Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

Next time don't start off with 9 designers and 1 guy making something besides generic paragraphs about humans and backstabbing rogues. Don't really care if it's your friends , dedicated members who will eventually work perfect together , whatever. It's way lopsided on unnecessary people to get the thing funded.

Find someone who works and makes a living at job A , who loves the idea enough to work at nights and weekends over a period of months to produce actual visuals that will catch folks eyes. Have the class system and abilities worked out ahead of time and appear confident in them.

I've seen amazing shit made over the years be it game mods or whatever by people who have a "real" job at the same time but are just passionate about whatever they are trying to make be it a mod or the entire Westeros continent in Minecraft.

I just don't buy the bullshit line about since they are doing it pro bono all they could come up with are two pictures and a few paragraphs.

I work as a full time engineer , teach tech college courses two nights a week , wife and 2 and 4 year old who I do things with every day, and find time to do my own shit too (not as much as I used to on that regard ).

The "they are working so hard" shit makes me roll my eyes.

gogojira_sl said:

I'm just anxious to see the end result if and when the Kickstarter doesn't happen.

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Let's pull the pledge and secure our interest!

Creator Visionary Realms, Inc. 3 minutes ago
Hey all,
Just wanted to keep you in the loop. The team is currently working on more content to get out and we're also reaching out to some more networks. The Wizard will be ready for tomorrow and then more stuff coming down the pipe really soon.
--Ben.


For those who swore off the comment section

Curious about the coder stuff. How many should be on the team? What exactly would they be doing this early on? Ive read people say they need more but I've read other people say 1 is fine for now.. I'm not even going to pretend to know.

Convo_sl said:

Curious about the coder stuff. How many should be on the team? What exactly would they be doing this early on? Ive read people say they need more but I've read other people say 1 is fine for now.. I'm not even going to pretend to know.

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In fairness, using Unity doesn't really need a "coder" per se to get started. I have never coded before in my life, never made a video game, and never worked on a development team, and I was able to implement a Necromancer from scratch in Unity. It's technically C#, but it is really just scripting. They will eventually need a lot of professional coders to, obviously, but I assume the people that are involved have at least some experience with scripting (certainly more than me) and they could start to implement and iron out classes almost immediately without a pro coder.

Unity handles the physics graphics, etc. It is really, really easy.

Dahkoht_sl said:

Next time don't start off with 9 designers and 1 guy making something besides generic paragraphs about humans and backstabbing rogues. Don't really care if it's your friends , dedicated members who will eventually work perfect together , whatever. It's way lopsided on unnecessary people to get the thing funded.

Find someone who works and makes a living at job A , who loves the idea enough to work at nights and weekends over a period of months to produce actual visuals that will catch folks eyes. Have the class system and abilities worked out ahead of time and appear confident in them.

I've seen amazing shit made over the years be it game mods or whatever by people who have a "real" job at the same time but are just passionate about whatever they are trying to make be it a mod or the entire Westeros continent in Minecraft.

I just don't buy the bullshit line about since they are doing it pro bono all they could come up with are two pictures and a few paragraphs.

I work as a full time engineer , teach tech college courses two nights a week , wife and 2 and 4 year old who I do things with every day, and find time to do my own shit too (not as much as I used to on that regard ).

The "they are working so hard" shit makes me roll my eyes.

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Great post. I agree, and this sums up what has been repeated here in a very nice fashion. The only flip is as someone working in corporate America doing coding, I can't code on the side for another group or I'll get in big trouble.

Just a thought, but how tough would it be to get enough content to release on Steam a la DayZ or Rust, in an early alpha and charge 25 for access? Every day I see those two games raking in cash there.

I'm pretty anti Kickstarter, but I love the idea of supporting early alphas for access.

Convo_sl said:

Curious about the coder stuff. How many should be on the team? What exactly would they be doing this early on? Ive read people say they need more but I've read other people say 1 is fine for now.. I'm not even going to pretend to know.

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what i do know is itd probably be preferable to have nine coders and one designer than the other way around.

Oloh_sl said:

In fairness, using Unity doesn't really need a "coder" per se to get started. I have never coded before in my life, never made a video game, and never worked on a development team, and I was able to implement a Necromancer from scratch in Unity. It's technically C#, but it is really just scripting. They will eventually need a lot of professional coders to, obviously, but I assume the people that are involved have at least some experience with scripting (certainly more than me) and they could start to implement and iron out classes almost immediately without a pro coder.

Unity handles the physics graphics, etc. It is really, really easy.

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The team has said something similar but other people keep challenging it. That's why I'm curious. From what I understand, they have already laid in the code for a mmo. Whatever the fuck that entails..

Gecko_sl said:

Great post. I agree, and this sums up what has been repeated here in a very nice fashion. The only flip is as someone working in corporate America doing coding, I can't code on the side for another group or I'll get in big trouble.

Just a thought, but how tough would it be to get enough content to release on Steam a la DayZ or Rust, in an early alpha and charge 25 for access? Every day I see those two games raking in cash there.

I'm pretty anti Kickstarter, but I love the idea of supporting early alphas for access.

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Since you have experience, I'm curious.. what issues will they run into by not having a lot of them this early on?

I know this sounds retarded(probably because it is) I just assumed that the designers, designed the game then passed that shit off to the art people and the coders made sure it all jived up. I never really read up on any of it.

Having a general idea where they are in the process.. is it too much for 1 person with some designers helping out like Oloh mentioned?

Convo_sl said:

The team has said something similar but other people keep challenging it. That's why I'm curious. From what I understand, they have already laid in the code for a mmo. Whatever the fuck that entails..

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They are using the base Unity engine to fuck around. The project still needs a ton of art assets, UI built <coder>, backend DB <engineer>, ingame scripting <programmer>, network tuning <engineer>, plus code for their game that makes it distinct, not to mention an actual website hooked into their backend DB.

In looking at the other KS games, ie, Camelot Unchained, Shroud, etc they seem to be far heavier on the tech people who also wear some design hats, too. The problem is when your designers can't code, provide art assets, or have engineering skills. It's like having a dozen guys to lay down railroad track, but 10 of them just send in memos a la Office Space, instead of having 8 of the guys actually doing the ground work.

Note, this is just my armchair view. I know for my projects we tend to have one PM for about 15 actual engineer types. I'd assume for game design you might need 2 or 3, but definitely not 9. That's a better question for Denaut, Convo. I honestly don't know for sure.

Convo_sl said:

The team has said something similar but other people keep challenging it. That's why I'm curious. From what I understand, they have already laid in the code for a mmo. Whatever the fuck that entails..

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A team like Brad has could make a cheap WoW clone with one class and a starting area with shitty graphics in a month without any "real" coder. No doubt about that. Like I said, I am not talking out of my ass, me and my buddy made a cheap, bad Diablo clone that could support 2 players in a month (necromancer class and an overland area to fight in), using no tutorial or other prefabricated scripts. We just started Unity, researched shit online. The first iteration of the skills are listed below and all worked. I coded them all myself with no previous coding background (I am a lawyer, so I am not even around people who code, tbh).

1 Life Tap Single Target DD that heals the Necromancer for the same amount. If cast on a Skeleton pet, destroys it and heals the Necromancer for 33% health.
2 Necrotic Drift Single Target DoT that lasts for 6 seconds. If the target dies before the duration ends, the DoT leaps to the nearest enemy. If the dying target is an enemy, it spawns a new skeleton.
3 Terror Single Target 2.5 second fear. If it hits a skeleton pet, destroys it and fears all nearby enemies.
4 Darkness Single Target DoT that lasts for 3 seconds with a 50% snare. If cast on a pet skeleton, upgrades it to Super Skeleton, increasing its health and damage.
5 Death Knell Single Target Direct Damage Spell. If cast on enemy undead, does double damage.
6 Corrupt Soul Channeled high damage DoT on a single Target. Causes a skeleton pet to spawn if the target dies or the channel lasts its entire duration.
7 Hollow Gate Ground targeted AoE that Roots enemies for a short duration. Any enemy that dies in the Hollow generates a skeleton.
8 (Ult) Bone Dragon Consumes 5 skeleton pets to create a Bone Dragon to attack enemies. Long cooldown.

Passive - Every time a pet skeleton dies, returns mana to the necromancer.


That said, to make Unity a MMO engine will take some work, I think. There are some third party applications out there, but they were too high price for us to check out to just fuck around with. They are a trivial price in the grand scheme of things, but for a pet project, not worth it. Maybe the Pantheon team looked at the third party MMO networking tools and think they are good enough to roll with. If so, they could very well have something shitty playable right now. Making a game is very easy. Making a good game is what takes the time.

Nothing that they have said so far even raises a sniff test as far as I am concerned with respect to Unity.

That model only works for DayZ and Rust because the scope of those games is extremely limited compared to even a basic MMORPG.

popsicledeath_sl said:

Is it bad I'm sorta leaning toward hoping this project fails just so I can bathe in the salty, sweaty tears of so many 90's geeks who never got over EQ? Must decide whether playing a game like Pantheon could maybe be is better than trolling a bunch of people whose glory days and hopes for the future just got shit on in a final, resounding way. Maybe I should take my dilemma to a new Games That Broke Your Heart thread.

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If this project fails it makes things easy for me, likely the end of any interest in MMOs. There are other options for RPGs that are better experiences these days anyway.. And multiplayer options as well.

Honestly if you want to play a real world, there are several thriving nwn2 persistent worlds still running and to this day nwn2 still looks pretty good.

Big Flex_sl said:

what i do know is itd probably be preferable to have nine coders and one designer than the other way around.

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With all due respect, I don't think you understand what a "designer" is as used in the industry. A designer isn't a pure "thinker." A designer essentially implements content. Its isn't like, for example, a quest designer writes up a quest in a word document and then sends it to a programmer for implementation. The designer actually does the implementation via scripting. He might not be a full on programmer, but the tools for the game are typically good enough that you don't have to be. The programmer's job is to make the infrastructure so that designers can do their work efficiently. Another example is with player abilities. Its not like a programmer is needed to implement a fireball...especially in unity. All the tools you need are already in there, whether you are making a TERA like action game or a WoW like tab targeted game. In Unity, much of that work is already done, so a "designer" could start designing from day one without any additional coding needed.

Obviously, if you want to add more niche systems like player housing,a mail system and other stuff, then a coder would get it all started. But you could 100% be designing the combat and class system with not a single programmer on the team. Again, this isn't me just spouting off. I've actually done it.

mkopec_sl said:

If they made bosses smart, you would never win.

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They shouldnt make bosses smart, they should make them believable (within the world they are creating, no "lol but fireballz!!1" please). They should make their whole world believable. If you have a dragon some degree of intelligence is plausible, if you have a giant but-creature it might just act on the instinct of hurting back whoever hurts it most, and mindless undead might be happy with fighting whoever stands closest. I'm not asking for Deep Blue level AI - just enough distinct behaviours from the various creature types that it creates a suspension of disbelief while playing the game.

Regarding raids or even dungeon bosses, some do that well, others are an assembly of retarded gimmicks (like the various forms of positive/negative charge that buff or hurt the others, vastly overused and so out of place in 99% of cases).

Gecko_sl said:

Great post. I agree, and this sums up what has been repeated here in a very nice fashion. The only flip is as someone working in corporate America doing coding, I can't code on the side for another group or I'll get in big trouble.

Just a thought, but how tough would it be to get enough content to release on Steam a la DayZ or Rust, in an early alpha and charge 25 for access? Every day I see those two games raking in cash there.

I'm pretty anti Kickstarter, but I love the idea of supporting early alphas for access.

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What vertical are you in something regulated? I was a programmer for the DOD for many years and frequently had side projects going on... It's hard for any company in America to come after you for anything other than an NDA leak or IP theft as a developer... Even though they say it in many employment agreements they typically can't force you to NOT use your craft for personal gains outside of your work responsibilities. I.e. Don't use company resources to build shit and/or do it on company time. I always had a side consulting business setup as well.

Thanks Gecko and Oloh for the insight. The team keeps talking about how great Unity is to work in. I guess that's some of the shit they are referring to. I know Brad mentioned it early on.

Convo_sl said:

I know this sounds retarded(probably because it is) I just assumed that the designers, designed the game then passed that shit off to the art people and the coders made sure it all jived up. I never really read up on any of it.

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No, it works more like this. The coders design the infrastructure and features to give designers the tools they need to script content. For example, the tool in Vanguard where the content was entered into the game was called something like "Tome." The coders would work on Tome and the designers would use Tome to put content into the game. They would have meetings every once in a while where a designer would say "We really need to be able to add under water areas to underground dungeons." The coders would say "that takes X man-hours and we can/can't fit it in our schedule right now." So, the designers cant design underground water until the coders put it in.

The biggest benefit with Unity is that all the "typical stuff" is done for you tool wise. You dont need to code a physics engine. You dont need to design an object oriented infrastructure. It's done. So, for example, my first project on my game was to make a spell that shot out a particle projectile along a vector, when the vector collided with something, it spawned an invisible collider sphere that returned all objects inside it, which I dropped into a list and then applied a 1 second stun (no actions, no movement) and damage too. It took me like a day to figure it all out. For someone with experience, they probably could write it in an hour.

The biggest danger if your not a coder is getting the hierarchy right (so you dont do the same thing in 100 different places...you generally want to do something once then cross reference), but for people that have been working on several projects, this should be very easy. They have worked around abilities and stuff long enough that I am sure they know how to structure basic hierarchies. At some point, some guru code monkey might come in and be like "you guys are retarded, we have to change this" and then there will be repeated work, but /shrug, that always happens.

Gecko_sl said:

They are using the base Unity engine to fuck around. The project still needs a ton of art assets, UI built <coder>, backend DB <engineer>, ingame scripting <programmer>, network tuning <engineer>, plus code for their game that makes it distinct, not to mention an actual website hooked into their backend DB.

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All those engineer roles are things that come into play much later. You don't hire a UI builder and all the rest for building an initial combat testing demo. You don't need a network tuning guy (maybe just one interested and giving advice like 'make sure you don't do this or it won't be possible later to do that'). It would be awesome if they had people who could be pros at those individual roles, as well fill in in other areas, but I imagine everything is so specialized these days and not like in the 90's where if your buddy can kinda do network stuff you let him teach himself and assume more than one role on the project.

The art is the odd one, though. I've never ever said this about anything in life, but I think they need[ed] more pure artists. I say pure artists, because I'm sure there are plenty of people who can do amazing shading or build in-game art assets, but can't really just draw a kick ass picture. Even artistic roles become highly specialized, and I've seen this happen where someone can do their one thing amazingly, but not much else that seems pretty basic. Having a lot of concept art would be the biggest boon at this point, because it's probably the most easily expected thing based on this point in their timeline.