Lords of Nether - A DK inspired game, with 3D Modeling by Blutonium

[YourMaster]

Thanks mate! We dont yet have a site set up or a sub-forum here but we have a Wikia page where there is a fair amount of information on the gameplay and some other things! It hasn't been updated in a while but we'll get to it and the info there is still valid.

http://lords-of-nether.wikia.com/wik...f_Nether_Wikia

We will try to update where needed and you can always ask me any specifics if you're curious about something!

We are going to be posting a lot more here, so hopefully that helps as well!

I'll look into what you've got, and then probably wait until your alpha-demo to give some feedback. I've got quite a bit of experience running software projects, and as probably everybody else on this board I'm a fan of DK, and would love to see you do well, so I'd be willing to help out with some pointers where useful.

[Blutonium]

Heeey, good to see you again, Blutonium!

This looks pretty interesting, so I'll be keeping my eye on this.
I need something to calm my nerves after WftO.

Hey Evi! Nice to be back.
Thanks, We're doing our best to make it great.

I hold Dungeon Keeper in very high regards and I promise you we are in good hands with David's vision for this game. He is very meticulous about every aspect and I have a great amount of faith in him.

Once you guys see the concept art posted here in the coming weeks, you will see what I'm talking about.
Good times ahead for all Dungeon Keeper fans!

[DBlac]

I'll look into what you've got, and then probably wait until your alpha-demo to give some feedback. I've got quite a bit of experience running software projects, and as probably everybody else on this board I'm a fan of DK, and would love to see you do well, so I'd be willing to help out with some pointers where useful.

Thats great to hear man! We would be happy for any help and feedback you can give! Looking forward to showing more and hearing from you guys

[YourMaster]

Could you guys also share a bit more on the project and technical aspects of what you're doing,... How big is your team, what kind of backgrounds do you have, how are you organized, how are you working together, what engine are you using (or making something yourselves?), do you want this to become a for profit game or is this going to be considered a success if you release a fun game and you don't starve to death in the meantime? Are you properly play-testing or are you just theory-crafting?

[DBlac]

Could you guys also share a bit more on the project and technical aspects of what you're doing,... How big is your team, what kind of backgrounds do you have, how are you organized, how are you working together, what engine are you using (or making something yourselves?), do you want this to become a for profit game or is this going to be considered a success if you release a fun game and you don't starve to death in the meantime? Are you properly play-testing or are you just theory-crafting?

I'll try and answer to the best of my abilities.

We're a small but dedicated and capable core team of four people, but a few more outlying talents in other areas (music/sound design etc).

As for backgrounds, I suspect you know a fair deal about Blutonium's, and the rest, well, me and our animator have gone through a Game Development Bachelor in Saxion University in the Netherlands, granting us many opportunities to work in teams with others and develop projects to acclimate us to the way things go. Our programmer originally began in animation and graphic design, but he switched to programming some years back, working on many different small projects. It has been amazing to see how good he is at what he does though, because he has basically built the functional side of the game from the ground up himself and never ceases to amaze with his ability to overcome obstacles!

For our organisation, I am basically Lead Developer and Art Director and a bunch of other things, Kris is programming Guru as mentioned, Blutonium primarily handles all the high ends of the 3D work (as well as solving a ton of other obstacles with our process etc), and Benita is our animator, working tirelessly to navigate that minefield . For communication we use Trello to organise and Skype for day-to-day communication and weekly full team meetings. We are basically all in different parts of the world for now (we hope to resolve that in the future) so this is the best we can do at the moment.

We are using the latest iteration of Unity, which honestly just keeps getting better and better (and in ways that almost suspiciously seem beneficial to exactly what we're doing :P).

We plan to release on Steam as this project is absolutely huge and will take a lot of time and effort, and we want to be able to keep making games with our company in the future. This is not a fun side project for us, it is our future and livelyhood so we are taking it seriously.

We've got the level editor already functional and many of the other tools we need, and now we're working on the AI and higher gameplay systems. So all in all, we are extensively testing every single thing we put in right now, the theory crafting was done a few years back, although we always keep flexible in order to improve, fix or enrich what we have.

[YourMaster]

Thanks for the info.

And where are you planning on compromising? Where do you expect to save time on compared to say, DK, and what do you want to give the player in return?
Naturally no matter how talented and dedicated you are, there's always a difference in what you can expect from a 4 man team compared to a 200 man team. (That's not to say small teams can't deliver amazingly successful products, see minecraft for example as a game that had clear focus which paid off)

[DBlac]

Well it's hard to answer those sort of questions at this stage in development. So far we haven't come across any major roadblocks and as we go on we only seem to be getting better at what we're doing. We're not willing to compromise on quality and polish of our main game features. I would say have a wait and see sort of view on it, we hope that we will be able to pleasantly surprise you!

[YourMaster]

To be honest, I think that's the most important question a small team should ask itself, and at the very beginning. Having a clear focus and a realistic scope is not 'compromising quality', but necessary to deliver quality. With 4 people you can't do the same as with 200 people, and if you try to do so you will fall short and end up delivering 'the same but worse'.

Now DK is a relatively simple game, but still not to be underestimated. Take some inspiration from other successful indie games - doesn't matter what genre - and compare what they did differently to EA or Activision games in the same genre to still be successful, to deliver high quality in a smaller scope.
At the very least, try to do a breakdown on everything you need to develop, and make your best estimate on how much time it would cost to build. Now look at the items on your long list and see where you've got to spend a lot of time, and really reconsider needed to do so. For your thought experiment just assume you won't do it, but what could you do with 10% or 30% of the time instead that would still be fun.

And prototype of course, try to quickly have a game up and running, as barebones as possible, that is enjoyable to play. That should be first, and than focus on investing more in the aspects that are fun.

[DBlac]

To be honest, I think that's the most important question a small team should ask itself, and at the very beginning. Having a clear focus and a realistic scope is not 'compromising quality', but necessary to deliver quality. With 4 people you can't do the same as with 200 people, and if you try to do so you will fall short and end up delivering 'the same but worse'.

Now DK is a relatively simple game, but still not to be underestimated. Take some inspiration from other successful indie games - doesn't matter what genre - and compare what they did differently to EA or Activision games in the same genre to still be successful, to deliver high quality in a smaller scope.
At the very least, try to do a breakdown on everything you need to develop, and make your best estimate on how much time it would cost to build. Now look at the items on your long list and see where you've got to spend a lot of time, and really reconsider needed to do so. For your thought experiment just assume you won't do it, but what could you do with 10% or 30% of the time instead that would still be fun.

And prototype of course, try to quickly have a game up and running, as barebones as possible, that is enjoyable to play. That should be first, and than focus on investing more in the aspects that are fun.

We understand the scope and danger of making something like this. We've been at this for several years now and even beforehand some of us have had formal education on working in this field. I myself spend my days meticulously picking apart the industry (and complaining about how most of it makes no sense, essentially abuses players and is frankly bloated to the brink). We have analysed our strenghts and weaknesses and made the according plans.

Teams of two hundred are often comprised of many people who are not even part of the core development, such as HR, PR management, voice actors (many voice actors) and a number of other auxilaries, while at the same time their games being comprised of large, heavy setpieces which take a lot of time to produce. The procedurally constructed nature of our game actually relieves a lot of the work we need to do on creating playable areas and while creating those algorythms is also a big task, that's basically what we've done in the past year in order to be able to come out to people in this state with it already working!

Often times creating the full functionality of the game is only the beggining of the development process, what comes after is the long process of producing all the numerous assets that go into the game, tieing them all together so they work right (character models and animations working properly with their programming etc) and constructing the playable areas of the game. Functionally we already have the ability to generate an underground map and edit it with various tilesets, as well as already having a basic but working Worker AI which can dig, claim and fortify. Both of these systems are essentially the core of our two main features and they're getting more and more refined each week, laying the groundwork to build other systems around them much faster and easier.

All in all we are not underprepared and we do not underestimate what we have started. We intend to finish this game no matter what and ensure that we deliver as close to the final product we intend as possible, but naturally this is a long process with many twists and turns so we keep flexible, knowing that we may have to adjust our strategy accordingly.

But I can understand that no matter what i say right at this moment it's just words and it's hard to convince anyone of our abilities and intent and that's okay! We will be bringing you guys updates as we go on so you can see what we can accomplish and how we work and we intend to be completely transperant with it You can decide for yourselves then, whether we are up to the task.

[YourMaster]

Well, like I said, best of luck. And you're right, the proof is in the pudding so we'll see what you're made of when you share something we can play around with and get a feel for your game. That's also the point were you can start to expect some actual useful feedback or course.