Wayward Realms Devlog 1: World Generation Systems

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Jay_H
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Re: Wayward Realms Devlog 1: World Generation Systems

Post by Jay_H »

Welcome aboard Wyaldfire :)

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Werewolf
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Re: Wayward Realms Devlog 1: World Generation Systems

Post by Werewolf »

Wyaldfire wrote: Wed Aug 31, 2022 3:55 pm Hey guys, community manager for OnceLost Games here. We haven't had much of a presence in these forums but DFU is a project that is very near and dear to our hearts.
I was reading through your concerns, which are perfectly valid, and thought I'd hop in to address some of the issues.
I do want to say that none of the systems in the video were faked. That is our genuine progress, at least from a couple months back. The systems are still fairly primitive but they will continue to be iterated upon and improved, adding more variety and definition. For instance, we didn't showcase multiple floors or destructible doors, but those do already exist.
We are walking a fine line between our buildings/dungeons staying reminiscent of Daggerfall and looking like a more modern game. We obviously haven't hit the right mark yet, but we'll get there in time.
The goal has and always will be Daggerfall but created with modern tools.
Finally, I know progress seems slow, but it has been steady. Our team is working on a voluntary basis at the moment but we have been in active talks with publishers. We are not in a rush to get signed on though, as we want to take advantage of this time to lay a solid groundwork for our systems.
If you guys have any other concerns or questions, feel free to ask. We try to be as open as possible about the game and our progress.
Care to explain this article? https://medium.com/@indigogaming/how-i- ... 8b327e50f3

A former major person on the project details the troubled development and lack of progress on the project.

The generator in the video looks interesting but at the same time with modern tools a hobbyist programmer could create those things. Years of supposed development and all we currently have is a couple basic generators. I want this game to be great but the team needs professional structure and leading so it doesn’t end up being vaporware

And what’s up with this: “They discussed many things, including politics, and were being very demeaning toward a particular set of views and some popular political commentators.”

Please don’t tell me you guys are wacky conservatives.

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BadLuckBurt
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Re: Wayward Realms Devlog 1: World Generation Systems

Post by BadLuckBurt »

Werewolf wrote: Wed Aug 31, 2022 6:21 pm Care to explain this article? https://medium.com/@indigogaming/how-i- ... 8b327e50f3

A former major person on the project details the troubled development and lack of progress on the project.

The generator in the video looks interesting but at the same time with modern tools a hobbyist programmer could create those things. Years of supposed development and all we currently have is a couple basic generators. I want this game to be great but the team needs professional structure and leading so it doesn’t end up being vaporware

And what’s up with this: “They discussed many things, including politics, and were being very demeaning toward a particular set of views and some popular political commentators.”

Please don’t tell me you guys are wacky conservatives.
Why are you so hostile? I'll tell you this about the politics bit, YOU are being demeaning by framing conservatives as wacky by that statement, maybe sit and think on that one for a bit. You have every right to ask questions but this isn't the way.
DFU on UESP: https://en.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=T ... fall_Unity
DFU Nexus Mods: https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity
My github repositories with mostly DFU related stuff: https://github.com/BadLuckBurt

.

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Interkarma
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Re: Wayward Realms Devlog 1: World Generation Systems

Post by Interkarma »

Welcome to the forums Wyaldfire! :)

I'm following Wayward Realms' progress with great interest, and enjoy your updates and concepts very much. Please keep up the good work. I look forward to seeing the next instalment of your generation systems.

For anyone who feels this looks underwhelming, an old anecdote I like to share about projects early in development is the black triangle. In this tale from 1994, a non-developer is underwhelmed that after a month of work the team had only a single black triangle on the screen:
What she later came to realize (and explain to others) was that the black triangle was a pioneer. It wasn’t just that we’d managed to get a triangle onto the screen. That could be done in about a day. It was the journey the triangle had taken to get up on the screen. It had passed through our new modeling tools, through two different intermediate converter programs, had been loaded up as a complete database, and been rendered through a fairly complex scene hierarchy, fully textured and lit (though there were no lights, so the triangle came out looking black). The black triangle demonstrated that the foundation was finally complete the core of a fairly complex system was completed, and we were now ready to put it to work doing cool stuff. By the end of the day, we had complete models on the screen, manipulating them with the controllers. Within a week, we had an environment to move the model through.
I have my own "black triangle" story. The quest system in DFU involved 18 months of building systems, coding actions, linking quest state into world, and hundreds of other small integration challenges. Literally none of my progress could be shared in screenshots until most of these systems were almost complete. When I could finally show something, it looked very underwhelming. Casual observers were not impressed. But within a few months, more and more side quests started coming online, then the main quest was playable from start to finish. Then suddenly guilds, commoner quests, NPCs, and all the other stuff happened within about 6 more months. That's the magic of incremental development and systems compounding on each other.

So next time you see something early in development, please remember the "black triangle problem" - accomplishments that take a large amount of effort to achieve aren't always easy to communicate. And they're usually pioneers of bigger things to come.

Vorzak
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Re: Wayward Realms Devlog 1: World Generation Systems

Post by Vorzak »

Werewolf wrote: Wed Aug 31, 2022 6:21 pm Care to explain this article? https://medium.com/@indigogaming/how-i- ... 8b327e50f3

A former major person on the project details the troubled development and lack of progress on the project.
https://medium.com/@indigogaming/how-i- ... 8b327e50f3

I too am very curious about that article. It appears to explain that the devs may not be taking their project seriously. This thing with Ian Phoenix does not appear to be resolved in an ideal manner that inspires confidence in the project’s leadership. There is so many parts of the article to quote from that no one on OnceLostGames Discord has explained.

For one, Ian afaik never received a formal apology, after all his hard work trying to get the team together, organized and focused on the project when everyone else seemed to mostly want to hangout and chat about unrelated crap. The others on the team didn’t have to agree with Ian, but it’s professional and ethical to say a “thank you for your hard work” and “sorry you left on such bad terms,” etc. particularly in a small team setting. If anything else, it can inspire confidence and build integrity, things from what Ian says, the rest of the team has little of.
Werewolf wrote: Wed Aug 31, 2022 6:21 pm And what’s up with this: “They discussed many things, including politics, and were being very demeaning toward a particular set of views and some popular political commentators.”
I care very little of the political/religious biases of the devs on any team, I try to stay clear of that. But I will say, political and religious issues can cause great rifts between team members/co-workers if things get out of control and make the work environment uncomfortable and frustrating. If the setting feels hostile towards one’s beliefs, why wouldn’t it make team members feel unwelcome, unmotivated and disconnected with the project and alienated from others on the team. This is just one example Ian gives might prove that these OnceLostGames devs may not be taking leadership seriously.

There’s a lot more I could add, but for me, with how they appear to have handled things in the beginning and what progress they’ve made over the years, overall, it makes me not care much about this project or expect it to grow past a Discord server and a small fanbase. I’ve seen no change and nothing to prove otherwise from what I’ve seen on Discord.
This WAS the dream team to make this game, and I still believe 100% in our design concepts — but not under these circumstances.

Not without direction, a firm producer, a plan, motivation and a plan for funding. Basically, we needed an experience CEO with firm direction, that could hold everyone accountable to do their part in making the game.

If the folks at OnceLost Games succeed and make a fantastic Kickstarter project, or get the game published and successful, I’ll be first in line with my money to support it. But after 18 months of “development”, I’m highly skeptical. Without some very strong leadership and attitude changes, I do not have faith that it will happen.

I sincerely hope they prove me wrong.

- Ian Phoenix

From what Ian says and evidence on Discord, OnceLostGames continues to look like a casual hobby project.
It doesn't seem professional.

We'll see if anyone from OnceLostGames responds to these concerns.

Wyaldfire
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Re: Wayward Realms Devlog 1: World Generation Systems

Post by Wyaldfire »

Thanks for the welcome Jay and Gavin!
Sure, let's talk about Ian's article. Full disclosure: I joined the team just a few months prior to Ian's leaving, so I can't speak first hand about things from the very beginning, but was there for what happened with Ian. The project had been in development for 18 months with only a handful of people and no "substantial" work as it was all pre-production planning. There is a lot of things you need to figure out before you start building a game. They had a few talks with a potential investor but they fell through. Ian blames Vijay, but from everything I've seen it was just one of those things that happens regularly with these kinds of talks.
You do need to understand that Ian does not have experience in the games industry and is not well versed with the inner workings of how game studios work. There were plenty of missteps that he took in setting up the project that myself and our other leads have had to correct.
You might ask why Ted and Julian weren't fixing these issues, but they were never really too involved with the business end of things in their own careers. They assumed it was being handled. Vijay was brought on afterwards so he missed out on these as well.
Now 2020 rolled around and we can all agree that screwed a lot of people over. Ted had a business that he had to shut down. There wasn't much communication going on. Was this a problem, of course. However, Ian was also lacking in communication with the team.
His leaving came out of the blue for most of us. At that time, and you can call it a wake up call, the team realized we needed to reorganize. We saw there was an issue, we took steps to correct it, we brought in more people for positions that were sorely lacking, including assigning more department leads, and got the project back on track before Ian even released his article.
Prior to that, the team was really small, and most of the current members do not know Ian. That is how much things changed and much larger the team grew.
Ted did send Ian an apology, much later. Not ideal, but he did have a lot of things to work out in his personal life.
Now, I don't mean for this to come across as strictly negative towards Ian. He was instrumental in getting this project together. He poured a lot of time and money into it and the team does not hold any grudge towards him. We appreciate everything he did for us.
Now, for the team member that left because of political discourse. You will remember how heated things were leading up to the 2020 election, but no one even said anything derogatory to him. They were simply chatting politics which were not aligned with his. He had a previous negative experience at another job because of mismatched politics and decided to leave on his own accord fearful the same thing would happen again.
It was absolutely unprofessional to be discussing politics in a work environment, but there was no malice intended.
Ted is still in favor of the team being able to openly discuss politics, but most of us see no reason to.
Now, for our seemingly lack of progress. Following our restructure there was still a lot of pre-production planning that was needed. Our new programmers also spent time researching and trying out different methods of proc-gen to see what would work best for us in Unreal Engine. The switch to UE5 was also a setback as things needed to be adjusted for the new engine. Our magic system completely broke for seemingly no reason and had to be completely recreated in UE5. It was still really early though, so it wasn't that much work.
Gavin summarized it really well with the black triangle example. While the systems don't look that impressive at the moment, we have a solid base from which to grow them. It took time to get there, from the design, to the research and development, to the engine switch. There is a lot of work that is needed that is not immediately obvious.
I hope that answers some questions and concerns. We have had issues, we do not deny it, but we've worked really hard, in our own spare time, because we love Daggerfall and we love this project. WR it's a dream game for all of us and we intend to bring it to life. We also want to share our progress, even if it may not seem very impressive, as we want to break down that wall between developer and community.

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Werewolf
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Re: Wayward Realms Devlog 1: World Generation Systems

Post by Werewolf »

Nice to see you finally post a rebuttal to that article. I’m not sure which side to believe but if you are telling the truth then I’m more confident in the game now. Though I wish you would post more devlogs. The devlog, while cool, seems way too cinematic for what is essentially a moderately advanced dungeon generator. A medieval city would be 100x more impressive. As we all know in modern RPGs medieval cities are just large villages as opposed to Daggerfall. A devlog showing the generation of a medieval city with the narration talking about it has 1000 people living in it and noting how it’s unlike any modern RPG with a literal, not condensed, representation would really raise the excitement.

Wyaldfire
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Re: Wayward Realms Devlog 1: World Generation Systems

Post by Wyaldfire »

Please keep in mind that I cannot speak for Ian, nor am I trying to invalidate his own view of things. In the end, I am sure he acted in a way that was most justified in his mind. I just want to make it clear that we have made many strides since his leaving and that article is not accurate to the current state of the project. In fact, by the time he released it, it was already out of date.
As for the cinematic nature of the devlog, yea, we did aim for a more cinematic view for our first outing. We even cropped out the interface. However we do plan to make more devlogs that dive deeper into the systems. At this time we aren't ready to build a full medieval city yet, at least not in a meaningful way. There are still plenty of other systems besides housing that need more work, like our crowd system, realistically laid out roads, or exterior clutter, but when its ready to showcase, we certainly will. Making them also detracts from actual development, so we do need to be mindful of how we allocate our resources as well.

Sappho20
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Re: Wayward Realms Devlog 1: World Generation Systems

Post by Sappho20 »

Hi, thanks for being here and answering our questions, it all sounds like an intriguing project.

I have a couple of questions, well three if you don’t mind.

Firstly, beyond Daggerfall where else do you draw inspiration for the lore and mythology for Wayward Realms? Any particular books, games, tv or film series that has inspired you guys? I often see Daggerfall like Game of Thrones (political intrigue) compared to Morrowind’s LOTR’s (bad guy in volcano).

The second was about this virtual Games Master I hear you want to create, do you envisage this GM being able to direct the story in a similar way to a human GM. I mean Daggerfall has multiple endings but how you get there is pretty similar every time, but are you trying to create a world where even the ‘main quest(s)’, can alter radically from game to game with the path you follow being dynamic or even unique? I was just wondering about what areas Wayward Realms would really excel over Daggerfall and more modern RPG’s.

My third question was about the ‘wilderness and the sea’. Since people question the need for a massive amount of space if it is blank, like Daggerfall, and Wayward Realms is set on islands and quite a few of the stories in the library of Logos being set in or around the sea, how do you think Wayward Realms will tackle this area and will the game feature much of the seas, boats, pirates, sea battles, trade, sea monsters?

I know it’s early days but the whole idea of building such a massive and immersive world is fascinating.

Wyaldfire
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Re: Wayward Realms Devlog 1: World Generation Systems

Post by Wyaldfire »

As far as writing, we have a fair bit of writers, around 10 I think, though some, like myself, pull multiple duties on the project. Together we pull inspiration from many different places, from books, to movies/television, to real world histories, to real world mythologies. I can really only specify for myself, Game of Thrones, and really the World of Ice and Fire, being a big inspiration, especially when it comes to the political stuff. Robert E Howard stories are also big for me when it comes to lore books, as I really enjoy reading and writing pulp. European and Norse mythology is big too, as well as historical events. For the other guys, LOTR, Dragon Age, near and far eastern mythologies, are a few of the things that pop to mind. So pretty diverse overall.
As far as the VGM, it's hard to say what it will be able to do in the end, and it won't really be able to show it until near the end when it has all the tools to work with, but it is Julian's baby and we have trust he can pull it off. In essence, yes, it would be able to shape the narrative around the character. We aren't aiming for a traditional main quest, so the idea is there is a lot more that can be customized to a particular character based around their choices and actions, and no two characters should have the same story as a result.
As far as the world size, it is one of our core pillars. We want the world to feel authentic. When you take an epic quest your character travels for days or weeks at a time like a real adventurer, not a leisurly hike across a small countryside the size of a modern town like most other games.
Fast travel will be a must and allow players to get on with their adventure quickly. However, for those that do want to explore, we plan to have a much more varied and alive landscape than what was possible in Daggerfall. From hunting animals or rare monsters, harvesting ingredients, treasure hunting, bounty hunting, or things like random encounters, or the VGM setting up obstacles or even rewards for the player, there is a lot we can do to bring the world to life. Now there won't be enemy encounters every two minutes like a lot of games do. We wish to give the players some down time to enjoy the scenery. With UE5 and our procedural landscape system, which takes into account various forms of erosion, you are bound to come across some unique, beautiful landscapes to enjoy.
Hope that answers your questions, I obviously can't go into too much detail regarding some of this stuff.

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