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[GuitarAtomik]

I thought this looked interesting. Based on the Mythica series (a Kickstarted indie fantasy movie series), the idea is to essentially be a VR DnD. Looks like if Vanishing Realms had multiplayer and user generated campaigns.



Kickstarter link
Goal: $80k
Platforms: Rift / Vive / Google Cardboard (uses two more phones as controllers)
Website
$20 pledge will get you the game

For Players:

Create your character, then join with your friends, or get matched with other players at the same experience level as your character, and play a quest together. A quest may be a one-off or may be part of a larger campaign that you can work through, slowly leveling up your character so that you can take on harder and harder quests.

For Game Masters:

The map builder can be used in two ways, either as a traditional desktop top-down map editor, using the mouse to create rooms and place items and monsters, or you can build the quest around you in virtual reality, walking around the dungeon creating rooms, and placing items and monsters. A simple trigger system will allow you to add logic to your quests.

For those who like to create story-rich worlds, you can string quests together into campaigns, where players have to complete each quest to progress.

If you are joining the quests with your players you can control all aspects of your quests as they are playing, including spawning items and monsters. You can even control your NPCs and monsters in real-time, acting with your motion controllers and voicing your NPCs.

The World of Mythica:

Mythica is a series of five fantasy films created by Arrowstorm Entertainment. Each one has received successful funding on Kickstarter thanks to loyal and generous fans. We are excited to bring those fans the world of Mythica in a whole new way, and many other worlds, and to introduce Mythica to those who haven't yet heard of the films. Watch the trailers for the Mythica films here.

In addition to campaigns created by game masters, Mythica VR will include a story-rich campaign set in the world of Mythica, created by the screenwriters of the Mythica series and featuring the characters that you've come to love from the Mythica series.

The Team:

The Music:

Music is a crucial part of bringing the atmosphere, and Mythica VR will include a number of atmospheric and epic tracks that game masters can use in their campaigns. The tracks are created to have sections for exploration, build-up, combat, climax, resolution, etc. As well as being automatically triggered, the game master can use triggers in the map editor to start certain parts of the music.

Sample

Some additional comments answered by the team on Reddit:

• How much mechanical depth will the dungeon creator have? e.g. Proximity or Touch Event Triggers. Say I want to have piles of bones in a room around an alter and when someone touches the alter the piles of bones rise up into skeletons. Or when players approach a certain area, a trap door springs open revealing a minotaur. Or if someone casts a spell in a certain area then something happens.
  
  Yes, triggers will be based on distance to an item. So yes, both of those first scenarios work. Triggers based on actions other than proximity is a good idea.
  
  
• Will monsters be able to react to things they hear but cannot see? e.g. A monster is in a side room down the hall but players are being loud and obnoxious as they travel by or down the hall. Can the monster react and try to attack them?
  
  Right now no plan for monster reaction based on volume, but that's a good idea. Of course, if you're playing in real-time with a game master he can decide that it's time for the monster to attack based on the player's loudness.
  
  
• Can you assign tactics to monsters or monster parties? e.g. A monster knows a player or players are approaching and sets up a hidden ambush point. Or a monster party is losing pretty badly and wants to retreat and alert other monsters or get reinforcements.
  
  Retreating will be a thing. Monsters going for reinforcements is definitely a good idea. Hidden ambush points I imagine will be determined by the game master in how they place the monsters when they create the quest.
  
  
• Can text be placed over things or engraved into things? e.g. Engraved into the stone alter are the words "The way to the future is on the path of the bloodied."
  
  Haven't thought about text yet, but that is definitely a must-have.
  
  
• Other things: Lockpicking? Destructible environments (like doors, pots and stuff)?
  
  Yes, VR would not be fun without destructible environments. We plan to support a rogue class, so lockpicking would be a must in that case.

We will definitely have mod support. You'll notice the stretch goal is another campaign set in an entirely different world. This could be a western steampunk world, a gothic horror world, etc, etc. We're going to let the backers vote on it. We plan to implement a marketplace allowing users to sell environments, monsters, items, etc. to each other, or make them free if they so choose.

It's definitely not Skyrim where you have a huge team of artists hand crafting these beautiful one-off villages. The game is extremely modular. It's room-by-room, like any other dungeon crawler. Those rooms aren't always necessarily dungeons, of course. A "room" might be a city street, or a path in a forest, etc. But you're not going to have sweeping open world vistas like in Skyrim where you can see the entire world. You'll see the room you're in and maybe the room before and after. Making it modular is what makes it flexible, though, so I can change a bunch of factors depending on device. It means lots of control. Each asset that you can place will have a level of detail. Shaders will have a level of complexity depending on device. What this means is we can make a few really awesome shaders, assets, etc that are reused a ton. They will look beautiful on nice graphics cards and on mobile they will be less complex and not compromise on game speed.

No pen and paper, no. The amazing thing about VR is that you actually have to get better to get better. When you're actually using your own arms to fight you actually have to get better at fighting. There will still be a progression system based on experience points, that determines your level, however. This is most useful for matching you with players of the same level and finding quests of the right level. You also have progression through getting better weapons and armor.

Out of curiosity - how much experience in coding does your team have? I haven't really heard of Mythica movies but I'm guessing that doesn't transfer to game making skills super well. Not to mention that 80k doesn't go too far to pay staff. The premise of the game sounds appealing but it sounds like something that needs a MUCH MUCH bigger budget to be semi-decent. Also, any word on a very rough ballpark of how long you think it might take to create?

Good questions. Yes, 80k doesn't get us that far. It gets us two devs full-time for a few months. We are definitely aware of what we're taking on and planning on a few processes to mitigate the risks: * Firstly, the game is very modular. We're not trying to build Skyrim here. It's not an open-world game where we're building a ton of art and levels. We are building a dungeon crawler. It's room-by-room, like any other dungeon crawler. Those rooms aren't always necessarily dungeons, of course. A "room" might be a city street, or a path in a forest, etc. But you're not going to have sweeping open world vistas like in Skyrim where you can see the entire world. You'll see the room you're in and maybe the room before and after. Making it modular is what makes it flexible, and what allows us to focus on just making good gameplay on a small scale. We make a few good gameplay concepts that work over and over again and leave it up to the game masters to make the awesome worlds. * We will not spend money on art until the game is playable. Gameplay comes first with us, and the Unity asset store has great assets we can use until we are sure we are not going to run out of budget for software engineering. * We will design the servers so that they can optionally be hosted by players. We don't want you to have to worry that if we run out of budget that you can no longer play. The servers will be designed from the start to be able to be hosted by players so you don't have to rely on our infrastructure.

In terms of experience, for myself I am a life long software engineer. I worked at Pixar as a software engineer and technical director for 6 years. I built a ton of 3D tools for artists, and game masters are artists in their own rights. I worked at Arrowstorm previously before Pixar and built them a 3D world building tool, kind of with some similar concepts, triggers, spatial audio, dropping in models and characters, etc. This was before Unity became popular so that was all built in .NET. The other half of my career has been spent building enterprise level web applications, and that's where I met my colleague John, who is an experienced web and mobile developer. Where I work fast, he works thoroughly, so he is good at making sure that the stuff I build works solidly across platforms, has good unit tests, etc.

In terms of how long it will take, we will be following an agile development methodology. That means releases early and often. Those backers who selected the "Early Release" reward can expect to receive the game as soon as it is playable, which we estimate to be before the end of the year and receive updates often after that.

My Thoughts:
I think an $80k goal is pretty ambitious for a VR game on Kickstarter considering the market, but maybe it has a chance since it's supporting Rift/Vive/Cardboard (even though expecting anyone to have 3 phones is kind of laughable) and is attached to a an IP that has been successfully kickstarted multiple times. There isn't a game quite like this in VR yet (Tabletop Simulator is the closest) but it's one I see asked for all the time. The goal seems like it's in a realistic realm to make something more than the usual one man project too, even though that could be it's downfall.

 

[GuitarAtomik]

Going to give this a single bump...

 

[Riptwo]

I'm intrigued! I have a pretty solid Pathfinder group, but haven't been able to successfully convince them to try out Virtual Desktop yet. Maybe this will be more appealing to them! I basically just don't want to drive for an hour every Sunday to meet the group in person, especially during winter.

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

They should have made their combat better before doing the kickstarter. It looks janky as hell.

 

[cyberheater]

This could be very special indeed. I'm looking forward to it.

 

[8-Bit Sunset]

Now this looks fun as hell.
Bringing people together in VR is a great step into making it not seem like a solitary experience.
Can't wait to see how this turns out.

 

[GuitarAtomik]

New video showing the Game Master's control options over monsters including VR puppetry.

 

[GuitarAtomik]

Tribal Instincts plays an early alpha demo. Combat looks pretty rough right now but it's pretty early. Funding isn't looking great though.