Hello everyone!
It's been a long, long time since I posted here. I just wanted to say that I am a big fan of Dwarf Fortress and often check on updates and great stories from the community. DF has inspired me beyond anything else, with its depth and hidden beauty. Which brings me here today, to show you a project that I've been working on for a year now, partially inspired by ToadyOne's tireless dedication and attention to detail, mixed with a little sci-fi and over-the-top fighting for good measure.
Spicy!
Mostly, I am looking to see what the general reaction is toward the project so far and where it could do with the most attention. (And if anybody is actually interested in a game like this.) Feedback, criticism and outright laughter are all encouraged.
What is Psiforged?Think of it as a bit of a mash-up, inspired by StarWars, Xcom, Factorio, DragonBall, CRPG games and Dwarf Fortress' adventure mode, to an extent. Psiforged takes what I've considered some of the better aspects of several games and places them into a 2d pixel-art sandbox environment. You can choose to play the game single player, but the engine is designed to allow as many as 100 people to join and play simultaneously. You can choose from two races so far, Humans and Grey Aliens. The game includes a combat system and a fairly simple crafting system so far. The plan is to get it ready for Steam and possibly even a Kickstarter to gain additional funding for more/better sprites and sounds. (The game has no sounds! ;_;)
Combat is very heavily inspired by Dragonball, in that you use the raw strength, speed and power of your character to cause catastrophic damage to the area and your opponent using punches, kicks and various psionic attacks. You could, for example, if you're strong enough, punch someone so hard the air explodes with shockwaves and the very ground ruptures with furrows from the force of your blow. Meanwhile, your opponent flies away backwards from the force of the blow, sending dust and debris everywhere before slamming into and through several objects. Maybe this video will explain it better, hehe. -
https://streamable.com/nqmupThe tech system was inspired by games such as Factorio and Rimworld, in that you create a network of power lines before placing objects on top. Batteries store power where as solar panels and wind turbines charge them. You can then use the stored power to place automated drilling machines down to extract the Earth's resources. With all the resources you make from this, you can build other technological marvels to further enhance your character, like Gravity Machines and Regeneration Tanks. I feel that with such a system in place, there's a lot of potential to add some truly fun machines to the game in the future. Here's another video of the technology building in progress. -
https://streamable.com/p03q4Psiforged also offers a lot of customization as far as character builds go. Your character mostly makes use of their primary resource, which is simply psionic energy. With their energy, they can perform feats of near impossibility, such as using telekinesis to move objects around or surround themselves with enough energy to fly. Players can also discharge psionic plasma in the form of blasts of power, waves, orbs and beams. There are 7 primary attributes, Strength, Endurance, Resistance, Spirit, Agility, Accuracy and Reflexes and each one plays into the combat system and allows for varied play styles. Some players could go full strength and endurance with accuracy and become powerhouses who hit hard and absorb a lot of damage. Others could focus on agility and their reflexes, letting them nimbly avoid damage whilst swiftly dishing out their own.
Attributes can be raised in unique ways, not often found in most games. You can sit in the middle of a lightning storm and allow bolts of electricity to surge through your body, raising your Resistance, meditate in the cold north to raise your Endurance or weather the extremes of a gravity field whilst dead lifting heavy objects to increase your Strength. I plan to add more ways to train later too, that interact with the game world and don't feel abstract and disconnected from the main game too much like a mini game might.
Only a couple of NPC's have been added and finished. The way you interact with them and talk is very reminiscent of older games, such as Baldur's Gate and more recently, Divinity Original Sin 2. But I have plans to add villains within the game, to give players a goal and reason to become stronger, explore and interact with others. One thing that Dwarf Fortress taught me, is that procedural generation is both fun to create and fun to experience, so long as its done in a certain way. That's why I'd love for Psiforged to also have some elements of randomness, like Terraria perhaps, with meteor strikes, invasions and other strange otherworldly eldritch things.
The main goal will be to either defend Earth or exploit it, using your newfound psionic powers. Then further on in development, battle alien space pirates, natural events, rouge androids, demons and even the undead. The game is being developed in the less than reputable Byond engine. However, the last two years have been kind to this aging relic from many years ago and allowed some considerable features to be added that just wouldn't of worked before.
The LoreThe game lore is that the planet is experiencing a psionic awaken, where the sentient beings on a world reach a point where their minds evolve, or develop enough that their ambient brain waves are no longer harmless. And to some degree, dangerous to the environment and those nearby. Other, more developed, evolved or older beings from beyond the stars have noticed this and plan to raid, aid or interact with the people on the planet. They too have their own goals, such as exploit the chaos caused by this world-wide psionic event, or help guide the people to achieve a kind of cosmic inner peace that will lessen the effects of uncontrolled psychic power lashing across the globe.
Future PlansPsiforged will feature set locations, like villages, points of interest and places of power or resource rich locations and nodes. These areas will have special properties associated with them. For example, there might be a rich resource vein in one area, but a village sits on top. That's where the player gets to decide how they go about getting those resources, if they want them. They could simply wipe the village out with their godlike powers, but could end up suffering consequences from other NPC or factions and even damage the planet itself in the process.
Players will only be able to build drills on resource nodes in the final build of the game, helping prevent littering upon the map and giving certain locations strategic value and a reason for people to go exploring or exploiting. I'm not certain just yet how the building system could be best added in Psiforged, whether we could go for a set look for each species added to the game, with a customizable interior, or full player freedom to place "blocks" as they please, in the form of walls, floors and ceilings.
Balancing the responsibility of your power vs what you can do and what you should do, is going to be a big part of the game too. As it stands, there's a frame work for a pollution system. Create too many drills, and the planet starts to die, the trees wither, the weather becomes worse. Use your powers too freely without regard for anyone or anything else and much more dire consequences will follow, like terrible psionic storms rippling over the world or the ocean boiling up to name but a few. In the end, you can help defend the Earth from the psionic awakening and cushion the damage it might cause, or fully exploit it to your hearts content.
FAQQ - Does Psiforged have a static world with a set series of places to explore and opponents to defeat?A - Yes, Psiforged will have set locations to explore, consisting mainly of points of interest. The main villains will also be static too, but their henchmen may vary slightly.
Q - Can I play Psiforged in its current state?A - Psiforged is usually hosted every few weekends online for players to join and the client/exe files are available from
http://www.byond.com/games/DoughyOne/Psiforged when the servers are live.
Q - Will BYOND remain the engine used for this game?A - It's likely I will stick with Byond for this project. So far, it appears as though the engine can handle current and future plans and implements, but should that no longer be the case in the near future, I'd consider switching to GameMaker if needed.
Q - Will Psiforged run on Linux?A - Sadly, it will not. Due to technicial limitations within the engine, this is currently impossible. However, you will be able to host a multplayer Linux server for others who use Windows to join.
Extra InformationThank you for reading and feel free to leave feedback here or contact me on Discord at
https://discord.gg/JBgEC6CBelow you can find a series of videos both old and new that show off a few of the games systems.
https://streamable.com/fdio1https://streamable.com/55nq5https://streamable.com/tf5pohttps://streamable.com/na6ja