Call of Saregnar, RPG In Development

Since I am spamming my twitter account, here is the same actor in an internal scene. Works much better than outdoors, since the lighting is plain wrong for sunlight. Will reshoot the portraits next time with more uniform lighting for external scenes.

IbkGYhr.png
 
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Ugh, yeah color me totally uninterested now too. Glad at least one person besides the dev likes this style. At least he'll sell one copy of his effort.
 
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I like the sound of the game, Rhuatavan. I'll definitely keep an eye on development. For what it's worth though, I agree with the others in the thread about the photo realistic actors - it's not a question of indoor/outdoor lighting, they're just a bit off-putting.As a matter of interest, are all of the characters human, or will you be using actors in make-up for creatures and different races etc?
 
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I like the sound of the game, Rhuatavan. I'll definitely keep an eye on development. For what it's worth though, I agree with the others in the thread about the photo realistic actors - it's not a question of indoor/outdoor lighting, they're just a bit off-putting.As a matter of interest, are all of the characters human, or will you be using actors in make-up for creatures and different races etc?

I guess the looks are just a matter of preference, so I won't go into that.

All of the characters you'll be able to speak to will be most probably human. You will be able to fight other kinds of enemies though, and I plan on having those modelled in 3D and then rendered into sprites.
 
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Sounds like an interesting approach, look forward to seeing it in action.
 
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Yeah, there is no reason to change your vision to match our preferences. If you changed and the game didn't sell, then it'd suck. If you keep to your guns and it doesn't sell; at least you know you failed your way.
 
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Alternative: As many graphical customization options as possible. If the shaders aren't applied externally and therefore baked in but instead applied in the game, you could add an option to disable it and/or apply other shaders.

Love this kind of customization. Was surprised to see the graphical customization options in Balrum and while The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians, which I am playing now doesn't offer graphical customization, it offers tons of settings for the interface.
The more customization, the better.
 
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While I understand some may enjoy tweaking the looks of a game to suit their preference, I feel obliged to define a certain look for the game and stick to it. Same goes for certain mechanics. I believe that if you do a good job as a designer, then there's no need for customisation options.
 
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But this presumes that all people like the same sort of widget. I think it is a bit egotistic to take that approach; though you could argue that you only prefer people to play the game that have the same view as yourself.



While I understand some may enjoy tweaking the looks of a game to suit their preference, I feel obliged to define a certain look for the game and stick to it. Same goes for certain mechanics. I believe that if you do a good job as a designer, then there's no need for customisation options.
 
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But this presumes that all people like the same sort of widget. I think it is a bit egotistic to take that approach; though you could argue that you only prefer people to play the game that have the same view as yourself.

Yeah, you certainly take the risk of alienating some players from the experience, but I always saw gameplay-related options in games as a safe way out for designers, who couldn't figure out better. The player shouldn't have to worry or want to change the core game looks or mechanics. If she does, then the game failed from that respect. You can call it egotistic, but I don't see it like that.
 
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Personally, I don't like real actors in games so much either. For me, photos or videos of real people can easily destroy the immersion of being inside a fantastical world and remind me more of some LARP event. But that's really a subjective preference.

Nonetheless, kudos to the creator @Rhuantavan; for defending his creative vision and standing up to his decision. :salute:
It takes a lot of self-confidence and courage to stay resistant even if you could probably face negative commercial consequences because of it.

Also, from a production point of view, I can fully understand the decision since any other approach would result in massive artist work. Creating low-poly 3D character models including animations or just simple static 2D paintings would come with significant costs.

@Rhuantavan;: Will there be actors of different age? Right now, it seems they are no children or elder persons in your world.
Do you plan to capture videos of animals as well?

Good luck with your game!

P.S.: the music of Saregnar fits very well, Ultima inspired Roland MIDI tracks FTW!
 
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Thanks for the kind words HobGoblin42!

Of course, besides nostalgia value for me, the actors were chosen for their cost-effectiveness. Low poly models just didn't make the cut, and animating the characters by hand (especially the 8k+ frames of animation per character for combat) would be prohibited.

Right now I only have young adults as models, but the script demands many elderly people and some kids as well. I'll see how I manage to drag the other age ranges into the project. :)

Animals would be really hard to direct, so they (along with certain mythological creatures) will most probably be rendered from 3D models.

A last week decision was to drop the lo-fi music (even though I am fond of it, nostalgia-wise) in favour of fully-orchestrated music. After many many *many* hours of contemplation we came to a conclusion that it just suits the game better.
 
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Are there rpgs of this type of art style that have actually sold well recently? Of course, the goal may not be commercial success, but just the mental reward of completing a game. In that case, it doesn't matter. Even though I don't care for this type, I still wish you success in your venture.
 
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Thanks!

The fact is, that there have been no games like this since 1993, when Betrayal at Krondor came out. So I am counting on that to drive the potential sales. Of course I would love to be able to develop games like this full-time, but if it fails to generate enough money, I’ll still work on them in my spare time, like I did up to just a couple of months ago.
 
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But this presumes that all people like the same sort of widget. I think it is a bit egotistic to take that approach; though you could argue that you only prefer people to play the game that have the same view as yourself.

Absolutely agree. I mean the difficlty is a great example. Without having a custom difficulty setting and having to play everything on "normal", well, I guess the majority of RPGs I played during the last year, I wouldn't have touched instead.
And the difficulty level I enjoy is not enjoyable for most people, so having this as standard is not a good idea either in most cases.

Are there rpgs of this type of art style that have actually sold well recently? Of course, the goal may not be commercial success, but just the mental reward of completing a game. In that case, it doesn't matter. Even though I don't care for this type, I still wish you success in your venture.

I am not sure if there have been any games of this graphical type at all during the recent years. There is Lands of Lore 2, but this is 1997 already and Lands of Lore 3 in 1999
15880-lands-of-lore-guardians-of-destiny-windows-screenshot-mistress.gif


Might and Magic 9 (2002) also uses some low res real photos as it looks like, but it was pasted on polygon models, which is arguably something different.
25268-might-and-magic-ix-windows-screenshot-another-denizen.jpg


And there is Stonekeep (1995) with real photos/ photo-sequence animations.
hqdefault.jpg


Ishar 3 (1994) might also been using real photos, most of them look somewhat less realistic though which imho makes them fit into the environment a bit better. Others…well
hqdefault.jpg


I am not aware of any newer games though.
 
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Actually there is one game, though it's a different type of rpg.

It's called "UnReal World" and it has been released 2016 on steam. It's originally from 1992 though and is updated since then.
urw-screenshot-12.png
 
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Good grief… that Stonekeep image is truly awful.
 
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Yes, some things were consigned to the dustbin of history for a reason...
 
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