Galactic Plane
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As a child, over 30 years ago, I first discovered programming and thought that it was the coolest thing ever: with this I could make my own video games! And I've sorta been on that ever since, learning all I could about coding and software development.
In 2019 I set up a company, Stormhunter Studios, and released a quick-and-dirty roguelike game that never got much attention, but at least I can say I've done it. But that was never really the plan; that was just practice. My real dream, dating all the way back to 2001, was always to build a big 3D RPG. And as I was thinking about RPGs and fantasy stories, I realized that there were a lot of stories out there where people and dragons traveling between worlds was a part of the background or the world lore, but it never really seems to make it into the story proper.
Barbara Hambly's dragons come to the world from across the stars, but all the action takes place on that world. Raymond Feist's Valheru were a race of dragon riding demigods who conquered worlds across the cosmos... thousands of years before the setting in which his books take place. And so on.
Thus was born the idea of Galactic Plane: I want to build a game where the interstellar dragon riders are the story, not the world lore.
I've been working on this for the better part of a year now, getting a story together and building character concepts and demo levels, and earlier today I finally finished up the work for a crowdfunding campaign that I plan to launch tomorrow.
Basic concept: after successfully overcoming the Calamity approximately 500 years ago, the Keireth Empire united the world under a single banner of peace and prosperity. And when they ran out of world to unify, they made an alliance with the dragons to expand the Empire to other stars.
500 years later, your character is William or Charlotte Keireth, bastard son/daughter of the current Emperor. Upon being given a dragon and sent on a diplomatic mission to a recently-discovered world for the now-galaxy-spanning Empire, something goes very wrong with the Stellar Teleport between stars. Upon arrival, you find that the outpost there was expecting you a year ago, and they had given up hope of ever hearing from the Empire again. A year earlier, the magic that kept the worlds of the Empire in communication with each other (and with the seat of Imperial power of course) failed for an unknown reason, and the Empire has fallen apart. With no news, and your dragon unable to return home for an unknown reason, the homeworld is believed to be lost somehow and you are presumed the last surviving member of House Keireth, and therefore the new Emperor/Empress, a job you had never trained for or had any expectation of assuming.
The game will take players across multiple worlds as they attempt to put the crumbling Empire back together, figure out what went wrong, and unravel a mystery that spans an entire galaxy and multiple pantheons of gods.
I really hope this works out!
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I just know you've talked about this before... ah yes, in the Lounge. Once again, best of luck to ye, o' brave tamer of rather disturbed states of atmosphere
You're not saying much more than before. Yeah, it's right to keep things close to the vest, avoid "molyneuxing" the whole thing, too. I'm going to ask questions, though.
I wonder what specific projection you've settled for? Graphical fidelity is basically directly proportional to budget problems (and worse, people's expectations; the more you have, the better they want). I have uneasy bad feeling about that regarding some of the latest released and unreleased productions.
Also, art style. I hope it's not the horrid "poly style" characteristic to Unity indies. Or if you've already settled for that, as little chumps on boards like to loudly declare, you've just lost a sale
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Galactic Plane:
I wonder what specific projection you've settled for? Graphical fidelity is basically directly proportional to budget problems (and worse, people's expectations; the more you have, the better they want). I have uneasy bad feeling about that regarding some of the latest released and unreleased productions.
Also, art style. I hope it's not the horrid "poly style" characteristic to Unity indies. Or if you've already settled for that, as little chumps on boards like to loudly declare, you've just lost a sale
I'm going for high, but not extreme, verisimilitude. Looking at the tools and technologies available, it looks like a achievable goal to build something of a similar level of fidelity to, say, Skyrim, the Mass Effect games, or Final Fantasy XII. Maybe a little bit better, but push things much further and you start running into 8-figure budgets.
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...and I did it. The Button has been pushed, and the campaign is now live.
Backers would be appreciated, but spreading the word would be even more so. If you back the campaign, that brings in one donation. If you post about it somewhere, that brings in the entire transitive set of everyone who responds to that post, and everyone they share it with etc.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/galactic-plane/x/24834557#/
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€2,059,732
Oh dear... I don't want to say it
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@Applied-Mediocrity I'm under no illusions as to what it will take to build a project like this. I've seen too many games ask for $50,000, get it, and then end up all
a few months later when all the money is gone, they've got no project to show for it, and all the backers are howling at them demanding the work they paid for. That's why I set the project up on Indiegogo with flexible funding: it will hopefully raise enough to get started, and build an audience, and after that I can continue raising money.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Galactic Plane:
Maybe a little bit better, but push things much further and you start running into 8-figure budgets.
Much of the cost comes from fancy audio budgets (especially voice actors) and redoing work. If you keep things unvoiced (except for whatever vague shouts you put in for fights) that's a whole load load of cost. And if you're thinking of changing the engine, you're definitely going to waste a lot of money. OTOH, if you can avoid doing lots of engine development that tends to keep the cost of coding down.
For a $2M-ish budget, you're talking about 10-20 man-years of effort available, less whatever it costs to license outside assets (though that in turn saves against the cost of creating them in-house). Given that your hires (assuming you're not mad enough to do this yourself!) won't be working at full efficiency from day one, that's tight. Good luck!
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This post is deleted!
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Good luck and I hope you'll have fun, and make a killing.
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@dkf said in Galactic Plane:
@Mason_Wheeler said in Galactic Plane:
Maybe a little bit better, but push things much further and you start running into 8-figure budgets.
Much of the cost comes from fancy audio budgets (especially voice actors) and redoing work. If you keep things unvoiced (except for whatever vague shouts you put in for fights) that's a whole load load of cost. And if you're thinking of changing the engine, you're definitely going to waste a lot of money. OTOH, if you can avoid doing lots of engine development that tends to keep the cost of coding down.
For a $2M-ish budget, you're talking about 10-20 man-years of effort available, less whatever it costs to license outside assets (though that in turn saves against the cost of creating them in-house). Given that your hires (assuming you're not mad enough to do this yourself!) won't be working at full efficiency from day one, that's tight. Good luck!
Yeah, that sounds about right, and voice work is a significant part of the budget, already planned for.
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Well, good news! MatPat says it's your time to shine!
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Galactic Plane:
Yeah, that sounds about right, and voice work is a significant part of the budget, already planned for.
There is still time to make a game about robots instead and use text to speach for everything
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As a gamer, I usually just scan (not read) the subtitles and skip the voice acted lines anyway, because dialogue is usually just an interruption in the gameplay, and I read a lot faster than they talk.
Filed under: Unless the voice acting is exceptionally produced and cinematic, which isn't really possible on this budget.
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@error said in Galactic Plane:
As a gamer, I usually just scan (not read) the subtitles and skip the voice acted lines anyway, because dialogue is usually just an interruption in the gameplay, and I read a lot faster than they talk.
Filed under: Unless the voice acting is exceptionally produced and cinematic, which isn't really possible on this budget.
I do it even then--it's really hard for me to pay attention to spoken words without something written. I'll even turn on subtitles in english (language, not nationality) movies/shows to give me something to anchor on so I'll actually watch instead of "multitasking" by reading something on my phone at the same time.
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@Mason_Wheeler that sounds terrible.
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@Gribnit said in Galactic Plane:
@Mason_Wheeler that sounds terrible.
Yes it does.
But so does country music, and yet a lot of people have gotten rich from it (and even enjoy it). Even though this seems like a huge waste of time and effort to me, that's just my own opinion as someone who has zero interest in that sort of thing.
He seems passionate about it and I wish him all the best.
If he becomes rich and successful we can all say "Hey, I know that guy". And if he doesn't, we can all say:
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.That's what you call your Win-Win situation
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@El_Heffe You make a very adulterous point. I encourage people all damn day at work already.
