Shattered Age

Game Type: Multi-Map ORPG
Players: 2-10
Multiplayer: Yes
Creators: ThePlacidOne, Timeling

Progress: [||||||||||]

Screenshots:
Rolling System:
Inventory Preview:

This has been a little project of ours for a few months, originally it was just a collection of systems we've developed, which feature:

• Rolling System
  Allows players to roll on items that drop off enemies, allows multi-item capability.
• Item System
  Almost completely trigger-based, the item system allows players to equip up to 11 items to their hero, unequip them, and more. Uses triggers to emulate the effects of the items.
• Interactive System
  Includes many small systems such as: The damage system which uses the hero's equipped weapon for damage and is completely triggered, the armor system which allows a max armor amount of 15000 and is entirely unique, the spell system which includes resistances, spell damage, healing incriments, and many spell-movement systems, the stat system which sports new stats recieved from items and gained over time from your hero such as Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Wisdom, and Spirit.
• Combat system
  Functions like World of Warcraft, allowing the hero to either be In Combat or Out of Combat, works with resistances and spells.

We're going to be using these systems and more that we develop to build an ORPG called Shattered Age, which will be many different maps of three types, Campaign, Dungeon, and Battleground. All will be wrapped up into one giant ORPG that can be built upon continuously.

The storyline will take place in a land called Argal, completely ravaged by war and famine, corrupted by demons, beasts, and evil-doers. You play as heroes attempting to cleanse the land of it's evil and rebuild the broken kingdoms that reside in the land.

The Level system, not mentioned above will be completely unique, and fully triggered. It will sport three different types of 'leveling', first, the normal experience based leveling called Experience ranking, this is gained from killing enemies, turning in quests, and much more, then the Standing ranking, which levels up from defeating bosses, completing quests, and doing special services. The third type is the War ranking, you raise this rank by defeating enemies in battlegrounds, and in PVE wars. All three rankings are woven into a major rank, which is openly displayed.

The max level to the Experience ranking is 80, the max level to the Standing ranking is 40, and the max level to the War ranking is 24. The following is a list of what the ranks do for players:

Experience Ranking: Is required for all items, spells and abilities, and to enter zones and dungeons. (Extra: If you are too high for specific campaign and dungeon maps you cannot engage in battle or recieve loot, this can be disabled by a vote and will severely lower gain in all ranks for other players.)
Standing Ranking: Is required for some items, to enter some zones and dungeons, and to start quests. (Extra: Allows many specific events to take place, and allows many new encounters. At max rank, players become Royalty and have access to everything npc's can offer, and can enter specific areas.)
War Ranking: Is required for some items, to enter specific battlegrounds, and to start and participate in many different wars. (Extra: At max rank, players are able to completely command armies, and control the flow of battles.)


1/7/07 - Classes and Spell Systems
The classes are now chosen, and are as follows:

Fighter - Functions much like a warrior, but much less defence oriented.
Disciple - Spellcaster that fuses the flow of magic and the power of light.
Summoner - Spellcaster that uses many deceptive and destructive abilities.
Monk - Trained warrior that uses dicipline and focus to bolster it's strength.
Ranger - Stealthy and tricky class that uses it's smarts and ranged weaponry.
Naturalist - Attuned to the wild, Naturalists wield the many fascets of nature.
Weaver - Spellcaster that specializes in arcane magic and chaotic energies.

Apart from finalizing the classes, the spell system is now in the works. Its going to function as a combo system, combining different abilities to perform many unique skills. Heres an example:

The buttons for your hero will look like this

X X X X
X E B F
1 2 3 C
E - Equipment
B - Cycle backwards through your abilities.
F - Cycle fowards through your abilities.
1,2,3 - Your 3 displayed abilities.
C - Execute your cast

Lets say 1 is Frost Bolt, 2 is Blizzard, and 3 is Frost Armor
Your hero could simply to cast any of these abilities, press 1 2 or 3 and execute the order, casting it. But if you wanted to combine 2 of the abilities, you could press, lets say, 1 and 3 and execute the cast, which in turn would cast Shiver Armor. The 3 abilities on the page can function with eachother, but if you cycle through your other abilities they would not fuse.

Each hero will have 3 types of abilities, lets say for our example the fighter has Offensive, Technical, and Defensive types, if he pressed the third ability and used F(Cycle foward through the abilities) it would go on to a new defensive ability. This allows an unlimited amount of spells/abilities to be used for your hero.

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Thats all I have to update now, just know we're still working on this map as hard as we can. :)

Very interesting.

Progress so far?

As progress shows, the systems I discribed in the upper portion of my post are what we have done, once we're done expanding on them and finishing the other systems we'll have an alpha of our game engine and continue on with the rest of the game.

Few questions:

1. How many abilities will each class have?
2. What kind of character customization will be available other than items in terms of being able to customize your character's abilities and such (I don't mean aesthetically)?


Well, it sounds similar to what many people have envisoned and tried to create (not saying this in a bad way, because it's a good idea if it can be finished). I know I've attempted one very similar to this in the past, but it was just too long of a project for me. So, if you're able to finish it, then great, but too many of these massive ORPG projects fail very quickly. Soo good luck =p.

As for abilities, we're still trying to figure out everything for this, but I plan to have many different abilities for each class, but thats to choose from, heroes will only be able to use 6 abilities at once. Apart from actual abilities, players will be able to choose a "spec" for their hero, available at a certain level and upgradable, which will increase the functionality of multiple abilities of one type, such as frost spells on a mage.

As for keeping it going... Me and Timeling are taking it easy making this, and having fun so we have no reason to call it quits. And we want to see this project done, it'll be a blast to play.

there sure are a lot of world of warcraft influences i see! :O

How about attachments? Will that work with your equipmentsystem?

how highres do you want to go? many imported models? or mostly ingame ones?

We're still considering attachments, but leaving the decision for later.

We're going to be using alot of sfx models, such as jetfanginferno's models, and maybe a few creature models for special encounters. Along with my answer to Aray, if we do use attachments, those models will be included. We're generally going to try to keep our imports downsized because we're using a very large amount of icons, and the map size itself without imports is already large.

Nub, of course, I love WoW. :) (Go IMP)

Seems pretty interesting insofar. Can't wait to see this finished, now that I've started playing War3 again.

Updated the original thread with the classes and spell system. :)

1/7/07