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)
- Magic spells
- Mages house
- Archery
- Sleep
- Compass
- Lockpick
- Smash door
- Perception stat (analyze result > tough/average/weak enemy, easy lock etc.
Spoiler!
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.