Psiforged, and the direction of the project.
Hey there folks. Time for another quick update on the status of Psiforged and where the project is heading.
With all this testing you've been doing, I've managed to really get the ball moving on features. Nearly all the major implementations for the engine have been added and finished. They just need a bit of a tweak and polish here and there for extra shininess and sparkle. But with the basics down, the only way now is forward! This is where things get interesting.
The last two days, I've been working on a new map, 5 times bigger than our tester island. And with it, comes a blank canvas and much opportunity to work on features that will shape the project into a proper, fully functional game. Some of the major additions added so far are proper NPC AI, Towns, Factions and Resource Nodes. So lets take a while to talk about those.
With the map being much bigger, I was finally able to begin work on adding towns. There's going to be about 4 minor towns and 1 large city. Each town will be populated with a few residents, a few houses and at least 1 point of interest, be it a quarry, logging camp, science center/vault, or an artifact, to name but a few. The idea is that as the savior (or destroyer) of Earth, it's your job to secure these towns from the many, many nastiest peoples that wish to exploit the world. So, if you wanted, you and your friends will eventually be able to travel around the map, taking over towns for your faction.
So, let's talk a little about the factions. So far, there's about 3 factions in the game. Roughly, they're split into separate types of morality. Your starting faction, an Order of Psionic Monks are considered good. Then there's the roving bands of Mercenaries and other members of society that fall into a grey, neutral area. And finally, the Cultists, an unsavory lot using this new found Psionic power washing over the planet to summon horrible eldritch horrors, and demons in order to gain power. Eventually, the player can join a faction and secure towns in the name of said faction, furthering that factions goals and gaining bonus opinion with it in order to gain things like strength, psionic power and intelligence/schematics.
So far, so good. With all these factions in the game, with their different objectives, it should give players a better sense of direction. Which brings me to the main optional objective. Liberating Earth from the Alien Overlord/Emperor/Space Pirate dude. Since Earth's populace simultaneously started to enter a new era of psionic power, the Goog's (named after the Australian word for egg. ) have arrived, having sensed a disturbance in the for...forecast...These Grey Aliens have taken the planet over now in order to safe guard us from ourselves and the power our unmitigated Psionic power could have on our world. But not everyone sees this "invasion" as such a beneficial thing for our species.
So, if you wanted, you'll eventually be able to train your character and work toward taking this Alien Overlord down, before him and his cronies harvest our brains for their soup! Each town will be under the control of a Goog force. If you're able to defeat them, you can claim the town as your own, be it taking it over or simply liberating it. Some towns will be harder, but the rewards will be greater. Which brings me on to the final point of this update. Resource Nodes.
To prevent players starting up a game and creating a bazillion drills, I've decided to make it so you can only place drills over resource nodes. Little shiny splotches and marks on the ground within towns where resources can be found, deep underground. Defeating the Goog forces will pave the way for allowing you to build yourself a little resource farm. But some towns hold better nodes than others, so not only will you be competing again NPC's for control, but also players of other factions.
So, that's a fairly broad overview of what's been added, what's being worked on and what's planned for the future. The goal was to trim down some of the games fat, so to speak, and concentrate on an end goal. Something the game was severally lacking during testing.
With that in mind, I am limiting the game to only one playable race for the moment, due to a combination of lack of financial support for extra sprite work and wanting to get the game to a point where its enjoyable and playable. But the plan is to finish and polish everything, see where the game stands, then go back and consider adding anything extra that may have been cut or missed out previously.
However, keep in mind that what was mentioned is definitely not an exhaustive list of overall features within the game. :smiley: Thank you for taking the time to read the progress and I look forward to seeing your reactions to these plans. Keep an eye out for a Kickstarter campaign sometime this year, and if you're a real champ, even consider putting a few pennies aside to help fund the project. Hopefully we can get some more frames in our animations, extra races, fancy art and finally some sounds. So once again, thanks for reading and I hope you have a great day!
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Topic: Psiforged, become godlike. (Read 7575 times)