Featured Game: Epic

Page: 1 2
ID:844940
 
Jul 1 2012, 4:18 am

Epic

by Yut Put



EpicEpic lives up to its name as a grand adventure. Featuring simple but engaging gameplay reminiscent of the early Zelda games mixed with role-playing elements and a plethora of content that just keeps coming, it stands out from most other action adventure games on BYOND. Yut Put handled most of the programming along with utilizing several of Forum_account's libraries (Pixel Movement, HUD Groups, and Map Instancing).

Along with the programming, Yut Put also handled drawing the art assets for the game. They're very nice and consistent and help set the atmosphere for the game.

The numerous dungeons and other levels were designed by Yut Put, Blazekid, and D-Cire. The enthralling music came from the wonderful site Incompetech which features a whole host of royalty-free music.

The game is primarily single player, though you can party with up to three other people as well if you fancy. On a hosted server, if you opt not to party with others you'll receive your own instance of a dungeon.

If you're interested in being competitive, your progress is logged on the scoreboard showing your level, class, and race.

Having spoke to Yut Put, he said that new content is certainly on the way along with new methods of combat to enhance player customization. One of the intriguing things he mentioned was an upcoming Java launcher for Epic.

Screenshots


EpicEpicEpicEpic
EpicEpicEpicEpic
[Click to expand the screenshots in a new window.]

Videos



Jul 1 2012, 6:09 am
Epic is a great game, I've found myself playing it for well over an hour straight after first downloading it. I hope many other people download it and enjoy it just as much as I did. (:
Jul 1 2012, 7:22 am
I think these featured games need a bit more publicity than a simple post on the forums, because most people who are on the forums already know of Epic.
Jul 1 2012, 10:05 am
In response to Albro1
Epic is definitely a fun game. I applaud Yut Put for continuously providing great updates.

Albro1 wrote:
I think these featured games need a bit more publicity than a simple post on the forums, because most people who are on the forums already know of Epic.

I agree. Perhaps the games page could show the featured game of the month with a short write up at the top of the page. Something as small as this could also motivate developers.

Jul 1 2012, 10:07 am
It's not like that section of the pager gets used for anything anyway. ;)
Jul 1 2012, 10:09 am
Alchemist was on BYOND's Facebook page.

Not that anyone really cares what goes on with BYOND's Facebook page, except for a couple important people.
Jul 1 2012, 10:10 am
It was, and I don't think it really helped increase the player-base any. This definitely needs to be in a better place than where it is now.
Jul 1 2012, 11:22 am
The problem really isn't that BYONDers can't find this topic or that they don't see the Facebook posts, it's that you're advertising to a saturated audience who are already here playing the types of games that they want to play. Even a giant flashing pop up ad for featured games in the pager wouldn't change anything.

The only way to get a meaningful bump is to advertise outside of BYOND.
Jul 1 2012, 11:43 am
In response to Silk Games
Silk Games wrote:
The only way to get a meaningful bump is to advertise outside of BYOND.

This. I think perhaps some are intimidated by doing this, because it requires looking at something a lot of people have very little experience with (Advertisement). Along with the fact that some developers have very little if any web-development experience.

I'd really urge you to try, though, Yut Put. The excersize is also a learning one, in that seeking to advertise your game makes you question how others will look at it, and that gives you a vastly different perspective than how to appeal to those already at BYOND, and your usual playerbase / yourself. Your game will probably become better as a result, and you might pitch yourself some extra players.

All you have to lose is a little time ;) Any missing web experience can, these days, be covered by just using a blog, or a simple website, or a CMS system with highly customizable skins and similar.
Jul 1 2012, 12:40 pm
On the subject of having this appear in more places on BYOND: We requested being able to show the features off in different places (namely the front page for games) so hopefully that'll happen.

ACWraith posted about the last one on Facebook and Twitter and I'm sure he'll do the same for this one as well. From the angle of advertising the game to outside audiences though, I'm not sure if I personally should be doing that because it isn't my place to speak for other developers.
Jul 1 2012, 3:38 pm
BYOND tries to be a game-playing community but it's really a game development community. People who like your game will come from outside the community. Showing your game to the BYOND community is still worthwhile - it gets you opinions from other game developers, but it's not meant to get you fans. The sooner we realize that BYOND is a game development community and not a game-playing community, the better.

It's good to have these posts but I think we already knew about Epic. I don't keep up with games so if I knew about it, you should have too! It'd be nice to see some posts from the BYOND staff here so they realize what people are trying to do with BYOND and have some idea of how to better improve BYOND.
Jul 1 2012, 4:08 pm
In response to Forum_account
Forum_account wrote:
It's good to have these posts but I think we already knew about Epic. I don't keep up with games so if I knew about it, you should have too!

True! But I think the idea of these posts being stickied at the top of the BYOND Discussion thread is to attract the attention of people that are just poking around the site to see what it's all about. Mr. Joe Schmo who hasn't even made an account yet can see all these pretty screenshots and say "Yeah, I'd like to try that."

I know that is a small demographic of people that read the forums. There probably isn't a lot of that kind of traffic, but every little bit helps. I know Yut has mentioned advertising outside of BYOND for his game, Epic, but I also kinda remember him saying something on the lines of (loose quote here) "When the game is where I want it to be I will do some advertising" or something like that.

I, on the other hand, love these posts. LordAndrew has a way with words and is quite good at posting these sorts of things. They're very informative and are always well-written.

.screw wrote:
I agree. Perhaps the games page could show the featured game of the month with a short write up at the top of the page. Something as small as this could also motivate developers.

We've discussed this in the BYOND Moderators' forum section. Lige brought the idea up as well as the ability for certain people (perhaps moderators, perhaps not) having the ability to "Review" these games so the Featured Game of the Month would appear at the top right of the games' page with pretty border and such for all to see. Hopefully this gets done.

Jul 1 2012, 10:31 pm
I don't see Epic as a game that I would join if I saw outside BYOND. Just saying.
Jul 2 2012, 5:00 am
In response to Yusuke13
Yusuke13 wrote:
True! But I think the idea of these posts being stickied at the top of the BYOND Discussion thread is to attract the attention of people that are just poking around the site to see what it's all about. Mr. Joe Schmo who hasn't even made an account yet can see all these pretty screenshots and say "Yeah, I'd like to try that."

Remember, those people who are poking around are game developers. It's good to show examples of what can be made with BYOND but that information should be easier to find than searching the forum. The site moved to this "let's treat everything as a forum" model but that doesn't always make sense.

What'd be more useful to potential users who want to dig around is if BYOND gave blogs to developers. If a potential developer could read Yut Put's blog posts about Epic's development, people could get a clear idea of how games are developed using BYOND - what BYOND does for you, how quickly you can get things up and running, what kinds of problems you'll run into, etc.
Jul 2 2012, 8:49 am
In response to Forum_account
Forum_account wrote:
Yusuke13 wrote:
True! But I think the idea of these posts being stickied at the top of the BYOND Discussion thread is to attract the attention of people that are just poking around the site to see what it's all about. Mr. Joe Schmo who hasn't even made an account yet can see all these pretty screenshots and say "Yeah, I'd like to try that."

Remember, those people who are poking around are game developers. It's good to show examples of what can be made with BYOND but that information should be easier to find than searching the forum. The site moved to this "let's treat everything as a forum" model but that doesn't always make sense.

What'd be more useful to potential users who want to dig around is if BYOND gave blogs to developers. If a potential developer could read Yut Put's blog posts about Epic's development, people could get a clear idea of how games are developed using BYOND - what BYOND does for you, how quickly you can get things up and running, what kinds of problems you'll run into, etc.

When I was here last year browsing around(was thinking about coming back, but got to busy again) there was developer blogs. I don't understand why those were removed, as they were a neat feature only members could have. I was confused when I came back last week and clicking on my "view site" no longer had my blog there.. So reimplementing these and just adding a "featured game" listed and colored on the front page of the games list would help alot and motivate more people to subscribe/develop. I think the site also used to list the featured games when it had those "guilds" for various categories.

Needless to say I was a little disappointed at the removement of those features, now we just get to post our games in the "Games Update" section on a forum that most players don't visit. Most players only visit forums if they have a problem with BYOND or they are developers. Then the hub if it gets published. However the only change I do like is the move from that "tree" forums to a more modern more readable forum, so keep this forum and bring back those features :P.
Jul 2 2012, 10:48 am
In response to MaGicBush
MaGicBush wrote:
Needless to say I was a little disappointed at the removement of those features, now we just get to post our games in the "Games Update" section on a forum that most players don't visit.

Those posts also get crossposted to the main games page (on the right). The developer blogs really didn't get that much traffic.

One thing we can easily do is reinstate the featured game box and put the game of the month in there. We could probably have it crosspost to the pager news section too.
Jul 2 2012, 1:48 pm
In response to LordAndrew
LordAndrew wrote:
ACWraith posted about the last one on Facebook and Twitter and I'm sure he'll do the same for this one as well. From the angle of advertising the game to outside audiences though, I'm not sure if I personally should be doing that because it isn't my place to speak for other developers.

The Twitter is automated, but I'll get a Facebook link and a photo up this week. I just wanted to get a Blue Comp reminder up first because it's not often that another community invites BYOND developers to participate. =)
Jul 3 2012, 8:21 am
In response to Tom
Tom wrote:
MaGicBush wrote:
Needless to say I was a little disappointed at the removement of those features, now we just get to post our games in the "Games Update" section on a forum that most players don't visit.

Those posts also get crossposted to the main games page (on the right). The developer blogs really didn't get that much traffic.

One thing we can easily do is reinstate the featured game box and put the game of the month in there. We could probably have it crosspost to the pager news section too.

Oh hah, didn't notice the recent post spot on the games list for some reason. Good to know :D. But yea the game of the month box + pager would be a great addition.

Jul 3 2012, 2:32 pm
I think the blogs added something to the site, but they caused a lot of problems and ultimately, weren't worth maintaining.
Jul 3 2012, 2:35 pm
Cloud Magic wrote:
People loved blogs. Then suddenly when the discussion of removing blogs was introduced, everyone went all hive-mind and jumped on the bandwagon. I wonder if any of you out there now regret influencing this decision.

I think it was more about getting rid of the members front page than the blogs themselves. I've been on that particular bandwagon since 2005.

The issue was all the jockeying for position at the top of the members page, and the ability people had to troll other users so publicly. Really I think the blogs should have been preserved and developers could have just linked to them from their hubs or off site.

But the forums work fine too. If people want to run a blog there are all sorts of sites to do that at. *shrug*
Page: 1 2