Project DARTMOUR________[not DFU related]

[VMblast]

Hi to all,
Talking with @Interkarma and with his permission, I decided to open a sort of temporary blog spot here, for this project-experiment.



What is it and what does it do?
Well, it’s sort of a complicated thing, but I can try to explain in short. I was inspired by what Anti from Road To Vostok did, as an idea/mechanics and his approach with Demo’s for his project.

But most of all, I was also thinking that it would be quite interesting to see a similar type of game but in a fantasy rpg setting. In a sense, it's a bit more hard core than your average present day rpg, where you walk and pick flowers.

Ofc, some of the mechanics could not be just simply copied from STALKER and Road To Vostok, or even Elite Dangerous, simply because of how to possibly translate main core gameplay mechanics from these survival/planning games into the fantasy/adventure type. It is a bit mind-bending since all these kinds of games have a strong element of loneliness and isolation, whether it's the Zone, or open Space.

So it is a challenge, but there is also potential.



My goals:

• To try to develop Demo1 and Demo2 (down the road)

• I want to make it very simple, no excessively detailed assets, environment, nor poly heavy characters etc. Focus is more on the smooth performance, rather than on "photorealism". Should be more leaning on atmosphere and feeling of dread and urgency.

Demo1 features:

• Small village map.

• Simple melee combat with one enemy type (Orc pillagers).

• Pickup weapons and shields.

• Pickup (limited) items or notes.

• Night/Day cycle.

• Safe place (with save possibility) -maybe

Demo2 features:

• Eat

• Drink

• Honing stones to remove dullness

• Weapon condition in %

• Trade

• Chat with trader (chatgpt?)

• Heal

• Stamina drain

• Different type of melee weapons

• Climbing

• Auto Save in safe area (house/camp)

Bonus Features (if first are meat):

• Magic spells

• Mages house

• Archery

• Sleep

• Compass

• Lockpick

• Smash door

• Perception stat (analyze result > tough/average/weak enemy, easy lock etc.

Spoiler!

Goals of the translating features (future -hopefully):

Sort of first pass on the idea:

• Gathering (finding or buying) core/basic resources:

• • Food
  • Drink
  • Tradable items (clay pots; precious stones/crystals; special plants; rare seeds?)
  • Bandages (or some healing items)

• Scares weapons and armor finds:

• • Pristeen (rare finds)
  • Standard state
  • Damaged; in all kinds of conditions (usual finds) -need extensive repair or will be unusable soon
  .

• Scarce utility items:

• • Honing stones (since there is no ammo, there is a need to have some mechanic similar: when you fight your weapons will dull quickly and be ineffective, so you have to sharpen them often after every fight, keep them in shape)
  • Wood repair tools (something like wood binders, special sinews, nails etc, for the repair of the shields). Maybe this should be a rare thing, so player have to find a woodcutter/smith?

• Deterioration of equipment (armor/weapons/clothing):

• • Through use in combat (faster)
  • Through use (time) -very slow

• Long traveling is hard:

• • Main roads network (If the place to travel to is a long way away, if it's in the path of the main roads network would be easier and could cost the player only money since there are inn stops along the way.) Also can take player significantly more time to get to it (no shortcuts). Very safe.
  • Adjacent roads network (less inns, less money needed, but more provisions for camping along the way) Mid tier safety.
  • Wilderness and dirt paths. Need provisions for travel, food/drinks (unless you can hunt). Quite unsafe (bandits, wild animals, monsters)

• Hard Combat:

• • Very hard combat in comparison to classic RPGs.
  • Physically based landings/contact (attacks)
  • If the blow is good, the enemy can one-shot-kill the player.

PS - I’m very sloppy with keeping track of my work and posting due to my very limited free time (day job, life and all), so I’ll post updates very irregularly.



Progress for now (village map, which I may leave or may not for Demo1):
I'm using UE5, trimmed it down, turned Off nanite, Lumen, streamingTextures, virtualShadowMaps etc. Managed to get about an average of 85fps on my 1660ti, at this stage with no optimisation etc.

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[VMblast]

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[VMblast]

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[VMblast]

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[VMblast]

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[VMblast]

Doing some orc work [WIP]. I'm more aiming for Angus McBride look.

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[VMblast]

This will work for now. I'm calling this finished sculpt.

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[VMblast]

Lowpoly done. Mesh is about 5500 quads and as well baking is done etc. Just few more tweaks and I think I can call textures done as well, which are 2K res. So in general body is pretty lightweight in compare to present day standards. Even with the gear, which I'm planning to add, armor/weapons/shield, will not get heavy at all.

Some tests inside engine:

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[MrFlibble]

The game world on the screenshots looks very nice! I have to confess that I mostly do not enjoy the look of "modern" games, but you have created visuals that look both rather realistic and appealing, and obviously inspired by Daggerfall.

[Interkarma]

Hey VMblast! Thank you for posting these. Your art is very beautiful and very clean. And like I said in our DM chat, I would very much enjoy this style of game. There's a Jacob Geller video about artificial loneliness which captures something of how I enjoy these games and articulates it better than I ever could.

https://youtu.be/hUwTh4uSILg?si=TQaofSHs_ImE-nWx

I look forward to seeing more of your progress. Thanks for posting!

P.S. I'll move this up into Community at top of forums where it might get more eyeballs, and leave a shadow topic here for coverage.