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Thread: Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)

  1. #1

    Default Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)



    November 19th, a new indie game development studio, Donkey Crew, launched a Kickstarter campaign for PC game "Melee: Battlegrounds" - the spiritual successor to the popular Mount & Blade Warband mod cRPG. MBG is a First and Third Person view Medieval Action-RPG with strategy elements such as real time base building and social interaction including property ownership.


    Meet hundreds of other players on epic medieval battlegrounds. Control your warrior in Third or First Person View, battling it out in a reaction-based combat system. Various game modes for different playstyles ensure that there's something for you: duel, round-based teambattles, castle assault, competitions and a huge sandbox where both teams build castles on the fly and conquer those to seize territory control.

    • Medieval combat - The combat is intense, direct and personal. Every player brings their own style to the battlefield. Try to anticipate your foes’ actions – outmaneuver, outplay or outsmart them! The 360° attack/block system makes combat easy to learn, but impossible to master - there will always be something new to learn.
      Customize your character - There are no perfect weapons - you will have to figure out which one fits your playstyle the most. There are no predefined classes - pick whichever combination keeps you above ground and your foes six feet under.
      Upgrade your skills - Earn experience on the Battlegrounds. Unlock skills that allow you to enhance your fighting style and give you an advantage in combat. Use a clever combination of skills to strengthen your playstyle.
      Build Castles - Construct your own fortifications and castles with your team. Make sure you allocate your resources wisely, because building is only half of the fun...
      Use Siege Engines - The other half is wrecking them again. Take full control over Catapults, Trebuchets, Battering Rams, Siege Shields, Siege Towers, Ladders, Ballistas, Tunneling and a few crazy things you’ve probably never seen before. They sure were creative back then to get from point A to point B, especially with point B being walled in.
      Experience Massive Battles - The game can feature battles with over 200 players fighting against each other at the same time. Are you a lone wolf, or will you use the advantage of working as a team?
      Fight, Die, Learn - You will die – a lot. It’s part of the experience, so get used to it. A few of you may be gifted, but most will have to practice to become a renowned Battleground Warrior.







    The bread and butter of Melee is combat. It's our number one priority – if the combat isn't good the game isn't good, and we want the game to be awesome!

    First of all, physics! We've based the entire hit detection system on physics allowing for a very natural combat system where weapons can connect at any time during a swing.

    The combat is very intuitive – easy to comprehend, but hard to master. You control your input with your mouse: flick to the right and your attack would go to the right, flick lower left and you'd perform a move at that angle. This is true for all 360 degrees. We believe this provides a very natural and fluid feel to the combat, and gives the player unrestricted freedom of movement.

    Apart from that there will be many special moves to surprise your enemy – kick, nudge and shieldbash, to name a few and they all come with specific strengths and weaknesses.



    Team work is not just a buzzword for us, it is a fundamental part of the game. No matter how good you are at fighting, you will need to work with your team to survive. We want to promote that in every fashion. You can form groups within a server which enables options for performing various commands such as formations, directed by the group leader, to enhance teamplay by creating features where two or more players can work together.


    What you can see in the video is our own, homemade engine. It was specifically designed and is still being optimized to do exactly what we need: large medieval battles. Due to the close proximity nature of Melee combat, we have found ways to optimize the netcode so it supports more than 200 players on one server.

    Minimum requirements for MBG:
    • Dual Core CPU
      Directx10 or 11 capable graphic card
      4GB RAM





    There will be a huge assortment of both weapons and armors available, enough to allow everyone to properly distinguish themselves on the battlefield. Look like a peasant, a knight, a commoner, or something entirely different.
    Looks aren’t everything though. Wearing lighter armor results in faster movement but lower protection. There's always a trade-off and no perfect combination, so go for whichever way you find most fun or most effective in combat.

    • Weapons - A variety of different weapons will be available in the game, allowing for you to truly specialize in many different forms of fighting, from using weapons with a shield or without, there'll be hundreds of different items ranging from swords to polearms, axes, maces, hammers, spears and more. Hammers and maces are more effective against heavier armored opponents, spears have good direct piercing damage and polearms are all-round good weapons, especially against those wielding a shield.

      Siege equipment - Various siege equipment will be available in different game modes. From siege towers to battering rams, catapults and trebuchets, there'll be plenty of fun to tinker with for those who desire the life of a siege engineer. A frequent question we receive “is the siege equipment pre-placed or pre-scripted?” No, none of it is. It’s up to you to decide where and how to use them most efficiently.




    We are the team behind the "cRPG" Mod, a Multiplayer Modification for Mount& & Blade Warband. chadz started working on it in 2010, and then more and more players joined him in developing the mod. For the last four years we have taken care of the mod and I think it’s fair to say we not only took care of the community, but that we are a part of it.

    Now we are 17 people working on the game and while we might not be famous we certainly have the will, dedication and spirit to achieve something we all know requires sacrifice. We've been truly giving it everything in the last two years, working whenever we've been able to outside jobs. Some even made the ultimate sacrifice of moving back in with their parents to save additional funds! For us, this is not just a project, this is the dream game we want to play ourselves.
    "Everything you can see in the Kickstarter video is the result of hard, hard work over the last two years. This was all achieved with a budget of 45.000$ - money that the cRPG community invested into this project in January 2013! Those funds were used to develop the engine, all models, animations, sounds, gameplay, and pretty much everything you see." - Florian Hofreither, Creator and Project Lead.

    A heavy amount of work on the homemade engine has been performed which currently features movie making and modding, including real time cloud based features where two or more people can work together simultaneously when creating a map.

    "Lots of stuff needs work, but the foundation is there – now it’s a matter of iteration and improvement. For that, we need to move to one place, get an office, and work together full time as a team. Working remotely only works for some time - at some point, you need to interact heavily and tie all ends together. We are at this point now and need your support!" - Florian.

    Melee: Battlegrounds is scheduled to enter Alpha stage March 2015.
    Last edited by Zimke_Zlovoljni; 12-02-2014 at 19:24.

  2. #2

    Default Re: Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)

    Game looks good. Im interested in giving it a shot. Are you guys going to do a buy in for alpha or a free alpha?
    Tho' I've belted you an' flayed you,
    By the livin' Gawd that made you,
    You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
    Quote Originally Posted by North Korea
    It is our military's traditional response to quell provocative actions with a merciless thunderbolt.

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  3. #3

    Default Re: Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)

    If you want to get your hands on the game earlier, 25$ pledges and above are fastest way. We will enter Beta Testing by November 2015.


    I just want to note, this is pre-alpha stage, lot of work needs to be done, especially on animation, I know they look bad at the moment, 360 degrees fight system is really dependent on animations (especially because weapons and characters are treated like physical objects) and that will be our top priority in the months to come.


    We worked on our engine almost two years straight, and finished it just two months before. When our graphic coder finished and implemented Physical Based Rendering (that's what Marmoset2 uses) it was a rush to convert all our textures into that system, last two months was hardest working months all around. But modders will appreciate that, because now Marmoset2 can be used for approximation of in-game looks.
    When we release the game, I will be holding meetings with modders to help them out in all things texturing related. Never mind the fact we are releasing our game, I'm still a modder and I want people to modd the hell out of it, basically we will release SDK and everything will be accessible and achievable, something I always wanted to see in a game, all the tools and code handed out to modders.



    I know everyone likes eyecandies, so here are ingame screenshots and concept art
    Last edited by Zimke_Zlovoljni; 11-29-2014 at 18:59.

  4. #4

    Default Re: Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)

    The game does indeed look a little rough but it also looks like it will be a blast. A couple questions if you don't mind.

    1) The castle building part of the game. The video said it was automated to a point. What's the control players have over the castles and their building process? Are there set layouts for the whole castle and you can choose which one you want? Is it a fully customized setup process on a grid?

    2) This is from the CRPG team, are we going to see the time investment that CRPG ask for to rank up? I.e: My first character took roughly 30~ hours to reach a rank where retiring was actually going to give me something. Or that going from level 30 to 31 is the same time it takes to go from 1 to 30.
    Tho' I've belted you an' flayed you,
    By the livin' Gawd that made you,
    You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
    Quote Originally Posted by North Korea
    It is our military's traditional response to quell provocative actions with a merciless thunderbolt.

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  5. #5

    Default Re: Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)

    It is very rough, all the stuff you see in video is made in two months after engine was finished. So everything is really rough and lot of things need to be tweaked, adjusted, improved, but it's a good sign that we can deliver the game, since two months for all that work sounds impossible, an yet we did it, so many sleepless nights, oh man...

    Now, regarding questions:

    1) In this game mode we are mixing medieval strategy game with third/first person fighting game so play-testing will be very important into making this as good as possible. But for now it works like this:

    Part of a team will start making the Base with the resources available around them, but those resources will run out eventually, so the other part of the team is meanwhile conquering areas with resources needed for building.

    On places where they find lot of resources they can build a small outpost using parts from wagons they drove themselves with (oh yes, that part of team will be driving around the map in search of resources with wagons), for better protection of the resource rich area. With enough resources gathered, they will make new wagons and start driving back the resources with the help of AI (no need to force anyone into doing tedious stuff like that). Few guys can drive along in wagon if they see fit, so they can defend it if enemy team discovers your route and ambush/raid it, steal resources of course.
    With resources now in base, you can build (or upgrade) objects of need, stables for acquiring horses, blacksmith for getting better weapons and armors, houses for reducing time of respawn, palisades (which can be upgraded to walls, gates to gatehouse).

    At one point resources run out and it's really up to team what strategy will they use and when will they attack enemies once they discover their main base.

    There are no set layouts, it's really up to players how will they organize the base, so it's fully customized, just choose what you want to build, choose how will you place it, and with enough resources in stock it automatically builds a desire object/part/upgrade.



    2) Oh It will be much faster then that, cRPG requires a lot of time to reach levels, so that will be avoided, less grinding more fun.



    Gotta admit, we do not have advertising skills, we are programmers, artists, but not PR personas, so I and the rest of guys really rely on you folks to spread the word out about our project, any kind of help is honestly appreciated!
    Last edited by Zimke_Zlovoljni; 11-30-2014 at 05:46.

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  6. #6

    Default Re: Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)

    I'd start with a link to your KS page, especially as your prices are quite good compared to similar start ups

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  7. #7

    Default Re: Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)

    First image is linked, but you are right, better to put it under it as well, thanks Ja'chyra :)

  8. #8

    Default Re: Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)

    Combat update is out, check it while it's hot :)

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects.../posts/1068690

  9. #9

    Default Re: Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)

    I backed the KS campaign, good luck with the game.

    Some more info on the sandbox mode would be good though.

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  10. #10
    In the shadows... Member Vuk's Avatar
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    Default Re: Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)

    I like what I see very much. I will definitely be supporting your efforts in the near future and letting all my friends know about this. This is exactly the type of game that a whole lot of people have been hungering for.
    Hammer, anvil, forge and fire, chase away The Hoofed Liar. Roof and doorway, block and beam, chase The Trickster from our dreams.
    Vigilance is our shield, that protects us from our squalid past. Knowledge is our weapon, with which we carve a path to an enlightened future.

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  11. #11

    Default Re: Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)

    Thank you Ja'chyra and thank you Vuk :3

    Ja'chyra, we're preparing few updates, I'll post them up here in comments as soon they are out :)

    edit: Meanwhile, something for the giggles, that's me in the pink hat there :3

    Last edited by Zimke_Zlovoljni; 12-06-2014 at 06:36.

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  12. #12
    In the shadows... Member Vuk's Avatar
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    Default Re: Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)

    I have supported your project and really hope you are able to get the other backers in time.
    Hammer, anvil, forge and fire, chase away The Hoofed Liar. Roof and doorway, block and beam, chase The Trickster from our dreams.
    Vigilance is our shield, that protects us from our squalid past. Knowledge is our weapon, with which we carve a path to an enlightened future.

    Everything you need to know about Kadagar_AV:
    Quote Originally Posted by Kadagar_AV View Post
    In a racial conflict I'd have no problem popping off some negroes.

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  13. #13

    Default Re: Melee: Battlegrounds (Official by developer)

    Thanks Vuk ;) And we came to the last 24 hours of kickstarter.

    https://imgur.com/gallery/hvsHv/

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