Introduction
Hello GameDev I have been skulking around for a month now, but I finally decided to join a day ago. My name is Cornelis, I own a small indie company and we have been working on a MMORPG concept called Aperi. This post is not about the MMO though, no need to worry, but it does deserve a mention since it is relevant. Aperi is very conceptual and will have allot of features new to the MMO genre. But the problem stopping most MMO's is funding, and we didn't want to take out a loan since the game very conceptual, making it hard to be a success. So what was decided is we are going to split the game up into smaller games, gathering feedback and funds before aiming for the full game. The first game we are going to work on is called "Magi".
Below I will be telling you about the concept and aim of the game, then ask you a questions relevant to game concept and ideas.
Magi Imperium
About
Considering advice given by users I have changed the name Magi to Imperium - Latin for Control. Magi as suggested by other users was rather plain and did not capture the true aim and impact the game is meant to have. The game will consist of players each using a specific element and set of skills with that element to combat one another. Imperium aims to be First-Person, PVP - Arena game. It will have a very strong focus on ability mechanics since the concept we want to test in this game is dynamic ability combat.
Dynamic Ability Combat
Lean away from your PC for one second, exhale, and try and imagine what the following scenario would be like: You are a powerful mage, controlling water to whim. Your opponent is a master of earth. As you two stare in a deadlock you decide to make the first move and draw water from the river pulling it to your side. The water statically swirls around you for a moment before you hurl it towards the earth mage. He retaliates by lifting up a rock from the ground and hurling it towards you. The two elements meet in the middle, but his was more sturdy, smashing through your projectile and continuing on it's intended course. You simply dodge out of the way, but this time you use the river water close to him to directly attack him. It's a hit being his blind spot, but he is not near defeated. He raises a wall from the ground and pushes it towards you. You evade it by stepping into the river, using the water to surf on the surface. While surfing you keep throwing water spears which just disperses against his newly erected wall. You try to get to his open side but he just moves his walls of rock to where he you go. With you on the offensive you decide to draw on allot of water. He lowers a wall to see why the barrage has stopped and sees you just as you command a torrent of water towards him. Quickly he springs up a wall with the time he could muster, but it's no match for your torrent which smashes through it and onto him.
So the segment above was just meant to demonstrate a little of how combat is going to be like, smashing through abilities, using elements from the environment and all being real time instead of traditional 1,2,3,4.... or QWER key bindings. We are aiming for the abilities to feel more fluent and truly interactive. To give you an idea to what degree we want to take this and a little of the look and feel is to have a look at our Silver Mage class - For one of his abilities he will be controlling a ball of silver. He will be able to throw his ball at the enemy and have it returned, but whilst mid air he can freeze it, have it change direction and flatten it into a shield by using a combination or mouse and keyboard.
A little bit more about the implementation of the abilities. We are using physical objects for this and just coating it with a animation. The abilities will have physics, collision, durability and all the properties a player will have. I think one of the amazing parts of this will be clashing two abilities into each other and having the weaker one being destroyed while the stronger one keeps hurling towards the target. We also want fast creation and destruction of objects in game that do have special behaviour depending on what it is. For example puddles and pools will be used for the water mage. These puddles will be a collection of hexagons that have some "flow" physics cause them to drift to lower levels of the map. So this will be computationally expensive overall and suited for a arena game. But to improve on it I want to pick the optimal gaming engine.
Questions
Although the snippet above does not fully describe the idea I do hope it gave all of you reading this some insight and maybe a bit of excitement to what it might become, but for that it needs to be made in a proper gaming engine as said above. This leads me to the first question:
Question 1: The Game Engine
The plan was to move away from Unity and possibly invest in Unreal Engine 4 or the Cry Engine 3, but honestly lost on which one to use. I am leaning more towards the Unreal engine at the moment but would like some feedback from GameDev first, preferable from people who have used either one before. Or if there is another engine you would recommend please do so.
The aim of the game:
- Dynamic/interactive environment
- Small Arena
- Graphics not too important at first
- Animation
Question 2: The Game Concept
I would love some feedback and ideas on how to go about getting the best optimization and getting "Interactive, Fluent, engaging" Abilities and game play. I am unsure if other games have tried this but would like to try some if there is.
I sincerely apologize to for this question, as I have not actually post the game concept on this page. The intendant purpose of the this post was to find out more information on gaming Engines
Thank you for your time
Regrards Cornelis
