Elium - Prison Escape, combat preview video

[Chosker]

Hello,

I'm here today to show a small preview of my game, Elium - Prison Escape.
I'm a long-time 3D artist and for years I tried making my own game, but lack of programmers kept setting me back. around 3.5 years ago I moved to UDK and started over, but this time I started learning how to program it myself.
Months of work convinced me to commit to it as a solo project. Countless hours of work later (which rewarded me a full-time games dev job) and a few down-to-earth decisions to cut it down, I feel it's getting ready to open it up

Why here?
I'm a longtime M&B fan even if I'm not active in this community and I only play rarely anymore (certainly waiting for M&BII). M&B was my first inspiration as to how swordfighting should be done right in a game, and the controls in my game are quite similar (WASD, 4 attack directions via mouse movement, aiming, etc).

Elium - Prison Escape is a single player action game featuring intense combat (M&B-like), about escaping a [randomly generated] prison dungeon. By force or by stealth.


anyway let's jump to the action

here's the latest video showcasing a very recent status of the combat gameplay. HD is available
sadly it doesn't showcase bodypart dismemberment (deaths were not very lethal), or dodging (I completely forgot to do it, AI doding is being worked on)

and a non-gameplay teaser intro (not so recent):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y2l9HDilvI

screenshots can be found in my IndieDB page:
http://www.indiedb.com/games/elium-prison-escape/images


let me know what you think

 

[TheFlyingFishy]

Very interesting concept. When I play the Elder Scrolls games, I always dream about getting arrested and performing massive prison breaks. Combat looks like it has potential, too. I'll keep my eye on this. Good luck!

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Very interesting! Any details you can share about the combat mechanics and how they differ from those of Warband?

 

[Chosker]

glad you guys like it

Papa Lazarou: I could go on and on about it, but here's the main differences:

1. The pace is slower. strafing and walking backwards are slower and in general the movement is slower (no chasing around). Feinting isn't nearly as fast either, which gets rid of this crazy rate of fenting on top of other faints found in warband's multiplayer. There's other small additions like ministuns and going out of balance (from parries, hits, failed hits, or pushes). In general these make the combat feel more strategic.

2. Stamina. every action takes up some of your stamina (which regenerates constantly). at low stamina the time you're stunned/outofbalance increases. at zero stamina you become exhausted (stunned) and can only parry.

3. Secondary attacks. block/parry has been moved to the Middle Mouse Button. the Right Mouse Button serves for secondary attacks based on the weapon or whatever is equipped at the secondary hand. at the moment I only have onehanded swords which make the secondary attacks be pommel hits and such. for unarmed it will mean dual-handed fist fighting. for dual weilding it would mean having the 4 attacks also for the secondary hand. for using a shield it would mean using it as a weapon.
however I haven't decided how many weapons there'll be in the final game, because it involves quite some time and effort.

There's also some more visual flair like animation differentiation for the 4 main attacks if you're counterattacking (attack after parrying the enemy) or doing a followup attack (attack after the enemy parried you), body part dismemberment, and very accurate sword collision representations (for hitting and parrying)

And some other minor gameplay/controls changes like, the player cannot jump when in combat, and there's a dodge move usable by touble-tapping a movement key.

 

[Chosker]

hello, me again

Last month I ran a small internal beta to try and test the combat, and now I'm ready to do a second round of testing.
However the last time it was with friends and coworkers, for the most part not true fans of this genre. So this time I'd like a few M&B players.

Interested? let me know

 

[Scully]

Does it have chamber blocks tho? Most important feature 2014.

 

[Chosker]

I'm new to the concept of chamber blocking, as I've never played M&B competitively (played a lot of the first M&B but only a little warband and very little multiplayer, where I'm a less-than-average player).
reading into it and watching a few videos, it seems that chamber blocking is about 'countering' a feint with a swing attack before the enemy can actually attack after the feint. or in other words, attacking before your enemy after he does a feint. is that correct?

thing is, in Elium the enemies cannot feint. the player can do it but it's single-player only and the AI enemies cannot do it, and I'm unsure if I should add this feature.
the thing is the game will be hard enough already, since the player has to survive against a bunch of guards (one by one, sometimes in small groups) and the player cannot heal himself (only after passing through a whole level). so the player needs some advantages against the enemies (which gets justified by communicating that the player's character is a master swordsman who only fights regular guards)

since I haven't tested it with players more used to this genre, I don't know yet how much harder I can make it.
and this is why I'm looking for testers around here

 

[Scully]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9jHcZjWw9U&feature=player_detailpage#t=124

It's not about making the game harder. Chamber blocks enable you to attack and defend in one skilful move. It breaks the monotony of attack-defend-attack-defend, almost turn based combat system and makes fights much more fluid. It can also be used to counter feints, that's true.

I can help test if you want.

 

[Chosker]

oooh this video is more clear and informative than the ones I saw before.

I can already see the benefits. first is it would add depth and an extra layer of complexity for the more experienced players, which sounds rewarding.
and second how it would break the monotony of attack-defend-attack-defend like you say, which is something that my game is suffering a little from (at the moment it requires a kick, dodge or offhand attack to break it).
best of all, the code implementation seems quite easy

I think the challenging part will be making it look convincing. the way I see it in M&B half the times it lacks visual feedback, as many times you don't see the swords colliding/rebounding at all and if it weren't for the sound it might even be confusing ("why did my strike not hit?")


thanks for the input. I'll get back to you in a few days once I get the next beta ready

 

[user1324865215]

I'd be happy to test as well.

 

[Chosker]

check your PM's

 

[Slawtering]

Id love to test as well, it seems a very interesting game. The UDKness reminds me of this: http://www.indiedb.com/games/gladiators-of-the-arena-gota

 

[Chosker]

cool, check your PM

I know about GOTA, in fact I chat with the lead dev every now and then and he joined my beta as a tester too. I've also tested GOTA, did you try it yourself?
so, like me he based the basics of his combat system off of M&B's, but that's about where the similarities end.

Elium's combat has a somehat slower pace and factors like movement, distance and body balance play an important role. aiming is also more crucial (we both have locational damage, but GOTA doesn't have an aiming crosshair for melee)
in terms of combat flow Elium is much more about a back and forth exchange of attacks and parries and breaking that exchange, while GOTA seems to have more of an arcadeish 'who hits first' sort of flow. all because the combat in Elium is much more deadly and unforgiving (taking 2 hits can kill you)
both being single-player games make the AI quite important. while I know GOTA's AI is still underdeveloped, the combat behavior of Elium's AI is more of a cautious and calculating fighter as opposed to GOTA's fearless "let's fight to the death" behavior.

the whole thing just feels very different when you play them. it's just a different approach to the swordfighting genre

 

[Slawtering]

I played it around Christmas time. The Roman theme interested me as well as the likeness to M&B.

Currently downloading this atm, just got in from college.

 

[Chosker]

to all the testers: I just put up a new build, so make sure you visit my forums to try it out.

for those testers that haven't made it yet: here's a friendly reminder to go check it out!

 

[TheFlyingFishy]

You're letting testers on? I'd be happy to play around and give input, if that's still being offered.

 

[Chosker]

sure, since most of the others never showed up

check your PM

 

[Suspect-Device]

I'd love to try this as well if you need some more people.

 

[Chosker]

sure, if you think you'll have time to both play and give feedback. I tried sending you a PM but got this:
User 'Suspect-Device' has blocked your personal message.


for now that'd be all testers btw

 

[Suspect-Device]

Strange, seems like my settings we on 'Buddies and Admins only' for messages.

Do please try again, I've changed the settings now.

I'll have time to play and give feedback, don't worry about that!