You may remember this Kickstarter from last year – it was for creating a game engine aimed at recreating gold-box style games with lots of modern updates (such as a decent conversation system!).
The good news is that the engine is now nearly at Beta! The very good news is that Bree Arts have somewhat over-delivered on their campaign promises, and the engine will now include an easy-use tileset editor and fully customisable classes / races / traits / skills etc.
Some of the forum regulars are posting Lets Plays of demo modules on Youtube, which give an indication of the state of play with the current Alpha build of the engine:
Hearkenwold module (demo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IzaixCwPa4,
Lanterna module (demo): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vpfe-LW_G8,
Red Carnival module (demo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlrpJSJuVUI,
Someone else on the forums put together a useful list of engine stuff that I’ll just cut and paste:
- superfast and easy building in a grid based 2D world with free form maps as detailed or as rudimentary as you like, using premade tiles or full scale unique painted backgrounds
- a sophisticated system of triggers that can simulate very complex chains of events and with varied and interesting adventuring & story telling
- deep and tactical, turn- and grid based battles with sounds, animations and very customizable rules (including already backstabs, cleaves, area damage, hiding in shadows, attacks of opportunity, giant sized creatures filling multiple squares at once…)
- an insane amount of flexibility (create your own classes, races, traits, spells, items, creatures, graphics… you name it, most of it already possible via - mostly intoolset - editors),
- support for not only for fantasy, but also scifi, western, post-apocalyptic, spies&agents, steampunk…
- a full blown conversation system allowing for unlimited roleplaying options in dialogue as well as narrative sequences
- a directx9 based graphic engine, allowing various animations of NPC/player sprites and other ambience objects and effects
- floating text above NPC heads in- and outside combat, providing statistical info as well as one liners or activity descriptions
- a journal (allowing the player to additionally write her/his own notes into it)
- the option to change the party sprite, e.g. to a boat or a horse
- a shop system
- the ability to designate one of the party members as leader, e.g. for doing conversations or to have some his abilities used on world map
- support for bringing in own music and sound effects
- a customizable UI colour scheme and design (e.g. fonts used, set up of character screen, icon graphics, buttons,…) for each module
- a flexible party size allowing for pre-created companions or fully player made parties of 6(+) characters
- an unlimited world size (by using a complex network of totally flexibly connected smaller maps with blindingly fast load times)
- a Line of Sight system
- absolutely powerful scripting options in C# through various script hooks placed at neuralgic points of the code, allowing module authors to insert self written code
- support for year long campaigns with savegames that can still be used after the campaign author adds in new regions, creatures, items, classes, traits, spells…
And this is just the work in progress state, e.g. world time, weather including full screen effects, day & night cycles with changing view ranges and atmospheric tinting, moving NPC with schedules, Fog of War, more battle AI variety… are just a glimpse of the features that are likely to make their way into IB in the next few months, too.
Anyway, have a look, and see what you think!
The good news is that the engine is now nearly at Beta! The very good news is that Bree Arts have somewhat over-delivered on their campaign promises, and the engine will now include an easy-use tileset editor and fully customisable classes / races / traits / skills etc.
Some of the forum regulars are posting Lets Plays of demo modules on Youtube, which give an indication of the state of play with the current Alpha build of the engine:
Hearkenwold module (demo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IzaixCwPa4,
Lanterna module (demo): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vpfe-LW_G8,
Red Carnival module (demo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlrpJSJuVUI,
Someone else on the forums put together a useful list of engine stuff that I’ll just cut and paste:
- superfast and easy building in a grid based 2D world with free form maps as detailed or as rudimentary as you like, using premade tiles or full scale unique painted backgrounds
- a sophisticated system of triggers that can simulate very complex chains of events and with varied and interesting adventuring & story telling
- deep and tactical, turn- and grid based battles with sounds, animations and very customizable rules (including already backstabs, cleaves, area damage, hiding in shadows, attacks of opportunity, giant sized creatures filling multiple squares at once…)
- an insane amount of flexibility (create your own classes, races, traits, spells, items, creatures, graphics… you name it, most of it already possible via - mostly intoolset - editors),
- support for not only for fantasy, but also scifi, western, post-apocalyptic, spies&agents, steampunk…
- a full blown conversation system allowing for unlimited roleplaying options in dialogue as well as narrative sequences
- a directx9 based graphic engine, allowing various animations of NPC/player sprites and other ambience objects and effects
- floating text above NPC heads in- and outside combat, providing statistical info as well as one liners or activity descriptions
- a journal (allowing the player to additionally write her/his own notes into it)
- the option to change the party sprite, e.g. to a boat or a horse
- a shop system
- the ability to designate one of the party members as leader, e.g. for doing conversations or to have some his abilities used on world map
- support for bringing in own music and sound effects
- a customizable UI colour scheme and design (e.g. fonts used, set up of character screen, icon graphics, buttons,…) for each module
- a flexible party size allowing for pre-created companions or fully player made parties of 6(+) characters
- an unlimited world size (by using a complex network of totally flexibly connected smaller maps with blindingly fast load times)
- a Line of Sight system
- absolutely powerful scripting options in C# through various script hooks placed at neuralgic points of the code, allowing module authors to insert self written code
- support for year long campaigns with savegames that can still be used after the campaign author adds in new regions, creatures, items, classes, traits, spells…
And this is just the work in progress state, e.g. world time, weather including full screen effects, day & night cycles with changing view ranges and atmospheric tinting, moving NPC with schedules, Fog of War, more battle AI variety… are just a glimpse of the features that are likely to make their way into IB in the next few months, too.
Anyway, have a look, and see what you think!