Our new game

[Lurler]

Edit: Some info in this topic is a bit outdated, but still interesting.
So feel free to read this and other topics to learn more about the project!

And yes, now we post regular dev. reports on our blog! https://atomictorch.com/

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This is not an "official" announcement yet, but I would like to share some information about the project we are currently developing.

By that I mean that we won't be making the development openly public yet, as it implies regular blog posts, screenshots, videos and all that. And we are not ready for it currently. However the project is progressing very nicely and slowly takes shape. So it would be silly to keep it to ourselves and not get some input from you guys.

So, It will be an openworld game. But wait, there are a lot of openworld and survival games already, it seems like everyone and their dog currently makes one. So, how is it different?
Short answer: quite a bit, actually

Another important point - we are not using Unity this time. We've had enough problems with it already. So we are developing a completely new custom engine for this game. It will give us some incredibly powerful options for development and elevate modding to a degree unheard of before (no jokes here, I'm dead serious). We are also working very closely with a few other teams, including Noesis (who provide us with their powerful UI library).
You can read a bit more about our custom engine "Renkei" here: http://wiki.atomictorch.com/Renkei_Engine

The game will have a top down view (2D basically) and will heavily focus on interactions with the environment and your character. I'm not sure if I should be giving away the actual story of the game, but basically you are given an entire planet to interact with. Ah, and it will be specifically a multiplayer game.

Currently the game is in pre-alpha stage and we are developing all the necessary groundwork that would allow us to implement all the planned features later at a very quick pace. This also includes working on the engine. The engine itself is about 95% completed, I would say. But there are still some things we can add.

So, now. What is the reason for sharing this information in the first place if we can't show the actual game yet?
There are a few actually:
- We want to start sharing information about the specific features we are implementing or certain decisions we are taking. If we have your input - it would help up understand how these things are seen by the players.
- We will need to test the game at some point and if there is already a small community of people who follows the development - we could simply distribute the game to you to try.
- You might also have some great ideas that simply didn't come to our mind. Maybe there is extremely simple solution to some game design or technical task that we just didn't think of?
And other.

We are also considering having a thread here where we will be posting short weekly news. This won't go to our blog yet, but rather will be available to people who choose to engage with the project here on this forum. But that would depend on you guys, if you think something like that would be interesting.

That's more or less it.

But don't worry, we will share more information about the game soon!

[kyokei]

Sounds good! 2d topdown survival rpg seems awesome - can't wait to see what you guys have been working on.

I really wonder in what time this game is, modern times, sci-fi, medieval. I think sci-fi would make sense since you did an amazing job with VE.

[Lurler]

I really wonder in what time this game is, modern times, sci-fi, medieval. I think sci-fi would make sense since you did an amazing job with VE.

Yes, it is certainly a sci-fi themed game. It gives us much more freedom to implement interesting mechanics and add things for you to tinker with.

Another big aspect of this game that I have never seen fully realized in other games before (in this genre) is that the choices you make actually make you a valuable member of the server.

Take Minecraft for example, it is an amazing game, but it's not really that fun to play in multiplayer (rather, it is not as much fun as it could have been, had it been designed slightly differently). For example you are building a huge nuclear power plant (with mods of course) only to realize that all other players are doing exactly the same  thing and your efforts go in vain, no one is going to use the fruits of your labor and it's a bit sad feeling when you spend an entire week on something only to realize that there is not much use for it beyond just the fun of building it. It's fine... but it's not ideal.

Here we keep that in mind when designing the game from the very beginning to make every player a valuable contributor to the server. You could fill many roles and your efforts will be rewarded with positive social interactions if that's something you want.

Or... you can always be an asshole and ruin other people's day

Anyway, that's only one part of the game. There is much more to it than that.

[kyokei]

Sounds interesting and huge!
So if decisions in the world affect everything - would I be silly to say that AtomicTorch would host some dedicated servers?
One thing that people hate is playing on a server only for the host to abandon it. With these kind of games you require to have some developer hosted servers, added to this you can of course have player hosted servers. For example RUST.

[Lurler]

Sounds interesting and huge!

It is huge
However, we deliberately don't want to create "infinite world" which is often featured as a "good point" in other games (hint: it isn't a good thing, it's just marketing). Instead, we will have an actual planet for you to explore. Entirely handcrafted with lots of points of interest! But most importantly, it will be always processed by the server it its entirety, and not only "near the players" like in many other games. So, if there is a factory on one side of the world, or a pack of hungry monsters on another side - it will all be processed and updated in real-time regardless of other factors making the world much more real and alive.

So if decisions in the world affect everything - would I be silly to say that AtomicTorch would host some dedicated servers?

Yes, we will host some servers ourselves initially. However, at a later date we will allow players to host their own servers as well. Both vanilla and modded servers.

One thing that people hate is playing on a server only for the host to abandon it. With these kind of games you require to have some developer hosted servers, added to this you can of course have player hosted servers. For example RUST.

We already considered that as well!
Currently I can't give any promises, but to avoid the problem of low quality, unsupported crappy servers as you described we will are planning to have a single way to rent servers. Rather than delegating this to some third-party companies which often do a poor jobs at this we will handle it ourselves!
You would be able to rent servers directly from us which would allow us to:
- ensure that the servers are always updated to the latest version of the game
- ensure that all servers are running on the best hardware possible
- ensure that there are no cheats, exploits or bugs
- etc.
Which would allow us to have much better experience even for community servers!
Plus it will be a cloud hosting, so if you want to create a custom server you will be able to rent a server in any part of the world you want in seconds.

Now, if you just want to play the game - you don't need to worry about any of this. Just connect to either our official servers or any of the community servers and enjoy the game!

We also would like to see all servers having 100+ players. So, rather than having 10000 servers with 2-3 players on average (like in Rust for example) we will try to make it so there are maybe only 100 servers but all with 100+ players.

[kyokei]

Mmmm, this is what Minecraft did too - not sure if that was a success. But I am all for a hosted server by AtomicTorch and then having community servers with mods etc.

Talking about mods - one thing that bugged me with VoidExpanse is that you could have modded servers but the users would have to install the mods would they be able to connect to the server.
Are you going to use the same approach here or will you do it differently? Think for example of: when you join a server that has mods you don't have that you automatically download them from that server, this way people could connect to all community servers without having to go through the effort of downloading the mods separately. Ofcouse this would have to be done in such a way that it puts the mods in a specific folder for that server - so that when you join another server that you aren't conflicted by the mods.

Other than that, really curious as to the rest of the game - seeing the damage and armor types It reminds me of some futuristic steampunk kinda game - Shadowrun comes to mind.

[Lurler]

Mmmm, this is what Minecraft did too - not sure if that was a success. But I am all for a hosted server by AtomicTorch and then having community servers with mods etc.

If you are talking about "Minecraft Realsm" - then yes, we want to make something similar. But in case of "realms" it's a bit too simplistic. We will obviously provide much more customizability (if that's even a word).

Talking about mods - one thing that bugged me with VoidExpanse is that you could have modded servers but the users would have to install the mods would they be able to connect to the server.
Are you going to use the same approach here or will you do it differently? Think for example of: when you join a server that has mods you don't have that you automatically download them from that server, this way people could connect to all community servers without having to go through the effort of downloading the mods separately. Ofcouse this would have to be done in such a way that it puts the mods in a specific folder for that server - so that when you join another server that you aren't conflicted by the mods.

Currently we plan to have a way for server owners to specify the download location for a mod, so people can receive that mod automatically when they connect to a server. No need to install anything manually. And later on, if everything goes well we will make a common mod marketplace where everyone will be able to upload their mods, vote, etc. And it will make mod installation even simpler for both clients and servers - no need to download anything at all, just specify the mod ID and it will be downloaded and updated automatically.

Other than that, really curious as to the rest of the game - seeing the damage and armor types It reminds me of some futuristic steampunk kinda game - Shadowrun comes to mind.

Yes, I would say it would be quite similar in Style. However it won't be as dark and gloomy
As for gameplay - we are aiming at a very deep gameplay with lots of different mechanics to try. Plus character specialization in different directions to make each play-through unique.

[Tchey]

very deep gameplay

To my taste, it's what was laking in your precedent games, so i've some expectation about this quote !

[Lurler]

To my taste, it's what was laking in your precedent games, so i've some expectation about this quote !

Well, I would argue against it. It would simply be dishonest to say that VoidExpanse lacked in content or depth
But worry not, our new game will be even more content rich and certainly won't lack in depth!
The concept document for it is three times as long as for VoidExpanse and Dinocide combined

[Tchey]

How are you going ?

[Lurler]

It's progressing pretty well. We finished implementing inventory menu and all basic in-game UI (user interface). Currently working on the main menu, server list, etc. Obviously the game itself is also progressing well. We've added quite a few new things.

In terms of visuals we are currently reworking how the walls are displayed in the game, because we didn't like how they were before (too low).

Our idea is - as soon as we finish every basic feature we will announce the game officially, show some screenshots, and finally start writing regular blog posts on our blog.

We just don't want to create hype (which won't happen at this point, which is obvious) before we actually have something substantial to show. But we are really hyped ourselves about the game

[ai_enabled]

But we are really hyped ourselves about the game

Tell them the truth! The core gameplay is finished and we're playing it 24/7 with red eyes and starved to death. It's crazy addicting. We just cannot stop playing and I'm afraid we all will die soon! But the good news is if we don't die the game will be the most addicting game in the history! Addicting enough to keep you alive and play forever...

[kyokei]

Tell them the truth! The core gameplay is finished and we're playing it 24/7 with red eyes and starved to death. It's crazy addicting. We just cannot stop playing and I'm afraid we all will die soon! But the good news is if we don't die the game will be the most addicting game in the history! Addicting enough to keep you alive and play forever...

hahahaha - We shall see! we shaaaall see! I hope you are right!

[Tchey]

Now you can rename the forum Cryofall !

[Lurler]

Now you can rename the forum Cryofall !

Right! Completely forgot about that