Indie Game 'Tempest' Aims for Co-Op Treasure Hunting!

[Thagarr]

It seems we have some more competition in the sailing game development scene, a group of student developers is working on a new game called Tempest! The game has been in development for about four months, and they recently setup an IndieDB page to act as a devblog. According to the description on their IndieDB page, the game is an open world co-operative treasure hunt game. Players will work together to sail a ship in the pursuit of treasure! From everything I have read, and the videos I have watched, they are not going for any real historical accuracy, not that that is necessarily a bad thing, just an observation. The game is set loosely some where between 1600 -1800.

Players must work together in order to make their ship perform actions such as unfurling sails in order to speed up, dropping anchor in order to stop, and using the ship's wheel in order to steer. Island locations, loot location and probability will all be randomised, so as to keep the game unpredictable and replayable.

The dev team currently consists of 7 people, and the game is being developed on Cryengine 3 for Windows. At the moment they are currently focusing on getting single player working, then plan to transition in to multi-player once everything is in place. Here is a look at some of what they have so far as far as ship combat testing. They have quite a bit of work to do still, but so far it is looking pretty good!

Crew member spawning :

A bit of a glimpse of the fighting system :

You can check out more videos over on one of the developers channel on Youtube HERE and HERE! You can also see more videos and see a lot of screen shots from the game on their IndieDB page! Thanks to @Wedori for pointing this out, and to @Pieter Boelen for giving me the heads up.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Where'd they get their ships, I wonder? And especially their character models!
We could put those to good use....

 

[Thagarr]

According to what I have read, they created them themselves. Pretty impressive!

 

[PapaDooks]

not too sure about there cannon firing though. i can't remember reading too much about age of sail ships using RPG's

 

[Flannery]

First of all its exciting to see more Pirate games on the horizon I like the trend ;-)

And this will be interesting to follow and see where it ends. I am at least pretty sure I will end up playing it if it reaches a launch

I wish them the best of luck in their journey!

 

[Captain Murphy]

I can speak from experience that making a cannon fire a custom projectile in CryEngine is a pain in the ass. I used RPG's for a couple months until I could figure that whole disaster of a system out. I hope it works out for them but I can already tell that they will have a few fun issues to work through. Our old CE source code is still available on Github if they want to raid that for some cannon code.

https://github.com/PiratesAhoy/HeartsOfOakSDK

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I can speak from experience that making a cannon fire a custom projectile in CryEngine is a pain in the ass. I used RPG's for a couple months until I could figure that whole disaster of a system out. I hope it works out for them but I can already tell that they will have a few fun issues to work through. Our old CE source code is still available on Github if they want to raid that for some cannon code.

Maybe we should contact them and let them know? Might as well give them a hand.

Would be especially nice if we could use at least one of their character models in return.

 

[Captain Murphy]

That repository also has a bunch of other assets in it, including older versions of cannons, the Hoy, and the Albans. I can't recall if that version has working cannon door animations or not, but I bet it does. It also has the ship buoyancy code in there too which might be helpful for them.

 

[Thagarr]

These posts help to express my favorite parts of Indie game development, you mates are awesome! You would never see this type of discussion in the open from the big game developers.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So @Captain Murphy, do you think we should contact them and offer them the use of our old CE stuff?
And what does @Wedori think, beause of course the St. Albans is his model. And who made the Hoy again?

Do you think a character model made for CE can be adapted to work in Unity?

 

[Captain Murphy]

@Pieter Boelen, no reason not to contact them and at least offer them the repository, they may find something they can use in there.

If the model is rigged like a normal skeleton then we can use it easily, we just need the FBX version instead of the CE version. Both systems use a very similar skeleton rigging and movement structure so there shouldn't be any reason we wouldn't be able to share the assets.

@Wedori would have to comment on the sharing of the models but it is the specific CE version on there and not the base file so there really isn't a lot they can do with it outside of CE. It also appears the textures needed to skin the models in the pack are also up there. If I remember correctly it should be a fully functioning version of the game.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I just sent a message to them on IndieDB.

 

[Wedori]

My opinion is: They pimp up the CE char. It isnt a own one. Thats the thing I read. And personal I share nothing. I write with the people, give my tipps, point out our problems but I think they didnt take my help seriously.
I guess that we cant get back any char in reason of its the CEs one and this one you can downlad here: http://docs.cryengine.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1310812

 

[TheCerbis]

Looks good! But personally I think that Hearts of Oak will be better...

 

[Captain Murphy]

It does have the same body type as the CE character, so it is probably just a couple of addons slapped on the outside of the same model. The game type itself is very similar to BlackWake and looks like they kinda followed their concept outline.

 

[Wedori]

@Captain Murphy, thats what I said. The link to the model is in my reply. Its avalable on CEs HP.

 

[Captain Murphy]

@Wedori, yeah I was just agreeing with you.

Looks good! But personally I think that Hearts of Oak will be better...

Well they are different game types. This one looks more like BlackWake with their game type. I see some serious problems in their video with stress tests. If they are hitting some hiccups at that point with only 4 ships in the scene I am concerned they will have a lot harder time later. I think my record was around 760 ships on a scene, but my buoyancy script was a lot lighter weight than the one used in the vehicle script, which I think is what they are using.

 

[TheCerbis]

Yup, I can see the differences. They will have to work a lot on optimization... BlackWake is some Kickstarter project, right?

 

[Jackseno]

Hey everyone, Jackson here. I'm the team lead for Tempest and it's pretty amazing that you guys are even talking about us over here. Hopefully I can address some of the questions raised already!

Character Models

I have indeed used the default Cryguy for our current character models, I've done my best to dress him up in the character editor but they remain placeholder at best. I'm sensing Hearts of Oak doesn't have a character artist, and we're exactly the same. Luckily from a design and playtesting standpoint the default character more than suits our needs, as he's already rigged up with the backlog of Cryengine animations behind him. (Josh is currently sat behind me getting our NPCs to vault through windows and scale rocks)

Blackwake

I saw this one a while back when they got posted about on Rock Paper Shotgun.

I dig their project but outside of the fact that our project has been in planning a great deal longer than our actual development, I feel like our games are significantly different design wise. With the recent work we've been putting in to cannons and ship sinking, it might seem like we're going for a Guns of Icarus style shoot 'em up game. And while we do want ships to fight each other under certain conditions, it should be stressed that what we're going for with Tempest is a much more relaxed and laid back experience, where navigation, exploration, and journeying is the focus. We're getting this combat stuff done at the moment though simply because it would feel too jarring to encounter the navy or some pirates and not be able to fight them. (We're hoping to not expressly brand the players as pirates, more like treasure hunters or explorers, but more importantly we want the player to decide what they are and how they will go about acquiring their wealth)

The Stress Test Video

Just feel like I should address the way this scene was set up. Zack rigged up each ship with an AI for each cannon, as well as a decorative AI for each cannon, along with more AI placed on decks. Most of which was never even seen. This setup exceeds (or at least should exceed) the actual setups we will have in-game, where ships will man their cannons, and only have a certain amount of characters on their deck, mostly for fighting the player when/if they board. In addition, we plan to have our A.I ships start far away from each other in the world and begin navigating. The odds of four of them coming together for a fight like this is actually very low.

Where'd they get their ships, I wonder?

Made them myself! I'm by no means an expert modeller, I've only got around a years self-taught experience at best, so they're absolutely not to the same standards as Hearts of Oak, but they work for us, so we'll keep using them for now. =)

First of all its exciting to see more Pirate games on the horizon I like the trend ;-)

And this will be interesting to follow and see where it ends. I am at least pretty sure I will end up playing it if it reaches a launch

I wish them the best of luck in their journey!

Thanks!

Hope all this helps clear some things up. If anyone has any questions about our development or our team, just send me a PM here or on Indie. Thanks again.

Jackson