#unreal arpg

[shawnthebro]

Movement is incredibly important in our game. Let’s make sure we get it right!

[m1lkyw4yw1sh3z]

"They tell me things I already knew. The greatest of the secrets they share.... the sky is not blue." - Sky is Not Blue, Lemon Demon

(I dunno man it looks pretty blue to me)

Almost to the end!! This was one of the last attacks we made for Artfight this year, featuring ocs belonging to @that-other-dead-person and @puppypop5 !!!

One of our favorite ARPGs, Kingdoms of Griffia, was running an Artfight-centric mini-event this month so we took the opportunity to participate in that a little while drawing for friends too ^^

[starlightechoesdev]

Damaged clothes.

[wauzmons]

remember dark spore?.So if you make DarkElysianEclipse could be a another darkspore but even better.

Funnily enough the thing I started making in Unreal Engine, before cancelling it to work on Quaxel, was going to be an ARPG.

[dragaorpg]

Dungeon&Fighter: ARAD recebe primeiro trailer

A NEXON Korea anunciou o trailer de estreia mundial de Dungeon&Fighter: ARAD, o ARPG de mundo aberto. A prévia foi apresentada durante o The Game Awards 2024. O vídeo destacou cinemáticas impressionantes, que revelam as narrativas de cada personagem principal, juntamente com cenas de ação em mundo aberto, tudo com gráficos deslumbrantes impulsionados pela Unreal Engine 5. Dungeon&Fighter: ARAD –…

[synbunny]

I'm actually making use of this now after nearly 5 years. Probably a good thing since I was in an awful headspace 5 years ago. I'm still not doing well, but I am doing *better* now that I'm like...employed and shit now. I work IT help desk. Not the greatest job but I make decent money. Not enough to own a house but...I'm not optimistic in my ability to own my own place in the future.

To introduce myself...I'm a 25 (soon to be 26) year old woman living in the US working IT help desk. I love to play video games (especially ARPGs such as Diablo) and have an obsession with vocal synthesizers such as VOCALOID. My sexuality is weird and doesn't really have a proper label to apply to it. All you need to know in that regard is that I am gay as hell. The "content" that I create are mods for video games, with my current project being a Diablo II LoD mod. I'm not much of a programmer though. I just know some scripting in Python and PowerShell. My mod is mostly changing database entries and modifying miscellaneous files like animation files and tilesets.

Today was a good day though. I got a big raise (holy shit I am beating inflation now) and I recently picked up the game Starsector. It seems like the type of game I'd be super into, but the egg is a bit hard to crack. It hasn't hooked me yet but I can feel its potential to become a big-ass obsession. I've been super into games with dynamic worlds and ever-changing systems like Doors of Trithius and Soldak games. Which, I highly recommend trying Soldak's games. They look and control really jankily but they're awesome and innovative.

It's late as I write this though so I will have to try Starsector a different night. Probably not tomorrow since I need to motivate myself to clean up my apartment and I can't stay up too late on Friday since I have a couple appointments on Saturday.

I started dating a dude despite saying I would never date a dude. He's super sweet and really supportive. I don't really feel like I am good enough for him in either the looks department or just...how much affection I show. I don't really show affection in the same way as other people and when I try to it feels fake as hell and makes me feel gross. Like I don't feel genuine when I do that but my genuine self feels cold to people I guess. He's quite a bit younger than me. 4 year age gap. He keeps comparing himself to me in terms of his career but like...my dude, I was *losing* money when I was his age. I was (is?) a lazy, privileged fuck who could go to college. He's doing better than I was but he doesn't seem to see that. He's working towards a career on his own and I practically had it handed to me on a silver platter. College is easy. Doing things on your own? Hard as hell.

Well, that's all I'm going to write for tonight. I'll probably play a couple of bot matches in Unreal Tournament then go to sleep. Still one more day of work this week. Aaaaaaaa

[lost-coati]

i should try writing again, i enjoyed the silly (it was angst it was not silly) 7k word story i wrote for an ARPG i'm in, it would be SO easy to write a bg3 fic. i have so many plots rattling around in my head it's unreal we've got (please be warned there be spoilers ahead)

isekai'd to faerun because how can you not fall into that trope?? twist is MC either can't understand common or can understand via the tadpole but cannot speak it...and telepathy via tadpole is a slippery slope to illithid town yanno? retelling of the story basically

post endgame, ascended astarion & unredeemed durge. I want to do something with them absolutely ruining the gate for each other, because does love exist when you're an ascendant or child of a god?

on that note, a fic chronicling the events of bg3 from an evil durge perspective i haven't looked hard enough for it i've only found redeemed durge fics dslfkdsh

stole a scroll of true res and use it on asta post-game, explore the conflict of returning to mortality when it didn't seem possible. Asta is deffo within 200 years of dying for this bad boy.

post-game spawn astarion and tav looking for a way for astarion to enjoy the sun, and asta is looking for a way to reverse vampirism or make tav immortal like him. conflict between giving up immortality or gaining it, as both have their consequences.

au where the netherbrain plot never happened. Durge is known to be the bhaalspawn and Cazador doesn't want this threat impeding his power in Baldur's Gate. Astarion is sent out to lure Durge to the palace, eventually Durge will slaughter Cazador. Have not decided if they'll be turned into a spawn or not yet, I think it would be interesting either way.

Tav is one of the people Astarion fell too soft for at the beginning of his time as Cazador's spawn. Eventually Cazador got ahold of them but they managed to escape (I haven't decided what magic they've used yet) but Astarion doesn't know. Either could be a bg3 story retelling, or picks up post-game when Astarion is free from Cazador and they cross paths again, likely outside of the Gate as Astarion is looking for a way to walk in the sun again. I have so much plot in my head but writing it down concisely while eepy is hard. I think post-game is better.

i find it so frustrating that i would love to write any of these but my anxiety riddled brain goes 'man these are CRINGE who would read them' (the answer is other tav/durge x astarion fans because is there such thing as too much of this pair?)

[raspberrykraken]

Alright I’ll admit it. I’m not going to be playing goat simulator 1 for the rest of my life because I’ve just been avoiding the next step in my game dev journey.

Since I made a list of “what I need to do next” am learn how to use Unreal engine I’ve been putting it off for a moment. And then after scrumming on Warcraft 3 ladder I decided to open it, used the third person project. Realized I like the more WoW aspect to it which makes me consider how to customize the player controller going forward for my ARPG. Then wondered if this is “standard”. Plopped down some of my own polygons on a plane as a second level. Just to try to get a feel of the interface.

After accidentally deleting the floor, I tried again and got two staircases and a cube as a landing space. I guess I’m hooked now.

All that anxiety of starting something new just percolates around you until you actually say “enough! I’ll try it!” Then just weird relief. My player character can easily run around by default. All because I chose a menu option. A cube appeared. Stairs appeared. And now I just want to find out how to keep putting things together and make it all work.

It’s okay to put things off or avoid them if you’re uncomfortable but as long as you take a step and seeing things are going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.

And you can literally learn how to do things as you do them. Game dev is so accessible now.

I don’t know where this is going but I made stairs and a landing.

[kandykittixd]

Why you should NEVER use RpgMaker

I know the title sounds clickbaity but it's the best I could think of. I am going to use a lot of screenshots from my game “Foundational Agora Premises: Hardware And Resource Dynamics”, to illustrate my points.

Before anything, I want to make something clear:

Whoever plays your game will not care if said game is built in RPGMaker, Godot, Gamemaker, Unity, Unreal, WolfRPGMaker, RPGInABox, or if you coded it from scratch in ASM.

Gamers are not developers, nor are they coders. It is perfectly fine to mess-around with an engine if you just want to have fun, make a game for yourself, your friends or just make a tech demo, but I am writing this from the POV of someone that wants to make a cool game that plays smoothly and can actually be made without having to fight the engine itself. I would advice anyone reading this to also give a read to LogLog's “Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years”.

Now RPGMaker is advertised as a no-code, beginner-friendly engine. And for the most part this is true, you can make a very basic JRPG in RPGMaker with no experience at all. I myself made a terrible RPGMaker game when I was 13 years old. If you need to squish more juice out of the engine, you can always download plugins to add more capabilities and custom content. But it's not all sunshine and rainbows, as a matter of fact it's not at all like that. RPGMaker has a lot of limitations out of the box, for example the fact that the engine can only work with spritesheets formatted in a certain way, the fact that you have only a few layers to work with (parallax, background tiles, tiles A, B and C) and the fact that the code blocks you work with are simply terrible and teach you horrible programming practices. Most of these shortcomings can be addressed by installing plugins, for example a plugin to allow you to use .png files instead of sprite-sheets, a plugin to add more layers, a plugin to allow you to play .gif files in your game, etc. But plugins have problems of their own, some plugins are paid, others are incompatible with certain plugins you want to use, and other plugins simply do not exist at all so to add that functionality to your game you will either need to code it yourself or commission someone to do it. Or find a plugin that does what you want 'close enough' and settle-in for that. Besides, I know a lot of people are passionate about ARPG in RPGMaker but let's face it, 'Legend of mana' released in 199X plays a lot better than the best ARPG plugin written in 202X, the engine is simply not meant to handle this kind of work, and it shows whenever you try to push it too far from it's intended purpose. To put it simply, just because you can make brownies in a mug in your microwave does not mean it's going to taste the same as brownies made the traditional way in the oven.

Large 'complex' projects also suffer from performance problems, I do not know the details of why this happens but I have seen it enough times for it to become a noticeable problem with games with a lot of complex mechanics, really big maps or just a lot of things going-on.

Now, about the terrible code-blocks that RPGMaker offers:

They surely make everything look very straightforward. Let's think of the 'conditional branch' block, for example, it's basically an 'if'. The code in RPGMaker would look something like this for a simple operation:

If your actor is dead, we game over. Simple, right?

Sure is, but what if we want to add another condition? For example, maybe I want to also check if the enemy's HP is 0 so I can play a sound or something. What would that look like?

Itty bit harder to follow, but not terrible, right? Seems like it in the beginning, but what if you want to check for 4 or 5 conditions? This is normal depending on what you are doing... Your code will end-up looking like this:

Now, this is just a big if, else; if... chain. It takes about 5 minutes to write this thing depending on how far apart the variables are because you have to navigate a few menus, but the problem here is that RPGMaker conditionals do not offer a 'If, else if' by default, nor a switch statement. You have to chain together a lot of conditional branchs to emulate what a simple switch statement would do in any normal language.

Here's what the same code would look like if I used JavaScript instead of events:

Oh wow, with the power of the switch statement, we transformed 5 minutes of navigating menus and searching through variables to make a big chain of else if conditions into... A very short 30 seconds top condition check...

But the gist here is that not only do I need to actually know javascript to write this code in the no-code engine, this code as it is would not work out of the box. I know people love to claim 'you can always use JS if you need to', but RPGMaker makes even this a daunting task. For something like this to work, instead of switches, difficulty would need to be a variable, and we would also need to use the script box to set the value of 'difficulty' in RPGMaker so even then we will be writing javascript... For this to actually work first you'd have to set the code like this in the game:

Here we set the value of the 'difficulty' variable to hard, because we are not using switches anymore if we are moving to javascript. Now the actual javascript code would look like this, I'm adding variables to make it more readable since now we have to access the variables from the game itself:

Now this looks more in-line to what you can expect from modifying variables in RPGmaker through a script call. Notice that in the end of the switch statement I have to update the actual variable, we only retrieved the value at the start of the function but did not actually directly modify it so we have to assign it at the end.

Here we will run into another tiny problem, the script call box itself, what happens if I try to add my script to RPGMaker?

Hmmmm that does not seem right... What's happening here?Well, you see, for whatever unholy reason the script call box in RPGMaker extends infinitely to the right side, but it's only about 12 lines height. Meaning that any complex scripting you want to make in-game (without needing to mess with plugin writing) will end-up looking like this:

Now that's a tad harder to read innit? It's going to be hell to maintain too. But at least you can always copy-paste it. I had to manually remove spaces here to fit it in the script box, but what about a really big script? Removing spaces manually would be a daunting task, so I would use a tool like JS.minify to do it for me. Take a look at this script for example:

Can you tell what this thing is doing? No?

Well the name of the event is 'Restore power variables' so I guess it does something like restore the power variables? I did not leave a comment here and that's a bad practice on my side. However just by looking at this code you can tell it is impossible to rewrite or extend, if I ever need to add functionality to this I'd have to run the code through a LLM to un-minify it and then I'd be able to edit it.

Of course you could instead just use a service that removes white space from Javascript to make it all a big line, I'm not sure if a service like that exists, but it would make the whole process a little bit simpler if it does... Or you could just write a plugin...Right? Wait wasn't this a no-code engine...Oh well let's ignore that part.

Now, plugins. Good ol' plugins. I once wrote a whole self-driving car neural network in vanilla JavaScript following a YouTube tutorial, I'll admit JavaScript is not my forte, I like C/C++ best but let me tell you, even if you do know some JavaScript You don't know RPGMaker core.

At first this may not seem like a problem at all, after all you just want to create functions and set variables, right?

Here's a tiny plugin I wrote to convert tenths of a second to RPGMaker frames.

Now it's all standard JavaScript, but you see that window.timestampToFrames = timestampToFrames ? That's what actually lets you call the function from within the game itself, and it's part of RPGMaker. Without exposing your function like this you can only really run the plugin as soon as the game starts.

This is not a big issue when it comes to simple plugins like this one, with a lot of hard-coded values, but if you don't know your way around RPGMakers' core, and how to work with plugin parameters, you will have a bad time writing complex plugins or actually extending the engine at all. I ran into this issue after hitting my head on my keyboard for two hours in my 'last fireplace' game, I made a cute little plugin to make snow fall on the screen but for the life of me I could not figure out how to A: Make the snow fall in the background and not on top of everything else, and B: How to actually stop the snow from falling and delete every snowflake after I added them via scene_manager (My despawn function simply did not seem to work as expected).

This is, of course, a me issue here. I simply do not know enough about RPGMakers' core to extend the engine to allow me to do this sort of thing properly...

Now, darling, please sit down for a second and tell me, when was the last time you have heard a Godot developer tell you 'Damn I don't know enough C++ to extend Godot's core for this feature to work in my game'. Do you see my point?

Why am I trying to extend the game engine in order to make a game? It's a game ENGINE, it's supposed to make the game-making process easier, yet the amount of times I find myself coding everything from scratch is astounding. Simple quality of life things such as being able to play an animation through a sequence of PNGs numbered from 1 to 12 becomes an hour-long plugin development and debugging campaign, instead of the 5-minute experience that is setting-up an animation in other engines, such as Godot (I'm using Godot as an example because it's a simple engine and GDScript is truly a simple language).

Please if you have ever used RPGMaker in the past and DONT TRUST MY POST, just follow one simple Godot tutorial, I know you're going to feel annoyed after reading this post and tell me 'godot sux!!!! I don't want to h4xx0r code!!!' but please, please please just try to follow-through, I promise the code you will actually write is very, very basic and not at all hard to understand, just please try-out a real game engine to SEE by yourself what game-making should look like. I can recommend this tutorial here, it's what made me fall in love with Godot's simplicity: https://youtu.be/LOhfqjmasi0

In about an hour of work you can get yourself a working platformer, I did it myself with 0 knowledge of Godot and indeed I got myself a working platformer in about 2 hours (I took pauses).

Now If I made a similar game in RPGMaker (which I did), how long do you think it may take me?

Answer is, one day and a half (about 24 hours of work) to make this game: https://nxonk.itch.io/the-last-fireplace

And that is with 11 years of experience in this engine under my belt, and knowledge of javascript, C, C++, programming logic and a lot of functions and code I have written for old projects that never saw the light of day (https://lamadriguera.neocities.org/Games/Games)

And the end result is...Eh, honestly. I polished it a bit but there are many things that the engine does not like, for example I could not really make use of a pixel movement plugin because it messed-up a lot of the events in the game, so I had to rely on grid-based movement as that is the way the engine likes it (and there is no easy way to modify this).

Please remember that people that will actually PLAY the game don't really care which engine I used to make it, they only care about the game itself. Sure I made a game, I made it fast and slapped-together a very traumatic story about a past life experience of mine, but is the gameplay actually good?

Compared to my 1-hour Godot platformer, no, it sucks and it sucks bad. Maybe one or two RPGMaker devs will find the project cool cause I'm getting the engine to do something it's not supposed to do without 3000 lines of plugin code, but most people will just ignore the game altogether. And I don't blame them, why would anyone play this when they could be playing some other game with better gameplay or innovation?

Well is that all I have to say about RPGMaker?

No, not at all, I have even more bones to pick with this engine, the event system:

Now you may think that is a lot of events...Just wait till you see how many COMMON events I got going-on

removing unused common events (I have a template project with a few useful events I almost always use set-up) and white-space I use for organization, this game is using about 100 common-events to perform some basic tasks. Since some events simply cannot be a common event they are left on the map itself.

Now just by looking at it, you can get an idea of what the common events do, because they have actual names, but what about the map events? Just by glancing at it, it's impossible to tell what they do at all, maybe I know what they do today but will I know in 4 or 5 months?

Of course you can name events, and if you click on said event on the map you can see the event's name in the bottom-right corner:

Here's my event named 'HAHA MY EVENT' I just named it that as an example. Even then to figure out what each of these events do, I would have to click every single one of them and hope I named them all and that the name clearly states what the event is supposed to do.

Now I know it may seem like this map is cluttered with a lot of unnecessary events... Believe me, it's not. Every single event in that map is doing something important for the game, from the first to the last and I am willing to open source the project files (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XiiT72Ybhznapzmaz8lak6k5JLHtsO06/view) just to prove my point.

And as a last tiny bone to pick with the engine, there is no way to preview your parallax mapping as you edit the game, you have to actually launch it to figure out what it looks like. Here's what my game looks like when I launch it:

Not the biggest bone to pick but it is still annoying that I can't tell what's where unless I actually run the game (Takes about 10 seconds but you'll find yourself pressing that run button a lot of times as you playtest).

Speaking of which, you see that little computer screen In the map? I had to really big brain myself to get that simple thing working as intended, it may not seem like that big of a detail but that thing alone took about half an hour of brainstorming. The mechanic is simple, whenever an agent guy appears on the screen and you click them, you 'capture' them and their little icon is shown on the screen:

It looks simple, right?

It is, in theory. In practice it's a nightmare to implement, like every other mechanic in this game. The mouse clicks themselves have a problem if you play it for long enough, and it is a problem with RPGMaker itself:

When an event is moving, it will only execute code within said event if you activate it AFTER it has stopped moving. You can NOT activate events while they move, if you want to do that, you have to write a plugin to overwrite this behavior or find a workaround. It may not seem like a big deal but if you try and play my game for a while you will notice that it feels as if your mouse is not working properly because sometimes a click will simply not register. This is one of the obscure engine's limitations when it comes to games that are not something that looks like final fantasy 1.

As for some closing thoughts on all of this, if you are a beginner, don't waste your time using RPGMaker. It is painful to say for me because I wasted 11 years in this engine, but all the 'experience' you will gain by using this engine is worthless. The engine will force you into writing bad code, learn bad coding practices and over-rely on third-party plugins.

If you do happen to learn javascript, you will barely learn anything that can be translated to another engine, so you will have to start from scratch on a lot of things such as movement and physics.

The games you make with RPGMaker will look terrible at worst and unpolished at best. And if you do manage to squish the engine into making a game that's not samey and it's actually interesting, people can always just say 'it's an artsy fartsy game'. Plus developing in RPGMaker somehow makes the whole game-making process take twice as long for whatever reason.

EVEN if you want to make an old-style RPG game, you will just make a terrible game!

Please please please actually look-up what 199X RPG games actually played like.

Here's a tiny list of 199X games THAT DO NOT LOOK LIKE FINAL FANTASY:

Legend of Mana (1999)

Atelier Elie: The Alchemist of Salburg 2 (1998)

Blaze And Blade: Eternal Quest (1998)

Digimon World (1999)

I know a lot of people think of final-fantasy and final fantasy-like games when they think 'retro RPG' but GOD PLEASE ACTUALLY PLAY OLD GAMES, not every RPG out there was a gird-based final fantasy copy-paste! A ton of RPGs from the time had weird and interesting mechanics, 3d, 2d, grid and pixel movement, VN-style portraits and not, there was a lot of variety besides final fantasy-like games!

The argument that RPGMaker is an engine to make 'J-rpgs' is in itself flawed! RPGMaker only ever shines when it comes to make games that look like a cheap copy of a very old final fantasy game. And final fantasy itself has moved-on from that format for a few decades now. The engine is not even capable of doing something as basic as a retro dungeon crawler without plugins, have you seen what a retro dungeon crawler looks like?

Just take a look at Shin Megami Tensei 1 (1992), do you think vanilla RPGMaker can build something similar?

Please remember that RPGMakerMV was released just a few years ago and that it actually costs money to use, and it cannot even realistically replicate a game that's over 32 years old out of the box!

If you really REALLY want to use RPGMaker to make games, please do, but please, please at least once in your life try using a real game-making engine. You can pick any engine, Unity, unreal, godot even Scratch if you really want to, but please broaden your horizons.

RPGMaker is a terrible engine destined to make terrible games, anything but a VN or a terrible game will be VERY hard to make and take at the very least twice as long as it would take in a normal engine. You are only hurting yourself by using RPGMaker and I make this post because a lot of people don't realize this, using this engine is actually bad for you, and not enough people mention it. As a matter of fact, the amount of people that actively defend this terrible engine is astounding.

EVEN if you want to just make games 'for fun', please TRY A REAL ENGINE, you will have WAY more freedom and even if the learning process takes some time, the end result will be WAY better AND EASIER TO MAKE than anything you will ever produce in RPGMaker.

Do you ever wonder why every time people mention how 'great' RPGMaker is, they mention a very, very few games?

IB, Toiler wonderland, OFF, Hylics, Fear and hunger, Mad father, Witch house, Killer bear, Corpse party...

How long is the list? 50, maybe 100 games? RPGMaker has been out for about 24 years now, that's 24 years of people from all kinds of backgrounds making games, and in all of those 24 years we only got about 100 'awesome' games?

Please, if you want to make a game, if you really really want to make a game and you want your game to be pretty, and you want people to like your game and maybe even form a fan-base around it, please use a real engine. I know we all want to make games because we all want to make something fun, or tell a story, or build an experience, or maybe we just want to learn and have fun making games. Not everyone needs to learn game design, and not every game must be different from final fantasy 1, but please, even if all you want to do is an 1v1 replica of final fantasy 1, or a very simple visual novel, try another engine. Do not fall into the RPGMaker hole, it will only gobble-up your time giving back nothing in return.

In short, RpgMaker is the self-harm of game-making engines, in the long run it is only bad for you, and people that actually talk about this get shoved under the rug. Here's a devlog that more or less helped me finally take the jump, it's another dev's experience with RPGMaker development and it's totally worth a read: https://yobobgames.com/harvest-island-rpg-maker/

Thanks for reading my post, if I can convince even a single person to try a better engine, that's all that counts for me. I really hope everyone succeeds in their game-making projects, that is the reason why I made this post. After about 11 years I can surely say this engine is never worth it. PS: I forgot to mention it but some version of RPGMaker are literally just a cash grab, for example RPGMaker MZ and RPGMaker Unite (Unite barely works, MZ is just RPGMaker MV with a few QoL improvements). PSS: Sorry for all the grammar mistakes and the few lines of code/comments that don't make that much sense, it's 2AM rn and I need to sleep. I will probably edit these later.

[indiespacesite]

Interview: Nahuel Ruda talks switching game engines mid development

Magnetic Magazine's Tanner Little talks with indie game developer Nahuel Ruda about making the switch from Unity to Unreal Engine while developing the ARPG The Universal.

[montyterrible]

“How do I love thee, Lords of the Fallen 2? Let me count the ways…”

Having somewhat recently finished my first playthrough of the 2023 Lords of the Fallen, and after immediately starting a second playthrough, I wanted to put together some thoughts on the game; however, I also wanted to avoid writing another Mortal Shell - sized epic, so I am going with an internet staple: a clearly delineated list, with five entries just because. There are issues I could talk about at great length—like the enemy variety or how the “rune” system of passive bonuses equipable on weapons feels kind of boring or limited—but I want to focus on the things that I feel led to me ultimately loving Lords of the Fallen 2 overall since that feels more fun and better suited to this intentionally limiting frame than trying to say something comprehensive.

I LOVE THE LEVEL/WORLD DESIGN…

“I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight”

While I enjoyed Elden Ring and Lies of P for the most part, one area where both of those games kind of disappointed me was in their individual approaches to the recursive and generally labyrinthine level and world design people associate with the Souls­-like sub-genre of ARPGs. I thought Elden Ring was too much of an open world game on the whole, with too much empty space and checklist-style design, while Lies of P was pushing in the opposite direction, with conventional linear levels so focused that they lacked a strong element of exploration. Both of those games do have some brilliant bits, but Lords of the Fallen 2023 was just a lot more satisfying to me in this regard.

It doesn’t reach the level of flexibility that the first half of the original Dark Souls has, but it often surprised me with just how consistently good it was at sending me out from a checkpoint, spinning me around five or so times, and then leading me back to that checkpoint again (to my surprise). It’s obviously more focused than Elden Ring since it has the more traditional Souls-y structure, but it’s also frequently willing to indulge in nonessential loops or significant dead-ends, in contrast with Lies of P. Furthermore, if you don’t engage with its system of optional checkpoint creation, that requires a consumable item, then some of these loops feel especially brutal, at least on a first playthrough, given the maze-like levels and the enemy numbers and aggression being quite intense.

“World design” factors in here because A) levels do loop back to one another at times in ways that I did not initially anticipate and B) the total space you explore is so dense. It’s not all incredibly interconnected via traversable paths, but as you explore and gain an appreciation for where each area is in relation to the others, you start to notice just how layered everything is. It’s possible to look up from the bottom of the world and place things at the top (or vice versa) in a really satisfying manner. In the end, you make your way all over, down, around, and under this particular mass of land that the game’s explorable world is situated upon. The effect reminded me most of Dark Souls 3, maybe especially because that is another game of this type where there isn’t an abundance of interconnectivity but where you can see the whole world from very early on and then get to spend the rest of the game traveling through it and visiting all the locations you were shown, while also looking back (often up) at the places you already traveled through.

I LOVE UMBRAL…

“. . . [I]f God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.”

In still images, Lords of the Fallen 2 can look quite impressive visually, albeit in a sometimes “default” Unreal Engine sort of (Maximum Polygons) way, but there is a certain amount of crustiness to it when you dig in and get up close and personal. I’m not some kind of graphics obsessive or someone who really cares about console power and whatnot, but the most distinctive “current gen” aspect of Lords of the Fallen 2023 is probably the element of “Umbral,” which represents both a technical showcase and an intensification of an idea that’s been developing across other, similar games.

In Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, you can die (at least) twice thanks to the resurrection mechanic that lets you revive on the spot where you were killed to continue fighting. In Mortal Shell, losing all of your health causes the “Foundling” to be ejected from whatever “shell” it’s inhabiting, where you could keep fighting in that extremely fragile state or could scramble to get back into your body before a single hit kills you. Lords of the Fallen 2 intensifies and expands on this concept by instantly (without a loading screen) sending you to what amounts to the realm of the dead when you’re killed initially, with true death coming only if you also die in this Umbral zone. It’s actually possible to technically die again and again without resetting an area as long as you can escape from Umbral at one of the designated exit points, which crumble upon use.

Probably the most succinct way to explain Umbral is that it’s the Otherworld from the Silent Hill franchise, but entering and exiting it is completely seamless and freeform. Being in Umbral changes the game world into something more Fucked Up. Some of the changes are just visual, but Umbral does also come with new landmasses, interactable objects, and enemies as well that sit naturally beside, around, and amidst what you could see before, effectively creating the impression of a ghostly land that’s always just out of sight all around you.

One cool concept here is the Umbral Lamp, which has various active functions (like yanking the soul out of your enemies temporarily) but which will passively let you see into Umbral if you just hold it up. Doing this reveals the hidden environment and also allows a limited interaction between the planes. I tested this very early in my first playthrough when I noticed that a wall in Umbral had this grotesque protrusion that I assumed would have collision tied to it. Walking along that wall without the lamp raised was perfectly smooth, but if I held the lamp up, I’d collide with the obstacle. Keep in mind that you can pull out the lamp whenever you want and swing it over whatever part of the environment you like. I’m not technically in the know enough to evaluate exactly how impressive this is, but it’s a neat trick that feels like it might show off the hardware.

Umbral adds so much to the exploration of the game because of how any given area is essentially doubled, though not all spaces have anything meaningful to see or find in the other realm. It’s often used as a puzzle-solving mechanic, where you have to willingly enter Umbral (risking true death) to bypass an obstacle, possibly via a path that only exists in the world of the dead. A fun horror visual you encounter a few times in the game is moving, in Umbral, along the bottom of a body of water, with plant life waving and debris and corpses floating around you like the water was still present. Even when Umbral isn’t used for anything meaningful, looking into it still reveals these extra macabre environmental details, like saintly statues that appear demonic if you shine your lamp on them. I accidentally jump-scared myself at times because I’d hold up the lamp, only to find an enemy from Umbral staring me in the face, or shrieking and taking a swipe at me as I yelped and dropped the lantern, narrowly avoiding being dragged into Umbral from the ghostly contact.

I LOVE THE “DREAD” METER (AND OTHER DISPLAY STUFF)…

“I love thee to the level of everyday’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.”

I’m cheating a bit with this item, but, at least initially, this is an extension of what I was talking about before. When you are in Umbral, you have a limited amount of time to explore, as the number and type of enemies that continuously spawn around you from these little statues/frozen figures intensifies with time, ultimately culminating in the appearance of a very powerful reaper-like creature that starts hunting you down. I had some narrow escapes during my first playthrough of Lords of the Fallen 2, where I entered Umbral (willingly or not) and then only just managed to reach an exit point or checkpoint to escape before triggering the reaper’s appearance, or sometimes even as it was actively chasing me.

The meter that tells you how close you are to doom is a wonderful visual, though: It’s primarily this giant eye icon in the upper right part of the screen that periodically blinks (and that shuts when you’re in a safe zone). This was honestly a huge contributing factor to me getting the game after I saw it in pre-release coverage. Rather than go with some innocuous meter or minimalist bit of design, you have this very lively, large eyeball. It’s both goofy and kind of genuinely unsettling.

Other elements of the UI/HUD have a similar level of stylization, most notably the displays associated with the Umbral Lamp and ranged weapon/magic actions. Every character has the lamp, but then the other depends on whether you’re casting magic or are using a bow or various thrown objects. You toggle between these two options with the up and down directional buttons, and holding the left trigger “opens” the selected one, surrounding the larger icon with a bunch of smaller ones indicating actions and button inputs. These are all very colorful, and the arrangement (where the smaller icons sort of ring and overlap with the larger ones) just struck me as some level of idiosyncratic. Initially, the icons are even kind of mysterious or “confusing” in a way that I liked. When you hold up the lamp, for example, you see all these little options, one of which is a skull and another of which looks like a weird fetus.

Also kind of idiosyncratic is the choice to pull the camera into an over-the-shoulder position when the player holds the left trigger to either ready their aim or raise the lamp. I like this flourish because it seems kind of unnecessarily awkward. It helps with manually aiming, I guess, but the shift also makes transitioning from melee to ranged (or lamp) options a little disorienting. In combat, it obscures your view of the battlefield, for example, and while you can still evade, it feels like exposing yourself to take on this perspective. And maybe vulnerability was one consideration here, as this is the perspective from which you use your lamp, so holding it up and peering into the dark, in a sense, is meant to create this appropriate feeling of tension or horror, which is further enhanced by your slowed movement and more limited view.

Or maybe it’s just willfully different to avoid mirroring FromSoftware’s work too directly? There’s part of me that likes that option just as much (if not more) than the marginally more profound one I described above. In either case, seeing this awkward view change in the pre-release footage also charmed me.

I LOVE THAT IT IS LORDS OF THE FALLEN 2…

“I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. . . .”

While I was initially intrigued at the prospect of a sequel to the 2014 Lords of the Fallen, I kind of… fell out of interest with it when I started thinking about what the massive time jump and the title (“THE Lords of the Fallen,” at the time of announcement) suggested about the relationship between the sequel and its predecessor. I did finish that first game and did continue playing it afterward, and probably would have stuck with it even longer if I hadn’t been constantly stressing about backing up my save to a USB flash drive to avoid losing my data to frequent crashes, so this framing of the sequel felt kind of like a snub to me.

What got me back on board and did push me to get it was watching a little of someone’s stream around the release date. When they spoke to a particular character at the hub and he directly referenced the events of the first game, including outright using the name “Antanas,” that was the point I decided to buy Lords of the Fallen 2023. To someone who hasn’t played the first game, I don’t think any of this stuff is too obviously being carried over and will just feel like the usual Souls-like vagueness around names and events and such being dropped casually, sans context. There is part of me that wishes it was more prominent, but I’m fairly content with what I got: Aside from the antagonist Adyr technically “returning” from Lords of the Fallen 1, there are two other characters carried over and one who has a connection via his ancestry.

Having these little footholds of pre-existing investment is ultimately what helped me get interested in the new stuff, I feel. I started out not really connecting with the new characters in a hard-to-describe sort of way. The writing and characterization were fine, I thought, but there was just something “off,” like they were a touch too generic maybe (but maybe that feeling only comes from having played so many of these games now that I recognize the archetypes). Eventually, though, those feelings changed and I did care when characters started meeting their, predictably, tragic ends. Some of these “quests” were more underwhelming than others, but I started caring at some point I can’t exactly identify. I think I also missed the more conventionally RPG-like dialogue system of the first Lords of the Fallen, which is replaced here with the more distant-feeling Soulsian approach of just having other characters as good as monologue at you.

This sequel’s aesthetic ended up being more consistent with the first title than I originally thought. Some shift in the visuals that I find hard to pin down had me thinking, pre-release, that the game was going in a more grounded direction, where the 2014 Lords of the Fallen had this colorful, kind of goofy, comic-book-like look to it. Having now examined the enemy models in particular up close, I think the perceived shift is just a result of more subtle changes that I’m again not qualified to identify specifically; however, the “Rhogar” (read: demon) designs here definitely look like they belong in the same universe from the first game, so it was just some change in… lighting(?) that threw me at first. The one thing I was hoping for that never happened was for the old enemies or areas to somehow return as well as a surprise finale or something. That would have really delighted me. 

I LOVE THAT PARRYING (AND THE GAME) IS A BIT EASY…

“I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.”

Don’t get it twisted—I died a lot in this game, sometimes in ways that felt fair and other times in ways that seemed like BS, though that’s an element of even the “official,” FromSoftware-made, Souls games. I felt tension while exploring in a way that I believe enhances that exploration, and I certainly didn’t go into any fights just assuming I’d win. The threat was there. And yet, I’d say this game is probably easier than any of the other titles I’ve mentioned above, and even that the exploration and moment-to-moment fights might feel tougher than the big bosses in a way that seems awkward or even unintentional. And yet, the game still feels like a true sequel to Lords of the Fallen 2014 in this way, as my impression of some of the post-release discussion around that game was how it was in some ways a more approachable take on this style of RPG. I think Lords of the Fallen 2 carries on that tradition.

One way it does this is through making grinding an incredibly accessible process. Since enemies spawn infinitely in Umbral, it’s easy to do a little grinding without even necessarily meaning to as you simply cut down the weaker demons because they’re either in your way or just on your way (somewhere). You don’t have to constantly visit a checkpoint and reset the level to get more sources of EXP to appear and can instead just go into Umbral and let the EXP come to you.

Bosses and enemies also have simpler move sets than in the more recent other big-name Souls-ish titles, and since enemies repeat so much throughout the game, you can get pretty comfortable with them individually. Parrying, as previously noted, also feels easier. That’s partly to do with the enemy repetition giving you so many opportunities to learn their attack patterns and timings, but they also tend to attack in simple and more easily readable ways. Most of them are humanoids, so how they hold and swing their weapons (or limbs) just makes a lot of sense even the first time you encounter them. Parrying is a matter of timing a block with the enemy’s attack, rather than performing any additional inputs, which means that you can also accidentally get parries even as you simply raise your shield or weapon to defend yourself.

I thought I’d try parrying out against the first proper boss—a heavy metal angel with her feet out—just to see how it went and found it so satisfying and reasonable to pull off that it became a staple of my first playthrough. I even went with a lighter, very small shield to maximize the risk of mistiming a parry since I felt so confident doing it (and since it’s possible to regain health in this game through certain mechanics I won’t get into here). The sounds and visuals associated with parrying just felt rewarding, as were the effects associated with breaking an enemy’s stance and delivering a “Grievous Strike,” up to and including the perhaps overly chunky wind-up and splattery noises that are meant to sell the power of the attack.

I reached a point years ago, when I still hadn’t played that many Souls-esque games, where I was no longer interested in punishing duels and was more invested in novelty and mechanics (“gimmick fights,” even). I can still buckle down and learn fights if I have to—and I certainly had to when I played Lies of P—but getting to bypass that process of dying over and over and having to come to terms with the fact that you might have an hour or more of learning ahead of you before you make meaningful progress in the game again seems just fine to me. Re-playing some Elden Ring in preparation for its upcoming expansion, I just found myself kind of tired of the Margits of the gaming world. Lords of the Fallen 2 was arguably too easy at points, even for me with this mindset, but I generally just found it fun. The exploration was the thing that really drew me in—that and sometimes feeling like I was trundling through the cover art of a heavy metal album—and the fights were more so the seasoning than the meal itself.

IN CONCLUSION…

“I love thee freely, as men might strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.”

This game was essentially a gift when I bought it, and if dollars and hours are equivalent, I nearly got my money’s worth with my first playthrough alone. However, I think Lords of the Fallen 2023 had the misfortune of being priced into the same associative tier as titles like God of War: Ragnarök or The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom when it lacks a lot of that polish, scale, and detail and would probably feel more at home at 50 dollars instead. It carries on a bit of its predecessor’s jank, and however massive of an undertaking it actually was to create, it has this scrappy quality to it at times when the seams really show. It was very unfortunate for it to release a month after Lies of P as well—a similar game that was both cheaper and more polished and that also had the more audacious and novel premise.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Lords of the Fallen 2 will receive a critical/popular reappraisal in the future. That’s probably just a safe bet at this point for literally any piece of media, but I genuinely think that the stuff with Umbral and the level and world layouts are going to catch people’s attention in a wider sort of way in time, probably after a price drop or steep sale.

(Title based on and quotes above taken from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43, “How Do I Love Thee?”)

[shawnthebro]

A menu system will help ensure proper gameplay flow and act as an interface for the players!

[linuxgamenews]

Sanctum Breach gets a big updates and will be back to normal patches

Sanctum Breach top down ARPG first major update releases for Linux and Windows PC. Thanks to the ongoing efforts of developer Reroll Gaming and Kiss Publishing Limited (KPL). Which you can play now if you own the games on Steam. The first major update for Sanctum Breach is live via Steam. The original game releasing on December 9th, 2019. Now leveling up the content even further. While over the last few months to get everything in place. With everything sorted out, things should be back to normal with a patch every month. So it's back to focusing on completing the Warbringer. While also working to transitioning into a Beta. This means Reroll Gaming can start adding more Endgame content for players. This Sanctum Breach top down ARPG patch adds 2 new Skills to the Warbringer. As well as many other associated major and augmented features included in the first major update.

Cleave:

Cleave in front of you, dealing Physical Damage.

Tag: Melee

180% of Weapon Damage as Physical Damage

150 Range

250 Radius

1.4 Second Cast Time

Major 1: Skulls have a 50% chance to appear around each enemy hit, causing Delirium. Sanctum Breach augment 1: Increases chance by 25%.

Major 2: Skulls have a 20% chance to spawn Demonic Skulls, which also deals 2 Fire Damage per Player Level in a 125 Radius. Augment 2: Increases chance by 10%.

Major 3: Demonic Skulls burn enemies they hit for 2 Fire Damage per Player Level for 3 seconds. Augment 3: Increases damage by 0.5.

Major 4: Demonic Skulls spawn a torrent of Frozen Skulls to fall from the sky, dealing 3 Cold Damage per Player Level in a 100 Radius.  Augment 4: 20% chance to Echo.

Major 5: While spawning a fiery inferno in the centre of the cleave. This deals 2 Fire Damage per Player Level in a 150 Radius every 0.5 seconds for 2 seconds. As a result, adds a 3 second Cooldown. Augment 5: Reduces Cooldown by 0.5 Seconds.

Major 6: A barrier forms around you, increasing Defence by 2 per Player Level for 3 seconds. Augment 6: Increases Defence gained by 1.

Major 7: A whirlwind rips forwards dealing 1 Physical Damage per Player Level to enemies in a 200 Radius. Since it can travel 1200 Distance at 250 Speed and ticks every 0.2 Seconds. Augment 7: Increases Damage by 0.5.

Major 8: A massive Tornado spawns at your location. This deals 4 Physical Damage per Player Level every 0.5 seconds for 2 seconds in a 200

Radius (only one Tornado will deal damage at once). Sanctum Breach augment 8: Increases damage dealt by 1.

Sanctum Breach Steam Release Trailer (Linux, Windows PC)

The trailer should give you some idea of this top down ARPG on Linux and Windows PC. The new changes do not end there. Since the first major update lets players deal out fire damage. Check out the Warcry details below.

Warcry:

Let out a Warcry that deals Fire Damage in a Radius.

Tag: Melee

150% of Weapon Damage as Fire Damage

300 Radius

15 Mana Cost

1.5 Second Cast Time

Major 1: 50% chance to Stun enemies hit. Augment 1: Increase Stun chance by 10%.

Major 2: Since enemies hit Burn for 2 Fire Damage per Player Level for 3 Seconds. Sanctum Breach augment 2: Increase Burn damage by 1.

Major 3: Likewise, enemies that are hit whilst affected by a status ailment have a 20% chance to Melt. Augment 3: Increases chance by 10%.

Major 4: After casting gain a 50% Damage increase for the next cast (has a 1 cast cooldown). Augment 4: Increases damage increase by 10%.

Major 5: Becomes an Aura that ticks every 2 seconds for 20 Mana per tick and has 50% less damage. Yet also excludes Major 4, Major 6 & Major 7. Sanctum Breach augment 5: Reduces tick rate by 0.2 seconds.

Major 6: 20% chance to Echo. Augment 6: Increases chance by 5%.

Major 7: After casting teleport forwards 300 Range. Augment 7: Teleport whilst casting.

Major 8: Hitting enemies reduces their Fire Resistance by 5% (stacks indefinitely). Augment 8: Reduces by a further 1%.

Also note, the next Sanctum Breach patch will roll out the final 2 core skills. Since this means improvements to projectiles in this top down ARPG. Likewise, they will follow the terrain up and down, rather than just up. As well as any additional bug fixes that players find in the interim. Which is due to arrive in the middle of February. You might also want to check out the developers YouTube channel. There you can certainly experience the developers mindset first hand.

Currently on Sale:

So, of you want to jump in and experience whats in the first major update. These changes are actively available in Sanctum Breach now. The game is also discounted 30% until January 20th via Steam. As a result, this drops the price down to $9.09 USD for Linux and Windows PC.

[starlightechoesdev]

Another character update. Work has been done in other areas as well. Will share more at a later date, probably next month.

[lexgamedev]

Hey guys, what’s up?

So been working on a new prototype for a looter shooter since I’ve been pretty into ARPGs like Diablo, as well as other looter shooters such as Borderlands.

I’ve been contacted about an interesting opportunity about a potential job using Unreal Engine to create simulations, so I am using this instead of my regular Unity. This will mainly be as a portfolio piece, but I wanted to still upload here to share what I’ve been doing.

So development with UE4 is a little slower than Unity since I am learning the framework, as well as relearning C++ since I haven’t used it much since graduating.

Here are the features I’ve added so far:

Sprinting

Basic ammo

Interaction System

While nothing crazy, I am pretty happy since its helping me learn how to use this engine and has been lots of fun. Hope you guys have a good one and see you later!

[wickedhorizondesigns]

Project Orion October 2021 update

The video sample featured in this clip is from the previous combat system we were using called “A.A.R.P.G.” We have since migrated to a new system named Tempest Combat Framework “T.C.F” in 2022. However we honor our Affiliates & collaborations with associates. The video is a sample of some basic combat animations which also highlights the smooth quality of animations & movement.

Greetings from the Wicked Horizon Designs "W.H.D" team, we have an exciting new update to share. The W.H.D team in collaboration with our affiliates at WeAnimate have together achieved a milestone. We want to thank the fantastic people at WeAnimate for their time, professionalism and attention to detail. At the bottom of the update post, we will include links to all of the appropriate products, content and services that are contributing factors. We want to include a few shout outs to individuals involved. The WeAnimate staff: Januth, Shai & the VA who was involved in the process Mia. From start to finish we are very pleased to have built a great relationship with our friends at WeAnimate. The W.H.D teammates who took part in this collaboration: Joe F. VFX, Animation & Consultation, Sam S. Unreal Engine & AARPG integration with move-set testing, Noel A. Video Editing & compilation, R. Chao Music score creation, Jamie N. W.H.D logo Animation, business organizer and project owner.  The WeAnimate team was able to create a bone rig system for the Orion character mesh in Blender that was structured to orient perfectly with the bone hierarchy system native inside Unreal Engine for easy re-targeting. Afterwards Sam S. of the W.H.D team transitioned the native Unreal rig set up into the AARPG Combat System where we conducted extensive stress tests using a variety of unique melee combat animation packs such as seen in the demonstration video here.  We will be posting future video updates as the development of Project Orion continues to advance. The W.H.D team is very pleased to acknowledge all the hard work of individuals, businesses & content creators who in turn help us achieve our goals and promoting their brands along with our own. We look forward to sharing future updates, progress, affiliations & partnerships.  Thank you and enjoy the w.i.p (work in progress) development video.  Sincerely: W.H.D team. Professional & legal acknowledgements: Wicked Horizon Designs is always happy to promote products or services we make use of.  Project Orion yYouTube page: Project Orion Youtube  Epic Games Unreal Engine: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/  Proper credit to the creation of the original model to "Sketch Kidd", a talented 3D designer.  Proper credit to R. Chao for the "Waterworld" music composition in the video.    WeAnimate offer a variety of Animation, 3D Modeling & Rigging services. They have a friendly intuitive staff of professionals that will be happy to consult with you and help achieve your business goals. You can visit their website linked here to browse their products and services.  https://weanimate.online/  Advanced Action RPG combat System: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/advanced-arpg-melee-combat-system  Great Sword Animset: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/greatsword-animset  Twin Sword Anim set expansion: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/twinsword-animset-plus