So I've been working on my own game: Rebirth - procedural survival horror sandbox game

[Rico]

Hey folks,

So it's been forever since on these boards, mostly because of the post title. During the spring last year, I started doing some game dev in my spare time when I got home from my day job. Long story short, Rebirth is that game and I've been hacking away at it in my spare time ever since.

Don't worry, this isn't some crappy greenlight my game post. In fact, Rebirth has already been Greenlit!


For those who want to just want to learn about the game a little, you can find more info here:

http://deadmanwalkingstudios.com

And here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93614122

Feature List:

Rebirth is a survival horror sandbox game with a focus on procedural environments and dynamic AI. Influenced by games such as STALKER and Silent Hill, all set in a sandbox world ready for players to explore.

Day
Scavenge. Hunt. Explore.

Afternoon
Fend off a group of survivors who found your house. Reinforce the barricades, check to make sure you have enough batteries for your flashlight.

Night
Survive.

Rebirth is a game about survival. The world is in shambles, shattered to the core due to a mix of mysterious events. The air is barely breathable, society has crumbled and governments have toppled. What will you do when your way of life no longer exists and strange beings roam the earth?
Do you have the will to survive?

Features

• Procedurally generated world – There will be a large amount of buildings and places that are procedurally generated to keep gameplay fresh and interesting each time you play.
• Living, breathing eco-system. AI with goals and advanced behaviours, such as actively searching for you when they lose sight of you, searching key locations for food, etc.
• Emergent gameplay – Random events scattered throughout the world. Your house may be raided or attacked one day, or you may find a map leading you to a loot cache… or a trap!
• Survival based gameplay – Scavenge during the day. Find food, weapons, medical supplies, ammo, and scavenge for shelter. Try to survive the night to see the light of the next day.
• Procedural Horror, immersive atmosphere and dynamic scares!
• Various enemy types, all with different behaviors and objectives. No “This Enemy is a bigger version of that guy who does more damage”. A core philosophy is to make each enemy have a role and be special in their own way.
• Third Person and First Person ranged and melee combat. Full body awareness when in First Person mode.
• Barricade existing buildings, set up defenses and generators using items you collect and the environment around you.
• Meaningful death.
• RPG elements – Your character can become more specialized as time passes and they get more experienced.
• Mind-warping horror system. Your fear shapes the world around you…
• Collect information and piece together the origins of the disaster.

Future planned features

• Multiplayer – After most mechanics are complete.
• Rebuild society and craft your own items and possibly buildings (later releases).
• Completely procedurally generated environments

I may be looking for folks to help play test a little later on, with the testing being a lot more focused on the horror and procedural elements since that's my current goal, to get a playable procedural level up and running, with some of the horror elements used/showcased since the last gameplay trailer doesn't really do the game justice anymore. My goal is to hopefully (if my day job/time/wife allows) have something testable by Halloween-ish. Definitely wouldn't be feature complete but it would at least let me get some feedback on the systems and some of the gameplay.

Anyways like I said, not selling anything or needing anything, just dropping a line to offer the chance to give me some feedback as the game progresses.

 

[Vegeta897]

Woah, Rico. Haven't seen you in a while.

Congrats on being greenlit! The features you boast are all things that appeal to me. Good luck!

 

[MFL]

Interesting work, Rico. Thank you for sharing.

 

[Rico]

Hey guys, thanks, happy to share it. Let me know if you have questions, I'm looking to release more media soon since I feel the game is no longer adequately represented by the main trailer. There's really neat AI stuff I want to show!

 

[MFL]

Do the fish swim away?

 

[JossiRossi]

This is pretty cool looking, would love to help you test when the time comes!

 

[Ascension]

Cool! I would love to see multiplayer and crafting! Just make sure the crafting isn't something like "One TNT, one metal=Nuke, or one metal, one wood, and one ammo=AK-47, or one normal clothing, one metal=Kevlar. Perhaps have workbenches and tools required for crafting?

 

[Mogi67]

Looks awesome

 

[Rico]

Cool! I would love to see multiplayer and crafting! Just make sure the crafting isn't something like "One TNT, one metal=Nuke, or one metal, one wood, and one ammo=AK-47, or one normal clothing, one metal=Kevlar. Perhaps have workbenches and tools required for crafting?

Yup that's already planned as a feature, but I'm unsure as to when exactly I'll add it. It's on the roadmap though, I plan to keep expanding the game for a while. I was thinking of doing crafting more akin to 1 grenade + duct tape + string = tripwire trap, gun + duct tape + flashlight = gun with flashlight, that sort of thing. Hammer + nails + boards = barricade.

The crafting will definitely not be as in depth as something like Minecraft where that's the sole purpose of the game, but I hope to add enough to let people feel like they can change the world and have an effect on it.

Currently my main focus is on the procedural systems and the horror gameplay so I can eventually release some more prealpha gameplay or a demo of some sort. I definitely want to do Multiplayer eventually, my main concern is time/money really, I'm just one guy with a couple of artists contributing some work every once in a while, I've pretty much built the whole game myself from the ground up. Multiplayer will be a big investment in terms of time and money since it's not really something you can just tack on, and there are fees associated with it too (third party network library licenses, server costs). So I definitely wouldn't expect multiplayer for the initially released alpha, but it is on the roadmap.

I'm also considering avenues like Kickstarter to see if I can speed up development of the multiplayer among other things. What do you all think, is this likely to be a project people would back? I've been avoiding any sort of funding until I have something people can play, as I feel a lot of folks on KS tend to show up with amazing ridiculously ambitious ideas and 2 pieces of concept art, and ask people for millions (and they sometimes get it...) but then a year later, you get things like CLANG, among many other projects, that fail to deliver or disappoint people.

I'm personally trying to be the kind of developer I like. I care about my game, but I also care about the players and making sure they don't feel ripped off or cheated. That's why I'm trying to make a game you can play over and over again since I remember having no money and enjoying the type of games I could come back to over and over again.

 

[MFL]

Good call on delaying the crowd-sourcing. I'll be honest, I do not know much if anything about the rigors of game development. That being said, in my opinion, I agree with you on most of your points. The procedural systems are going to have to be in place before you can successfully market this and feel good about yourself for not misleading people about your product. On that note, you already have my respect, at the least.

To be frank, thematically, this reminds me of a blend of The Binding of Issac and Day Z. Which is a good thing, in my opinion. Derivation is almost inevitable in this day and age. Where you can stand to make ground here is on evolution. This, supposedly, will come from your games artistic style, your gameplay mechanics, potential for gameplay longevity, and story (emergent or otherwise). Multiplay will only succeed dependent on the previous elements.

Now, I'd like to take the time to respond to your first post line by line, because I'm genuinely interested in the development of your idea, and I'm assuming you came here because you think you might get some good feedback.

Procedurally generated world: Money. ****in money. I love it. The idea is sound, but before I would kick some money into your start, I would want to see exactly how this is implemented, because, as I'm sure you can attest, there are good ways to do this, and there are piss poor ones. The best implementation I've seen of this so far has been in Diablo II and the Binding of Issac, both of which are two-dimensional games, so I'm very interested (and a little skeptical), to see how this translates into a three dimensional environment. Every sandbox I've seen thus far has been set within the template of an overworld, so to speak, that does not change from play to play. If you can pull off overcoming this hurdle, god damn man. Good jorb. I know it's way too early in the game at this point to talk about it, but what would be the outer boundaries for your sandbox? This going to be played indoors, outdoors? What are the limits to the amount of space you can wander? Both are important aspects of emergent gameplay.

Which, unfortunately, is one point that I'm going to have to put forward as an issue. I'll get to that in a second.

Before that, I want to address the AI. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Interesting behavior from enemies is a tenant of gameplay experience that oftentimes gets overlooked. THIS IS THE HOOK. It's how you convince people to play once they turn it on. How do I fight this thing? How do I overcome this hurdle? The more they have to figure out, the longer they'll play, the more renown your game will get. So, y'know, best foot forward on this front.

Emergent gameplay is a very important topic. It's the hidden pipeline that your players will progress down as they get better and better at the game. Can random encounters that lead to hidden treasure troves be emergent gameplay? Technically, yes, but I think it's a shallow interpretation of the term. When we talk about emergent gameplay, we should be talking about gameplay mechanics that are not immediately apparent. Emergent gameplay is when the systems that you set up, separate from each other in their own individual identity, start to work together in interesting ways. The best example of this? In the history of gaming? Dwarf Fortress. That ****er is depth. It will lag my rig, and it's a god damn ASCII based game. Why? Because all of the different systems are modifying each other, etc., etc. The important thing to take away from this is that in a survival game, in a horror game, even in a shooter, emergent gameplay takes place over time within the community as they discover interesting ways to do whatever they want. This is completely dependent on the amount of variety available to the players in terms of gameplay. Now, whether or not they realize it, that's the real reason people stayed with DayZ. And with Diablo. And with the Binding of Issac. And with your game, if it truly works the way you put forward. Why do I go to such length to emphasize this point? Because if I can influence your mindset during the production of your game to work with this in mind, maybe you can do some amazing things.

Now that I've typed that wall, everything else seems to slide away in importance. It looks good so far. The idea is sound, and expectations have been reasonably managed. Hope you keep us updated with your work, and when the time comes, if you need some testers (or, y'know, some LP'ers), I'm sure there are plenty of scumbags around here who will be more than willing to lend a hand.

Edit: Finally got a video to load at work. It will mostly take place inside, yee.

 

[Rico]

Just a quick reply (I'll tackle your post fully when I have a bit more time, promise) to give a little insight into the procedural generation.

If you check out the above youtube video, you should get a decent idea of how the system works to an extent. Those are just interior levels, think of that sort of like a dungeon in the game. The first prealpha will have you contained within one of those, the full game will actually have a sandbox overworld that can contain many of these types of "dungeons".

In addition the algorithm to generate those was actually first designed to populate building interiors procedurally. So thus the idea is to have your houses/buildings/etc have some of them being procedurally generated in the overworld (not all of them).

The overworld itself right now is static but that is also on my roadmap to create procedurally, connected together in "zones" akin to STALKER since I don't have the resources to make a full open streaming world sadly. So you'll have a procedurally generated terrain, with procedurally placed houses, some of which will have procedural interiors... whew. Not just that but the trigger system I have built also has the ability to turn on/off certain events, objects, spawners, etc, randomly. So even if you walk into a room that looks the same as another room, what happens in that room may be randomized as well between sets of possible events.

The AI and all the gameplay is actually independent of each other. AI learns about the world around it, nothing is actually scripted (since the world is dynamic there's really no other way for the AI to function!). If the AI sees you walk into a room and you close the door behind you, it will learn about the door when it encounters it and decide whether to break it down or go around it (if possible). If you shoot a gun, it hears the gunshot and goes to that location to investigate.

More info when I get another chance to drop in!

 

[Fishlore]

Did you write your own 3D engine or are you using something that already exists like Unity3d, etc? I write my own 2D games and engines as well so I was interested in more of the tech specs. Any info you care to share? I'd love to move into the 3D realm one day, but I'm not there yet. I really like what I'm seeing from your project. Good luck moving forward.

 

[Rico]

Hey Fishlore,

I'm using Unity3d but its been heavily modified at this point. I wrote my own culling system for the procedural generation (since Unity only does static Umbra culling) as well as the actual procedural generation algorithm. Everything in the project is pretty much made from scratch aside from a few plugins here and there to speed up my workflow (since I am just one guy so I need all the help I can get).

I've also written a few custom shaders to do some neat horror stuff, which I haven't shown yet. That's going to be in the next video showcasing the horror gameplay I think

The main reason I decided to go for an existing engine is that I simply do not have the time to write it all from scratch. I've done some of that before and rather than reinvent the wheel, I chose to start from a base and then modify/add to it as needed. Unity is extensible enough that if something doesn't come out of the box, I can just build it myself. In fact I'd say Unity is pretty much just a renderer/physics/sound/editor program. There's not much "engine" to it compared to something like Unreal or Source where there's a look, feel, and mechanics in place. If you want to make an FPS in Unity for example, you pretty much start from square 1.

 

[Rico]

Good call on delaying the crowd-sourcing. I'll be honest, I do not know much if anything about the rigors of game development. That being said, in my opinion, I agree with you on most of your points. The procedural systems are going to have to be in place before you can successfully market this and feel good about yourself for not misleading people about your product. On that note, you already have my respect, at the least.

To be frank, thematically, this reminds me of a blend of The Binding of Issac and Day Z. Which is a good thing, in my opinion. Derivation is almost inevitable in this day and age. Where you can stand to make ground here is on evolution. This, supposedly, will come from your games artistic style, your gameplay mechanics, potential for gameplay longevity, and story (emergent or otherwise). Multiplay will only succeed dependent on the previous elements.

Now, I'd like to take the time to respond to your first post line by line, because I'm genuinely interested in the development of your idea, and I'm assuming you came here because you think you might get some good feedback.

Procedurally generated world: Money. ****in money. I love it. The idea is sound, but before I would kick some money into your start, I would want to see exactly how this is implemented, because, as I'm sure you can attest, there are good ways to do this, and there are piss poor ones. The best implementation I've seen of this so far has been in Diablo II and the Binding of Issac, both of which are two-dimensional games, so I'm very interested (and a little skeptical), to see how this translates into a three dimensional environment. Every sandbox I've seen thus far has been set within the template of an overworld, so to speak, that does not change from play to play. If you can pull off overcoming this hurdle, god damn man. Good jorb. I know it's way too early in the game at this point to talk about it, but what would be the outer boundaries for your sandbox? This going to be played indoors, outdoors? What are the limits to the amount of space you can wander? Both are important aspects of emergent gameplay.

Which, unfortunately, is one point that I'm going to have to put forward as an issue. I'll get to that in a second.

Before that, I want to address the AI. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Interesting behavior from enemies is a tenant of gameplay experience that oftentimes gets overlooked. THIS IS THE HOOK. It's how you convince people to play once they turn it on. How do I fight this thing? How do I overcome this hurdle? The more they have to figure out, the longer they'll play, the more renown your game will get. So, y'know, best foot forward on this front.

Emergent gameplay is a very important topic. It's the hidden pipeline that your players will progress down as they get better and better at the game. Can random encounters that lead to hidden treasure troves be emergent gameplay? Technically, yes, but I think it's a shallow interpretation of the term. When we talk about emergent gameplay, we should be talking about gameplay mechanics that are not immediately apparent. Emergent gameplay is when the systems that you set up, separate from each other in their own individual identity, start to work together in interesting ways. The best example of this? In the history of gaming? Dwarf Fortress. That ****er is depth. It will lag my rig, and it's a god damn ASCII based game. Why? Because all of the different systems are modifying each other, etc., etc. The important thing to take away from this is that in a survival game, in a horror game, even in a shooter, emergent gameplay takes place over time within the community as they discover interesting ways to do whatever they want. This is completely dependent on the amount of variety available to the players in terms of gameplay. Now, whether or not they realize it, that's the real reason people stayed with DayZ. And with Diablo. And with the Binding of Issac. And with your game, if it truly works the way you put forward. Why do I go to such length to emphasize this point? Because if I can influence your mindset during the production of your game to work with this in mind, maybe you can do some amazing things.

Now that I've typed that wall, everything else seems to slide away in importance. It looks good so far. The idea is sound, and expectations have been reasonably managed. Hope you keep us updated with your work, and when the time comes, if you need some testers (or, y'know, some LP'ers), I'm sure there are plenty of scumbags around here who will be more than willing to lend a hand.

Edit: Finally got a video to load at work. It will mostly take place inside, yee.

Ok Here's a bit more info:

Regarding outdoors vs indoors:

I actually would like to have a mix. Think of STALKER, you have a mix of outdoor chunks and indoor areas that require a loading screen and are "separate" from the over world. Currently the idea is to have a similar thing here, where you have a sandbox overworld with certain dungeon type areas you can enter and explore. These dungeons of sorts will likely contain special weapons or gear, supplies, and each will have their own story within the universe.

When talking about the "overworld" it will be mostly terrain, with some buildings to enter in an scavenge for supplies or to use as shelter. Using the day and night cycle the player will be encouraged to take shelter at night and defend themselves. I'm toying with the idea of requiring the player to sleep but we'll see. Anyways the intent is for the player to be able to have a "home base" of sorts to which they can keep coming back to (but may need to migrate to another building if they want to continue exploring and not remain in one place). During the day I imagine players would venture out and seek supplies and explore dungeons, but keep an eye on the clock to avoid getting stranded out at night in the open.

As far as the overworld changing from play to play, that's part of the plan. All the systems are built so that this is possible, it's just a matter of making it look "good" in the sense of making the world look believable and good. The AI can already handle the dynamic environments, which was one of the big hurdles early on. I have spent a lot of my time working on the AI to make it do more than just the standard "spotted = shoot at it till it dies" behavior. Mostly I've built out a sensor system so that AI reacts to the input around them, and now that that is in place, I'm adding more advanced behaviors with the hopes of making the ones that make sense of course, sort of roam around and do as they will.

As far as emergent gameplay I agree. I'm hoping that some of the features on my roadmap coupled with the way the systems have been built to work in the dynamic environments will help create that sort of thing. It will definitely take some time to add more and more content to make it have a lot of depth, but just the fact that the AI can hear your gunshots and react to things like barricades, gives things a nice twist.

The game is slowly coming together, I have a ton of ideas for cool systems I want to implement, just wish I had more time in the day to work on it :-/

 

[Fishlore]

Hey Fishlore,

I'm using Unity3d but its been heavily modified at this point. I wrote my own culling system for the procedural generation (since Unity only does static Umbra culling) as well as the actual procedural generation algorithm. Everything in the project is pretty much made from scratch aside from a few plugins here and there to speed up my workflow (since I am just one guy so I need all the help I can get).

I've also written a few custom shaders to do some neat horror stuff, which I haven't shown yet. That's going to be in the next video showcasing the horror gameplay I think

The main reason I decided to go for an existing engine is that I simply do not have the time to write it all from scratch. I've done some of that before and rather than reinvent the wheel, I chose to start from a base and then modify/add to it as needed. Unity is extensible enough that if something doesn't come out of the box, I can just build it myself. In fact I'd say Unity is pretty much just a renderer/physics/sound/editor program. There's not much "engine" to it compared to something like Unreal or Source where there's a look, feel, and mechanics in place. If you want to make an FPS in Unity for example, you pretty much start from square 1.

That's awesome. Very impressive stuff. I hear you about writing from scratch. That's fun once, after that, not so much. I've done a little reading on Unity3D and it sounded like the best framework to use. Once I finish my current game (my last 2D game) I'm going to be moving this direction. Is there a cost associated with using Unity?

Impressive stuff, looking forward to the new vid. Best of luck to you!

 

[Ascension]

Yup that's already planned as a feature, but I'm unsure as to when exactly I'll add it. It's on the roadmap though, I plan to keep expanding the game for a while. I was thinking of doing crafting more akin to 1 grenade + duct tape + string = tripwire trap, gun + duct tape + flashlight = gun with flashlight, that sort of thing. Hammer + nails + boards = barricade.

The crafting will definitely not be as in depth as something like Minecraft where that's the sole purpose of the game, but I hope to add enough to let people feel like they can change the world and have an effect on it.

Currently my main focus is on the procedural systems and the horror gameplay so I can eventually release some more prealpha gameplay or a demo of some sort. I definitely want to do Multiplayer eventually, my main concern is time/money really, I'm just one guy with a couple of artists contributing some work every once in a while, I've pretty much built the whole game myself from the ground up. Multiplayer will be a big investment in terms of time and money since it's not really something you can just tack on, and there are fees associated with it too (third party network library licenses, server costs). So I definitely wouldn't expect multiplayer for the initially released alpha, but it is on the roadmap.

I'm also considering avenues like Kickstarter to see if I can speed up development of the multiplayer among other things. What do you all think, is this likely to be a project people would back? I've been avoiding any sort of funding until I have something people can play, as I feel a lot of folks on KS tend to show up with amazing ridiculously ambitious ideas and 2 pieces of concept art, and ask people for millions (and they sometimes get it...) but then a year later, you get things like CLANG, among many other projects, that fail to deliver or disappoint people.

I'm personally trying to be the kind of developer I like. I care about my game, but I also care about the players and making sure they don't feel ripped off or cheated. That's why I'm trying to make a game you can play over and over again since I remember having no money and enjoying the type of games I could come back to over and over again.

Yeah, I just meant to not have the crafting be extremely easy, like you can make a high cal assault rifle out of three easily acquirable things

 

[Rico]

So I did a horror game jam this weekend and made a procedurally generated horror game. I figured you guys might be interested

http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-unknown/

It's free, so go and download and let me know what you think! Would love to get some feedback on it.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Hey I read about that jam somewhere, sounded interesting. Will give it a shot and let you know what I think.

Edit: Aw man, I was just on my way back to the start and I got jammed in by these boulders (haha, jam).

 

[Rico]

Haha, you should be able to move them with left mouse, could you not?