1. SPS Accounts:
    Do you find yourself coming back time after time? Do you appreciate the ongoing hard work to keep this community focused and successful in its mission? Please consider supporting us by upgrading to an SPS Account. Besides the warm and fuzzy feeling that comes from supporting a good cause, you'll also get a significant number of ever-expanding perks and benefits on the site and the forums. Click here to find out more.
    Dismiss Notice
Dismiss Notice
You are currently viewing Boards o' Magick as a guest, but you can register an account here. Registration is fast, easy and free. Once registered you will have access to search the forums, create and respond to threads, PM other members, upload screenshots and access many other features unavailable to guests.

BoM cultivates a friendly and welcoming atmosphere. We have been aiming for quality over quantity with our forums from their inception, and believe that this distinction is truly tangible and valued by our members. We'd love to have you join us today!

(If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you've forgotten your username or password, click here.)

Underworld Ascendant - All About Interactivity

Discussion in 'Game/SP News & Comments' started by RPGWatch, Aug 4, 2017.

  1. RPGWatch

    RPGWatch Watching... ★ SPS Account Holder

    Joined:
    Jul 28, 2010
    Messages:
    30,196
    Likes Received:
    30
    [​IMG]The latest Underworld Ascendant update describes its progress creating and transforming the world to make it an interactive playground.

    Hello backers,

    Joe Fielder, Underworld Ascendant's game director and writer, here again with the latest update straight from the development team.

    The last month's been a pretty exciting time at OtherSide, because we've been busy...

    Transforming the World Into an Interactive Playground
    As you know, we recently stood up the core tenets of combat, stealth, and magic in an early area of the game called The Challenge of Ishtass. There, the player is first introduced to the array of choices available to them with The Improvisation Engine. We set the challenge, the solution is up to you, and we reward creativity.

    Our recent milestone has been a key next step in inspiring and supporting player experimentation: turning the world into an interactive playground. The idea is that the systems that simulate this underground realm make sense. A wooden door can be burned down or chopped down, water can put out torches, physics act in logical fashion, and so on. So, when the player tests something out, they get expected results.

    At its heart, this work has been about giving the player an abundance of options on how to equip their character and solve the challenge. We've expanded the playable area and added new skills and interactive elements. It's intentionally designed to be replayed. We want players to experiment with different solutions and find what works best for them.

    In terms of visuals, it demonstrates our visual style done to a fair extent of polish and now includes an initial pass at UI elements, but we will continue to iterate further on both during development. Current creature animations are not representative of the game's visual target. This an important area we feel deserving of concentrated effort and we'll be locking our sights on it in subsequent milestones. Also, usability of items, skills and interactive elements is another area that we'll continue to hone and polish.

    The reason that getting these core elements working clearly and well is absolutely essential is because it unlocks the magic sense of discovery the player gets from combining different systems together.

    External playtesting is reliably eye-opening in this regard. For the choices people don't make, as much as the ones they do. Teaching players that they have choice (like, no, seriously, here are your tools, surprise us), after decades of games where they haven't, is a fun, interesting challenge.

    To explain, first let's take a look at a few recent additions to the game world...​
     
Sorcerer's Place is a project run entirely by fans and for fans. Maintaining Sorcerer's Place and a stable environment for all our hosted sites requires a substantial amount of our time and funds on a regular basis, so please consider supporting us to keep the site up & running smoothly. Thank you!

Sorcerers.net is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to products on amazon.com, amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk. Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.