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

[Jenkem]

HOW DOES NO ONE HERE HAVE DEMO IMPRESSIONS YET????

 

[Gargaune]

Besides fixing bugs, I have also been adding various features that would improve the overall experience of the game. NPCs will now greet the players via text messages over their heads. The same system is also used for idle chatter and combat taunts.

NPCs have a lot to say - both nice and nasty.

RatTower, I'm not sure adding silent NPC barks is the best move for a game like Monomyth. You've got an immersive sim, first-person, low-abstraction presentation, so having this disparate treatment where characters grunt and yelp in combat (as they should) but taunts or chatter are text-only might come across as very incongruous, just seeing it in the video instantly stuck out to me. This won't be like omitting conversation VO, where most of us have a sort of learned reflex to mentally segregate the interaction as a distinct mode so it works.

I think having these little ambient one-liners would be great to make the world feel more alive, but only if you can spring for their audio too. Maybe cut down on their number to be able to budget VO? Sure, gotta account for logistics overheads too, but I think most of us wouldn't mind another delay if it came to it. Otherwise, I think you risk getting the opposite effect and slightly a disjointed impression.

 

[fuzz]

Large amount of distinct text barks > Repeated number of VO (soon-to-be-meme) barks.

 

[Kaivokz]

If combat barks are in a separate category, you can also add an option to disable them for people whose immersion it breaks.

 

[Hobknobling]

You can also go the Doom way and make all the enemy barks sound like Chewbacca's orgasms.

 

[gaussgunner]

Yeah, voiceover barks are gay - as in annoying and obnoxious. Last words text could be funny at least, if they're bitterly butthurt and not too hurr hurr funny. Try not to break the grim immersive atmosphere if that's what you're going for RatTower.

I only just noticed this game a few weeks ago, in that thread asking about First-person RPGs and ImSims I think it was. Monomyth is one of the few new ones that appears worthy. I guess I was more into turnbased in 2017. And I'm a kickstarter hater. But I've been getting more into this flavor of RPGs, always looking forward to more dungeon-crawling brutal combat gameplay like Dragon's Dogma in particular (the cutscenes and AAA shit not so much).

Hoping this isn't another Broken Copper Dreams...

 

[Gargaune]

You can also go the Doom way and make all the enemy barks sound like Chewbacca's orgasms.

Actually, that's not a bad idea, KotOR did this with its alien races and it worked even if attentive players could catch on to recurring audio. If barks VO just ain't on the menu, maybe recording a muddled little library of gibberish "made-up foreign language" to mix and match to various lines could work as an effective stopgap.

 

[Wunderbar]

You can also go the Doom way and make all the enemy barks sound like Chewbacca's orgasms.

Actually, that's not a bad idea, KotOR did this with its alien races and it worked even if attentive players could catch on to recurring audio

Hellpoint had the same thing with a made-up language. Thanks to that the game felt more alien and atmospheric, while saving a bunch of money for the devs in the process.

Not sure how this can be achieved in a game with a sort-of medieval fantasy setting. When everything around you looks so familiar, a made-up gibberish language may sound too off-putting.

HECU marines from Half-Life had a pretty advanced speech routines where the game engine was stringing various sound files together to create coherent sentences (that's why they all sound creepy and robotic). Something like that may be useful for simulation purposes, though obviously adding a feature like this into the game at this stage of development would mean going way beyond the scope.

 

[Gargaune]

Hellpoint had the same thing with a made-up language. Thanks to that the game felt more alien and atmospheric, while saving a bunch of money for the devs in the process.

Not sure how this can be achieved in a game with a sort-of medieval fantasy setting. When everything around you looks so familiar, a made-up gibberish language may sound too off-putting.

Well, to an extent, Skyrim features that made-up dragon language which you'll actually hear from Draugr most often. The Draugr voices are heavily processed, but you'll also hear the same stuff in more regular tones from dragons and story NPCs. I'd say it's a little silly, but it's not distracting and I don't think it would make a difference whether these fake words translate to something in English or if they're complete gibberish (the more cost-effective solution to take here).

HECU marines from Half-Life had a pretty advanced speech routines where the game engine was stringing various sound files together to create coherent sentences (that's why they all sound creepy and robotic). Something like that may be useful for simulation purposes, though obviously adding a feature like this into the game at this stage of development would mean going way beyond the scope.

Agreed, that would probably be more work than a limited set of English VO.

I think the most accessible solution here would be to record a bunch of short, faux-foreign gibberish lines for each enunciation type - query, statement, angry/threat, maybe also scared/panicked if the AI has a use case for it - for each race that absolutely needs to sound distinct, and just link them manually or key them to the AI state and punctuation marks. That way, you could have all the text interactions you want with some audio backing to go along, you do away with the jarring silence.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Not sure how this can be achieved in a game with a sort-of medieval fantasy setting. When everything around you looks so familiar, a made-up gibberish language may sound too off-putting.

Archolos used a made up language to make the game sound foreign.

 

[Kalarion]

Yeah, voiceover barks are gay - as in annoying and obnoxious. Last words text could be funny at least, if they're bitterly butthurt and not too hurr hurr funny. Try not to break the grim immersive atmosphere if that's what you're going for RatTower.

I only just noticed this game a few weeks ago, in that thread asking about First-person RPGs and ImSims I think it was. Monomyth is one of the few new ones that appears worthy. I guess I was more into turnbased in 2017. And I'm a kickstarter hater. But I've been getting more into this flavor of RPGs, always looking forward to more dungeon-crawling brutal combat gameplay like Dragon's Dogma in particular (the cutscenes and AAA shit not so much).

Hoping this isn't another Broken Copper Dreams...

It's not. Not to say I'm 100% on this coming out (who ever knows for sure?), but the difference between RatTower and Whalenought is night and day. I really recommend going back and reading the entire thread if you're new to it. It's interesting purely from the perspective of the game itself, but what I find fascinating is Michael's commentary as he started developing. He talks about setting up workflow pipelines, gets deep in the weeds on specific programming topics, goes into game design theory and how he applies it to Monomyth, talks about the business side of setting up his company and his considerations for running a Kickstarter... about half this thread could be ported directly to the Game Development thread with no issues. It's fantastic, up there with reading the entire Sirtech thread :D

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Has there been a post about the level design? Skimming some videos showed mostly corridor after corridor. The best gameplay mechanics get old quickly if the maps are repetitive and boring, or if they lack opportunities to make use of them.

 

[deuxhero]

You can also go the Doom way and make all the enemy barks sound like Chewbacca's orgasms.

Actually, that's not a bad idea, KotOR did this with its alien races and it worked even if attentive players could catch on to recurring audio. If barks VO just ain't on the menu, maybe recording a muddled little library of gibberish "made-up foreign language" to mix and match to various lines could work as an effective stopgap.

Muja shaka paka?

Bioware also tried it in Jade Empire too. It didn't work nearly as well because foreign gibberish themed around a real human group makes for... interesting results.

The Sims is also famous for its gibberish language.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The Sims is also famous for its gibberish language.

It's not gibberish, it's an actual language.
Sims has actually done a lot of advanced things like that(esp. things related to AI) which have gone relatively unnoticed.
There's actually a derived(? fake source?) form of the language used in the medieval addon, meant to be a precursor of the language.

the things you learn watching GDC videos when bored

 

[Ysaye]

Has there been a post about the level design? Skimming some videos showed mostly corridor after corridor. The best gameplay mechanics get old quickly if the maps are repetitive and boring, or if they lack opportunities to make use of them.

Level Design (From Update 16 Jan 22)

In the last update, we spoke about level layouts and how to structure a semi-open game environment. We discussed, how levels in various classic games were essentially a set of largely independent sections, interwoven with a separate "connector" section. Today we will take a closer look at the sections themselves and talk a little bit about their creation.

A section is essentially just a collection of rooms containing encounters. Such encounters may be enemies, friendly NPCs, puzzles, etc. The first question is, how to approach a section's design. Just as with the level layouts, there are essentially two ways to go about this process:

a) Top-down: You start with a rough overview of the entire section and you continue to go into detail for every single room as a part of the whole. This approach puts an emphasis on coherent interconnections between a section's individual rooms. However, these rooms may require restructuring once the full design becomes more concrete.

b) Bottom-up: You start with a collection of readily designed rooms and compile them into a section. This approach puts an emphasis on gameplay-driven design. However, the rooms may become incoherent with each other and the connections between them may feel unintuitive.

A room, respectively a section can be anything by the way. It does not need to be a "closed" space. Practically, it can be any area with a finite set of entrances that connect it with other areas of the game. Talented level designers can create a collection of such areas and connect them in a way that seems like an entirely open world.

A very good example of this is the map of Gothic 2, which is presented as an open world environment, but strictly guides the player through various bottlenecks (i.e., entrances) from one area to the other. Fans of Gothic 2 may be very familiar with the northwestern area of the map, which is enclosed by the sea, the city, the ancient forest, the bridge, and a valley of aggressive monsters. Unless players get very "creative" (e.g., by climbing onto walls and roofs where they technically shouldn't be), exiting into another area of the game without going through one of the bottlenecks can be very difficult.

The main map of Gothic 2 with highlighted entrances to the section north of the game's main city. Readers of the last update can probably already spot the different sections of the game.
Coming back to Monomyth, I am mostly using a top-down design approach. This means, I first draw a rough overview of a section and I start re-iterating on the design. At this point, I am also annotating most of the rooms with a location name or a first idea of an encounter.

There are numerous ways to draw section overviews. Some people prefer working on paper, while others use dedicated software. For Monomyth I normally use Dungeon Painter Studio (DPS), a tool that was originally developed for Pen & Paper DMs. It allows its user to draw tile-based maps, much like on graph paper.

An exemplary map design made in DPS
Having all the map designs in a digital form has a big advantage. Once I am satisfied with the design I export the map as an image file and I import it in the Unreal Engine 4 (UE4). With the right scaling, the image file can be applied as a texture on a simple plane, which then serves as an exact floor plan for the blockout stage.

The map design from DPS, applied as a texture in UE4
During the blockout stage I align the floor plan with UE4's top view grid and I use blueprint actors to build the environment according to the design. These blueprint actors represent various building blocks of the level, such as different kinds of walls, floors, doors, and so on.

Some building blocks of the environment.

The floor plan is exactly aligned with UE4's grid and scaled in a way so its tiles match the building blocks.
Every actor I place is of a certain class. This has the advantage that once the modular meshes for the respective area are done, it is not necessary to replace the entire blockout. Instead, I simply adjust the blueprint classes, which then automatically updates every actor. Take for example the following meshes:

A set of modular 3D meshes
I simply plug these meshes into the blueprint actor classes and remove the original gray building blocks in them. All instances of the adjusted classes are automatically updated and the blockout will be significantly closer to the desired end result. At this point, it is also a good idea to think about encounters.

Top view of the built level section using adjusted blueprint actors

Perspective view of the built level section using adjusted blueprint actors
Once the basic geometry is there and I am satisfied with the look of it all I usually continue by adding detail meshes and lighting. This is called a detail pass, respectively a lighting pass. In these stages, I also visually optimize the scene by adding particle effects, fog, etc.

The realized level design after the lighting pass.
At this point the only thing that is still missing from the level section is level logic. Level logic describes any level-specific functionality within the game environment. This may be something that affects the level design (e.g., a collapsing hallway or a suddenly flooded room), in which case it is recommendable to already consider level logic during the blockout stage. Sometimes, however, level logic can be something as simple as an automatic door:

All done! Level logic can add dynamic elements to the level.
And that's it! During the entire process, it is of course recommendable to test the section again and again. Especially with regards to scaling, encounter pacing, item distribution, and so on.

It should be noted, that this approach is slightly different from the industry standard and requires special consideration in terms of verticality. Usually one would use so-called geometry brushes, which are simple 3D shapes that are combined into whatever you wish to block out. UE4 does provide such geometry brushes, but unfortunately, this feature has been slightly neglected by the engine developers, meaning it is not very performant, and comparatively impractical to work with. So impractical in fact that there are plugins by the UE4 community to make up for the engine's native feature.

Either way, the process I am employing works very well for enclosed spaces and dungeon crawling environments. Next time we will take a look at rooms and encounter design. Until then!

 

[Narushima]

I don't mind the written, non-voiced lines, but I'd rather see them at the bottom of the screen, like subtitles. The way they move, shrink and grow above the speaker's head makes it difficult to read.
You'd need to add a speaker ID, like "Ugly Zombie: I'm going to eat your face!"

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Has there been a post about the level design? Skimming some videos showed mostly corridor after corridor. The best gameplay mechanics get old quickly if the maps are repetitive and boring, or if they lack opportunities to make use of them.

Level Design (From Update 16 Jan 22)
...

Thank you for looking up that post.

The levels seem fairly flat without much verticality. I hope that there will be some levels inspired by Thief/Thief2.

 

[Narushima]

The levels seem fairly flat without much verticality. I hope that there will be some levels inspired by Thief/Thief2.

Have you not played the demo?

 

[Blutwurstritter]

The levels seem fairly flat without much verticality. I hope that there will be some levels inspired by Thief/Thief2.

Have you not played the demo?

Yes, I have not played the demo. Does it feature good maps?

 

[Narushima]

Yes, I have not played the demo. Does it feature good maps?

Yes, and you can climb stuff.
The demo is still available on Steam, link is on the first page of this thread.

 

[Gargaune]

Bioware also tried it in Jade Empire too. It didn't work nearly as well because foreign gibberish themed around a real human group makes for... interesting results.

Sure, I can imagine faux-gibberish is a harder pill to swallow sprouting from a human face than some Star Wars slug alien, but still far more palatable than a silent text bubble. Again, in the context of a game like Monomyth, not arguing isometrics here. And it may be feasible from a cost perspective where actual VO isn't.

Basically - it's better than nothing. Literally.

Yes, I have not played the demo. Does it feature good maps?

It features a single huge map with separate areas, different levels of elevation and multiple junctions facilitating nonlinear exploration. It's excellent, you really oughta give the demo a go. That said, if you're asking about "verticality" in the Thief sense, then no, it was something I also flagged after playing the demo, that stealth gameplay might benefit from some more traversal options within individual encounter locations. Ceiling support beams, crawlspaces, convenient Denton-shaped holes in the wall etc., wouldn't mind seeing some more of that.

Either way, grab the demo and see for yourself, it's worth your time.

 

[Skdursh]

I hope there is a way to turn off the enemy remarks thing entirely. Just feels corny to me. No way in real life some guy running at you with a sword would be bothering to spout dumb shit like "Have at you, knave!" while trying to plunge a sword into your throat. People are usually too busy worrying about not dying or at least not getting completely fucked up while fighting to bother with one-liners.

 

[manifest]

Incorporating soundbites from WorldStarHipHop videos into enemy quips could give players like Skdursh a desired sense of realism, being drawn from real-world fights, and save a lot of money on voice-acting.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

No way in real life

 

[Bad Sector]

The levels seem fairly flat without much verticality. I hope that there will be some levels inspired by Thief/Thief2.

Note that the quoted post is about individual sections, a level is made up of more of them and they can be stacked with various connections at different heights - the section pieces can probably also be put at different heights too to introduce some small variation if needed (without breaking "into" other sections of course) and my guess is that this is done during the "detailing pass". The "last update" link it goes more into the overall use of sections for the level (with examples from Thief and Ultima Underworld), this more recent post is about how each section is made.