Indie Browser MMO City of Steam

Hey all, I'm Ethan and I work for a small games developer, Mechanist Games. We're working on our debut title, City of Steam, a free-to-play browser-based MMORPG.

If you've heard of City of Steam and been keeping an eye on it since the game went public, be sure to sign up for our newsletter and follow our dev journals for up-to-date game development. We're getting closer to a Beta launch.

To those that don't know what City of Steam is (no surprise for this, we're pretty small, so getting widespread recognition is relatively harder for us). It's a browser-based MMORPG featuring a mix of industrial fantasy and steampunk elements, lightweight enough to play smoothly on even non-gaming computers and accessible straight from your browser. Even then, thanks to Unity 3D and a lot of in-house tools, we've managed to still make it look quite impressive,and all stored in but a few megabytes. You won't believe it's a browser game after you hit the fullscreen button.

Visit the World Machine page to take a better look at this animated world. Take a quick look at the world CoS is based upon:



For a better picture of the game, check our latest Closed Beta Trailer, a lot has changed and improved since then, but it can still give a good idea for what we plan to make of our game:

[video=youtube_share;ynmn3DjIDqA]http://youtu.be/ynmn3DjIDqA


Edit:

Hello all, we've opened gates of Nexus again, Beta is now launched and ready to play. Visit the link below if you don't have an account yet and start your journey in just minutes!
http://cos.r2games.com/signup

Thanks to your continuous support of our game, City of Steam has finally been approved on Valve's Greenlight approval system. We are thankful for everyone who voted for us and who spread the word! If you want to know more, you can find the full announcement here: http://cos.r2games.com/news/view/?id=1731

Also, we wrote up a dev journal (though delayed!), along with a video, about the showcase of City of Steam at PAX East and GDC 2013. The video itself is here:

If anyone has any questions regarding the development (within reason) and how we went about doing things feel free to ask. I'll get as much info as I can out of the coders/artists.

 

Very nice looking game, I look forward to following your progress.

The development Vlog is cool, I really like your in-house level editor, simple and clean. The video was really polished as well, you guys clearly know what you're doing. Hopefully it doesn't take too much time out of development to make these because I would really like to see more.

 

I heard about this the other day. I'm a fan of Steampunk stuff and I'm an MMO junkie so I'm pretty excited. Hopefully I can get in to the beta. I'm even more excited to hear that it's been built with Unity. I'll be watching this closesly!

 

Oh they actually take an enormous amount of time but we love doing them. You can see how many tools we've made directly in Unity. While there are lots of limitations that we have worked around, the tools are getting to where things are streamlined.

 

While not expressively 'Steampunk' (we call it Industrial Age Fantasy) we'd love to get the word out more into the Steampunk community. Thanks for the support and do drop by our forums to join in on any of the discussions. Also, help us test play the Alpha version in July.

 

Hey, folks. My name is Joey, one of co-founders of Mechanist Games. If there is any question regarding the technical aspects, our technical director Johnny and me will be here to answer. Please feel free to ask.

 

Looking very good! and special things you do to minimize the drawcall? and is there a sorta limit to it?

 

Oh, yes. We did quite a lot of optimization to reduce the drawcalls. For each open scene(public area, which is quite huge with lots of objects), we aimed to control the cost on static scene objects under 400 drawcalls and save more for the characters. For a mmo, rendering cost is very dependent on how many players you want to display per screen, and the drawcalls will easily go crazy if you don't optimize that part well. We make our character to use as less materials as possible and combine meshes dynamically on armor change. This way saves a lot. Still the best way to save drawcalls: wisely use the materials and combine meshes.

 

These images looks cool. Are the system requirements available yet?

 

Plenty of steampunk forums for you to advertise on. I used to build and sell steampunk style lamps.
This is the look I'd love to have for my concept.

 

This looks awesome. The world needs a good Steampunk MMO; I hope you guys succeed!

 

City of Steam will scale to the user's hardware and web browser settings. (This tweaking and fine tuning of this will not happen until the Beta test in Fall 2012) Currently, a gaming computer that is around three to five years old will run the game just fine. Older, non-gaming computers and/or old laptops will need to reduce the graphic quality settings to achieve an acceptable frame rate.

 

If you haven't noticed, we already released the new redesigned website and forum with more original steampunk elements. Also, the long-expected City of Steam themed merchandise store is quite impressive. Head over the City of Steam website to access more updates.

 

City of Steam Alpha test release dates confirmed. The test will start on July 20th and last for 3 weekends. Be sure to help us test play this game and provide feedback. Take a peek into Alpha through our new gameplay trailer:

http://youtu.be/aRR6ENSr780

 

Awesome! Simply awesome!

Cheers,

Galen

 

Looks excellent! I'm a pretty big fan of the Steampunk genre, so I can't wait to see how this turns out!

Also, just curious, did you get the terms "warder" and "channeler" from the Wheel of Time series? If that's the case, do the terms still have the same meaning?

 

No; although they share similar roles (Warder is a fighter type, whereas Channeler has supernatural abilities), the names were not taken from Wheel of Time. Warders in City of Steam are more like knights, and are independent warriors, not attached to having to protect a specific individual (unlike Warders in WoT that are directly connected to Channelers). Channelers in City of Steam channel the resonance of the Mechanism through sound and music, serving more of a "priestly" role (like clerics; buffs, healing, etc) in the City of Steam world...and male channelers here don't go insane from using their powers. So really, aside from sharing the same name, they are very different from each other. Interesting comparison, but otherwise purely coincidental

 

We're pretty close to a third round of Alpha Weekend launch now. If interested, be sure to sign up for our Newsletters and test play City of Steam on Friday! Can't wait to receive more feedback!! Also, check out our new little video while you are waiting for the test:

http://youtu.be/6VV9IIiWYrk

 

Man this looks absolutely amazing, would love to get a hold of a key so I can play this game! I love seeing amazing Unity projects. If I had money I would throw it at you ^_^

Edit: I hope there is class that can summon a pet or some sort, I am a big fan of summoner type classes.

Edit2: About how long did this project take, and how many people are/were working on it during the main dev process?

 

Any support is appreciated, financial or not

All classes can eventually select a summon as one of their skills, and the summon will fit their class theme (gun turrets for Gunner, ice construct for Arcanist). These summons have a limited duration of course, extended by upgrading the summon skill. Pets, too, will be added in future versions of the game (because who doesn't want a loyal pet by their side?)

The project has been years in development, starting with David Lindsay, our co-founder and Lead Designer, and his dream of making this game, and just 3 other people, back in 2008. Very small, crappy apartment as an office, a true indie tale. People have joined the team since, then the company got proper investment, and now we have a decent-sized development team (for being indie) working in a proper office. A huge majority of the game was worked on by a team of just 11 but due to the expanding scope of the game and the complete re-writes we’ve been making as result have pushed the team to about 30 developers.

 

One can clearly see that. This is one of the best looking Unity games I have seen so far. The graphics are just stunning. So much detail and depth.
Good luck with this project... For an MMO you certainly need 30 developers as the bare minimum ^^.

 

We just got done with the third round of Alpha testing and it turned out to be another great weekend for us! Now we are heading for the fourth (also the last) Alpha Weekend starting on August 17th, featuring even more content and all 9 playable races. If interested, do remember to sign up for our newsletter for alpha key priority and choose your preferred races on 17th.

 

Damn. That's some good work, guys. It's great to see an MMO actually happen on this engine! I wish all of the best for this game, and I'll try to make it for the last alpha test.

 

Was your in-house level editor developed by your team?

 

Yes, the level design tool was created by our team, with help from our own level designer Greg (who you can see in the video. Of course, he makes it look a lot easier to use than it really is, but the tool is constantly updated with new features as they are needed for the game.

 

Looks pretty good, got a key for this weekends alpha.. could not see a place to download the client but ill have a proper look when i get home from work tonight.

 

The game is browser-based, so you don't need to download anything except Unity Web Player for playing it in your browser. We all look forward to seeing you in-game this weekend!

 

After a terrific weekend, City of Steam’s 4th and final Alpha test has officially come to a close. Our thanks go out to all players who flooded in The Refuge last week; without your support, we couldn't have tested the game out as thoroughly. Also, we've piled up tons of player input since the test started, and will be looking into them shortly. Be sure to keep an eye on our website and dev journals to keep up-to-date with Beta news and development!!

 

looks great!

 

Thanks, Alpha turned out to be a great success (see alpha wrap-up here), and we are going to release Beta in about 2 month form now. If interested, be sure to sign up for the newsletter on our website and help us test the Beta out later.

 

Will you guys be making a standalone version, it would be nice since the web version is much laggier, as are most Unity Web games for me, and lots of others I've heard, compared to a standalone version of the same game. Having a standalone would allow you to explore more settings as well and maybe some different features for the HUD/GUI

 

Although it's a possibility, since we'd love to explore other platforms as well, for now, we're focusing on just getting the game;s content ready and putting it out there. We've refactored the client code recently, which significantly improved framerate issues for lower-end computers (you can read more on this on a recent dev journal here: http://www.cityofsteam.com/coding-dev-journal-post-alpha-to-do-list). But yes, somewhere down the line, given enough of a demand, we'll be looking at the possibility of a standalone version.

 

this looks gorgeous!

 

This game looks amazing, this definately sparks my interest and has also made me think about a few things like creating tools to make development smoother with the current game im building as i have been just using the default unity toolset and some assets purchased on the asset store to make things easier. Did you guys do kickstarter to get your funding and how did you go about getting artists? (they seem very scarce here at the unity forums)

 

Thanks, for funding, well, we didn't get it from kickstarter. For years we were very small, just a few guys in a cruddy apartment/office, living on scraps, but with a dream to make this game (3 guys pooled their money and quit a big game company 3 years ago). After 2 years of paying ourselves around $200/month, we posted video so four game everywhere, and then in a sudden stroke of luck, last year, an investor showed up, liked what he saw, and wanted to give it the best chance to see the light of day. We've had a much better set up and proper resources since then,and now it's up to us to make it work.

Speaking of artists, as I mentioned before, we were running out of money before the funding came in, so finding them (only 3 or 4 at first) was simply through job ads, but the hard part was the training and constant revision after hiring them, almost all developers in the company had several "hats", if you want to know more about this, just hit the link:http://www.cityofsteam.com/the-mechanist-hat-rack. Feel free to drop me a line if you have further questions!

 

This looks fantastic! i cant wait to try the game out and i'd love to see more
can't wait to hear and see more from you guys.

 

We just put up some new dev journals, here's your chance to get a closer look at some cool Rattling animations in Unity, backstories of the charming but manipulative Rivens and a wrapup for all available classes in City of Steam now.

 

I love your project guys!

 

Thanks man! Feel free to drop by our forum and participate in discussions, we really have a gamer-driven community.

 

Last chance for supporting City of Steam guys! The closing date of all Alpha Supporter Packs is pretty close now; to those who've been keeping track of City of Steam, don't miss the chance of being an honorable supporter for this game while receiving some amazing CoS swag at the same time!

 

Check out a funny little video we made while stressed-out over getting City of Steam Beta ready. Feel free to leave us a comment, too! As always, keep an eye on our Dev Journals for latest development progress we've made, and share your thoughts. Beta should be rearing its head out sometime in November.

 

I liked the POWERTHIRST parody

 

Sometimes a little video can make us relaxed..

 

Hello everyone, we have plenty of great news share recently, so forgive me if this seems a bit spammy (but yeah...how else to spread the news on stuff like this..?)

First!Closed Beta Test will start on Nov. 16th (see more details via the announcement here), coupled with more content and contests;

Second! we just got a new Beta Teaser Trailer up, so please share the video with your friends and help spread the word out.;

Third! we now have brand new Beta Collaborator Packs, if you missed the Alpha packs, this is your chance to get a bunch of awesome extras for Beta!

Lastly, as we also have some goals to reach in Closed Beta, we do need your support to make them achievable. Check out the bonus content you could get in CBT on your Steam-o-Meter (it even includes developer humiliations; we may regret our enthusiasm later…).

Whew, ok, that was lots of news, sorry for dropping so much on your guys at once… I’m glad to hear your comments on this though, so be sure to let me know what you think, or ask those questions I’m sure are crossing your mind!

 

It looks amazing!! Great work.

 

Inspirational project, inspirational story. I do believe that a game of such quality will be revolutionary for browser-based games.

I saw that someone asked about a standalone version, which I think would be nice, but what about an online PC downloadable version in the future? You'll need to have a cloud up and running, however, you'll find expanding to other platforms a lot easier from there. Also, from my experience, lower end PCs will find the game a lot easier to handle than playing it through the webplayer.

 

This is really awesome.

 

Thanks for the compliment. Speaking of a standalone client,we will be considering a higher-rez client download in the future but that would require working out proper patching etc. We like where we are at now, update anything and don't need to push it, the player signs in and gets the newest assets.

 

Looking awesome! Definitely on my watch list!