Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
General: Reroll: Survival RPG Team to Map the Entire World to Scale
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
PIXYUL, a new game development studio founded by Julien Cuny and Louis-Pierre Pharand, former producers and creative directors at Ubisoft, are working on a new survival RPG called "Reroll". To prepare for making the game, the team is seeking to map the world in 1:1 scale using drones. Don't believe it? Check out the video proof below and let us know what you think!
If you’d like to know more about what kind of game will actually take place on this digital recreation, they’ve got a page about that as well. From the little bit of (mock-up, it looks like) footage in the trailer above, it’s a top-down action RPG about foraging, fighting, crafting. Like Wasteland 2, but with a 24-hour day/night cycle and a planned system to sync the in-game weather to real weather, and also I guess with just huge stretches of space where it’ll be no fun to ever go or be. Like Hull. Imagine if you spawned in Hull.
Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Comments
Very ambitious, could be very interesting I definitely hope we'll hear more from them and it won't end up vapor.
We'll see. Every once in a while something is announced that promises a lot.
The good news is that there's no PvP, so it stands a chance if it is actually made.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
The point would be survival, as suggested by the title and what we've received so far.
No, he's right, there is no point.
Say the game does outrageously well, and it gets 1 million players. That's 0.014% of the population which doesn't cover very much of the land mass. The only reason you'll see another player is if they start you on the same place.
Any decent sized country (like France) would be more than large enough and give the players plenty of rural and urban environments.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
I was interested until he said....your character would be required to eat sleep and get exercise. In which case I assume a hunger meter and water meter which will go down all the time and eventually you will lose hit points.
So that means the game will be mostly a grinding game to find food and water with no real exploration or story to follow or missions....in other words I think watching paint dry or water boil will be more fun as I will actually be accomplishing something.
Sorry the concept of useless micro management makes me not want to play....the world being mapped to scale sounds neat.....but the micromanagement interfering with exploration or fighting or actually playing and having fun....just doesn't sit well with me.
Haha. LOL. My god...
I never heard more useless , lying and insane pitch for a MMO game (or any game)
Even if they manage to find enough money to travel to every place on earth. Brave the weather conditions , militias , pirates. And somehow they manage to make it in only one decade.
And dont get arrested like Bohemia developers of DayZ and Arma did , for military spying.
Even if , in some crazy reality they manage to do this.
Who will give a damn ? Except of "Oh neat" now lets see the gameplay ...
Yeah, lol ... not to mention world is all ready mapped with Google maps.
The known world is mapped, that has nothing to do with replicating it on a 1:1 scale, every incline, dip and contour of the world included. Plus google maps has alot of blank area's, e.g. canada, alaska, antartic, also google Sandy Island to for an example of how its not the be all and end all of world mapping.
I obviously know that.
But how much will it cost, if its even doable.
And how is this relevant to MMO gaming ?
so you are saying, this game will have roughly around 149 million km2 of land to explore?
and hell, even if this game manage to get 1,000,000 people online at the same time, this world still will be a fucking grave yard, you probably would even never meet a random player in a week time, unless you have set up a meeting point with your team mates
i call this impossible
So What Now?
I agree with Lobotomist, it will be exceedingly hard for them to pull this off. They will need both huge amounts of funding and others to do it for them or they're likely to get killed.
Aside from the environmental difficulties, you'll need visas for tons of diffirent countries, many of which are in huge states of turmoil.
How are you going to scan warzones or dense jungles filled with rival tribes and ethnic groups who are out on the warpath one square kilometer at a time? Take the Congo for example, I'd like to see them try.
At any rate, it will take them many many years to complete the project. Of course they might start off with a more limited world and grow afterward, but I didn't get a clear impression of gameplay at all. It looked like a top-down game to me (which begs the question how you're going to handle certain inaccessible places like ravines and aforementioned jungles).
Before they start asking for people's money they should really show us that their actual gameplay is also solid.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
That's stupid. The amount of time and money it would take to map just one state is ridiculous, not to mention in many areas they would need to get permission just to fly the drones without getting sued into non-existence. Google has already mapped out most of the planet with terrain information as well. So, I guess it's good that what they are really doing is mapping a few square kilometers with the initial funding money.
**
They are starting with a few square kilometers. The Earth has roughly 510 million square kilometers of surface area. Total land surface area is about 149 million square kilometers. The United States alone is 9.8 million square kilometers. Hawaii, slightly larger than Rhode Island has about 4,028 square kilometers. They are starting with a few square kilometers. The number of drones and fuel required to map out the land masses of the planet would be so immense, the cost to produce the game itself would be a teeny, tiny blip in comparison. This is a marketing blurb, to get people to invest in the game.
**
From this page on mapping drones: https://www.sensefly.com/
The drones can fly about a half hour, at a maximum rate of speed of about 7m/s. The max altitude is 4.5km. The largest area in their "samples" is 0.57 square kilometers. So half a kilometer per half hour of flight time, assuming each of the samples consisted of one flight means it would take roughly 4,000 hours to map Hawaii. So the better part of two years, working full time.
I just don't see this as a good use of time or money in developing a video game. There are faster ways of doing this, that probably yield results that are just as good. I say again, this is a marketing thing, not a realistic thing.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Ummm of course it is a grind, it is a survival game....
It sounds like they are going to be mapping out sections of the world and expanding outward.
The concept is cool.. but no way they are getting into north korea or iran. Fly a drone over Gitmo you might get a surprise vacation!
I do wish them luck.
Why does its relevance to MMO gaming even matter at this point? It's been explained again and again that the site is expanding to cover other types of online games and RPGs. Repeatedly complaining that a certain article doesn't relate to MMO gaming isn't going to change that fact, so get over it or find another site.
Anyway...
If I had to guess, they're not actually mapping the whole of Earth (at first), just a good sampling of its various biomes, and reference material for the graphic artists so certain things such as mountains can be rendered as realistically as possible. That 's the impression I got anyway.
It's an incredibly ambitious undertaking for sure, but if they can follow through it'll be one of the best game design achievements in the history of the industry.
As others have said though, I'm not plunking any cash down until I see some solid game play. A huge, near-realistic representation of Earth is awesome, but ultimately means jack squat if the game taking place on it is garbage.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
From the article, they are mapping a few square kilometers.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Have to agree with other comments, mapping the entire world is pretty pointless, the data it would take to construct such a world would take many terabytes if not more. This is more a marketing gimmick than anything else.
There are currently too many survival games in development, I wish them luck, but a lot of these games will die due to lack of enough players to keep them profitable.
if they can do it like they say......by adding BLOCKS over time it is doable over many years and might just keep players going for new "content" for many years.
IF they can get enough funds.....i doubt they will because all investors want there money back with profit and they want it NOW
This is just an assumption on your part. We don't know how rare food and water will be. It's very possible that it won't be very grindy at all. Also, to a lot of people having a reason to explore makes exploration that much more interesting/immersive.
I think it sounds quite interesting. As for people being rare why is that a bad thing?
Might be fun having a game where people actually have to band together and form a community but not really know what is going on on the other side of the "world". Also makes it easier for people to avoid each other.
Hmm they plain on using real time weather to determine weather in game.
Guess will have to see how this turns out.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Ummmmm, ok, but aren't the majority of areas in traditionally-sized MMO cities/areas barren? Apart from a few major hubs, things like starting areas are pretty low-traffic areas.
Nothing like walking for a week without seeing another person. Sign me up!
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
They would have to have a massively parallel system in place to do this. At one drone mapping one square kilometer per hour, which ignores the landing and take off times, fuel costs and human labor, it would take almost 5,000 years to map out just the United States. Given the phenomenal cost of the mapping, compared to the cost of game development, there is zero chance that they will map out any significant area in any great detail.
Unless they have some revolutionary mapping method that doesn't exist in the realm of professional drone mapping that is. Which is possible, I suppose, but then it seems like they could just sell that process and make all the money they needed to write a game.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.