Ghostcrawler

Fantastic Pixel Castle official site Fantastic Pixel Castle is a AAA first-party development studio that is part of NetEase Games. The studio is working towards creating an all-new and immersive fantasy MMO, purpose built for those that ...

New week, new dev blog. Episode 2: Why would we try to make an MMO?

fantasticpixelcastle.com/new-detail/?...

I look forward to changing the name of every body of water and military base every 4-8 years. That won’t get old at all.

Fantastic Pixel Castle official site Fantastic Pixel Castle is a AAA first-party development studio that is part of NetEase Games. The studio is working towards creating an all-new and immersive fantasy MMO, purpose built for those that ...

I like to write a lot about our game and the industry in general, so our studio is kicking off a weekly dev blog! I won't write them all but I'll probably write a lot.

fantasticpixelcastle.com/new-detail/?...

I butcher those little ones by the dozen because they have a rare resource drop.

I'm kidding. They aren't in the game just yet.

There's a budget for how many new creature models, even critters, you can get in an expansion. This one already had a lot. (Budget in terms of hours of dev time, not cost.)

The owlbeast is intended to be terrifying. It’s one of the top dangers of the Wychwood, a jabberwock type creature

Nothing against actual ren fairs. I find the music of ours in Texas to have more varied music than most fantasy games.

We have talked a lot about it! I find a lot of fantasy games use generic ren faire music and swelling strings for EVERYTHING. There is so much more out there. I loved at Riot how we could work in an electric guitar for SOME pieces and it worked.

We are really going to do this Friday! Join in or watch later!

A dev stream announcement for Fantastic Pixel Castle, the studio developing the MMO codenamed Ghost. It says: "FPC Dev Stream: The Wychwood Blue Zone Showcase. Join us for a look into our Wychwood Blue Zone progress and a Dev Q&A! April 4th, 11:00 AM PT - 12:00 PM PT, twitch.tv/fantasticpixelcastle, youtube.com/@FantasticPixelCastle. (See, we weren't kidding.)" Below the text is a misty screenshot of the game, showing craggy rock faces, twisting trees, waterfalls, and a wooden tower.

dev_stream_announcement_final_FINAL_actually.png

Come join us on Friday 4/4 at 11:00 AM PT to take a look at the progress we've made on the Wychwood! We'll be live on our Twitch and YouTube channels - you know where to find the links.

Oh 100%

👀

Probably but you would still want a healer in that case

Right now we are thinking all combat classes with professions as something you add on top of that (like many MMOs do)

Unlike George we are making really fast progress! We just started sharing earlier than most games would do.

We have a melee class in our game now. It’s not shippable of course but directionally it’s ours and not stand in. Starting a healer next. Then just 20 or so to go! :)

Yes and part of my job was to design the campaigns. I wrote all of the narrative and most of the maps. For the Aztecs, I wanted an alt history where they defended Tenochtitlan.

"So says Cuauhtemoc, jaguar warrior of
Tenochtitlan"

I wrote that!

Brian Holinka is in charge of combat, but I'm not sure if he has an account here

We started with it, but will end up having to a bunch of our own work, because Unreal is currently more designed for FPS than for client server RPGs.

A lot of game designers have experienced the situation where someone plays something and says "I don't know it just wasn't fun" which may be true but doesn't provide them much to go on for how to fix it. So we try to ask more specific questions. Did you understand it? Did you find it worth the cost?

It is both. I have always believed you have to playtest and take the feedback seriously but you have to weigh the feedback through your experience and intuition as a developer. A playtester may said "I didn't feel the weight of my hits" and that could be because the enemies don't react at all.

Yeah designers don't use the word "fun" much because it's not very specific. "Satisfying" is the closest word, but that implies a bunch of different things: affordance, skill mastery, expression, responsiveness, immersion, wow factor.

Many people on your team can’t squint. But if you are in charge of combat (or any other early feature like this) you best be able to. /thread

So how are we supposed to judge squintable combat that needs more polish without assuming the polish will fix it? Well that dear reader is why the job is hard. 7/

We read all the time about failed projects that assume “the old X studio magic” will eventually appear and the game will become fun overnight. 6/

But the opposite part of that is you can’t just trust blind faith that everything will be good once all the vfx and everything is in place. 5/

“Is it going to say WIP in big letters in the final game?” 4/

But there are two somewhat contradictory lessons I want to share here. First, everyone talks about being able to squint at early content. In my experience, most people are awful at squinting. 3/