New Roguelike MMO in developement

[Topher]

Hi, I'm Chris, the Graphic Designer behind Topia Online, a new roguelike permadeath sandbox MMORPG created independently with my friends over at http://www.topiaonline.com

Our game design and mechanics are very community driven. On the forum, a lot of the ideas that community members throw at us get implemented.

Here's our first video for the Kickstarter we began today where "Josh", the lead game developer, talks about the Topia Studio's engine capabilities and how it can be used to make your own roguelikes and MMORPGS, online, in javascript, hosted on our servers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMAt6OtuCSA

Here is the Kickstarter as well: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1784263141/topia-online?ref=live

You don't have to donate, but every little bit helps to get this game and it's awesome engine finished, and you can watch as the game's engine progresses as we continue to add to the page in the coming weeks. Questions? Concerns? Tell me what you think!

Edit: Another really awesome feature is you'll be able to post your own custom world in HTML. Check out this forum thread where Josh posted his own sandbox right in the forum thread to play! (Use WASD to move around) http://forum.topiaonline.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=159

[Alex E]

This looks really interesting! I'm definitely going to be signing up for the beta.

[Krice]

Permadeath alone doesn't make game a roguelike. I'm quite confused about the content also. Players create it, or what? It's like Minecraft all over again. And you have nerve to ask 50K for it? Well I guess it's not a problem if people are willing to pay.

[Topher]

I say Roguelike because it is also tile-based, an rpg, turn-based to a point (tic-based), and the world is completely random and created by the players.

Like Minecraft, the world will be a barren sprawl of land, resources,  and wildlife. The content is there, but it needs to be crafted by the players. The Topia Engine has a toolset for players to create scripts for fulfilling tasks and creating the spells, laws, and UI. There are no NPCs in this game, all players and monsters will be controlled by the player by hand or by scripts you can run which are either crafted by hand or loaded from the script marketplace if you lack the skill to make the scripts (which are actually quite easy to make and the game will come with tutorials to learn). Just like in a roguelike, the permadeath system will give players a feeling that every choice they make is very important, where bad decisions are punishable by the community.

$50k is a very realistic goal for the hours and art content required to release this game. Most Kickstarter projects have stretch goals that are over $50k alone each just to add small things like "Saving your Game" or "Cosmetic choices" and make upward of over a million dollars.

Check out the FAQ for more info and the posts by joshrmt in our forums

[Krice]

and created by the players.

Not a roguelike.

$50k is a very realistic goal

I guess everything is realistic in crowd funding reality. It's just not the reality I grew up.

[Topher]

There has already been hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in this game out of pocket, and thousands of hours of work to make this game from scratch. For an MMORPG with the ability to run thousands of players simultaneously, $50k wouldn't even buy us enough crack to portal to your reality. The server costs alone would be a chunk of that budget. Please point me to an MMORPG with a development budget under $50k offering even half the features we are. Unless it's client and server structure is cloned from a previous MMORPG for free, I'm not seeing your point.

[Topher]

Sorry to double-post, but I wanted to show off the feature list I created today:

[george]

I think the overall toolkit looks cool but I agree with Krice.

Stepping back a little it seems like there's a new wave of mid 1990s style 2D MMOs coming out but with better technology. Going to make these kinds of tools a lot more available to developers, I think that's good.

[requerent]

It's definitely more of a sim-game than a roguelike. The combat especially looks unusual.


The idea that you can, essentially, make and script NPCs is compelling, but the account limitations, imo, cause some problems. If a player could, expressively, build a town all Dwarf Fortress style by scripting a number of NPC occupations and allowing a society to grow based upon those. Players more interested in simulation and creation (minecrafters and dwarf fortressers) would have a lot of fun working together to make towns and cities and such-- while the roguelikers would have a lot of fun looting, pillaging, and destroying said things. Then you could conceivably attract both genres of players in a manner in which neither compromises one another's play style.

[Fenrir]

The website itself never calls the game a Roguelike, and it isn’t much like a Roguelike, so I suspect that the word “Roguelike” was tacked on in the OP to get our attention and justify putting it here. The game doesn’t look bad at all, but I would have appreciated sincerity.