Announcing MAGE GATE! I have decided to give another go at making my own RPG. The main reason for aborted past attempts has been the lack of programmer support. Since then I have teamed up with Ryan Dean who has agreed to help out with programming and Patrick Griffiths who will lend a hand with animations. (I can do the animation part myself, it's just one LESS thing that I will have to do myself)!The game will be created using the venerable Realm Crafter Standard engine. Although it is pretty out-dated as is, Ryan has been creating a Community Edition with many features that will serve to bring the engine closer to 2011 such as normal mapping. Many of his planned feature expansions are things that I would require in my game so this is a turn key sort of venture.
I have a license for Garage Games T3d, and I also have some experience with Unity 3d and ShiVa -All superior to Realm Crafter. RCS however, has many RPG features all ready built in and is by far the most user friendly of the afore mentioned. My biggest complaint with it in the past was that development had stopped on it some time ago and it was left broken and incomplete. Ryan has already made huge progress towards fixing and finishing it.
The above shot is an in-game screen shot of the starter zone. While Ryan has already implemented Normal mapping, this shot does not use any normals. It was taken a day or two before Ryan released the update enabling those. For those not familiar with normal maps, they are a way of creating what appears to be 3d detail without geometry, using only texture. This allows real time rendering of detail that normally, would not be possible.
The premise of the game itself is fairly simple, all player characters are a mage of some kind. Spells are the law of the land. This is a fantasy noire genre and not for 13 and under. There will be NO elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, goblins, or trolls! Although dragons might make an appearance.
Mage classes will be interesting and a little on the dark side. Blood mages who slice themselves to hurl flaming blood at an opponent for an example. Golemancers forging inhuman servants from rock and metal. Contract mages who bind demons to their will for power, to mention but a few of the planned character classes.
Underlaying all will be a detailed custom crafting and custom spell creation system. The best items in the game be they weapons, armor, or even spells will be player created. Players will have to brave dangerous areas and defeat mighty foes to acquire resources needed to make items of power! All in preparation for fighting their way through the MAGE GATE and doing battle with whatever dark and sinister forces lay in wait on the other side!
