Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox

[Maximinus Thrax]

Info

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://www.msoa-game.com/

Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox is an indie game development project founded out of Brisbane, Australia and is involving nearly 30 people from all over the world in places like California, Scotland, Great Britain, New Zealand, and more. The aim is to recreate the amazing turn-based, first person RPGs from the golden age of PC gaming using modern game engine technology.

Rich classics such as the Might & Magic series, Eye of the Beholder and the like have inspired this new title which, when finished will put its players into a literally infinite fantasy world filled with procedurally generated content. The Sword of Ahkranox isn't trying to compete with the larger, professionally developed RPG titles out there, but instead our aim is to fill a large gap that we believe has existed in game technology since the mid-nineties. It is definitely a must-have for all enthusiasts of the quintessential RPG.

The game's procedural engine can generate an infinite number of weapons, items, spells, monsters, dungeons, cities, countryside and even dialogue, allowing the player to explore the game with no end and no reason to stop.

We are currently working hard to reach our milestone of releasing an official, playable demo of the game just before Christmas 2011, and the final product on December 21, 2012.

http://techzwn.com/malevolence-the-s...pg-with-style/

Malevolence isn’t all about bringing back old-school features though. Norton is also bringing a few unique features to the genre. The game has an infinite, randomly-generated world, but it also has a storyline within it.

“The world builds itself using a formula based on the player’s co-ordinates, so as you travel, the world is being built around you. But if you go back the way you came, everything is still there,” he said. “A lot of work has gone into that formula to make it generate as incredible environments as we could muster.” According to Norton, most of the work right now is going into perfecting the dungeons, but after that, outdoor environments and cities the engine creates will be the focus.

The game’s story will also be generated by the formula. “Everyone who plays the game will experience the same world, but because it never ends, we’re hoping that will inspire people to start communities where they can show off places or items they’ve managed to find that other people may not have found yet,” Norton said.

“All of the quests, items, NPCs, even dialogue in the game is generated by this core formula, so as the player keeps exploring, the game keeps making more content for them to play with,” he said. “It took nearly two years to get it to work, but it’s working beautifully!”

This will be backed with procedurally generated content, which according to Norton, “means is that the in-game world only exists when the player is looking at it, as it is generated according to the co-ordinates of the player. Instead of levels that are hand-made by level designers, the game relies on a set of very advanced mathematical formulas which generate the world around the player according to where the player is in the world at any given time.”

The system lets players travel on forever, and the game will keep generating content as they go. The same system generates the items, quests, dialog, and other features, “so the player will never run out of things to find and do,” he said.

Gameplay footage (early alpha-stage)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Well, these indie developers (Visual Outbreak) are surely aiming sky-high, boasting over their unique engine which can supposedly generate an infinite (!) amount of content. The game promises to deliver an old-school gameplay, similar to '90s titles such as Daggerfall or Might and Magic series (by the way, the name is just epic). Overall, I think this RPG has a great potential but we shall find out more about that in December, after they'll release the first version of it. I took the following screen capture from the developers' blog just to illustrate the sheer vastness of this game (the commentary below reminds me of a quack trying to sell his stuff ) .

[The Despondent Mind]

Interested

[Legio]

Ditto^

Looks all right.

[Hopit]

so basically, they've gone crazy with the size?

[Maximinus Thrax]

A nice video about the procedurally generated weapon system of the game (but I guess the same concept also applies to armour parts, spells, potions, etc.).

So in Malevolence, all of the weapons are procedurally generated. Not just the stats and abilities of the weapons, but also the images of the weapons! We've just recently started having a play around with doing this, and working closely with our lead concept artist. What we have currently is a simple, cut-down version of what the final thing will be like. We have 8 different blades, 8 hilts, 8 handles and 8 pommels and the program stitches them together to make randomized daggers. The final game will have 8 different weapon classes with closer to 50 different weapon parts to combine (so a total of over 300 million image combinations)

[BalanceofTerror]

This will be a badass game if they do everything right. The size has me intrigued. The graphics are awesome for an indie game as well. Good job developer dudes.

Just hope the random generation has some variety to it. I really enjoy Minecraft-esque worlds where you can literally go anywhere you desire and adventure endlessly.

[anduril38]

This looks pretty cool.

[the_mango55]

So you mean if I get a quest from someone on one side of the inland sea to meet someone on the other side, I have to spend 15 minutes walking around it?

Pass

[Hopit]

So you mean if I get a quest from someone on one side of the inland sea to meet someone on the other side, I have to spend 15 minutes walking around it?

Pass

as I said

so basically, they've gone crazy with the size?

[Kanaric]

World size reminds me of Daggerfall or Elite: Frontier.

Funny both of those are 90s games yet are 1000x as large as anything release in the past 10 years.