Voxel game project: Rituals of the old

This is the next version of the moose walk cycle. There are still some errors to fix, but we’re getting there.

Keep the feedback coming! :+1:

Here’s a quick photoshopped mockup for size comparison. The war moose is real!

Also we decided to go with unified meshes after careful consideration. The reason for the detached body parts was the desire to have the limbs etc cut off. But we’re going to try dynamic mesh destruction techniques with precalculation of the cut-off points (to get around lag issues) at some point.

Here is the male player character’s mesh after the adjustments. Next we have to redo the UV maps and textures.

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You could also have two meshes, one for animation and one for dismemberment and simply swap them on death. Well, unless you want to do this.

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Yes. That is pretty much exactly what I want to do. :smile:

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Sometimes you need to try out a few things to get where you want to be.

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Why do you have to show genitalia?

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That’s a good question. Does it bother you? I suppose I could censor them out from the images in the future if it bothers you. But people generally have genitalia and frankly I come from open northern European culture where we don’t make a big deal of such things and I hadn’t considered that it might offend someone to see occasional badly drawn low poly characters naked.

But if what you’re asking is “why do you even have genitalia on your game characters?” it’s just for the sake of completeness. For me it’s kind of like “hey, let’s remove noses from all of our characters in case someone is embarrassed by them” - in other words I feel it’s silly to remove such things from game characters.

But that’s just my personal opinion and I understand that people feel differently and come from different backgrounds. If I receive confirmation that it does in fact bother someone (and you’re not just asking because you’re curious about it) I will censor them out in the future or stop posting images of the player characters altogether.

But if what you’re asking is “why don’t the characters have clothes?” it’s because we haven’t gotten that far yet. We’ve had several unexpected setbacks with the player character. I think it’s finally done and we can continue animating (and clothing!) it. They will of course eventually have clothes and once they do we will definitely stop posting the naked models.

And we will add a setting through which both the client and the server can turn on/off nudity. Client side option is your personal preference which can prevent you from seeing any nudity anywhere you play. And the server side option can enforce a non-nudity policy across the server. I think that way everyone can get the gaming experience they like.

Also in addition to the above the characters will most likely spawn and respawn in their underwear by default - and if the server allows it you can then remove your clothes, if you like - because they are, you know, clothes and not glued on.

But it really was an interesting question from all the points of view.

I’d like to know more about your perspective on it and your cultural background and how non-sexual nudity is viewed where you come from.

Cheers,

Pilvinen

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*Snickers* … here you go :slight_smile:

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Hi, I don’t really feel bothered or something like that. I was just wondering how the genitalia could play an “important” role in your game. But it seems like you want them to be in because of “completion”.

You do not need to censor the images of course!

Best regards
Domenic

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There is possibly going to be some bodily functions, like the need to go to the toilet and pissing yourself when blind drunk, but there is no sex planned in the game.

Although I’m not quite sure at this point how the reproduction of animal herds is going to be represented visually… but no human reproduction is planned at the moment.

If we do get a lot of requests for having children I suppose we could try something made with good taste similar to Sims.

But generally adding children characters to the game gives me a bit uneasy feeling.

Ultima 7 did it and had even violence towards children but it was a different, more innocent time. Didn’t think much of it at the time when I was a kid myself but in retrospect it was pretty disturbing and not something I would wish to encourage in any way.

And the 3D sandbox setting is very different in nature compared to a full fledged 2D RPG.

And on the other hand I really don’t like games which prevent you from doing things artificially. So it’s potentially a very controversial subject which I wouldn’t know how to begin to approach.

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And why would you not to? :slight_smile: Everybody has, unless injured etc. Perfectly normal. Especially for a Fin. Fins look each other naked in public saunas all the time. And in the summer during evenings everybody is naked…

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See here:

In the end it’s something that is purely cosmetic and has no real contribution to gameplay, it restricts your official audience and you have to implement the switching (which is even more complicated in this case because of MP).

The way I see it it’s a hassle to implement for no real gain.



Is your target audience only the nordic EU countries? You have to consider that about 50% or more of your sales will likely be the somewhat more stigmatic US.

I do have a feeling that you’re adding it to appease former Rust players, in which case it could be a good marketing idea I guess?

But anyway, how is the gameplay and the game itself going? Looks like your 3D modelling team is bored to death seeing only so many character models.

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I understand. And this is the common sentiment in the game industry. But personally, I love the small details - in everything. And I know there are plenty of players who feel the same way.

And while I do realize that some things restrict the target group I don’t really care about it that much. And our target group is probably already going to be rather limited with all the violence, torture, realistic alcohol and drug use, theft, witchcraft, burning of people, ritual magic modeled after western secret esoteric traditions - and other disturbing elements.

I care more about creating a game with wide variety of options and paths to follow with a lot of small interesting details - the game I want to play and explore myself rather than trying to fit it under some “suitable for all ages and your cat” category.

And there is much to gain. But it’s hard to see for people who are oriented towards achieving goals, getting better and “gaming” the game mechanics.

Rituals of the old is directed towards a more mature audience who like to build things, explore deep game world full of lore - people who are into real roleplaying, not the atrocity they call RPG these days.

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I don’t believe the restrictions restrict the actual sales number. Quite the contrary. There is always somebody to buy the game for you with enough legal age. The further you shock people, the better you might sell. There is no such thing as bad publicity, in general :slight_smile:

But mostly, I just love genitalia, and tits. Especially in times like these where you can’t simply represent the user a selection like “male or female”. As there are 65 different genders, and counting. And everything seems to trigger people. If someone tries to do a historically accurate piece of art, it is immediately depicted as racist, sexists, …

I mean, it is great that we live in a time where you can identify yourself a F-22 Raptor and be accepted. That means we have freedom in larger sense. And much free time to just ponder our existence. But at the same time it seems to be that being normal (in very very traditional sense, and, yes, everybody is normal and extraordinary at the same time, but maybe you get the point) is not ok and more and more things are considered offensive. So somehow we manage to do both at the same time, widen and narrow our view of the world.

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We are going to have male and female characters you can choose from in Rituals. I’ve been pondering whether we should also have an androgynous character as well.

But perhaps it would be too much trouble. Not sure. And I doubt it would make anyone truly happy.

Personally I’m not really up to speed with all this modern “gender stuff” that’s all the rage these days and I don’t really know why it should even matter. You are who you are. Categories and labels don’t really change that. I think it may be in fact be a little misguided effort which only serves to confuse people from the true search of your self. No amount of categorizing will ever be able to give us an easy answer to that.

Everyone would benefit much more simple openness. But that’s something which is not at all popular. In fact you get hammered down, hard, if you express your true feelings in the open society - even if it’s something as mundane as “I really like you” in a comradery sort of way. It’s amusing how big of a social taboo it is to talk about feelings. Also it’s not something which is valued or taught at schools - a shame.

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I mean unless he’s planning on releasing a DLC for Helicopter dicks where said junk is literally replaced with Helicopters.

Plus I think this thread has perhaps been derailed from a “Dev Blog” into penis politics really. Kind of up to the dev’s whether they want anatomically correct bloxel people or not.

Personally I agree about the effort part. But hey. To each their own. :slight_smile:

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Nah. We’re pretty anti-DLC on our side of the fence. But we are considering “pay to lose” scheme (as opposed to “P2W”). Unfortunately the coolest stuff with the disadvantages:

  • Crippling incurable diseases.
  • Horrible disfigurement.
  • Missing arm or leg (Wooden leg / hook in place of a hand)
  • Only one life per server per day.
  • Negative personality traits/strong moral convictions, ie. “I would rather die than…”
  • Incurable addiction.
  • Incurable mental illness.
  • Horrible mutation (Needs to do certain things periodically to survive like for example eat people, etc)
  • Coward (Reacts badly under stress or confrontation)
  • Unlucky (If something can go wrong then it will)
  • Daft (Skills? What skills? Bad at everything, unable to progress

…will probably have to be abandoned due to the technical impossibility of implementing such a system securely for user run servers - so I’ll not discuss about the cool stuff :expressionless:

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“For the low low price of $49.99 you TOO can catch leprosy!”
EA Marketing (probably)

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Dev’s gotta make a living :+1:

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LOL, I did not expect my question would lead to a discussion like this… :upside_down_face:

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Well I made him some clothes so you wouldn’t have to stare at his swinging dick.

Though I’m not sure what’s causing that distortion in Blender and whether that’s going to be an issue in JME… it’s disturbing. You don’t see it close up, only from distance.

Any ideas what’s that about and how to avoid it?

EDIT: You see these weird lines and rings on the jeans.

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