RatTower]

When can I give you money already??

Also, Monomyth is just fine.

Oh, and will there also be a level editor for fan maps? Perhaps even a stretch goal?

Soon™

No level editor so far. Even though I'd love it, but I'd have to further clean up my work process (which is always a good idea, so never say never).

 

[baud]

"Immersive Simulation Software" to shorten it as ISS.

that's a cool name

 

[Gargaune]

"Immersive Simulation Software" to shorten it as ISS.

that's a cool name

Immersive Sim and backwards SSI in one package? Yeah, that's pretty cool. I like RatTower as an indie moniker, but I always prefer drier, more "serious" names for companies, you gotta think of the business cards.

 

[CyberModuled]

I suppose since we're probably going to get a crowdfunder in a few months, any plans for a fundraiser here?

 

[bandersnatch]

This game is starting to look really great! I look forward to following it and your campaign!

 

[OctavianRomulus]

My jaw is on the floor. Your're a powerhouse!

 

[Gargaune]

Really digging the visual vibes in the first screenshot. Actually, I'm just playing a bit of Ultima Underworld for the first time, so it's like poetry, it rhymes.

Also...

RatTower, I'm assuming these texts are just development filler, but can't hurt to flag a couple of typos - add a comma after "Bouthria", lives, drop the comma after "Yet", and adequate. Better still, can concatenate the last two sentences into "throughout their lives, but a formal education etc."

 

[RatTower]

Oh yes, I just read over those texts once and most of them were written in the UE4 editor (not the best environment for that really). I already set up a better workflow for writing.

Last week I spent some time on various details and secondary shenanigans:



Until the end of next week, I'll have to step off the gas a little because of my final exam.
After that, there won't be any more significant interruptions from that side - the only noteworthy "exception" being two conferences I'll have to appear at in May (or so it seems at least), but since those are virtual they will probably just cost me a couple of hours each.

Either way, after next week I will first re-evaluate my way of communicating progress so this whole operation is a bit more consistent.
That's probably also good practice for the Kickstarter campaign.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Good luck on your exam bro.

 

[fork]

Yeah, good luck!
You won't need it though, since you're going to make millions with Monomyth anyway.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Will definitely back this. I just want another good arx fatalis.

 

[RatTower]

It's done:



Rest assured, you will never have to hear me lament about my day job ever again!

Spoiler

Because I'm "unemployed" now.


And so I will be until I fully mold this project into a professional framework.
(which will be happening in the near future)

Aaaaanyway...
Last week I was still experimenting a little bit:



Besides the explosive, I introduced the torch mechanic which makes torches a little more valuable.
They basically act the same way as an "ignite" spell now, so you can light other torches, candles, fire bowls, etc.
This is still an experimental feature that needs some polishing because it didn't really fit into the control scheme so well.

But enough with the feature creep. In the coming days, I will get back into core/content development!
And I will stick with that until that Kickstarter demo is finished!

More updates soon!

 

[Gargaune]

But enough with the feature creep.

Dude, that's like the software developer's New Year's resolution...

Speaking of, I was looking through some of your videos and noticed that strafing left and right applies a sort of "lean" effect, rolling the camera. And I mean I noticed in my stomach. Would it be possible for the player to turn that off?

 

[RatTower]

Perhaps not in the demo but I can imagine once we collected a series of visual personalization requests I can add a panel for those in the options menu.
There was also the request for turning off motion blur earlier in the thread, so I'll write this down together with that.

 

[V_K]

Perhaps not in the demo but I can imagine once we collected a series of visual personalization requests I can add a panel for those in the options menu.
There was also the request for turning off motion blur earlier in the thread, so I'll write this down together with that.

As a rule, I turn off every VFX in modern 3D games that the game allows me to. They just tend to make the game disorienting and hard to parse visually for me. Now, from the gifs and videos your environments look clean enough that it might not be a problem, but I would still prefer to have the option to turn off as much as possible.

 

[Gargaune]

Perhaps not in the demo but I can imagine once we collected a series of visual personalization requests I can add a panel for those in the options menu.
There was also the request for turning off motion blur earlier in the thread, so I'll write this down together with that.

Thanks, much appreciated! Tends to be worse watching than playing, but motion effects like bob and blur can be hit-or-miss with people. And congrats on wrapping up your exam!

 

[Arulan]

RatTower

I've started delving into UE4 development recently. I've created some basic systems, and just started to get into 3D modeling with Blender. It's enough to where I can see how I'd create a basic vertical slice of my game concept. Since you also come from a programming background, I just thought I'd ask if you have any suggestions on how to proceed, what to prioritize learning first, and general tips.

Monomyth looks great!

 

[RatTower]

RatTower

I've started delving into UE4 development recently. I've created some basic systems, and just started to get into 3D modeling with Blender. It's enough to where I can see how I'd create a basic vertical slice of my game concept. Since you also come from a programming background, I just thought I'd ask if you have any suggestions on how to proceed, what to prioritize learning first, and general tips.

Monomyth looks great!

Thanks!

When it comes to Blender I probably can't tell you anything you haven't heard in Andrew Price's donut tutorial already.
There is however one thing that is constantly broken in the Blender->UE4 pipeline, which is bone sizes. When you rig something in blender and import it in UE4 the editor will often complain about bones being too small. As a result root motion won't work properly (it's always a good idea to make sure that works before you start animating anything). The reason is a disconnect between UE4s unit system and the units that are used in blender. Despite both systems being largely consistent when it comes to regular meshes, animations have been causing problems for years. How I understand it, UE4's importer downsizes bones because it misinterprets (?) the unit scale by a factor of 100. So one solution is to change blender's unit scale in the scene properties to 0.01 (metric). Of course, now you gotta scale your objects up as well. Just add a regular cube for reference. This may mess with your animations if you do it in edit mode.
Also, take a look at bone hierarchies and how to make your own rigs compatible with UE4's standard skeleton animations. That involves (but isn't limited to) retargeting. A general rule of thumb: You can always easily retarget the mannequin's animations if your rig has the same bone hierarchy (extensions are allowed, no pruning though), however, some animations may turn out a little funky. You can also bind the standard UE4 skeleton to your mesh, but only if you really like manual bone weighting/weight painting.
Talking of weight painting, blender has its quirks when it comes to symmetrical editing (i.e., weight painting on the left hand bone automatically being transfered to the right hand bone), so make sure your mesh and skeleton are facing the right direction (facing negative Y) and bones are named according to naming conventions. Generally speaking: Get "Mr Mannequin Tools" for reference and just in case you want to make new UE4 standard skeleton animations.

A couple of UE4-related things:
- C++ is a hell lot faster than Blueprint, but don't let that discourage you from using BP (especially not for prototyping). Theoretically, you can even nativize some of its (literal) spaghetti code in the cooking/packaging process. Just look out for circular dependencies.

- Basically, C++ is a good choice for everything that has to happen over and over again during the runtime (e.g., every frame). It's recommendable to have those things written out in C++, everything else should be fine in BP.

- If you can't use C++ for whatever reason, just make sure you disable Ticks for actors that don't need them (under class defaults). If you don't have to update a blueprints state on every frame use timers instead.

- Otherwise, you will see the results in UE4's runtime profiler (which you can find in the session frontend of the developer tools (under "Window")). You can write files at runtime for that profiler via UE4's console commands (stat startFile, stat stopFile). A standalone launch is always more representative of the final performance than the inEditor game mode.

- Another performance thing: When you are using lots of meshes in a blueprint, make sure you have all of those set to static (at least when it's possible). Also perhaps look into instanced Meshes.

- Another BP quirk: UE4 handles a lot of exceptions in the background so sometimes it's not 100% clear what just happened. A thing I noticed lately: Sometimes, UE4 won't allow the modification of an array during its iteration. However, if the array is filled with actors which are destroyed during the iteration, the array won't replace references to those actors with none/null values but actually drop them from the array, which may cause index skipping.

About level design:
UE4 was made with Fortnite in mind so its focus is not on brush oriented interior level design (like in the original Unreal Editor or Quake) but on large scale, heightmap-based landscapes complemented by modular assets. In fact, lots of brushes (100+) may heavily affect your editor's performance while recomputing the resulting mesh. You can transform brushes into a static mesh, however, that is an irreversible work step, which is always a bad idea to have in a workflow. Though I gotta admit, I haven't built a bigger level in brushes since UE4.18. Either way, keep it in mind when you come up with a pipeline/workflow for level design.

A last thing about computation/compilation time:
Recently I switched from an old i7 (2015) to an AMD Ryzen9 processor. The difference in compilation time is so significant, I assume it has to do with the multithreading capabilities of the R9 and isn't just because the CPU is newer.
I have also heard others having a similar experience, though I can't point to any sources here, really.

Those are just a few things I can think of right now.

 

[Arulan]

Wow, that's a lot more than I was expecting. I appreciate it.

I imagine modeling and the art in general will involve a lot of iteration. I'm actually working on my first first-person arms, rigging, and animations next, so I'll make note of those Blender quirks.

I'm comfortable with C++, but I'll try to use BP when it makes sense.

The level design workflow is the one area I'm most unsure about. I've seen some indie developers do their blocking by creating entire level models in Blender, and refine them over time, but modular assets seems to make more sense to me.