Tortured Hearts - Development Update

Hi there friends,

We would like to update you about what we have achieved so far regarding Tortured Hearts: Or How I Saved the Universe. Again. and what is still in the way of finishing it.

It may seem that it's taking forever: one of the most important facts to understand about this progress is that ONE person has done most of the work steadily, with intermittent help from about 5-6 others. This is not a lot of manpower for a game of this size and scope, but it's what we could afford.

The game is in very good shape now. Since we did not continuously have a dedicated 3D artist, we had to purchase about 90% of the models from the Unity Asset Store or other commercial sources and adapt them to work in the game. Almost all the graphic assets are now in the game. At the moment this is 1644 inventory items, 1000 interactive placeables, 1016 creature instances, and 185 areas (all that were originally planned in our Neverwinter Nights module mock-up): a huge achievement.Though this is already an asset-rich game, we have planned it so it could be embellished and enriched further.

Some item property highlights--these give boosts when equipped or used:

Personal stats, elemental resistance, action point, attack/damage (absolute & relative percentage), elemental damage, alchemic damage, slayer, vorpal, toxic, regeneration (combat only), damage over time (combat only), race-specific attack/damage/slayer, parry, dodge, threat, outgoing and incoming healing amplification, immunities and some others.

Base playable characters are human male and female. All features are implemented, although a few are still buggy. Much as we want other playable races, each race and gender is a huge new modeling demand.

There are now 114 quests ready to go, plus outlines for 30 more contingent on funding. (see below) Many quests will have alternate ways of accomplishment and alternate outcomes.

COMBAT! Everyone's favorite topic

Combat is not interactive on character level: meaning you can't control your characters individually. It is turn-based, directive-based, and uses aggro-management. This means you can mitigate or amplify your aggro generation via equipment or combat directives, so basically tanking is possible. Healing generates aggro.

The higher your level of a particular combat skill is, the more options your character's AI can choose from and the greater damage he/she can inflict.

You can automate rounds or intervene between them using potions, bombs, special items and instruct your characters to behave differently as a team in the next round. In other words, you can set AI directives between rounds, for all of the party characters as a team.

The base combat styles are warrior, arcane caster, and divine healer. Melee styles are: HtH, small melee weapons up to bastard sword size (single wield), shield usage (small & large).

Other options are flee, berserk or parley.

As soon as TH can legitimately be called in beta status, we may launch a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for help to create more polish: intro and outro, voice acting, more CUSTOM models for henchmen and playable races, for instance.

When? Well... whatever the time frame, we won't start until the basic game is playable in beta.

Some campaign stretch goals: if we had the $$$$

1. More companions
2. Up to 30 of the omitted quests
3. Bardic Combat Style
4. Roguish Combat Style
5. Psionic Combat Style
6. Dwarf and elf playable characters, maybe gnomes and halflings too
7. Tower Shields
8. Two-handed melee weapons
9. Oriental weapons
10. Impromptu weapons like broken bottles or chair legs
11. Throwing Weapons
12. Bows
13. Dual wield
14. Crafting (Fishing, Gold Panning, Herbalist, Alchemy, Mining, Junk Art, Ragpicker)
15. RND Item Generator
16. Voice for VIP NPCs
17. Voice for Greater NPCs

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HiddenX said:

Keep us informed on the progress, SubBassman.

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KaosWarMonk said:

Is this a retelling, continuation or something completely different to the NWN modules?

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mercy said:

Yaaay! You are my daags, Hungarians! Congratulations! Gratula fiúk, remélhetőleg készen lesz már vmikor. REady.. when ittts ready!

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you said:

I'm a little disappointed by the reduction in combat (though it is understandable; btw have you seen thea which has an intersting but simple combat system ?).
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What I am curious is if you consider using an engine like D:OS to write your (next?) game. I.e, I have not tried them but they have tools to do modules and use your own assests (art). I don't know how their tools compare to nwn but I do know they are making a major push to improve the tools with D:OS-2 (which is out in 2017). Also larian has traditionally been a friendly company when it comes to allowing the use of their tools.

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I didn't realise they were still working on this. I remember the kickstarter from years back, it looked like it had potential.

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luj1 said:

Been awhile indeed

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SubBassman said:

we're excited to announce that there are only two creature models left and a little polishing that needs to be done on combat before we can state that we have an Alpha Version. It is due in a month or two. Then we'll start making builds and test the hell out of our lovechild!

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you said:

I wish these guys a lot of luck. I saw their kickstarter after it completed but loved their NWN mod; it was one of the best. They seemed to have poured a huge amount of effort into this game with little financial backing.

Btw do they plan on going early access or running another kickstarter ?

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daveyd said:

Some impressive numbers but of course size isn't everything and I'll gladly take quality over quantity. In other words, how many of the 113 quests are fetch quests or kill X number of Y monster quests? How many times will I have to grind through trash mobs of each of the 1016 creatures? Will there be any dialogue trees or interesting moral / plot critical choices to make?

I never tried the NWN modules partially because the description seemed overly preoccupied with how huge it was but nothing sounded particularly interesting or original. But they sounded like just another combat heavy action RPG in a generic medieval fantasy setting.

Now combat for this game is apparently automated turn-based… I like turn-based but am not sure how that is going to work. So far it sounds sort of like Dragon Age: Origins tactics except we cannot control even one character directly. Sounds tedious unless combat is a small part of the game. The parley option offers a glimmer of hope, assuming it isn't just a gimmick.

On a more superficial note, I recall liking the backgrounds art style of the game but the character models were this simplistic cartoonish guy that looked awful. From the new screen shots it looks like they're now going for more realistic looking characters, which is great. But mostly I'm wondering if there's anything interesting about the gameplay.

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