About the Game
The Vision
Since my early days of being creative, I wanted to make an epic RPG experience, where the player has as much freedom as possible. Inspired by genre classics like The Elder Scrolls or Gothic, I wanted to delve into creating a complex and rich story, set in a lifelike and believable world.
Game delevopment being a hobby for me, it was not always easy to get my foot into the field properly. Many failed attemps with many different engines and game-creators left many scrapped ideas and prototypes behind. Finding the time to properly get into coding, modelling and designing was not always possible, often left me frustrated and caused me to abandon my desire to create something multiple times.
That was until recently, when I picked up the idea once again, and started to properly conceptualize the idea for a first-person action-rpg. And thus, The Last Dweller was born.
That was until recently, when I picked up the idea once again, and started to properly conceptualize the idea for a first-person action-rpg. And thus, The Last Dweller was born.
The Engine
I am using The Game Creator's GameGuru to develop the game. It is a rather powerful game creation engine, usually catered towards FPS games, with an easy to use work interface, a simple, yet very versatile programming laguage, and a large amount of community documentation, scripts and assets.
Speaking of assets: I am aware that engines like GameGuru, and even Unity, have a rather bad reputation when it comes to indie games and the use of premade assets.
To be clear and honest upfront: yes, The Last Dweller will primarily use stock and community made assets. I know that this could give the game the feel of a cheap, so called "asset flip" and I also know that there might be many more games with a similar look to them. This however is not the most important aspect of the game making process to me. I am of the opinion that the many, many assets and models are of high quality and were made by talented 3D artists, regardless of whether they be part of TGC's team or the GameGuru community. I would never claim any of the work of these taletend people as my own in order to make a quick buck out of it. This is why The Last Dweller will be completely free, once it is released.
I rather put my effort into crafting and designing fascinating worlds, places and stories. Sure enough I could start getting into 3D modelling, and I sure will some day, since I find this to be another great way to be creative. However, for this project I have decided against doing so. The Last Dweller is a one-man project, so level-, sound- and interface design, scripitng, story writing, voice acting, artwork and many, many other tasks should keep me busy enough while tackling this project.
I hope to find understanding among critics of "asset using".
The Game
However, as stated before, I do plan to create and craft a lot of the games aspects myself. The Last Dweller is not supposed to be a quickly put together game consisting of 5 levels, where you walk around dull corridors, kill every enemy, move to the next level, repeat this 4 times and see the credits roll after 15 minutes. But it probably won't be a 200+ hours long real life consumer either. I want it to be a solid 2 to 3 hours worth of quality entertainment for players to escape their all day lifes.
The game is supposed to be a medium which moves forward a story by giving the player the opportunity to experience this said story through their own eyes. To ensure this to be possible, I want to implement many custom scripts and systems into the engine.
Condition based level progression, NPC interactions, quest and navigation systems. All these are things that are not pre made and that I want to include with the help of the wonderful GameGuru community and self-study of the used programming language.
Cutscenes and voice acting will find their way into the tale of the lonely Dweller, that require lots of work and imagination.
Menu graphics, interfaces and artwork may be already available through the engine, but do not fit the style I want them to have for my game, so these have to be created as well.
The huge world of Dalaya will be split into several areas, consiting of multiple levels and dungeons. The player will traverse through thick forrests, dimmly lit caves, rocky canyons, bone dry desserts, ancients temples, otherworldly biomes and many more. Designing these areas to be realistic and lifelike and thus making Dalaya a 'real' place straight out of my imagination is, for me, the most fascinating and fun part of this project.
I hope that my little project will be able to live up to my own set standards and that I will be able to deliver players an enjoyable experience with the powerfull, but still limited set of tools and skills that I posess.
The Promise
As stated before, The Last Dweller will be completely free, once finished.
I do not intend to capitalize and make money out of an 'rather easy' opportunity to create something. I much rather use the process of creating something to improve my own skills, well being and imagination. I find it soothing to daydream about the world that I created in my mind and how I am going to make it come to reality (at least virtually).
Therefore I do not expect money, praise or awards. I know it probably won't be a game of the year for anyone. But it could be MY game of the year, because of all the thought and work that I put into it.
If people will think it will be a bog standard asset using GameGuru game with bad AI and controlls, I'm fine with that.
But if only one person, who played it, will say "Hey, that part was kind of cool." or "This area looks sort of nice", then I couldn't be happier.
I am using The Game Creator's GameGuru to develop the game. It is a rather powerful game creation engine, usually catered towards FPS games, with an easy to use work interface, a simple, yet very versatile programming laguage, and a large amount of community documentation, scripts and assets.
Speaking of assets: I am aware that engines like GameGuru, and even Unity, have a rather bad reputation when it comes to indie games and the use of premade assets.
To be clear and honest upfront: yes, The Last Dweller will primarily use stock and community made assets. I know that this could give the game the feel of a cheap, so called "asset flip" and I also know that there might be many more games with a similar look to them. This however is not the most important aspect of the game making process to me. I am of the opinion that the many, many assets and models are of high quality and were made by talented 3D artists, regardless of whether they be part of TGC's team or the GameGuru community. I would never claim any of the work of these taletend people as my own in order to make a quick buck out of it. This is why The Last Dweller will be completely free, once it is released.
I rather put my effort into crafting and designing fascinating worlds, places and stories. Sure enough I could start getting into 3D modelling, and I sure will some day, since I find this to be another great way to be creative. However, for this project I have decided against doing so. The Last Dweller is a one-man project, so level-, sound- and interface design, scripitng, story writing, voice acting, artwork and many, many other tasks should keep me busy enough while tackling this project.
I hope to find understanding among critics of "asset using".
The Game
However, as stated before, I do plan to create and craft a lot of the games aspects myself. The Last Dweller is not supposed to be a quickly put together game consisting of 5 levels, where you walk around dull corridors, kill every enemy, move to the next level, repeat this 4 times and see the credits roll after 15 minutes. But it probably won't be a 200+ hours long real life consumer either. I want it to be a solid 2 to 3 hours worth of quality entertainment for players to escape their all day lifes.
The game is supposed to be a medium which moves forward a story by giving the player the opportunity to experience this said story through their own eyes. To ensure this to be possible, I want to implement many custom scripts and systems into the engine.
Condition based level progression, NPC interactions, quest and navigation systems. All these are things that are not pre made and that I want to include with the help of the wonderful GameGuru community and self-study of the used programming language.
Cutscenes and voice acting will find their way into the tale of the lonely Dweller, that require lots of work and imagination.
Menu graphics, interfaces and artwork may be already available through the engine, but do not fit the style I want them to have for my game, so these have to be created as well.
The huge world of Dalaya will be split into several areas, consiting of multiple levels and dungeons. The player will traverse through thick forrests, dimmly lit caves, rocky canyons, bone dry desserts, ancients temples, otherworldly biomes and many more. Designing these areas to be realistic and lifelike and thus making Dalaya a 'real' place straight out of my imagination is, for me, the most fascinating and fun part of this project.
I hope that my little project will be able to live up to my own set standards and that I will be able to deliver players an enjoyable experience with the powerfull, but still limited set of tools and skills that I posess.
The Promise
As stated before, The Last Dweller will be completely free, once finished.
I do not intend to capitalize and make money out of an 'rather easy' opportunity to create something. I much rather use the process of creating something to improve my own skills, well being and imagination. I find it soothing to daydream about the world that I created in my mind and how I am going to make it come to reality (at least virtually).
Therefore I do not expect money, praise or awards. I know it probably won't be a game of the year for anyone. But it could be MY game of the year, because of all the thought and work that I put into it.
If people will think it will be a bog standard asset using GameGuru game with bad AI and controlls, I'm fine with that.
But if only one person, who played it, will say "Hey, that part was kind of cool." or "This area looks sort of nice", then I couldn't be happier.