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Outward - The Adventurer Life Simulator

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by pltremblay, Apr 10, 2015.

  1. pltremblay

    pltremblay

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    Outward is an open world RPG that want to simulate what the life of an adventurer would feel like. Players will have to hunt to get food, find water source to drink and setup camps to have a shelter for the night.



    Inventory
    Player's inventory will be divided in two parts. His/her character inventory, named the pouch, which will be extremely limited, like a couple of weapons, a few potions and herbs. Most of the inventory will be put in the second part, the backpack. Though also limited, the bag's capacity will be much higher than the pouch.

    We also want to bag to be able to receive damage. Receiving a hit while wearing your backpack could damage it, reducing it's capacity and stuff falling from it. It will be possible to put the bag down while exploring and fighting, then returning back to get it and then put loot in it.

    The world
    For design purpose and software limitation, we have decided to divide or world into medium sized zone. Outward won't be a seamless world but will have several areas with dimension around 2km by 2km. Travelling between each areas would require the player to use a caravan, boat or other traveling options. Moving from an area to another would be done instantly in term of real life time, but would take a few to several in game days. So the player would need to have enough provision to complete his/her journey.

    Having areas divided that way will allow us to make completely different biomes without having to worry about the transition. Those areas will also have changing weather depending of the climate. Desert could have sandstorm, tempered zone would have rain, and colder area would have snow. So far we are just tackled the later.


    Update April 21st -----
    Also, the snow will melt if there is a heat source close to it (such as a fire sigil or fire ball).


    -----

    Coop
    Exploring such vast world would be even better with friends. That's why we decided to make Outward coop compatible. Players will be able to play together on both online and splitscreen, a feature that tends to be put aside these days.



    To play online, a player will put a request on a job board in inns that other players will be able to see and join if they want. The client will then join the "host" world "à la Dark Souls". Players playing in splitscreen will also have the option to share the same world and progression.

    Update April 21st: ----
    An option we want to add to the Online coop is a way to play splitscreen. Yup, you have read right. We will allow players to see what your coop partner is seeing by simulating splitscreen over the network.
    ----

    There is still a lot to talk about, like the factions, the skills and spells, quests and dialogues, etc. I will come into that in future updates. Stay tuned!

    You can follow us on our Facebook page
    https://www.facebook.com/NineDotsStudio
    The game is on greenlight, feel free to thumbs-up it :) EDIT: We have been Greenlit in 7 days!
    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=424386335
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2016
  2. Mr-GamingWatch

    Mr-GamingWatch

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    That looks very nice!

    I'm a big fan of that weather system.

    I'm going to be keeping track of the progress on this for sure.
     
  3. ImAldu

    ImAldu

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    This just looks incredible. The animations are very, very good. How big is your team?
     
  4. zviaz

    zviaz

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    That menu screen is beautiful.
     
  5. pltremblay

    pltremblay

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    Thank you very much! You are making the day of our animator.

    We are currently a team of 6
    -The Ceo and Game Designer
    -2 programmers
    -1 Lead artist
    -1 Animator
    -1 Modeler
     
  6. ImAldu

    ImAldu

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    Well he deserves it. I mean I assume the rest of you deserve it as well but I haven't played it so I don't know how well everything is done. But animation is very obvious when its done badly so your animator is very good.

    Looking forward to seeing this game progress!
     
  7. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

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    This is very interesting looking.

    The very first thing this made me think of when I read the description and saw the banner was the very first 3 books in the Dragon Lance series, the Chronicles trilogy. The game world doesn't really portray that setting or anything, but the description and banner has some kind of subliminal connection.
    If you've never read - the Chronicles trilogy is a great series.

    Good luck guys. Will follow this development closely.
     
    NickHaldon likes this.
  8. pltremblay

    pltremblay

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    Is it the trilogy with the season in their name, like 'Dragons of Autumn something'? I remember reading them during my teenage time. Good trilogy indeed.

    I should get an update soon regarding the snow and some other stuff.
     
  9. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

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    Yeah - that's them. :)

    Good reads.
    Your description really made me think of the trials the original group faced when starting out on the journey in the very first book. Anyway, looking forward to the update.
     
  10. Stiffx

    Stiffx

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    very nice, keep it up
     
  11. pltremblay

    pltremblay

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    I added some new infos about the online coop and some melting snow!
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2015
  12. ensiferum888

    ensiferum888

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    Fellow dev from Quebec here (Montreal) - I had no clue this was made in Unity a friend of mine showed me the kickstarter a few days back and I find this project very impressive!!!

    You have my support and admiration, keep up the good work!!
     
    pltremblay likes this.
  13. pltremblay

    pltremblay

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    Here are animations made by our talented animator. These are rendered in Blender.

    Adventurer animations


    Alpha deer animations
     
  14. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

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    Animations are very nice, especially the attack animations. Very nice anticipation and moving holds.

    Deer don't scratch at the ground with there back feet when there heads are down. They may do that with one front hoof but not the back. May want to edit that movement.

    Nice work.
     
  15. pltremblay

    pltremblay

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    Been a little while since we posted something regarding Outward. The game is still in development. We have received funding through the Canadian Media Fund!

    Here is a video of a couple armors and a few weapons that are currently being developed.

     
    theANMATOR2b and Mister-D like this.
  16. LargerEagle

    LargerEagle

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    This looks very very good, can't wait to see more. Everything seems very fluid and smooth, and the terrain is good looking and seems like realistic geography.
     
  17. pltremblay

    pltremblay

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    I'm passing the good words to our animator.

    For the terrain, we are using World Machine, it's much better than Unity's default terrain system :p
     
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2015
  18. ind1

    ind1

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    impressive stuff, like the animations.
     
  19. pltremblay

    pltremblay

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    The world is starting to shape. We (almost) have completed the first village and we started to flesh out the first open area of the game. It is mostly non-interactable flora, but we will add something to hunt and a predator (probably some kind of hyena) and a few bushes that you can gather berries from quite soon.

    Note that there is some bandits roaming the area too but aren't shown in the video.

     
  20. Jim_West

    Jim_West

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    Looks really good, are you using assets or is this all made by your studio?
     
  21. pltremblay

    pltremblay

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    Everything is homemade. For plants we are using Speedtree, terrain was generated by world machine then we use an edited UBER shader to adjust the texture so it look a bit more natural.
     
    theANMATOR2b likes this.
  22. pltremblay

    pltremblay

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    Boy it has been a while since I posted progress on the game. I'm really sorry about this. We have been busy developing features for the game, prepared a trailer and a demo for PAX West which will be in about a week or so. (EDIT: Added the trailer in the OP)

    We have 3 regions so far. A tempered area where it will snow during winter (trees will lose their leafs), snow will accumulate, not in height though, as it didn't run well on consoles (bummer). We also have a desert, hotter area where it will be hard to find water and the player will have to protect himself from the arid weather. Finally, we have a marsh, more humid area, with poisoned water.

    Splitscreen was especially complex because of the UI. Two players can select UI elements and Unity's UI implementation didn't allow that. Had to change the UI's core code and make my own Standalone Input module. In the end, it works pretty well. It's just annoying to update each time another Unity version is out with modification on the UI code.
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2016
  23. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

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    Looking forward to seeing the new trailer. So far - your animations are top shelf!
     
  24. pltremblay

    pltremblay

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    I added the trailer in the OP.
     
  25. ExDeaDguY

    ExDeaDguY

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    Great work, this looks awesome!
    I love the idea of local co-op. I miss games that offer that. I absolutely loved that feature on borderlands. I think that was the last good rpg style game that offered co-op that I played.
     
  26. eaque

    eaque

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    any dev wanting to make this thread live!? the game is quite famous now, how many did you sell? i Hope enough for those 6 memebers to retire!!:p
    cheers
     
  27. kdgalla

    kdgalla

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    If that's true, then it's not a "work in progress" anymore, so not much left to talk about unless the devs want to do a postmortem.
     
  28. Darrkbeast

    Darrkbeast

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    Really digging the melting of the snow effects.