521 Days Later
Old friends reunited
OK. Well, it’s been a heck of a year-and-a-half for everyone everywhere, I won’t recap it. We’re all hunkered down and feeling fine, hope y’all are too.
So, the previous RTS concept was great, loved it then, love it now. But… I love this one a little more betterer. So I’ll be re-adapting some design elements from the old to inform the new but there will be a lot more new than old.
Welcome to the UMP, the Unnamed Monster Project. Why are titles so difficult in the early stages of the project? I guess the true nature of the game, the fun of it, the doing of it, hasn’t fully discovered itself. And when it does, voila, it’s true name will be revealed.
What will the UMP be? At this stage, the feature list is:
RTS for 2-6 players
15-30 min play time
Local vs AI in story mode, online in open or private match play, daily/weekly tournaments and events, &c
Spherical/globe map, 3D models
Asymmetrical factions; different economies, different unit compositions, different meta-powers, different paths to victory
Factions, units, and abilities are all monster-/horror-themed. Kaiju battling the undead, xenomorphs vs. Cthulhu, &c. Could there be a 30-foot-tall Samara Yamamura slowly advancing on your position, radiating madness and despair? There might could be!
So a lot of the squad-level tinkering from last years project will be put aside, simplified at least in the early versions. And the art/models/thematic chrome will be deeper and ore heavily invested-in. Ideally, I would like to see each faction handled by a different artist; I want each faction to appear alien and distinct from others. Is this doable within a budget? We shall see!
So to date we have 2 GDD’s and a small handful of people I like and trust (NC, PH, JC) who may be willing to go along. I’m looking at working with a studio, and RC has recommended Double Coconut and we’re in talks to see if we fit. After securing a studio, we’ll have two huge tasks to do in parallel; get the world and mechanics mathematically modelled and iterate those models through playtest. That’s why we have 2 GDD’s; one for UMP and one for the UMP Test Platform. My vision for the UMP Test Platform is a web client where I can upload JSON or other formatted data to update/expand on unit/terrain/faction abilities and effects without having to build and re-build, just iterate like a mutha. But I am sensible to what the tech leads at a studio will advise.
So assuming I get in bed with this or that studio, we’ll need to:
Define the depth and breadth of data to iterate on
Come up with a format and platform that makes sense for playtesting and managing
Come up with playtesters! Find them, corral them, incentivize them!
Can the 1st iteration of the Test Platform come to life in 45 days? In 60? Can we have enough live bodies to commit time to testing? Can we have a playable alpha with meaningful experiences to test?
It’s 500 days later and I am once again champing at the bit, eager to finish getting started!