Rise of the King - An Action/Adventure game with Survival elements

Hey everyone,

We've spent the last year re-booting our art style and direction from the low poly style to a more realistic direction. The thread has been updated! =)

"Rise of the king is a third-person action-adventure game with survival elements, set within a medieval fantasy world. You will have to survive as you travel across the dangerous lands on your journey to find answers as you investigate the disappearance of the son of Lord Henry of New Haven.

You will explore a sweeping storyline filled with unique characters and meaningful interactions along your journey. Our gameplay is a unique combination of survival, action and investigation mechanics to flesh out a much more dynamic and immersive experience."

Website:

http://www.rotkgame.com/
facebook.com/RiseOfTheKing
https://twitter.com/ROTK_Game

Video:

Screenshots:






















Like us on Facebook if you're interested!

https://www.facebook.com/RiseOfTheKing

 

Would enjoy a game play video if you have one. I checked on your site but didn't see one. Me No Facebook so didn't check there.
The character models look nice, I'd say they are good quality, good enough for release - I don't know why you consider them only placeholders. Possibly because it appears they aren't animated, but the models and texture quality is good quality.

Keep at it.

 

Sounds like a unique and fun game. Pretty art and models, the bloomy cartoony style fits it.

Looking forward to more, keep it up!

 

Looks good!

 

Looks really nice love the art style. Any plans for co-op this looks really fun to play with friends.

 

Thanks guys! I'm glad people are digging the art style. As far as co-op goes, the game is primarily designed for a single player adventure game narrative but we've pondered adding in some type of Coop open roam mode. I doubt its very feasible with our design but it's something we'll ponder as we go.

Thanks!

 

Very very nice, keep up the great work and keep us updated.

 

Looks a lot like fable 1 to me. Which is definitely a good thing in my book. I want to play it. Post a demo back here for sure when its ready!

 

I really like the idea of having day/night split of adventure and survival gameplay. Looking forward to seeing some more footage.

 

Very well done. Nice and smooth animation. I like the subtle sway of the bow as the character is aiming. Am I imagining that?
I see shades of Skyrim here!

 

Very nice. Not to question your design decisions, more to ask why you decided to proceed the way you did. Will all mesh objects come up nearly full resolution when you examine the object?
Will there be UI elements that pop up when you choose interact - to choose another object from your inventory?

I've been playing Skyrim (I know I'm behind) and the only interactive prompt they provide is to show the name of the object the invisible cursor is hovering over, to show it is collectable. Bioshock uses a similar approach you have choosen, and they both work nicely. Just wondering if you iterated on this interact/examine/pickup design?

 

Hey Animator - Thanks for your feedback man I really appreciate it! =)

The examine Item screen would be the equal of looking at an item within your inventory in Skyrim. However in our game the Examine screen will also give you a line of dialog for each item giving you some hint or tip about how it might be best used. A possible clue. So picture how in classic adventure games when you examined something you might get a line of dialog giving you some type of clue about how it might be used or some information on it. It's a similar concept here.

So the idea is that examining normal items have the perk of actually getting some more understanding about them textually. But as well you'll be coming across Books where you need information from them to proceed or relics or artifacts that you will need to physically look at up close to understand how to use it or get possible information from it. The examine item screen it designed to allow for his possibly with relevant items.

A good example of this is the Claw relic from Skyrim in the initial dungeon from the guy stuck in the spider web. How you needed to physically look at it close up to find the pattern engraved on it to put into the door to open it? Thing's like that.

 

Hype!

 

Looking awesome, keep it up! I love the art style, and I love games like this!

 

Yes nice progress.
Though Im a little partial to the initial prototype characters stylized look over the new one. Especially the scalemail treatment on the arms. Was that character original - or reused from another source, only for initial development?

The environments and lighting looks great - especially the moose? Mooses? Mieces? Moosi?

Care to share your lighting schemes?

Keep it coming!

 

Thanks guys I really appreciate you checking us out! =)

theANIMATOR2b - He was a temp character place holder for testing purposes while we begin to pursue more custom art pieces. We're still going for cartoon and some characters will have more stylization but we're going for a bit more balanced look now.

Thanks for the kind words regarding lighting! I've spent more time than you know trying to improve things lol.

 

Looking real good Jeff. Graphics are beautiful, and the sound track is pleasing.
On the run cycle the wrist angle on the back swing looks a little stiff to me, and I think the painted highlights on all parts of the characters texture map might be a little too strong (white).
Normally I wouldn't mention such minor issues, but I think your dedicated and able to making this look as nice as possible so - two minor points I noticed.
Your website is clean and clear - I like it - all of it.

 

Looks real good keep up the good work!

 

Thanks a lot for checking it out guys! Thanks for the input Animator2b! I see what you're saying and we'll try to address those things later as we get core functional mechanics into place properly but well noted =) I appreciate you checking out the site.

Thanks StarGamess! =)

 

this looks awesome :O

 

Thanks Resinresin! Appreciate you checking us out =)

 

Hey Guys,

It's been forever since I've updated this post lol. We've spent the last several months changing art directions to help us better achieve the vision we had for the game. We've since went to a more realistic art style direction. We've released our first mini peak at the game and will continue releasing new gameplay footage over at our youtube Channel and on our FB page. I just wanted to let you all know and when we're ready I'll create a new Post with all the updated info for you if you're interested!

http://facebook.com/Riseoftheking

 

Looks great!

 

Great job on the scenery you posted in the GAIA thread! It looks pretty much spot on visually, the only thing I noticed is that the head of the character seemed really small. Apart from that, I'm really curious about where you're taking this.

Which asset packs did you use for the hunting scene, by the way?

 

The new videos look amazing.
I would suggest to clean up the original post at the top of the thread as the images cannot be found and replace them with the new videos

 

Consider the post finally cleaned up LOL Took forever haha =)

 

Here's our updated player character concept for Greyson with our rebooted art direction:

 

We've finally released our new updated website for Rise of the King. Check it out!

http://www.rotkgame.com/

 

Looks really, really good with the environments. Character is also lit and shaded nicely. Only thing I can see needing serious polish and repair are the animation state transitions for the bow hunting. They detract from the amazingness that is everything else.

 

Thanks man! Would you mind giving us more details as to what exactly and why you feel the animation transition is bad? You're refering to idle to Archery? Not actual movement within archery?

 

Well it's a bit of both. The worst offender I could see was the transition between walking to drawing his bow. There is a really large pop for the position of his upper right shoulder bone. It then twists around in a fashion that makes it appear to be dislocated. You can see this really well in the video if you run it at .25 speed on Youtube. The pop happens and the transition of the shoulder bone rotates in an unnatural way. Now the second part was the movement of walking while he was holding the bow towards the animal. It looked unnatural to me, like the arms were held in an unnatural position and the back was arched in a strange way. Just looked odd to me personally, but I would check what other people think as well (it's my own opinion and you know what they say about those

I think these things stood out to me because all of the other animations feel very natural and have a nice weight to them. They also blend nicely without any popping.

 

Thanks we're limited to some goofy animations at times so we don't always get perfection but we worked hard that at least what was, was fairly smooth in terms of basic movement. You should have seen them before all the tweaking lol =)

 

Oh man what you have right now is pretty freaking awesome. I figured these animation things would be just some polish at a later time you guys could refine or something. You are most definitely on track to have an amazing looking game. I shared this with David Helgason on my Facebook (he comments on some of my personal posts so I think he sees some of my stuff). It's that impressive. Just keep pushing forward and improving on what you have.

 

Looks better than Skyrim!

 

Thanks for those encouraging words! We are perfectionists and we utterly fail everyday but we'll keep trying haha =)

 

Thank you for that kind word! =)

 

Hey everyone. Getting close to our little Kickstarter attempt and polishing content. Here's a peak at our Tavern interior:

 

New progress being done on our player character model and its coming along quite well. Also been reworking our snow textures and vibe to be a little bit more overcast.

 

Leather looks outstanding. Nearly perfect specular levels.
There is slight mesh clipping on the left shoulder with the chain mail sleeve, though I don't know if it will show up in game.

Even though I really liked the previous character, this one is looking pretty dang cool.

 

Thanks for the kind words Animator2b! The old character was just the Unity blacksmith demo so we've been needing our own custom character for a while now so its a long time coming. I look forward to posting the final result and thanks for your feedback! =)

 

I like the art style a lot.

 

Didn't you have a semi-hand painted, stylized character even before the black smith character?

 

Thanks for your nice words!

Yes, we came from an entire low poly design which was not able to hold the level of immersion we desired so we grew the design to a suitable art direction that could better allow us the depths that we wanted. We've been slowly updating everything as we can heh.

 

Here's another character update =) We've got the face done and are into final stages.

 

Looking good. I'm curious as to how it's going to look in the engine.

 

Thanks man! I'll be sure to post pics as soon as he's in game to show you. We're working on a hair shader and skin shader at this moment.

 

Hey all,

Here's the final render of our protagonist Greyson Wallace. I'm very happy with the results and I hope you dig it as well. He's a medieval forester and expert tracker and almost like a medieval sheriff of a small Lords manor. He deals with poachers, hunting and general protection and maintenance of the Lords forest.

 

very inspired by skyrim, but it looks really great, and the genre looks very interesting too...

 

Thanks a lot! And yep Skyrim is a big influence but it has nothing to do with gameplay =)

 

I figured I'd post this here as it gives a better look for you who are interested. Also shows a little music. Cheers!