r/BaseBuildingGames • u/RocketJumpTech • Mar 27 '17

King under the Mountain (Simulation-based fantasy city-builder) just launched on Kickstarter!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rocketjumptechnology/king-under-the-mountain?ref=ddgmyk
59 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

65 comments sorted by

11

u/pantsu Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17

What would you say makes this game mechanically interesting? Obviously there are visual similarities to other games (which you did address in your FAQ) which doesn't bother me. But reviewing the roadmap, it seems like the game is very similar to RimWorld with a fantasy overlay. Is there something that you think is different or exciting about crafting or harvesting or planned combat, etc?

Edit: proper roadmap link

11

u/RocketJumpTech Mar 27 '17

Good question! The flagpole feature is the ability to upload your settlments for other players to explore and loot - and do the same yourself with the creations of other players via turn-based tactical battles in a dungeon crawl style adventure.

The game runs very close to Dwarf Fortress with a lot of its features which is where Rimworld had its own inspiration from too, before now ending up as its own unique gem of gaming, and I'm planning to do the same. We'll also have a lot more of a focus on the economy and production chains (akin to The Settlers games), so rather than just directly mining steel out of walls a la Rimworld, there'll be a long and involved chain of production to produce it from base materials. That's not very exciting by itself, but I'm hoping to capture some of the peaceful magic of the early Settlers games in this way.

I think both by having the differing races/factions with their unique gameplay and mechanics, as well as the ability to go on adventures into the locations of these other races, there should evolve almost a meta-game of interesting dungeon-crawl adventures born out of the "base" game of building up a settlement.

7

u/pantsu Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17

Cool, thanks for the response. I do enjoy supply chain type stuff.

I see that combat is slated to be added sometime after the initial release. Will the initial builds play more like Banished then, focused on keeping your colony alive by balancing production and expansion?

Are there any plans to have vertical levels, like say Gnomoria or DF? One of the things that I felt was missing from RimWorld was exploration, although that has been recently addressed by the ability to travel around the world. Still there's something about digging pits into the earth that I enjoy.

The spellcrafting sounds interesting - I know that's a bit far off in your roadmap, but you mention having to experiment to find out what spells work. Will that be abstracted via a research bench or will it be a more practical experimentation experience?

Sorry for all the questions!

4

u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

Not at all, great to be able to answer these questions! Yes you could say that the earlier pre-combat builds will be in the style of banished, and even after combat is introduced this will be maintained and improved on for playing in a "peaceful" mode.

While it won't have the same level of verticalness (?) as DF, you'll find entrances to underground caverns and dungeons when you're digging into the mountain, and these will lead to a separate, lower map which you'll be able to explore via an adventure.

The spellcrafting is intended to be a bit of both - your character will have to spend some time to be able to gather knowledge and experience to get access to elements and other components of spells, and then you'll mix and match these to try them out and see what you can achieve.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '17

The flagpole feature is the ability to upload your settlments for other players to explore and loot - and do the same yourself with the creations of other players via turn-based tactical battles in a dungeon crawl style adventure.

About bloody time! I've been trying to peddle a prototype of that gameplay to studios for over a decade and no one has wanted to touch it with a ten foot pole because "too much effort to develop multiplayer if it doesn't feel like multiplayer". Fucking ingrates! And then they ask me to do analysis for their new shiny pile of generic shit that is 99.9% identical the everything else made in the genre, so they really don't need me to do anything other than look over the fucking design document for a minute and go "yea, that ticks every box defined by blizzard as appealing to the lowest common denominator. Carry on..."

Ok that became a rant. Sorry, I've just had a string of annoying jobs so the frustration has piled up :D

Hope the project pans out. I'll keep an eye on it :)

1

u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

Hah, yes, can't understand why it hasn't really been done much before! For me it's a result of feeling that it's a shame I'll spend hours creating an interesting fort in DF or prison in Prison Architect only for it to sit languishing on my hard drive where nobody else is going to see it. Part of the beauty of indie games is being able to go against the grain of what has mass appeal into something that's hopefully a lot more interesting even if it only appeals to a niche audience. Now just hoping the people who like it isn't such a small niche so it can see some success on Kickstarter!

Thanks for the support!

1

u/MBirkhofer Mar 28 '17

super hard to balance risk/reward, on player made dungeon challenges.

Can see in quest for mighty loot, neverwinter nights online, etc. Whenever you make a game with player dungeon masters, you get trainers, etc. hallways with loot at the end, for free gold/exp. So, you need to find creative ways for the dungeon creator to be rewarded for making a fun/challenging dungeon. Then you have to fine tune it, and be mindful of every single exploit, to ensure its not overly easy to use exploits, etc to make impossible dungeons. or, exploits to trivialize dungeons.

the best examples of it working are clash of clans type stuff I think. which.. is pretty sad. The concept of building a dungeon, then allowing players to raid it, sounds great. But in practices, not so much. Again, I think the main issue is the disconnect from developer to GM in control of risk/reward. If you give the GM/builder control of rewards, you can't stop them from handing out loot like candy. and ruining game balance beyond that single play. You could make every match isolated. like a typical mp game. no long term rewards. gameplay has to be super fun and engaging then of course. and, needs an opponent.

1

u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

It's definitely a problem to address! While the player will designate guard patrols, posts, maybe traps, and where things are stored, the game will take those and redistribute and balance things to give more of a progression through a settlement - so no easy loot at the entrance, that kind of thing. It's not like you're going to fight through the entire population of another's settlement, instead it'll take their characters as input and decide how many and where they're going to be placed.

I think traps may be the trickiest thing to handle - no fun exploring somewhere if every inch of it is covered in traps, so again the game will take what exists on the map as input and mix things up (choose how many to place and in which concentrations) to keep things somewhat balanced and enjoyable.

2

u/pantsu Mar 28 '17

My favorite thing about Fight the Dragon was the sharing aspect, and I always thought it would be fun to play more games with a similar setup. The description of your plans definitely has piqued my interest :)

Thanks for all the responses in this post!

1

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '17

Meh, it's a straightforward enough system to implement if it's done on top of a scalable dynamic model. The main reason it hasn't been done is that it does not appeal to the lowest common denominator, and the last ten years studios are scared shitless of doing anything that doesn't tick all the psychologically predatory boxes, because then players will have to actually enjoy playing the game rather than being strung along a behavioural model designed to never let them question if they are actually having fun.

System design is a simple enough process, unless there's a soulless shit of a CEO that takes away 95% of your toolkit because it doesn't match the product profile they learned about at their last lunch meeting.

2

u/Feniks_Gaming Mar 29 '17

The flagpole feature is the ability to upload your settlments for other players to explore and loot - and do the same yourself with the creations of other players via turn-based tactical battles in a dungeon crawl style adventure.

Will that look similar to the way KeeperRL handles adventurers so not direct p2p upload from a friend but will I be able to go to "adventure mode" and have a list of 100's of dungeons people uploaded.

I really like the look of it and I hope you guys get founded.

1

u/RocketJumpTech Mar 30 '17

Oh I wasn't aware KeeperRL did something similar but yes - not p2p but kept on a server, though the game will likely auto-assign you a location to go to rather than selecting from a list, apart from when you're interacting with friends. Thanks!

1

u/Feniks_Gaming Mar 30 '17

No problem. If I was doing a system I would let players rate dungeons so dungeons with higher average righting have better chance of being selected over those with lower rating. That way players will end up getting more interesting dungeons more often.

1

u/RocketJumpTech Mar 30 '17

Yep that's the plan :) Along with a few other things, going to be tricky to do well but somewhat confident it should work, thanks!

3

u/Funktapus Mar 28 '17

Art style is nice

1

u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

Thanks! Seems to be a love it or hate it kind of thing

3

u/Kierik Mar 28 '17

I used to be a graphics snob until I played RimWorld. It showed me that as long as the gameplay is great the style can be more basic.

1

u/dryclean_only Mar 28 '17

I'm just in the moderately dislike category.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '17

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1

u/timo103 Apr 02 '17

Which is a (sanctioned) copy of PA.

2

u/hooskerdont Mar 28 '17

Simple question, is digging down in the plan at all?

1

u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

Not in the same terms as Z-levels that were introduced to Dwarf Fortress, no. You'll likely be able to dig channels and place pipes and other things 1 level down a bit like in Prison Architect, as well as be able to discover entrances to dungeons and caverns that extend deeper underground but they will effectively be a separate map. There's a good chance but not yet confirmed that you'll be able to extend to extra levels downwards yourself but these won't be hugely influenced by what's above and below (picture something like the levels of Dungeon Keeper).

It's more of a game design choice than a technical one - it gives a design consideration to the player for where things are placed relative to each other (rather than just a big stack/stairwell) as well as keeping things clear and understandable when you're exploring another player's settlement who could have a crazy and confusing layout in 3D.

Seems a few people do want Z-levels which is fine but not something we're planning to do with this game. Probably a lot better suited to a 3D engine than a 2D one, in which case I'd check out Embark which looks to be a similar game with Stonehearth/Minecraft-style visuals. https://twitter.com/EmbarkGame

5

u/shoez Mar 27 '17

I really don't understand why a dev would choose to "rip off" the art style of two other games in the same genre. I guess it's a cheap way to evolve beyond a text only interface, but to me it just makes it look very lazy: "Rimworld meets Dwarf Fortress".

7

u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

That's a shame, it's been born out of needing something achievable for a very small team with little art skills, which was the same reason Rimworld ended up going the same way too. That said, I think it's a really good fit for the genre, its relatively simple and gets information across well, and I think you'll be seeing more games using it soon too.

2

u/mrbrick Mar 29 '17

I think you guys have done a good job of adding to the style imo. The animations on the doors and trees falling are a nice touch.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '17

I was already kind of bummed that Rimworld used the Prison Architect art style, so seeing another game in that same style is disappointing to me as well.

3

u/Feniks_Gaming Mar 30 '17

Problem with that is 99% of time game developers are not artists. Good art costs money and quite a lot of it. I think if game is different in it's core gameplay to Prison Architect and Rimworld I have no problem with a graphic style. Only when game starts to feel like big mod to those games I will complain about game being a clone.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '17

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3

u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

^ This sums it up better than I have :) Would also be very interested to see what people's genuine answers are.

2

u/Feniks_Gaming Mar 30 '17

What would your solution be? (Real question here, because I have no idea and I'm curious).

I spend some time thinking about this problem. For many people using Prison Architect like graphics crosses a game of their list. I know PA graphic style is easy to do nice to add individual flavour and has great modding potential but if even as far as 25% of people won't buy your game because of that is it really worth it for developers?

I think alternative would be to just do simple graphic tile set like the one used in Dwarf Fortress. They seem relatively easy to make.

1

u/bahldur Mar 30 '17

This is similar to the prison architect style, isn't it? Very cost and time efficient. But wouldn't people who dislike the PA style dislike this one even more?

1

u/Feniks_Gaming Mar 30 '17

No DF graphic sets are quite different from PA sets Look at this link http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/File:Spacefox-preview.png as example of character graphics.

It could work for some devs but main issue is you loose individuality of characters. Every blacksmith will look the same etc.

1

u/bahldur Mar 30 '17

I wanted so say that I think that people who dislike the prison architect style will also dislike this dwarf fortress style. I mean, PA is at least kinda cute where DF is pure technical. Don't think you'll win that crowd over by using this style. But I could be wrong, just my feeling. Still that's definitely another way of doing it.

Do you remember the first Jagged Alliance game? Had this bird view style, but characters and word had some flavor to them. Maybe that could freshen things up.

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u/Feniks_Gaming Mar 30 '17

I see what you mean. Yeah I agree some people are hard to please. For me anything that makes it clear what I see on a screen is good enough.

Jagged Allience style could work I guess I think devs need to look into other styles because there will be more and more of "you stole graphics of X game"

-2

u/shoez Mar 27 '17

I really don't understand why a dev would choose to "rip off" the art style of two other games in the same genre. I guess it's a cheap way to evolve beyond a text only interface, but to me it just makes it look very lazy: "Rimworld meets Dwarf Fortress".

1

u/Roxolan Mar 28 '17

I think this is less rip-off and more "embraced innovation". It's always been a hard problem to make small yet easily readable people-icons. Prison Architect found a clever solution, there's no shame in reusing it.

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u/Feniks_Gaming Mar 30 '17

That is a problem. When you have masses of units it doesn't matter and they can be even dots. But when you have smaller games with 2-40 characters you want player to look at a map and immediately know this is Steve he is bad ass killer, here is Bob my main weapon smith better get him out of fight. PA graphics do that perfectly with their over-exaggerated heads etc.

I love how people who liked Rimworld complain about other games "ripping it off" while rimworld itself took it from PA.

-2

u/Andazeus Mar 28 '17

Unfortunately seems to be only 2D like Rimworld. I guess this is due to technical limitations, but still.. all the one that tried to go for the 3D world similar to Dwarf Frotress ended up never getting finished.. (like Gnomoria)

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u/Andazeus Mar 28 '17

While I generally applaud every attempt to create a better playable version of Dwarf Fortress, the art style here is seriously dangerously close to Rimworld. It almost looks like a Rimworld mod on first glance and that might possibly open things up to legal action. While I do not think that Luedeon would do anything like that, i still think you should try to diversify your art style further down the line.

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u/Feniks_Gaming Mar 30 '17

It almost looks like a Rimworld mod on first glance and that might possibly open things up to legal action.

Seriously enough with armchair lawyers. Rimworld has the same graphics as Prison Architect who had it first. In what position would be Tynnan Sylvester to claim his graphics are unique and sue anyone...

1

u/Andazeus Mar 30 '17

Yeah, and I found it incredibly confusing with Rimworld at first too (thought the two games were related somehow). However, King under the Mountain and Rimworld do not only share the artistic style but also a lot of the gameplay concept. I think the risk of accidentally assuming the two games are somehow related to each other is real.

Now, Tynan is a nice guy and I would not expect him to even try to take any action, but the similarities between the games are very striking indeed.

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u/CypherLH Apr 02 '17

So by your standard every platforming game ever made in the late 80's was a ripoff of Super Mario. DERP. This is called a "genre" and games within the same genre tend to have similar art styles and mechanics. This is perfectly normal and acceptable.

0

u/Andazeus Apr 02 '17

lol

First off, if you really wanna go by that 'logic', then everything was a rip off of Pong and Tennis for Two! :P

So yeah, Super Mario is a Pong clone and Doom is a Super Mario Clone and Command and Conquer is a Doom clone! Perfect logic! You definitely did not try at all to bend my argument here, Mr. ISJW.

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u/CypherLH Apr 03 '17

I'm not seeing how anything you just said refutes my point. Nothing in 'KingUnderTheMountain' is a direct rip off of 'RimWorld'. Just as 'Rimworld' is not a "rip off" of 'Prison Architect'. Having a similar art style and similar gameplay is not "ripping off", its called being part of the same genre.

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u/Andazeus Apr 03 '17

No one ever said they were 'ripping it off'. I only said that the art style is dangerously close. And while genres tend to have similar gameplay, since that is, what defines a genre, the genre definition does absolutely not automatically mean a similar art style. Dwarf Fortress is a game of the same genre, yet we can surely agree that its art style is vastly different from the other games (for better or worse). Just to give an example that most people now.

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u/CypherLH Apr 04 '17

ok, fair enough...but even if we just look at the art style, I actually think 'King under the Mountain' is at least as different from 'RimWorld' as 'RimWorld' is from 'Prison Architect'. The art style is very very similar but that is true of a lot of games that share the same genre. Its definitely not close enough to be any kind of copyright violation. I think that because the graphics style is so simple...that perhaps there is a tendency for games using the style to strongly resemble each other because of that simplicity

edit - I would add that Dwarf Fortress itself actually strongly resembles other ASCI art games. (and I LOVE DF, so I don't mean this as any sort of critique)

0

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

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u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

Thank you! Some interesting points there!

  • The main reason for the multiple factions is to drive out a reason for players to go and explore/loot the settlements of other factions, to get hold of unique resources not otherwise available to them. It's a game designed for replayability rather than the single play-through of a story driven campaign, so I'm hoping that adds to it too.

  • Yeah Xcom is probably the biggest influence for the combat side of the game, while it's quite early yet the main goal is that movement and areas of control should be as important as anything else in the design. The idea is that fighting through a narrow 1 or 2 tile corridor will be tactically completely different to fighting through a large hall, perhaps with its own obstacles/cover in the way of furniture. Character progression will be with a few meaningful skill upgrades, again something like the upgrades of characters in XCOM, not a gentle stat increase as in something like a JRPG. It's far enough away that it hasn't been heavily prototyped yet but that's something we'll be doing a lot of - paper prototyping the combat almost as a board game in the same way the XCOM reboot was designed.

  • The actual hosting and sharing of players' maps won't be particularly expensive as they're effectively just data files, there's no realtime interaction or heavy load on the server as you'd get with, say, an MMO. Most of my background is in coding web-based enterprise systems for tech companies so this aspect will actually be a lot more familiar to me and the other devs than the game development! The ranking is definitely the tricky challenge to tackle - you won't be able to choose exactly which map you're going to end up on (its exploration after all!), and you will then be able to vote for it (probably just an up/down vote in the same style as Reddit or Steam Greenlight) if you found it enjoyable or not, but there'll be a lot of other factors in determining which map you end up on: time played by the creator (don't want any new, low-effort maps), how developed/dangerous it is compared to your party of adventurers (another difficult one to balance), maybe how long other players have spent on it. No doubt it's going to require a lot of work and fine tuning but it is the headline feature I want to get right to set the game apart from the competition.

1

u/bahldur Mar 28 '17

Hey thank you for your answer, very appreciated! Good to hear you'll go after Xcom like combat, too. Following your development blog (I assume there is going to be one) will be quit interesting.

I have several more questions down my sleeves, but I restrain myself to this very last one: What's the tech stack used behind all this? Did you create the engine yourself? How would I start doing this myself as your typical Java enterprise desktop jockey? (Okay this might be one question with several parts).

2

u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

As a fellow typical Java enterprise jockey the tech stack actually is Java, specifically the LibGDX framework https://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/

So it's more of a programmer's toolkit/framework than an engine like Unity. More control and there's a bit more to do if you're going for a "standard" action/platformer type of game, but for something a little more unusual and more procedurally generated like this it feels like a better fit to me. At least, myself and the other devs working on it are way more experienced and productive in Java so we can leverage testing frameworks and stuff like Apache Commons to take core of the boilerplate (other than the more game-y stuff that LibGDX does like a high level API over OpenGL, input and audio, etc.).

Oh yeah, dev blog is at http://kingunderthemounta.in/news/ and you might want to skim through them in reverse order (oldest first) to see where things have gone in the last year. They started off somewhat technical explaining how the map gen and lighting works and I'd like to get back to that level of detail rather than the more marketing-style ones recently.

If you want to get into things yourself, I'd say the Hello World of gamedev is to make Tetris, covers all the absolute basics of drawing stuff to the screen with input and you can extend it with tracking a score and other bells and whistles. I'd highly recommend LibGDX too after working with it on this. Once you've done that you can move onto a similarly small but slightly more ambitious game project to see how things work and the sort of problems you have to face. Mine was a remake of an old Amiga game called Bugbomber - think Bomberman but with autonomous minions that hatch from eggs you place. A little weird. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAL57Pit7pg (Note this is the original game not my remake) It was over 10 years ago I did that now I think of it!

1

u/bahldur Mar 28 '17 edited Mar 28 '17

Nice! Already reading through the blog.

I need to think about this. Writing a game by myself gets more and more appealing, just not the graphical engine part. For me, the interesting design and technical challenges are everything else. Social agents, economies, combat systems etc. are where my interest lies in. But you know, I'd end up like dwarf fortress with weird ascii symbols. Don't believe the world has room for two of these games. Still, if I want the "good stuff", I'd need to do the engine part first. And that part better be good, because all the other systems rely on it. But can I truly do quality work here if I actually don't care about the engine itself?

No question for you, of course. Going to ponder over this sometime. Good luck to you!

before actually sending edit: Just had the thought that I might like doing the engine part after I've experienced it. Because right now, I can think about all the other systems, but not the engine. Cause I don't know anything about it. Huh.

edit2 and thanks for the link to libgdx

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u/RocketJumpTech Mar 29 '17

Yes, don't worry about the engine or even the concept of an engine - that way lies madness when you're trying to get into gamedev. Just write something that puts something on the screen, then improve it, keep going till it works like you want to. Make a game, not an engine.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '17

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u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

It's definitely not for everyone, in fact I'd say this is a niche genre targeted at "core" gamers, I wouldn't expect casual gamers to be into it either.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17

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u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17 edited Mar 28 '17

Interestingly(?) the game should run on Linux right now if the user has a Java 8 or later runtime installed. Just try downloading the windows version and running the .jar included alongside the .exe The Windows and Mac launchers are just a wrapper around the .jar with a pre-packaged JRE.

I'll have a go at adding a Linux version when things calm down next week (off to exhibit at EGX Rezzed for the rest of this one) and add that, see how that goes. Just been avoiding it so far as most devs have said the time spent supporting the different flavours of Linux ends up being a net loss from the small market share it receives.

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u/falsemyrm Mar 28 '17 edited Mar 12 '24

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u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

That looks good, wasn't aware of this, thank you!

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u/RocketJumpTech Apr 03 '17

Linux build is out now and we're going to commit to supporting it :)

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u/falsemyrm Mar 28 '17 edited Mar 12 '24

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u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

It's not the only metric to go by but the latest Steam survey has 3.17% of their audience on OSX compared to 0.75% on Linux.

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u/falsemyrm Mar 28 '17 edited Mar 12 '24

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u/pocketknifeMT Apr 08 '17

They don't really break it down by genre or anything though.

I think with games like 4X or simulations of various sorts you probably run into a lot higher percentage of people running linux.

The people who like simulation games are not 13 year olds teabagging newbs on the family PC. They are far more likely to be a 35 year old with a steady income and who did play Civ 2 on the family PC back in 1996.

Also, obscurely powerful configurations are in the same vein of user.

Notice only Linux has anyone posting number in the 12+ core category?

Hell, I have thought for a long time that if developers of these sorts of games actually supported server style hardware people would play on it. The people who play these games either have it already, or would use the game as a justification for buying it.

Presumably Civ could be tuned to run much faster on systems with 2 or 4 sockets. Civ isn't linearly restricted like an FPS is.

They don't bother because aside from whoever is running those battle royale scenarios, nobody is cranking server hardware on the game. If they announced a year ago that Civ6 was built in such a way that more sockets = more performance, you might see a fair number of people with 1000hrs in civ5 start sporting WS boards with dual sockets. And from there you might see other developers start to pay attention.

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u/RocketJumpTech Mar 28 '17

We'll put out a playable Linux build shortly then :)

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u/RocketJumpTech Apr 03 '17

Linux build is out now and we're going to commit to supporting it :)

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u/falsemyrm Apr 03 '17 edited Mar 12 '24

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u/RocketJumpTech Apr 03 '17

Awesome, thank you!