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Survius - Multiplayer Open World Survival Game (Open Alpha available!)

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by chaozz, Aug 15, 2014.

  1. chaozz

    chaozz

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    Intro
    Survius is a Multiplayer Open World Survival game, that focuses on survival and cooperation, rather than deathmatch and Kill On Sight (kos). The game is played in third person.

    The game is currently in Open Alpha, and you are free to try it out!

    The game thus far has:
    • The island Survius is about 5x5km in size (incl. smaller island via a bridge)
    • Several towns, farms and other locations of interest. All buildings can be entered
    • A day and night cycle
    • Zombies
    • Random player, loot, zombie and animal spawning
    • Multiplayer (join servers or create your own servers, either public or private)
    • Inventory system, including save system
    • Item consumption
    • Hand gun and melee weapon
    • Animals
    • Basic hunting
    • Surrender / Hostage system
    • Campfires / Grilling/Cooking system

    The website: http://survius.com
    Facebook: https://facebook.com/survius

    Latest video:


    If you have any questions or remarks, let me know.
     
    Last edited: Apr 1, 2015
    siblingrivalry likes this.
  2. JSierraAKAMC

    JSierraAKAMC

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    Looks awesome so far! I love the look of the flashlight!
     
  3. matthewbauer

    matthewbauer

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    So other than no automatic weapons, do you have other ways to discourage player killing?
     
  4. ExDeaDguY

    ExDeaDguY

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    Looks great! But.. Noooooo not another survival game! no more competition please! :p
     
  5. CarterG81

    CarterG81

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    Id be more interrested if it was either singleplayer survival or void of pvp (and you competed in other ways, such as through limited supplies or competition for needs).

    Survival games are my favorite type of game, favorite theme.

    Games like DayZ are not survival games. They are deathmatch timesinks for kids with too much freetime on their hands.

    Part of what makes fps survival games deathmatch are too many guns, too powerful guns (automatic, tons of ammo, lack of realistic recoil like red orchestra), multiplayer, pvp, and ffa mode (as opposed to coop or team based).


    I could give some ideas to help move it to survival and less deathmatch. However, it is your game so instead let me show you the survival games that stray from deathmatch and toward survival.


    (I will add a comprehensive list to start giving you ideas). Even small features can help. Although youre on the right track- removing automatics is one way, but not enough by itself.

    Perhaps a good design for a multiplayer survival game needs to have a requirement for all design components. "Does this draw players together or not?" You can create a design which attempts to make players NEED each other. If they have common need, which is lost if enemy or dead, then that encourages them to NOT needlessly deathmatch, even if allowed. Pf cpurse then you have to ask, "Do I still need to allow them to kill one another? What does that add to the game? What does it take away?"

    Who knows. In the end you might have a design which brings people together to cooperate with new companions while declaring enemies with other groups who cooperated as well, culminating in team fights or betrayals or colony raids- or all sorts of fun shenanigans which transcend "ffa full loot kill everyone lame clone deathmatch game."
     
  6. chaozz

    chaozz

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    First of all, thank you all for replying!!

    To discourage player killing I am thinking along the lines of :

    - If you kill a player, you will not get his loot
    To get a players loot, you need to hold him up.
    - If you kill a player you get a bad reputation, and this punishes you in other fields (the bandit/hero system of dayz?)

    If any of you have other suggestions I'd be happy to take them into account.
     
  7. CarterG81

    CarterG81

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    So if you hold them up, I assume that means demanding they trade (give) you items? Make sure they can't hold them up, then after kill them.

    I didn't have the time to ,make that list. However, if you haven't played these survival games yet, please do: Don't Starve, NEO Scavenger, 7DaysToDie, Minecraft. Taking a look at their unique mechanics relative to survival gameplay.

    I strongly discourage anything similar to Day Z. It is a poorly designed game whose success relies on its popularity. There is already a Day Z, so your game won't be able to compete if it is similar. That is why I encourage a design which focuses heavily on what people seem to want in survival games. Taking out FFA full loot PvP may be a requirement to fulfill that market and make a successful game.

    Just look at how many feel about FFA PvP games like day z.
    This guy makes some good points.
    http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/149131-how-to-do-the-bandit-hero-system-in-standalone/

    Another tells the truth:
    "People need to realize that if KOS was removed, DayZ would suck ass."
    Take that out of your design, but don't add in enough alternative features- it might suck.
    Keep it in, but don't do enough to fix the flaws- it might fail.


    7DaysToDie and Minecraft have voxel world building. Don't Starve is built entirely around survival, not combat. Neo Scavenger is about scavenging items, crafting, and realistic. All have one or more features (unrelated to combat, related to survival) and a design which focuses heavily on those particular features.

    Hence why the need for a heavy feature list for the survival aspect- even if you keep a FFA PvP system. Youd be working against players natural and encouraged behavior to KoS death match. One interesting thing that hasn't been done with days, mine craft, or survival games is team played competitive player. Like those multi-realm mmo's but on a smaller scale, like a local Team vs Team vs Team balanced fps server.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2014
  8. chaozz

    chaozz

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    Thanks for that DayZ link, that really sums up how I feel about DayZ right now. Good ideas too.

    By holding up, I indeed mean you need to hold someone at gunpoint and raid their backpack. Then after you're done you can restrain them with ducktape (or something) that will stay on for about a minute, so you have time to leave the scene.

    This is just an example ofcourse, but killing them would not give you access to their stuff.

    I played a lot of Minecraft, WarZ (Infestation), Project Zomboid, Don't Starve and still play a lot of DayZ. So I have a good understanding of what mechanics work and which don't, at least to my opinion.
     
  9. Terminator75

    Terminator75

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    Hey there!...Brilliant work so far.....the game looks really good. My only question for now is that are you planning on implementing a First person camera on the game aswell? Sure the game looks great with the third person camera too but it would really add more diversity to the game if you can implement a first person cam too :) . I will certainly keep an eye out for the games progress and Good luck with this great game!!!
     
  10. chaozz

    chaozz

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    Thanks a lot for your kind words.

    About First person; I could move the camera to where the head position is, and that way give you the idea of First Person. But I'm not sure if that is true first person. But this method is easiest to implement.
     
  11. CarterG81

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    Awesome.

    So what are the biggest things that separate it from those games?
    I'm curious bc I love survival games.
     
  12. Terminator75

    Terminator75

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    Yeah! Nothing too fancy, just to give the player the ability to switch between cameras gives a lot more freedom to the game and it would be very useful in zombie attack sort of situation.
    Good luck!! and keep up the good work :)
     
  13. CarterG81

    CarterG81

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    Wouldn't switching from third person to first person be as simple as disabling the renderer for the character model, enablnig a hands model, and switching cameras to a different first person camera? Sounds super simple.
     
  14. chaozz

    chaozz

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    It really isn't because you can bend your spine, looking downward you should be able to see your gun and feet. Moving the camera to the head position is probably my best bet. But those are details I am not yet focusing on.

    Lets first get some more house models and basic hunting into the game.
     
  15. chaozz

    chaozz

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    I've decided to change the name of the game since there was already an Xbox indie game with the same name and theme. The new name is:

    Survius
    http://survius.com

    Should I ask a moderator to rename this thread or do I start a new one?
     
  16. chaozz

    chaozz

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    How do I do that?
     
  17. AthosK

    AthosK

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    There is a button to the right, on your first post with the name "Thread Tools", click on it and you'll see an Edit Title option
     
  18. CarterG81

    CarterG81

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    That does not edit the title outside of the thread. It only edits it inside the thread. You need a mod to edit the title.

    Edit: Nevermind, I guess they fixed that. It used to require a mod, but it's better since the big forum update.
     
  19. AthosK

    AthosK

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    Didn't know that was ever an issue, I'm constantly spamming it when I'm updating my project :p:p:p
     
  20. chaozz

    chaozz

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    Thank you, that fixed both the title and the permalink!!
     
  21. jonkuze

    jonkuze

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    when you say Multiplayer (PUN) do you mean Photon Unity Networking? Are you using you hosting your own Dedicated Photon Server with Custom Server Logic or are you using Photon Cloud? Very curious how your building this Survival Game with Photon if so... and it looks great by the way! All the Best! I'd be happy to play test it when it's ready... = )
     
  22. chaozz

    chaozz

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    I am using Photon Cloud, 100 concurrent users.
     
  23. jonkuze

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    Interesting... so how many players will you have in a single server instance or game session? and how what about persistent world features, i'm guessing if your using Photon Cloud you can't have persistent world because the game sessions are hosted by a single player who is considered the Master Client, and if the Master Client leaves the Game the Game Session ends and anything that happened in the world will not be saved. So the next time the player joins another game session everything will be reset correct? Or you have some other neat ways of handling this?

    And i'm curious also about your performance, and how well is the game performing with multiple players logged in and lots of Zombie AI running around...
     
  24. chaozz

    chaozz

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    If the master client logs off, nothing is lost and a new random player is assigned as the new master client. When all players leave the room, only then will the room-session die. At least to my understanding.

    Because I am using the cloud solution I can not spawn persistent items in the world, and that is a limitation I am willing to work with during alpha and beta stage. I will save inventory, health, food levels, etc in an external database.

    And about performance, I can't really tell yet. I've had multiplayer test sessions with no more than 2 people. That is why I will launch an alpha soon, so see how things are holding up.

    The master client for example will have to take care of all items spawning in the world. While zombie AI is handled by the one who aggro-d the zombie. I hope tricks like that will keep the network performance fast.
     
    jonkuze likes this.
  25. jonkuze

    jonkuze

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    You should add me to Skype! Skype ID: jonmalave, I can help you play test sometimes when I'm not busy working on my projects... I'm currently working on a Multiplayer RPG, MOBA style game "Heroes of Rune" and I am using Photon Cloud myself... and will have Enemy AI along with up to 6-8 Players Max per game session. I can tell you that I ran into big performance issues before with the enemy AI I had about 32 Enemies in a Game Session and my game's Frame Rate dropped like hell even with just 1-2 players online lol! We found the issue related to our Movement Script, I think it was too many updates and too much for the Master Client to keep track of as all the Enemies were Roaming around certain area's. For now we have our enemies idle until a Player engages the enemy, I think this is helping along with probably other script optimizations to the Movement. I would love to share notes and maybe we can learn from each other's projects as we are both using Photon Cloud. = )
     
  26. chaozz

    chaozz

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    I've added you.
     
  27. chaozz

    chaozz

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    I've been working on zombie AI. The map is pretty huge, and I use the free indie version of Unity, so no NavMesh. So, I ended up scripting my own super lightweight "pathfinding" script. It's absolutely super fast, and doesn't put strain on game performance.

    The script still needs a few tweaks to make the zombies respond better to spotting you, but in it's raw form I'm pretty content with it.

    Here's a video demonstrating the zombies following me in the game's supermarket:


    I've also been working on adding drag and drop support in the inventory and that's working nicely as well.
     
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  28. jonkuze

    jonkuze

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    Really Cool! AI seems pretty solid... fast lightweight path finding sounds great to me, and looks good! = )
     
  29. Brendonm17

    Brendonm17

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    Wow, I am just hearing about this game! :) I would also, like to add that i am currently using photon too! I am making a minimalistic topdown zombie shooter.. instead of just normal survival, it will have gamemodes (survival too). but WOW, this game looks amazing! i hope you keep us all updated :)
     
  30. primus88

    primus88

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    The game looks solid, but I think you are not considering the networking part enough.
    As I can see, you don't have an authoritative server, which will translate in rampant hacking and cheating.
    Sure, you can say that this doesn't matter for alpha or even beta, but the problem is that in the moment that it will matter, you will have to re-write almost everything...

    Just my two cents here. Again, the project looks serious, not like most zombie survival games on these forums.
     
  31. chaozz

    chaozz

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    Money is always the issue at hand. I am already investing my own money into this project and can not already rent servers. I first need to see if there is actually demand for a game like mine. So, during this first phase we rely on the photon cloud.

    Adjusting the game to client/server won't be a big issue. The network part is setup pretty solid.

    Thank you!

    Thanks, I will!
     
    Brendonm17 likes this.
  32. chaozz

    chaozz

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    Mac Seymour has been working hard to create models for the game. His latest creations include a new house and something every small town needs.. a bar!

    I have been working on optimizing game performance. The way Survius is set up is that there is no centralized server. All clients connect through a cloud service. One client however is appointed the “master” client and needs to keep things in sync.

    In my first version of zombie AI the master client took care of all zombies, who they detected and who they targeted. This dragged down performance for the master client, even with just 10 zombies.

    I have now rewritten that code so that ever client handles it’s own zombie things. I now get a steady 60fps again, without weird framedrops.

    I also replaced the backpack model found in almost all videos and screenshots. I found a better one, which still needs some tweaking but looks a lot better.

    Here is a video of me running into the bar, showing you around, while zombies follow me inside for a Bar Fight!

     
  33. okm1123

    okm1123

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    No matter what anyone does KOS will not stop , but there are ways to reduce it and thats by making features that make the killing only if needed and reducing the anger that results in KOS , for example :

    1- in minecraft you dont get so frustrated when you are killed on sight because you have a base and alot of collected materials and tools , so loosing some is not a big problem , and the equipment you wear in minecraft pretty much reflect your base and resources , for example an iron armored guy will be having good amount of iron and very very much stone and enough wood and a good base to hold alot of chests and rooms , but will likely have low amount of gold and less that 16 diamonds , a diamond guy will have about 32 diamonds and good amount of iron and wood , about 5 chests of stone and a large base with a big mine , so if you die in minecraft you can remake what you had easily atleast once to revenge , while in games like Unturned ( check it out if you dont know it ) or DayZ after dying you have nothing , so you are just another easy target , and building a base in unturned requires alot of time ( really really alot of time ) and resources , so you carry everything you have with you and you will likely get killed before building and you will have to start again , so if the game doest have building in it you should add atleast capturing buildings in the map and crafting chests easily .

    2- another thing is to make the killer think 1000 times before killing or looting , for example add diseases in the game , and the more you get closer to dead bodies or cloth that someone else used for along time will , depending on some calculations( the period since the dead body was killed , the time the dead wore the piece of cloth , if the dead guy had any diseases ) you will get diseased , and also as in number (1) if the killed player has the ability to quickly grab good equipment and kill his killer , then the killer will rething killing him for nothing .

    3- reduce the damage range alot : big problem in KOS is that you are killed instantly from 300 meters and from behind , this frustrates as you cant keep looking at each centimeter around you to check if there is someone , most people look around by a quick look and dont use scopes to see some far snipers , for example the most powerful gun ( will likely be a sniper rifle ) will damage 50% when shot in the body , after 250M it damages 34% .

    deleting auto and reducing ammo will also reduce alot of fun aspects of a survival game , like team battles .

    disabling loot will turn it to almost PvE , and that sucks .

    Me and my friends made our own Unturned server and we formed 2 main clands , other friends were lone survivors , after I and my friend built a base we couldnt KOS because we knew that the other clan will declare war and we didnt know what weapons they have , then someone from them entered our town we killed him , and stayed inside the base for a week because we were scared that someone snipe us , it all depends on making fear in killing , but unfortunally all survivor games now just make killing more rewardable , while there isnt any negative side of it .
     
  34. chaozz

    chaozz

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    Thanks for your long reply. Let me reply to your points:

    1. the alpha and beta will not have persistent items. it will however probably have some sort of safe zones where you can store your items for later use.

    2. if you kill a player you will not be able to get his/her loot.

    3. there won't be sniper guns in the game, for this exact reason. the only two guns will probably be a handgun (in the game now), and a bolt action rifle (partly in the game).

    The rifle will have a bit more range, but right now you have to hit a player about 3 times before he goes down, and then you don't get his loot (point 2).

    That's the current approach at least.
     
  35. Paddington_Bear

    Paddington_Bear

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    You know, I'm actually really interested in this. I wasn't expecting much when I saw "Multiplayer Open World Survival" but its looking very solid.
    Normally I never recommend working worldside before your core mechanics are nailed down but in this case, given how tight things are looking, I'd say set aside a day or two for a nice practical testbed. You need a place to test other systems you might use like terrain shaders, volume lighting, pathfinding solutions and so on. You need to be able to regulate all the variables in the scene to get a good grasp on performance and so on.
    If you want some pointers just hit me up on Skype.
    All the best with this, it looks excellent.
     
  36. chaozz

    chaozz

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    I've gone ahead and added you.
     
  37. jonkuze

    jonkuze

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    why won't there be persistent items? so do you mean everytime we play we start out with nothing, but then when we find stuff it's only good for that play session, and if you log off you will lose all your items? I would think that's an important part of a survival game to be able to keep your items... regardless if there is a safe house storage or not. There is no reason why you can't add MySQL database to store the player items they pick up on the fly as they pick it up. I know you mentioned no persistant items in Alpha or Beta, but I would think especially in Beta this would be a crucial time to have this already implemented as that's when people are really getting the feel for the game in Beta stage, Alpha is understandable not to have, but not in Beta... it should be there in Beta.
     
  38. jonkuze

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  39. perracolabs

    perracolabs

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    Looking really awesome. What are you using to generate the terrain?
     
  40. chaozz

    chaozz

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    By persistent items i meant on the servers, in the scene itself. I will ofcourse save the inventory, health, etc in a database when you log off.

    And thank you for the link, really helpful.

    I used a heightmap made in Photoshop, then used the Terraintoolkit (old script) to texture it based on height and steepness.
     
  41. MadJohny

    MadJohny

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    To disencourage player killing you could do something like SAO (Sword Art Online) I AM NOT A FANBOY, but I gotta say, what they have there is quite good, basically the name tag changes color depending on how many people they have killed (or in how many fights they have ENGAGED, since you could kill someone for self defense), so that if you see a red tagged player you would know that he isn't safe, and I guess the player being able to kill him wouldn't be that bad, he's red for a reason, so the player that killed the red player shouldn't also get a warmer color, I think that's enough for you to understand what I meant, good luck btw, looking good so far
     
  42. jonkuze

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    ah in that case cool... i really don't see a real need for persistent items in the game world... I think you can keep Photon Cloud as your backend and still create a cool session based survival game. But if your going to use Photon Cloud and it's not going to be a persistent world, i think you should consider scaling the world down! I don't know how big the world is currently, but I think that would be much better....

    that's actually one of my ideas... to develop a Session Based Survival Game. There is no reason why we can't have AI Zombies or Monsters, PvE, PvP and a Medium Sized World... as long as you randomize the Spawn Points, optimize the Networking, and make the game fun and interesting... instead of 32 or 64 Players whats wrong with 8 or 16 players in a world depending on the map size... Technically yes, it would seem more like an FPS Deathmatch Game, but really what is a Survival Game? Find people to team up with that hopefully won't stab you in the back, kill other players, take their loot, kill zombies or monsters, collect loot, and hmmm survive lol! and see your rank on the leaderboard of how good you are compared to others... I don't see why you can't do it with Photon Cloud and make it Session Based as that's exactly what I will do...

    I don't like following everyone else design, i like to do things different because i'm an indie that's why haha... so i think you can make it work man... just scale back in the areas that need scaling abit to match your team's resources. Otherwise you may aim to build something too big, and you may find that you are not well equipped to handle the server cost, or support cost that comes with building something too big than you can handle... unless you manage to get some good funding or find other team members that are willing to work for free and in partnership to help you achieve your vision.
     
  43. chaozz

    chaozz

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    That is like the hero/bandit system in DayZ, but instead of name colors they use clothing. I will definitely implement something along these lines.
     
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  44. chaozz

    chaozz

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    I am slowly adding more buildings, polishing my 3D modeling skills as I go along.


    I am also working hard to get the second and last fire arm in the game, a bolt action rifle.


    I hope to have some sort of demo ready soon. As soon as I get more house models done.
     
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  45. chaozz

    chaozz

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    It's been a while since I've posted an update on the open-world multiplayer survival game Survius. There are a lot of new things added to the game, and a public alpha is coming soon.

    The modeling of the houses, interior props and items has really taken a giant leap since I started modeling them myself. I've been creating small settlements and villages on the island Survius, using the new models.

    Here are some screenshots of the current state of the village called Clemenster.







    I've also been working a lot on the network code. To test the multiplayer I created a build of the current state of the game and sent it to two of my friends. We started playing, and I recorded video footage of our endeavor.

    Below is an edited clip of the footage shot during the multiplayer test. The video gives a pretty good impression on the current state of the game.



    A public alpha test is expected in Q1 2015! I appreciate all feedback on this post!!
     
    Last edited: Jan 7, 2015
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  46. mattlcpdfr

    mattlcpdfr

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  47. chaozz

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    I've worked on the AI of the zombies and they are now able to follow you around using my own take on pathfinding. Very lightweight.

    Here's a clip demonstrating how they now act in the game (first rough version):
     
  48. Brendonm17

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    So the AI is like Breadcrumb AI?
     
  49. chaozz

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    yes. whenever the target is out of sight or out of reach it uses breadcrumbs.
     
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  50. chaozz

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    It's been a while since I posted an update.

    I've implemented a PHP/MYSQL back-end to facilitate a login system. It also is able to load and save your player inventory. The game will store a separate inventory for when you play on either a public or a private server.

    I hope to release a first alpha version in a month.
     
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