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[muppetpuppet]

Hi everyone, I was invited to post some info on the game I'm developing here. I've been trying to find an active (PC oriented) community to share some of the development with, and hopefully get some criticisms and feedback. It's a solo project and I've definitely entered the stage where I can't tell myself if the game is going to be fun or not, objectivity has left my desk a fair while ago.

So definitely not trying to break into the Dwarf Fortress community, so please let me know if this isn't the place for something like my game. I've heard this a pretty engaged community, and I respect there are rules and introductions.

An introduction to myself:

I'm Tomas Sala(hi), and I've been an applied game developer for over 13 years, working for education,healthcare and brands, so serious games as its called. A few years back I did a Mod for Skyrim called Moonpath to Elsweyr, which although put together quite experimentally (read haphazardly) did quite well and gathered an unexpected amount of attention. This was really the first time in 13 years I did something solo and man did I enjoy it!.

So after that I decided I'd do a full game by myself, which is what I'm working on now for over a year. It's called Oberon's Court and it started out as an RTS and is now evolving into a bit more of an adventure(if that makes sense). I started out by going for a mobile game, but a month ago it was shown to the guys at Valve and was directly accepted into Steam.  Seeing I had such a fun time on steam with the modding, I've decided to go for PC full steam.   But that means changing quite a lot, and rebuilding a dialogue with potential players. Hence I took up the invitation from a user on RockPaperShotgun to post here.

I'm going to post as much info and visuals from the game as I can, and hope at least some of you would like to feedback or critique what you see, and if quality wise its something you might consider picking up from steam.  I'm still heavily developing this, but any help or feedback would be great, I'd happily explain any questions you might have, so ask away.  I hope to also be able to distribute some alpha type builds in the near future.

Now going to spam a lot of info, sorry for hogging your bandwith (don't worry its all hosted externally,so not taxing the bay12 forums)


So Oberon's Court:

Oberon's Court is a journey of the soul as it transitions through the afterlife, reclaiming its identity by conquering the harsh world of shadows. Will you chain and bind other souls and make those weaker suffer, or shepherd them to their own salvation. Oberon's Court mixes RPG elements with a RTS control scheme and combat to create a streamlined strategical adventure experience. Combat is quick and fierce, two shades go in, one comes out a master, the other a slave or worst. "The battle was short, a flutter of bravado, the soft embrace of muddy ground . The sound of wooden wheels sloshing through it , as you silently thank the looters for taking your body away, a reprieve before the final indignity. Night is coming, all is lost. Time for carrion to dream, the dream eternal, surrender or rise a shadow"

In the underworld of Oberon's Court every soul becomes a shade, an animalistic representation of their former selves. Lost and confused the shadows of the underworld are slowly driven insane in an attempt to keep what remains of their identity intact.  You the player traverse the underworld with a small cadre of shadows, they won't follow you willingly though.  To add units you'll need to defeat and then chain the wild shadows of the underworld. Bind them to your will and any enemy can become yours to command.  As you progress you'll find and bind the shades of kings and commoner alike, each stuck in their own dark shape and their own abilities. You will need to decide what to do with the shades you command, increase their power by harvesting resources and buffing them or weaken them by removing parts of their identity and giving them eternal rest. This is your choice, empower them and keep them stuck in the underworld, or unbind them and grant them a chance for release. Will you become a shepherd or a tyrant.  Some of the mechanics follow the campaign "Shadow Chains" from a semi-randomized tactical map grow your three squads by defeating and chaining other shadows gather resources, blood, bone and essence to summon your shadows and empower them unlock special abilities for your shadows (binding them) weaken your shadows so you can release them (unbind them) explore mini dungeons,and meet elder shadows that help or hamper your progress Be judged for your worth, a shepherd or tyrant Find oberon and figure out his motives The game itself is a hybrid of sorts, not a true RPG or adventure, but a dynamic campaign played out over 20 or so maps. You will traverse the underworld where each map has different enemy shadow types, bosses, npcs and dungeons. In the end you'll be able to face off with Oberon himself who is chained to the underworld. Your behavior along your travels will determine the outcome of the game.

Some of the shades you'll encounter and bind: (the number has grown, so  you expect more variation in the future, at 10-11 shades currently)



Some images from the game:

A typical view of a level, with one squad of three shades	Some combat with some souls fleeing their defeated shade form
A very crude design for a simple dialogue, for a gate in this case	You'll find nodes for each of the resources, you can choose to harvest them for use in summoning a shade you've chained or directly buff the shades in your squad. The latter is what's happening in this shot
The dreamtime is a reward level you'll occcasionaly enter where you need to choose between binding/unbinding your units	There are several necropolis maps in the game, where'll you'll meet some of the boss shades
The entire game is developed without any textures, as you can see here, even the interface is only geometry and shaders	As an animator and 3Dartis by trade (one that can code/script a bit) I love the challenge of abstracting all the artwork to just shapes and colors, no fancy normal maps or all that jazz

Some gifs

Two bosses duking it out

buffing from a blood node

A soul trying to flee

A soul getting chained (old interface)

Videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/dummy36923/videos

Links:
website: http://www.oberonscourt.com
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/oberonscourt
twitter: http://www.twitter.com/littlechicken01
indieDB entry: http://www.indiedb.com/games/oberons-court

[muppetpuppet]

I appreciate that, And I've gotten hesitant about using forums for promotion, for that exact reason.  RockPaperShotgun and other newssite forums seem a more logical fit, community wise. But this is a completely different community, so I understand it might not fit or be appreciated. But I am honestly not looking for promotion though,even though thats all nice and dandy, but its becoming very hard to actually find any feedback or discussion on your game. What with the tidal wave of new devs. Even putting up a playable build seems to get very little usefull feedback. And with the backlash against early access its all getting a bit


So yeh I appreciate your candor, and the time to put that down in actually not very rude wording. 

[muppetpuppet]

I do tend to try and contribute to any community I'm active on by the way. I see a lot of just dumping of info and art, and then not following up, so that's recognizable. But for a developer its also hard to find what is a positive contribution to an audience of players.  Sharing on a community of other developers like indiedb or Tigsource is easy, you can give quite a lot. For instance I did a how-to on the entire art-style including all the shader source code. (http://tinyurl.com/ocxxjsp). So that's actually quite a good way to both contribute and create dialogue.  However when it comes to looking for a dialogue outside of the dev community things become a bit harder, gamers as an audience are (rightfully) quite defensive of their communities, and its hard to find those gamers interested in actually critiquing a game in development. Especially if said game is not yet done.

So I imagine that's why devs go fishing for interesting places outside the dev communities.  Just posting and then hoping you get views as part of promotion seems silly and not very useful, If I do that, I'd expect to get a worst response than your quite polite one.. I try to sincerely avoid that. 

And perhaps its good to first ingratiate yourself in a community , but as you mention yourself that's just as much a facade. I'd rather be honest upfront, and hope to share positively by opening my work up to criticism by the audience that counts , the gamers.  Its not as if there's much chance this game will make me rich, and no logic in me coming here if  I'm just here to earn a quick buck of you guys. I love making games, sharing games and talking about games.  So to try and introduce myself properly and my work, it seems quite natural to me.  As for sharing I spend the better part of year creating a mod that was enjoyed by nearly a million people, for free.  Why did I do this, not for promotion, but just because it gave me a rush to do it and talk to all the people giving feedback and helping out.. 

So yeh this game is going to steam, and it will cost something, and yes I hope that it will provide some funds for me to keep doing what I love. But believe me If I say that I'm not here to try and shamelessly plug a game that's not even out yet, or will be for a decent amount of time..

I hope you understand my reply, and also I'm not trying to be rude (even though it reads a bit snippy, i'm typing this with a smile cuz we're talking bout games)( I hope)

[Robosaur]

holy crap I love those shaders

[Xantalos]

Huh.
This game honestly intrigues me, so I'll be watching it like I do many others. It seems like it could make a good one!

As for the joining thing, I'm fine with it because I don't post on the other games forum much, but while you're here, why not use it for looking at other games? Express your opinion about them and all that. It's fun for one thing, and making yourself seem like an active user will make most people trust you more, hardened as we are by the kitchenbot hordes.

[Levi]

That art style is amazing.     I can't believe it looks so good without textures.  I don't really like RTS style games, but I think I'd be tempted by this one.

[burningpet]

This is a beautiful game!

Ill keep watching. Also, i am extremely happy you decided to develop it for the PC!

[nenjin]

I'm normally the first to complain about advertising on the forums, but what can I say? You were polite, took the time to demonstrate some humanity, didn't copy/paste your pitch around the internet.....oh, and your game sounds original and looks great.

So good luck to you! Not sure the art style is my cup of tea, but it's quite an accomplishment already. Looking forward to seeing more.

Oh shit, you made Moonpath to Elseweyr? A celebrity indeed!

[muppetpuppet]

Thanks for the replies everyone, I'll try and add something to this community, but I can already tell its much more alive and seemingly mory cordial than some other places on the web..

[muppetpuppet]

Here's a thing I'm working on at the moment, its a design for the worldmap  I'm sort of torn on how to implement it.  I really liked the old dune 2 type strategic overview map.
So the idea is to plot a path from shard to shard.  (they'll be more regularly sorted). each shard represents a level or map. 

the shard(or the last few) you've just finished will give you a starting buff for the next map ( a stat boost for your units, or a resource boost), and you'll usually have several shards to choose from.
The majority of the storyline will be told from this view, (through Oberon and possibly some of the NPCs(respective owners of shards).

in the rough desing here a finished shard is represented by a gate, and an unfinished shard by a enemy indicator or npc). The precise GUI is yet to be designed.   Oberon is the foxlike dude being clutched by a giant hand in the centre(hard to see the details while static)

the design (with just a few shards/levels)


I'm torn on how much detail and freedom of choice to implement, and how much such a tactical overview type map is appreciated. I could just make it a simple level overview with some randomness. The game is already doing a fair bit of genre bending and strangeness, perhaps better to keep it simple and efficient..



Also a mini dungeon, forgot to show those: they're like a little detour from inside the levels, any castle or ruin in a level contains a mini dungeon,with either a NPC or buff or enemies. You can only enter with 1 unit, so it becomes a tiny bit more of an rpg in there.  (i'd love to autogenerate bigger levels, and add some roguelike feel to it, but That would defenitly be a version 1.1 feature)

[Il Palazzo]

This looks absolutely fantastic! Great job indeed.

Reminds me quite a bit of Sacrifice - an unusual RTS with a strong story and soul-based mechanics. Which is great, mind you. That game managed to achieve near perfection. I've never really thought about what made it great, but it's got a lot of similar elements to yours. You might want to check it out, or go through reviews at least - it might give you some ideas regarding what works and what doesn't.

[muppetpuppet]

WOW! you are spot on, just read the wikipage, its almost eery I never played it.   Inspiration keeps popping up in my game from the strangest places,usually games I forgot I played.  The two bosses are clearly black and white (also literally)..  Must rethink If I haven't played it in the past. 

Also I do recall getting inspiration from the wraith setting by white wolf (pen 'n paper rpg)..

[Viken]

Moonpath to Elseweyr is an awesome Skyrim mod that I greatly enjoyed playing myself; so I have no problem welcoming you to the forums here.  We've had some problems with self-promoters, but that doesn't stop us from welcoming people who generally seem to be good guys.  Keep up the good work on Oberon's Court, share as much juicy game design and developmental tidbits as you can, take our suggestions and thoughts seriously and you shouldn't have any problems Muppetpuppet.

P.S., Yes, Oberon's Court does seem quite similiar to Sacrifice. 

[Valtam]

This is already pretty cool looking. Thanks for taking the time to introduce yourself and this marvelous product. I love the simple packaging of it all, the abstracted and implied shapes of everything, and I think it won't be a taxing experience for lower-end machines.

Hope you get a great sound designer for this, not only to match up that awesome art, but also to help with some possible failing points. Mainly, identifying what's happening via sound cues. Battles and resource gathering could be really helped if they're coupled with distinguishable noises, right now it looks a bit... Idiosyncratic, which is good, but tends to blend with all what's happening, and sometimes I got lost from watching something that I couldn't identify as a battle, a buffing routine between allied monsters or something else.

Hope to see it in Steam soon!