The Kickstarter Thread

[Lord of Lost Socks]

Heya!

Melee: Battlegrounds has just launched their kickstarter campaign, and I'd be happy if you guys would pop over for a look. Melee: Battlegrounds is a multiplayer-focused medieval combat game similar to Mount&Blade, War of the Roses and Chivalry. The game will feature large-scale medieval battles with over 200 players per server.

The game is being developed by a new studio that previously worked on a mod for Mount&Blade: Warband called cRPG. cRPG has consistently been one of the best and most popular multiplayer mods for M&B: Warband. Melee: Battlegrounds has been in development for two years and kicked in to high gear with a larger team last year. I'll post a brief summary of the games features below, although if you want more information and to see the kickstarter video you'll have to go to the Kickstarter page:

Combat:
The game features a similar, but further developed, combat system to that of Mount&Blade with a 360 degree combat system, weapon collision and other things like kick, nudge and shieldbash.

[YOUTUBE]

[/YOUTUBE]

The combat is 100% skill-based where the only reason you die is because someone outplayed you.

Equipment:

What differentiates cRPG from the M&B: Warband is the persistant nature of your character. In cRPG as in Melee: Battlegrounds you will be able to buy better gear, gear that looks different and create your own unique character and style. Everything from horse archery to heavy landsknecht to lightly armored spearman is possible all with their own drawbacks and advantages. Armor makes you more resistant, but slower and fighting against a more skilled lightly armored guy will get you killed. There is no right way to play.



The game will feature siege equipment as well for sieges, in the form of ladders, catapults and siege towers.

Game modes:
 

Battle
No respawns - one life only, while facing 100 or more enemies together with your team. It’s tense.

Conquest
Attack and hold tactical points of interest to win this game.

Duel
Practice, Ranks or Bets - Measure your skills one vs one, or set up group vs group duels. This is the ideal gamemode to hone your skills in and get feedback from other players.

Siege
Use the available siege equipment to assault a castle and conquer it by taking over sections of it. Maps will typically feature multiple stages as the battle progresses, and attackers will be able to assault multiple sections at a time, improving the replayability.

Stronghold
In Stronghold we are bringing in elements from the RTS genre - build and design fortifications and castles to protect your team, while holding resource points to allow your team access to advanced weapons, armors and horses. Rounds are typically longer in this mode, and offer great variety due to team decisions and choice of strategy.
 

Modding:

The team come from a background of modders and they are therefore supporting modding as much as possible. Here's what is said on the kickstarter page:

We come from a modder’s background. For us moddability is not just something nice to have, it’s something we fully embrace. That’s why we intend on working very closely with the modding community and making sure as little as possible is hardcoded in our engine. The SDK is based on the C# Language (implemented via Mono) and super easy to code with. All game mode related code will be released to the modding community which means you can either adapt, tweak, or change our code or do the whole thing from scratch. If you shold run into any limits with the engine, talk to us, we’ll listen and do whatever is possible within our means. We know how tedious it can be having to work around small simple problems by applying huge hacks, so we’ve designed the engine to be as easy to modify as possible without making you code the basics from scratch.


Want to code the killer bunny from Monty Python? No problem! A dual-axe wielding laser shooting viking on jetpacks? Easy! A full blown strategy game, a dragon riding game, a medieval farming simulator, a physics based golf game, a mage duel competition, literally anything you can think of, you can mod it.


We plan to release the SDK for everyone together with the alpha release.
 

If this sounds like your thing, I'd be thrilled if you could go over to their kickstarter page and check it out. They've put a ton of work into this. They are asking for a relatively modest 130 000$.

Progress on the game so far:



If you have any more questions, feel free to ask me, or you can even ask the developers themselves at their irc chat: http://webchat.quakenet.org/?channels=melee
There's usually someone around who can answer the question if the developers are busy.

 

[Lord of Lost Socks]

Here's the kickstarter video aswell. Was just uploaded on youtube, so couldn't add it earlier. Pardon my double-post, I can't seem to edit anymore.

 

[babaganoosh13]

 

I demand the return of text parsers.

I grew up on Sierra On-Line, so I have lots of very fond memories of text parser driven games and even I don't think I'd want to play a text parser driven adventure game right now. 

 

Nothing was more frustrating at times than trying to figure out the correct word for something. Especially in the AGI games that didn't pause.

 

 

As much as nostalgia tugs at my heart and I love retro and all, I was not pleased when I saw the old skool verb interface.  That is one aspect of old skool Lucas Games point & clicks I most definitely do not miss.  Probably not a deal breaker, but it's a definite minus in my book.  Still, I really don't want them to microwave that hamster.

 

 

Yeah, I prefer P&C with icons myself.

[Keyrock]

Looks like we're getting a Shadowrun Returns follow up!

 

[ShadySands]

^I liked it then unliked it just so I could like it again

[Labadal]

I will most probably back again.

[Starwars]

Will definitely back this! Dragonfall was *amazing*.

[rjshae]

They should call it... Shadowrun Forever.

 

To be followed by Shadowrun & the Worm Catcher. (Wyrm Catcher?)

Edited December 16, 2014 by rjshae

[ShadySands]

Yeah, Shadowrun Returns returns to Kickstarter to kickstart a return to Shadowrun 

[Bos_hybrid]

A little disappointing that they need to kickstart another title. Would of hoped that they sold enough to make more without it.

 

Still I'll be backing this straight away,

[rjshae]

A little disappointing that they need to kickstart another title. Would of hoped that they sold enough to make more without it.

 

Still I'll be backing this straight away,

 

I never understood this sentiment. Ideally, I like to see Kickstarting cRPG titles be all about independence from big house publisher control; it does not need to be about making a self-sustaining series. If it does make them self-sustaining, then great. But if it doesn't: so what? You'll still end up with a game that you want.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Looks like we're getting a Shadowrun Returns follow up!

 

While that's good news, I'd prefer to do PayPal or IndieGoGo.

[Keyrock]

 

Looks like we're getting a Shadowrun Returns follow up!

 

While that's good news, I'd prefer to do PayPal or IndieGoGo.

 

They'll probably allow PayPal pledges once they hit their initial goal.  If I remember correctly, they did so last time.

[Labadal]

 

Looks like we're getting a Shadowrun Returns follow up!

 

While that's good news, I'd prefer to do PayPal or IndieGoGo.

 

I'm going to use PayPal. I won't pay directly via Kickstarter.

[Nordicus]

Strength of The SWORD 3, a tough 3D brawler/fighting game hybrid on PS3, has a Kickstarter for an improved and extended Windows/Mac/Linux version

 

Strength of The SWORD ULTIMATE

 

Edited February 11, 2015 by Nordicus

[JFSOCC]

Will definitely back this! Dragonfall was *amazing*.

Am I the only one who thought dead man's switch was better?

The number of clichés and tropes in Dragonfall was appalling.

[Oner]

 

Will definitely back this! Dragonfall was *amazing*.

Am I the only one who thought dead man's switch was better?

The number of clichés and tropes in Dragonfall was appalling.

 

DMS is full of corny detective story clichés you know. I'm replaying it right now and it's even worse than I remember.

[Althernai]

I'm going to use PayPal. I won't pay directly via Kickstarter.

I can't pay directly via Kickstarter. They switched to some new system which doesn't take Discover (which is what I used to pay via Amazon) at all and my VISA is also declined (it has never failed me anywhere else before). I don't understand why they can't use a normal payment system.

[Elerond]

 

I'm going to use PayPal. I won't pay directly via Kickstarter.

I can't pay directly via Kickstarter. They switched to some new system which doesn't take Discover (which is what I used to pay via Amazon) at all and my VISA is also declined (it has never failed me anywhere else before). I don't understand why they can't use a normal payment system.

 

 

I have same problem and I have my prejudices against their new service provider. But this change in their service means that I will not fund anymore projects via KS at least until their service again accepts my credit cards.

[JFSOCC]

 

 

Will definitely back this! Dragonfall was *amazing*.

Am I the only one who thought dead man's switch was better?

The number of clichés and tropes in Dragonfall was appalling.

 

DMS is full of corny detective story clichés you know. I'm replaying it right now and it's even worse than I remember.

 

sure but the characters were not nearly as mary sue

[CoM_Solaufein]

Closed for post limit.

 

Continued here http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/70574-the-kickstarter-thread/