Forging Life - An indie RPG game

Just added some animals to the world. Modeled, rigged and animated in blender:


https://sites.google.com/site/forginglife/ProjectProgress/animatedanimalsstartingtoappear

Feedback is most welcome, since this is our first game

Your game looks great to a newbie like me!

The concept, as gleaned from the blog post you linked on your site, is quite interesting. If you can make it fun, I can see it becoming popular. However, that's a very daunting "if." I, for one, sincerely hope you can pull it off!!!

As a GURPS player who despises Dungeons and Dragon's video game reality, I can appreciate complexity in my RPG -- but, in my opinion, you went just a bit overboard. Splitting intelligence into 5-7 different attributes? Yikes.

GURPS has only one type of intelligence, but has numerous advantages and disadvantages to modify it so that a character can be a high-IQ social introvert, or a low-IQ creative genius. You may wish to consider something like that.

The English writing on your Web site, however, leaves much to be desired. That's completely forgivable knowing English isn't your native language and the the page is in its infancy.

I'd be happy to donate some time to the cause, if you'd appreciate some help with your Web site. Just let me know and I'll go through it with a fine-tooth comb. Also, I could offer some more of my opinions about the game, but only if you wanted to hear them. I realize you want to make your game as you envision.

Good luck, in any case!

-Sharpe

Very cool. I have had a similar idea for a while now - except in mine you could build traps to capture animals, use basic tools to hunt etc. Also, mine wasn't planned to be 3d. Which technologies are you using for this? Also, I notice that your names are Scandinavian? Where are you guys from?

Your game looks great to a newbie like me!

The concept, as gleaned from the blog post you linked on your site, is quite interesting. If you can make it fun, I can see it becoming popular. However, that's a very daunting "if." I, for one, sincerely hope you can pull it off!!!

As a GURPS player who despises Dungeons and Dragon's video game reality, I can appreciate complexity in my RPG -- but, in my opinion, you went just a bit overboard. Splitting intelligence into 5-7 different attributes? Yikes.

GURPS has only one type of intelligence, but has numerous advantages and disadvantages to modify it so that a character can be a high-IQ social introvert, or a low-IQ creative genius. You may wish to consider something like that.

The English writing on your Web site, however, leaves much to be desired. That's completely forgivable knowing English isn't your native language and the the page is in its infancy.

I'd be happy to donate some time to the cause, if you'd appreciate some help with your Web site. Just let me know and I'll go through it with a fine-tooth comb. Also, I could offer some more of my opinions about the game, but only if you wanted to hear them. I realize you want to make your game as you envision.

Good luck, in any case!

-Sharpe

Hi Sharpe.

Thanks for the great feed back, appreciate it.

We would like to hear more about the advantages and disadvantages, sounds like a interesting idea. Cant really remember much from GRUPS, we also played it, but its serveal years ago now - we were more into MERP, and trying to make our own RPG's.
But regarding the intelligence, then our is devided into 3 litteral, logical og social. And we find that resonable for a couple of reasons. In real life, to very intelligent people - lets say they are a journalist and a computer scientist, they both have high intelligence, but they are intelligent in two different ways. My wife is a journalist, and very clever, but I can spend hours and hours explaining math stuff for her - but she dont get it. She corrects my writing - and i dont get it. That difference in the intelligence is used in our skill based game. And ofc the social int, is obvious.

Regarding the help with the web site, you are welcome to give us advice and a helping hand . We are software developers in out professionel life, but both mainly work on backend - not so much the web


Thanks.
Anders

Very cool. I have had a similar idea for a while now - except in mine you could build traps to capture animals, use basic tools to hunt etc. Also, mine wasn't planned to be 3d. Which technologies are you using for this? Also, I notice that your names are Scandinavian? Where are you guys from?

Hello

We are also planning traps, and hunting is ofc nessary to get food - unless you want to live as a vegetarian and only eat what you grow and harvest

We are indeed scandinavian - both from Denmark.

Cheers

Anders

Hi Sharpe.

Thanks for the great feed back, appreciate it.

We would like to hear more about the advantages and disadvantages, sounds like a interesting idea. Cant really remember much from GRUPS, we also played it, but its serveal years ago now - we were more into MERP, and trying to make our own RPG's.
But regarding the intelligence, then our is devided into 3 litteral, logical og social. And we find that resonable for a couple of reasons. In real life, to very intelligent people - lets say they are a journalist and a computer scientist, they both have high intelligence, but they are intelligent in two different ways. My wife is a journalist, and very clever, but I can spend hours and hours explaining math stuff for her - but she dont get it. She corrects my writing - and i dont get it. That difference in the intelligence is used in our skill based game. And ofc the social int, is obvious.

Regarding the help with the web site, you are welcome to give us advice and a helping hand . We are software developers in out professionel life, but both mainly work on backend - not so much the web


Thanks.
Anders

Sounds great, Anders! I'd be proud to help in any way I can.

For five years, I too was a journalist. Actually, a staff writer at a newspaper -- which is a glorified way of saying "reporter." At one time, my coverage of a high-profile murder case was rather well known across the tri-state area.

Like your wife, math is my weakest suit.

So, I totally understand what you're saying. Even Dungeons and Dragons divides cognition into Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma and that RPG system is mostly all about hacking monsters and looting dungeons. So, I don't at all disagree that intelligence needs to be categorized.

However, your game seems to be something of a hunter-gatherer simulation. Perhaps I'm wrong; most of what I know about your game is gleaned from the review linked on your site. In such a game, fringe aspects of human intelligence take a back seat to fundamental survival. Who cares if Ogg the barbarian is an artistic savant and can paint beautiful pictures on his cave's wall or can capture a breathtaking sunrise in eloquent prose? That isn't nearly as important as being able to find edible roots that won't poison him or stalk and spear a gazelle with the stealth, guile, and skilled precision of a wizened huntsman.

In such a game, the vast majority of players aren't going to invest much in social intelligence. Thus, it will be largely ignored in favor of whatever intelligence makes their character "better" in game play.

That's where I base my suggestion of having less primary attributes while still being able to fully micro-customize the player's character down to minuscule detail with advantages and disadvantages. You can thus make Ogg the barbarian into a poet-artisan without making him less able to hunt and gather.

But, I digress. You should make the game as you envision it. My offer to help with the English composition of your Web site stands alone.

Tell you what, let's take this to PM. I don't want to derail your announcement thread, which is better reserved for game updates and news.

I'll PM you soon.

I'll PM you soon.

OK

Hi

I just added ambilight to the world [color=#333333][font=Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif] to make the lightning a bit more realistic[/font], and it actually looks better. You can now see the morning is a bit more bright than it is in the video, plus the shadow areas on the objects and trees, are more lit up.

As day progress, i'll tone down the ambilight a bit. (not implemented in the pics)

Morning:


Daylight


Evening:

A new screenshot... Grass moving on the wind. (Well, the moving part will have to wait to be shown until the next video).

We are not entirely happy with the grass yet, but a few new textures and the right size will do it..

We have improved the water. We are working hard to get ready to make the next preview video.

Been working on mining, and here is the result. I've been mining a lot, as the picture shows

Hitting the granite, causes small debris to spawn as visual effect, but in the end a useable rock will loosen from the granite and fall to the ground. When the useable rock loosens, depends on the quality of the pickaxe, you mining skill and the hardness of the granite.

Just a couple of new features. Collect water in a container (here a bucket) and drink

Just posting the news, about we have joined the IndieDB. We still need to put some work into the "space", the textual stuff is always the booring stuff

http://www.indiedb.com/games/forging-life/

Wel'll try to keep it as updated as possible.

JOIN US !!!

I've been following this game for awhile now and it seems to be coming along great. One question I do have is what do you have in plan for construction.

I've been following this game for awhile now and it seems to be coming along great. One question I do have is what do you have in plan for construction.

When you say construction, I guess you mean building houses and other bigger things. Not crafting a sword?

We have plans indeed, and cant wait to get started on it.

Here is a quick overview (not all that detailed):
Building a house, is not easy. Maybe it is to day, but in the old days - it was quite an accomplishment.

First of all you need to find a spot (do you need to level the gound or not, we havent decided).
Mayby choose a 10x10 floorplan.

Or idea is that you build wall segments - and because its such a hard job building a house by your self, you can "outsource" parts of the house building as jobs, that otheres can get. You decide the material the have to use, and the lowest quality and such. And then you put a payment on, and if the payment is good enough compared to the material you desire, maybe someone will take the job. (And its not too dangerous to reach your building site.)

Ofc you can choose to build the house your self. Cheaper, but will probably take longer. Thats the overall idea.

Maybe i forgot something, but then ask, if its not clear...

It sounds and looks fun. Does it have real life situations like, 'if you don't eat, you die'?

This would be fun with a co op multiplayer mod that your companion can live in the wor,d with you, then you can bring others in too over time and the network load wouldmbe shared among the users, neat idea right?

It sounds and looks fun. Does it have real life situations like, 'if you don't eat, you die'?

I you don't eat - you die... If you dont drink - you die... If you get a deadly disease or poison, that remain untreated - you die.... etc ..... What happens when you die is still up to consideration. One thing is for sure, you will be able to be revived some how, but the consequenses of dying will be extremely severe. Dying is not something you want to do. So pick your battles carefully, and build a stock of food and water. Maybe grow your own fields or something.

This would be fun with a co op multiplayer mod that your companion can live in the wor,d with you, then you can bring others in too over time and the network load wouldmbe shared among the users, neat idea right?

It sure will be neat, and we are well aware of that the concept cires for a co-op or MP. But as of now, we focus on the single player part. Many of our "modules" that we code, are prepared for MP, and ofc our ultimate goal is to make it MP. But after our SP is released.