New New Sorpigal - M&M-inspired prototype in Unreal 4

[lapislosh]

Hello friends,
I've spent the last 6.5 months working on a small prototype/proof-of-concept game based on Might and Magic VI. I don't know if progress will continue after this, but I thought you guys would be interested in what I came up with so far anyway. I only did the programming and 2d art (I am a bad artist), and the 3d art is just random stuff I found online. So it doesn't look great, but it is functional with lots of features - turn-based and realtime combat, stats, skills, trainers, alchemy, lots of weapons/armor/spells (wizard's eye, torch light, fly, feather fall, town portal, and a bunch more), artifacts, shops, quests, a dungeon with auto-mapping, and more.

You can find a video of some of the features here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fZ1SYKQmCQ
The playable demo is here if anyone wants to try it out: https://hapro.itch.io/newnewsorpigal

Whether the project continues after this basically depends if I can find 1 or 2 3d artists willing to partner up with me, as a project of this scope would be a ~5 year endeavor for a small team, which is not something 99.99% of people want to sign up for. But if you know anyone, send them my way. The intent for this project wasn't to make a straight-up clone of M&M, but something new inspired by it, re-using a lot of the same core mechanics but trying to build on them and modernize them (like figuring out a good way to handle mouselook). Basically what Grimrock did to Dungeon Master, but for M&M instead. I may open source the project eventually and let people tinker with it, but we'll see how things go over the next couple weeks.

[GrayFace]

Plays great! Although, FPS isn't great, especially in the forest with torch light.
Here are bugs I found so far:
1) Shooting range is longer that enemies trigger radius, just shooting them from a far will do the job.
2) You need to always aim above the target with arrows. When target is auto-focused, arrows often fly into the ground with small targets.
3) There's a crash whenever I enter any shop. Where are saves stored?
4) Music volume isn't saved.
5) Window is sized at full screen size, but placed to the right of task bar (I have it on the left). Right side of game window is cut out.
6) Master cure spell of Body Magic ("Cure Serious Wounds" or something) can't be learned.
Long attack delays don't go well with such short shooting range, although I'm guilty of fighting in full armor with 0 skill in it.

[Neecko]

I have to say this is great! I'm really impressed! I didn't experience any crashes, but shooting like GrayFace said could use some work. I'm blown away though. I know they are placeholders, but I love your 2d art. It's got simple charm to it.

I have to admit I've gotten about the same amount of work, but I did mine in the unity engine with slightly different controls and mechanics. No turn based combat either.

[lapislosh]

Ah, cool, someone played it! I thought I fixed the crash when entering shops

I'm working on something of a design doc now to try and figure out some of the issues mentioned, as well as not making it quite so much of a clone. Archery is definitely a big consideration though. I tried a few different things in the demo to not make it so overpowered, and some things worked and some didn't. I also tried using sight/sound for enemy aggro so you could sneak up on things a little, but I think it turned out pretty neutral for the overall experience. I learned some valuable things about what could work and what isn't fun, though; especially with the new control scheme, it changes some aspects of the gameplay a lot. I don't know too much about art-related things so I suspect most of the FPS loss could be mitigated by someone who knows how to make game-ready assets and proper level design.

Regardless, the project so far was pretty fun and a good learning experience, so thanks for checking it out.

[Neecko]

In my Unity version I have it so if an enemy is hit, but doesn't have a "target" to attack it will take the source of the damage and make that its new target and start pursuing whoever attacked it. This fixes the aggro range of enemies.

How I'm doing archery is you need to be a certain distance away in order to shoot and my arrows have enough power to always make it to the target so you can's actually miss, but enemies can deflect / block arrows.

Are you using Occlusion? That can help FPS. The portal was a neat little trick though.

I do hope you keep improving. It's really awesome! What did you have in mind for not making it such a clone?

[GrayFace]

Ah, cool, someone played it! I thought I fixed the crash when entering shops

I'll send you the dump and saves if I know where to find the saves.