Scriber36

I might agree, but you missed one crucial fact. The whole Adventure Mode to be implemented on top of the VS Engine has started BECAUSE Hytale was cancelled, and VS devs decided to offer Hytale devs a platform to keep their vision alive. Hence saying "Keep Hytale devs away." undermines the whole point of Adventure Mode. It is NOT supposed to be a Vintage Story thing. It's the same engine, but a completely separate project. For all intents and purposes, even if legally not said so, yes, Adventure Mode is basically Hytale given one more chance by VS devs (at least that's what I see). You might have realized this by rejecting to think about this further. You seem to hate everything this whole thread is about, and this idea of the VS devs. In the meantime, it seem you fear Vintage Story and Hytale would somehow merge into some unholy emulgeation. But they won't. We got reassured, that Vintage Story continues its path as intended, loyal to its original design, style, gameplay, etc. This Adventure Mode would merely reuse the engine of VS. As such, "Hytale devs" would likely also work on the engine, or at least get deeply familiar with it; but I can hardly imagine they would not contribute to it code-wise. (I'm a software dev.) But even if they do, that does not hurt VS. The engine being more capable is a good thing. And if "Hytale devs" would add some very Hytale-ish feature to the engine, VS is not forced at all to use it in any shape or form. If you'd like Hytale 2.0, then you'd like Adventure Mode imo. From the player perspective, there is absolutely zero differences between the two. Maybe Hytale 2.0 sounds more strictly loyal to the original Hytale concepts, while Adventure Mode is a bit more free to explore other options (especially if the IP license is owned by Riot). But they are kinda the same thing. Why would you care what engine will Hytale 2 run on? And also a fun fact: Vintage Story is already a Hytale fork. The original developer of Vintage Story WAS a Hytale developer. Hence saying keep away Hytale devs from Vintage Story is as absurd as it gets. No offence, just trying to shed some light on the background and context you might have missed. I know this 2nd project on top of VS Engine swirled lots of opinions and emotions. Let's hope devs will be wise enough to make the best of it – and most importantly for us VS players, it keeps VS intact. But since we have promises that VS keeps being VS and progresses onwards with the same speed, I'm not worried at all. EDIT: Also, Hytale devs were passionate and did lots of progress. The Hytale trailer shows that. It was mostly mismanagement in my opinion, that killed Hytale; especially rewriting the engine in C++. That was a rather stupid idea. But since the engine is done here already, it's a different scenario. Also, Hytale's philosophy was to release when done all. VS has a very different philosophy, as we all play its Early Access now. If Adventure Mode would begin being developed, it would follow VS's development strategy with an existing game engine; I'm not worried, that they would fail to realize a very fun game rather quickly.

One thing coming to mind is organizing community competitions with clear goal and rewards to steer the creativity and keep it colorful and fresh. E.g. "make the best story map about being a castaway" or "enter a gothic castle to rescue someone abducted by the forces of evil" etc. Then community would nominate their works, and would also vote on maps within that category. Like game of the year competitions and community game awards on Steam, determined through voting. Ingame rewards would motivate players to create maps and maybe also get rewards for casting votes. Talking about Steam and truly brilliant contributions... on Steam there are users doing professional reviews suggesting games. They go by the name of curators maybe? I guess they are volunteers too. Making categories for players to search by would also give more space and prevent popular maps to overtake everything. The "mountains of crap" issue would need attention indeed. Maybe dungeons could be verified by a moderator team from volunteering fans, and until verification, they can be found, but would clealy be indicated as unverified, and hence everyone would know it's by high chance just crap; and most player would browse only the verified maps/dungons by default. But maybe this starts to feel a bit too much of a hussle? Does not Minecraft have something like this for its Bedrock Edition, an ingame shop of maps? TL;DR: Have user-made content built-in categories and competitions with voting? Maybe volunteers to verify submitted maps, or curators doing professional reviews finding and highlighing gems?

I was thinking more of a rather limited area of the map being shared. Maybe letting the client(s) procedurally generate the surrounding area if a natural environment is needed. Having a floating island castle dungeon or generating the rest of the world procedurally would take a few MB in size to download, I assume. What would need a high end mod is what @Echo Weaver mentioned about this: to make it easily accessible to players without manual file sharing (e.g. ingame catalog/portal to access the dungeons) and to connect worlds oganically; so I can find a badass dungeon, invite you, you join me, we beat the dungeon and return to our worlds with the reward/treasure obtained in the dungeon. Without an explicit support for this, it would take much effort to set up this session for us and it wouldn't feel part of the world. The mod would give continuality, using your already existing character, doing everything within the running game from selecting the dungeon to finishing it. Or if we use such organic portals from personal world, we could build portals to connect our worlds. You could enter my world anytime through that portal when I'm also playing that world of mine. That'd be quite cool imo.

As of 1, whatever constitudes to RPG is irrelevant to this thread. I've specifically gave you a definition regarding my post, but it's pointless to hunt for a precise universal definition. Go Google it. Being RPG has evolved over time in gaming, and today people think of many features initially was not part of its definition. Maybe think of table-top RPGs and you will get close to what I mean by RPG. But again, pinpointing it here is pointless. As of 2, you are incorrect. I specifically mentioned which ones are from Hytale. Go and read the Hytale blogposts, I won't offer you citations for everything for no reason. As @Echo Weaver said, it's not even important which ideas are from Hytale and which are not. If you don't know Hytale, why do you care? And if you were to know Hytale, you would not ask. If you are interested in it and even reject my direct answers to you, then don't be lazy, go get familiar with Hytale yourself. This thread is not about what Hytale was specified and advertized as. I don't want to seem unkind, but this conversation adds no value here anymore. Stop policing around. I've already mentioned there is nothing wrong with having ideas not universally understood in every detail. We just conceptualize here. Again, if someone is curious how I imagined certain aspects, can ask. Please accept this and move on from demanding explanations already given. Thank you.

Please read through my comment, I've went into explaining my take on RPG for your sake, because you've asked. I've literally wrote paragraphs on it, unless I write a complete specification of a game, I cannot make it much less abstract. If everyone has a slightly different concrete image about the game after reading my ideas, that's completely okay. This is the conceptualization phase, not specification making. Of course, you do you. If you get familiar with Hytale, you will know which ideas are from it. I've just followed YT videos and Blog posts and have my idea of Hytale from there. But as I've mentioned, being high-fantasy, the owned worlds with easy player invite, procedurally generated content, dungeons with reward treasure, dungeon portals, species colonies/interactions and player-made adventure editing with much modding capabilities are the core concepts borrowed from Hytale. Progression system and NPC companions are not. I hope I've provided all answers/info you missed. Have a nice day!

@CastIronFabric My ideas could have been too vague at places, too abstract for you and not a refined specification, but so be it. I don't see the problem. I've explicitly outlined what high-level concepts I like of Hytale. If you don't know Hytale features, why complain you don't see similarities with it? Actually I had a second comment addressing exactly what I derived from Hytale vision, e.g. its worlds and dungeon system. It's not supposed to be a 1-to-1 list with Hytale, I just borrow lots of ideas from the Hytale vision, so I've mentioned it as my core inspiration and that I'd like to see Adventure Mode going in that direction. About the "Fun Progression" section: I've merely mentioned VS because Adventure Mode will use the same engine, so obviously the potential of the VS engine is highly relevant. By RPG I've meant all what you've mentioned. Generally RPG today orients about leveling, quests, skills, lots of consumable items and gear, player choices, avatar customization, allowing both PvE and PvP: so players can progress and find various play-styles expressing their fantasy about their character (fulfilling the role-play label). The easiest to think about is MMORPG but without the MMO part. Games having Lore and being Story Focused does not make them RPG; it's like half of all existing games having story or lore. I find it pointless to discuss English grammar here, but undead is like a race, or seraphs, or bandits of Hytale, likely not their own species. I've heard "human race" many times, and I assume even if it's not biologically correct term, it's a widespread English term. I'm a software dev, I understand your urge to be correct and specific, but be at ease, haha. My goal was not being biologically correct about a fantasy world, nor to provide a refined specification, and not even to exactly specify which inspiration would look how exactly and like which existing game. My comment was long enough as-is. If someone is interested in how I imagine it in details, like the RPG part, then simply ask and don't complain I have not yet provided said details. Please try to be constructive and add value, ideas, inspiration. So about RPG... Hytale indeed had some questing aspect, but we never quite get much info on it. It was likely similar to what VS has now, going in the world, finding clues, then NPCs with dialogues giving us quests, e.g. to go find the portal to a Gaia temple, beat a corrupted golem there, examine the wall arts presenting the lore. Something along these lines. I've played MMORPG's a lot, yet I'm not quite interested in such high-level lore questing about cosmic baddies. I's find it more fun to have local areas of interest, have lore of a given town ruin by examining it, maybe helping an NPC settled there to figure it out, a bit Lovecraftian way. Visit a settlement of other races/species and help them collect resources, protect them, participate in their culture through quests. I've mentioned unlockable items giving the player pros and cons without tiering, as in Magicka. That's the progression I can imagine. Or that, but tiered a bit, like having Common, Rare, Epic items from dungeons; each having better advantages vs. disadvantages ratio. In VS armor makes you slower and hunger more, but for Adventure Mode I'm more thinking in term of magic aspects, power and weaknesses, not realistic disadvantages, e.g. wearing a fire mage robe makes your fire magic more powerful, but makes you take more damage from water magic, and less capable with water magic. For RPG aspect, I'd love to track the reputation of the player with factions/settlements, like if I'm kind with underwater dudes, they will like me, if I kill them, they will be hostile towards me. Maybe even allow the undead and other intelligent evil forces to like me at the cost of good forces excommunicating me for it. Gaining trust is a good immersive RPG progression. Skills for using certain weapons, fishing, etc? Yeah, I'd like it. Or talent points to spend. Everyone chooses what to excel at as a player and could focus on that. Having classes/professions as in MMORPG's is also an RPG thing, like whether you are a wizard or a warrior. In that regard I like how ArcheAge and Albion Online approaches it: just obtain the gear and weapons of the desired class you want to play and play it; it's not a choice when you start the game, but a dynamic ingame mechanic. Being a mage with a wand and a shield might not make much sense. But maybe it does for you. RPG's are such, allowing for great and also weird choices to try. I'd love this: going into a dungeon, finding a staff or magic tome and switching my sword for it to try playing a sorcerer for a while. That'd be quite Hytale-ish for me and I'd love to see this in Adventure Mode. I hope I've detailed enough in which directions my ideas go If not, feel free to ask more, and where you see holes or find it too abstract, try fill the holes for yourself, share it with us if you will. As I've said, these are ideas, brainstorming, not a specification, please don't handle it as such. Have a nice day!

The Hytale vision evolved over time, but what I saw is to be a more dynamic, high-fantasy, story-based spin on Minecraft. The central concept was to have worlds, each having its owner, its creator, akin to an all-powerful god to that world. This basically meant you have creative mode in the game; but they also said your friends can join your world. Which to me sounds like I click an invite button while playing, you click accept, and we play together in my world. Another specific concept they presented was dungeons. Dungeon portal was also in videos/arts. You enter the portal and visit a separate world, a dungeon, that is at least partially hand-crafted to tell the story of the game. This central goddess figure Gaia being missing, some other evil entity spreads corruption, etc... Portals on multiplayer servers could also lead to minigame worlds. If you are interested in details, you can read the Hytale Blogposts. They wanted to add both ordinary animal species and intelligent races, like goblins, each intelligent race with a society, behavior, architecture, background story, being involved in the Hytale lore. Modding and ingame editors were also central to Hytale, the same way Vintage Story implemented it; except Hytale was going to add more actual ingame modding and runtime modification of the game, reload on the fly. That's relevant to the adventure mode discussion in the sense, that if players were to craft their own dungeon worlds, they could customize it ingame to a great detail. VintageStory creative mode partially added its basics, but Hytale was to be even more free and embedded, setting skybox color for the hours of the day, having a schematics catalog for world editing, and even scripting mobs ingame. For me Hytale was a creative dream, a set of great ideas with some presented concepts, e.g. the trailer. But since Hytale never released, we don't know what exactly they made.

I quite liked the initial ideas of Hytale as depicted in the trailer and concept arts: band together, explore dungeons, face enemies there finding treasures, all set in a cozy high-fantasy setting. Our Own Worlds / Dungeons The "owned worlds" concept of Hytale: that everyone can create worlds and invite people over to it. VS has an "Open to LAN" option, this would be the same, but more robust with no network tweaking. Just say "Hey bro, I've made an epic dungeon last night, wanna try together?" or "Bro, I'e found an epic dungeon made by this guy online, let's join and beat that dungeon." For inspiration I mention 'Spore: Galactic Adventures' - it was an extension to a game named 'Spore' essentially adding story-driven quests to planets, which can be replayed multiple times. Think of World of Warcraft dungeons/raids, but user-made content. I'd love to build something epic, add a story to it, and open it for players to explore. Not as mods, or downloadable map, but as a core game feaure, like how in Portal 2 players can make maps, search and try them ingame without ever needing a web-browser or manual file download. These maps would spin up and live as long as players play it, then get destroyed when they exit. Maybe players could host it themselves, like how modern multiplayer games often select a host player and others join him automatically; and said world could be saved locally to continue later, even. Think of... a dungeon with skyblock, which you start with a friend and can come back to it again and again. Could be a VS server in the background, with mods, optionally limited map size, even. Emphasis on click-and-go setup vs. manual installed and configured VS servers, expressing and sharing creativity, and super easy coop experience. Like firing up the game with bro and saying "Would you like to replay that epic lava dragon dungeon today together? I wanna give it a go with daggers and a bow." Fun Progression As an adventure mode, I'd try to mix RPG elements with creativity, to make use of the potential VS provides. Completing certain objectives of dungeons could reward the player with some adventurer currency to use, maybe XP. That could be spent on fancy stuff, like making a sword glow, be in fire, or freeze enemies, or have a cool shape. Or have cool runes on the blade. I always like games where you are rewarded well and can decide which direction you progress, what you unlock next. I also loved how the game Magicka used progression items: they were not higher tiers or had more damage, but had unique and interesting effects, like giving +30% fire damage, but also giving +40% vulnureability to water at the same time. You could build your adventurer mage to reflect your playstyle by unlocking these, while interestingly not creating a power gap between players who played 1000 hours or just joined 5 minutes ago; yet it felt rewarding and fun to play. Conquering a Fantasy World I'd expect multiple races, like elves, dwarves, undead, golems, trolls/ogres, maybe some underwater races? The intelligent insect race of Hytale looked also fun to fight against if implemented well. I'd expect one or more infinite procedural world with random settlements, ruins, dungeons, maybe dungeon portals to procedurally generated replayable dungeons or user-made ones. It could be immerive to use portals like in the Stargate universe: not game UI to join instantly, but maybe play your own singleplayer map, build/find a portal, and use that to invite/visit the world of your friend, or a dungeon together. Would be cool to befriend NPC's which could live with you and accompany you on your adventures if no friend is available. Could even convert enemy units with magic or what not to follow you loyally. Wouldn't it be cool to attack enemies with a small army of undead following you until death? (Pun was accidental.) Not as efficient fighters as players, but still, a fun help. Or even, add parts to dungeons needing such companions, like doors only they can open, etc... It sounds fairly simple to implement and quite fun to play. You could name these NPC's or they could get a random nickname upon becoming your minions! Immersive World Generation I'd expect fantasy biomes like Hytale concept art realms. If I want to live in a vulcano, let me. If I want to role-play a vampire in a world of eternal night, give me such a place. Or better yet, allow me to build something that shrouds the surrounding area in night / darkness. If I want to live underwater, make me able to move in with the underwater race. Generate ordinary landscapes, but also fields of crystals, floating islands, huge desolate craters, mountains with abandoned dwarven mines, dragon caverns with the dragon(s) and treasure, outposts, mushroom forests, or places with giant trees! Make the terrain moody and versatile, so players can live their fantasy world. I could imagine players conquering and repurposing dungeons too; like if a dungeon is a floating island and nothing more, let me build my castle on it. Then the dungeon would no longer be replayable, but would become my awesome hidden-away base, accessible by a portal. Or maybe many portals? Why not? Summary All these would make a colorful, vivid world to play dynamically alone and/or together with others, build our own stuff, but also face procedurally generated challenges. We could get familiar with the same world(s) we play, but also make use of the progress we made along the way. It'd aim to allow high player agency, and everyone would find their play-style playing the same game, with multiple ways and options to play together; to conquer our own survival world, build a home or a replayable dungeon, or just go and play a 15 minutes dungeon when we have time for that, all this either alone or tohether. These are just my personal ideas, inspiration based on Hytale and what I personally would absolutely love to see in the voxel-game genre. Feel free to criticize, lift, reuse, or improve on my ideas. This is my first forum post, hehe. Cheers!