Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[video] Wizards and Champions Alpha Tour (what makes it different)
KenFisher
Member UncommonPosts: 5,035
WARNING: micro-budget Indie MMORPG with ancient graphics
YouTube videos, roughly 5 minutes each. Full presentation is around 40 minutes.
TRANSCRIPT:
What makes Wizards and Champions different?
Micro budget - Development cost less than $5,000 (not counting server hardware)
FPS Combat - First person shooter combat for both ranged and melee. No tab-targeting. Not auto-aim like used in some action combat games. True server-side hit detection. Full physics on projectiles. Cone of effect for weapon swings.
Cheats avoided - With server-side hit detection it is not possible for a hack to modify the client to cheat hits.
UDP communications - UDP packets are used for simulation. This type of packet is not affected by lag spikes or buffers. Data that arrives late is discarded. Only current data is ever used. This makes movement and combat react quickly and reliably.
Click to Shoot UI - UI is full first person with overlayed controls. The TAB button switches modes (mouse look, mouse cursor). In mouse look mode, combat is both click to swing and click to cast spells (left and right mouse buttons).
...
No XP - No kill XP, no quest XP, no XP at all.
Classless - Fully customizable skill system.
Skill System Progression via Training - Using a skill does not raise the skill level. No need to macro. Skills raise by paying a trainer. Progression is driven by wealth.
Skill levels are capped - With limits on skill training, no character can reach max level on all skills.
Training skills raises character level - Training skills also raises character level.
Progression is driven by wealth - With the progression system based on wealth, any method of achieving wealth can be used to raise a character to max level. It is easily possible to hit max level by crafting and selling the crafted items.
...
Gearing equipment is gated by skill - The use of equipment like armor and weapons is governed by the skill level, not the character level. Even a mid-level character can use best weapons in game if their skill is high enough to do so.
Spells are gated based on skill - Learning spells is governed by skill level. Training up a skill unlocks new spells. The more training, the better and more powerful spells, regardless of character level.
Character builds - A character's build is their collection of skills. There are no racial or birth sign restrictions on what skills can be learned by any character. This provides freedom to build a character as desired, not based on what the developer wants you to do.
...
Birth Sign system - On character creation, player selects a birth sign for the character. The birth sign determines state progression as the character levels up. Some birth signs make great tanks, others make great healers, and so on. Birth signs are not restricted by race or builds.
Racial system - Selection of a race not only changes the characters look on screen, but it also affects stat progression (along with birth sign) as the character gains levels. Some players chose to specialize by matching race and birth sign, while others do a mix and match looking for greater performance without specialization. As with birth signs, there are no restrictions on race selection.
Advancement system - In addition to stat gains based on race and birth sign, there is an advancement system that allows players to customize the character stats by adding advancements. Advancement system can be reset at any time allowing recustomization as needed.
...
Mixed Level Grouping - The design of WAC is to promote mixed level grouping as a way to avoid the forced content gating common to other games. A low level can group with high levels and receives an equal share of XP and loot making it easy for high levels to assist a low level in progression.
Possibly worth watching for people with interest in alternative MMORPG designs, or those contemplating a solo or small team micro-budget MMORPG.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
Comments
I love your honesty approach... Game looks to be coming together great, I am looking forward to trying it out more in the coming days!
Nice job, mate!
Started in March 2008 so almost five years. Got realmlords released in Feb 2010 but was very unhappy with it because of the old opengl renderer, so I pulled it. Changed engines and and rebuilt that into this one.
Funny in retrospect, when I started I figured I could do it in six months to a year. Engine, artwork, scripting, bolt it all together... it should be easy. Man did I get that part wrong. Spent months on end just straightening out engine and middleware issues.
Heh, he said not to mind the debug messages, as the game is still in alpha...
Puts an interesting perspective on DFUW being in beta. Lol.
Otherwise, I would agree the other poster in terms of the graphics, as well as gameplay. Let's get a kickstarter going for this guy.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I did some searching for AC screenshots and videos. That so looks like a game what would be to my liking. Virindi are one cool race.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
Yeah, still going. Not too many of the workshop crowd left.
Thanks for checking out the vids.
Howdy,
After playing enough to level up some skills, decided to head on into the cave north of town. Big mistake for me.
I'm really liking this. Love the design you decided to take, skill progression and cap.
Keep up the good work! Definitely gonna be playing the alpha as much as I can.
Thanks for the note... One thing to keep in mind is that I'm still hammering out details (performance curves) for levels, stats, skills, and gear.
One recent issue is when a mob is given a weapon (for a drop), if it's a good weapon they will equip it which makes their DPS really over powered for their level. I was playing a lowbie toon and ran into a mob with a weapon and it stomped me into the ground. Even worse it was a dungeon mob (they're all elites) so it had HP and damage bonuses on top of the strong weapon.
Still much to be cleaned up and balanced.
Yeah, I've noticed that as well. DPS varies widely depending on if the mob has a weapon, and the quality of it. In my mind, that wasn't a problem, as it made it challenging and kept me on my toes when engaging more than a couple mobs.
In my opinion, if anything, the mobs could hit harder. I've been leveling my character with heavy weapon, heavy armor, combat, and restoration. The healing I can do pretty much means I can take on any amount of mobs no problem, and deal enough damage to bring them down quickly. I've been aoeing groups of level 6-7 regular mobs since level 3, and makes it easy to gain wealth and train skills.
One problem I've run into though - when your inventory is full, and you continue looting, the item will replace the attack macro on your mouse 1 button. You can clear and save the item macro to nothing, but have to restart tjhe client to move attack back to it's correct place.
Another thing I noticed last night while playing, I could equip an offhand weapon with my heavy weapon. I don't know if that's meant to be like that, but my impression was it was a two handed weapon.
Overall, I'm having a lot of fun! And if you need any specific feedback, I'm willing to give some impressions.
So, is your server actually up and running? I d/l the client and tried to register a new account and am getting an error. "User timeout caused connection error".
I wanna try this!
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
hehe, i remember this from the mud i used to play - best was when he killed me or other char of my class, because we had a class weapon with life drain - unless you had item with immunity to drain, you were totally screwed, since 1 min fight with such mob would drain all your skills to minimum and totaly crippled you
Hey Amjoco,
I have the same problem sometimes. I've found that 1) having the resolution set to my native resolution, 2) having fullscreen enabled, and 3) not minimizing or clicking out of it helps.
Hope to see you in-game!
TY Willsteller,
I tried quite a few different times with different settings and even setup my firewall just in case. I will try again tomorrow!
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Both known bugs. Good eye for catching them. I'll write them up on the forum so I remember to look into them.
The full inventory part should be an easy fix. Just make it so that if autoloot cannot throw the item in main inventory that the item is destroyed rather than ending up on the cursor. Also I want to look into corpse looting again, perhaps the item can stay on the corpse and be looted later (an ideal solution).
A very old version of WAC didn't have weapon skills and I botched up the ability for the server to identify two handed weapons. For the moment 2h + offhand works, so does 2h + shield, but this needs fixed. They aren't supposed to work :-)
Specific feedback needed at this point is client stability and performance. Connection failures, rubber-banding mobs, low framerate on modern hardware are all good reports. Also if it runs well, knowing what hardware it runs nicely on helps.
As things move forward, we'll look into broken mechanics (like weapon equips) UI mistakes (there are a few) and combat balance (PVE).
Target for same level mobs is 3 at a time. 6 should wipe a character easily (sloppy pull or walk-in aggro).
Elites in dungeons are much harder to kill and hit harder. Tank with a healer (or good self heals) should have a chance on 3, but a much longer / harder fight. Considerably easier grouped especially with good DPS. The cave dungeons are huge* so to even get to the end boss means you have to move quickly.
Also, heals are way OP. Either character mana needs to be lower or heals need to eat more mana. I have a 7 setup as a Paladin (1h + heavy armor + resto) and he heals through just about anything. Not intended to be that much of a faceroll.
*I'd call caves just about finished other than decoration. There are smaller caves that need installed too. Regular dungeons are looking at being completely reworked... I'm not sure I like the non-linear layout.
Let me know if you get stuck. Bring a specific error message and I can try to track it down. Also note, I patch quite often and there is no test realm so I work on the live servers. Down for patch will either show "connection refused" or a server menu with no servers listed.
Shout if I can be of help.
I got in and played a few minutes. What I saw looks fun though! Your graphics are much better than you let on in your video! I will try some more tomorrow!
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.