After talking over on the team and with advice from others it has been decided the KS will launch June 23rd which will mean we will not be running the campaign and trying to compete scrabbling for coverage during E3 when the news will be flooded with news coming out of E3, the first week of a kickstarter are very important and it can make or break a projects chance of being funded and we need all the coverage we can get from sites once we launch..
As of now everything is in place and we are reaching out to media sites and those helping us with getting word out and doing news posting on prepping for the 23rd when we go live, while we are waiting for the 23rd we will be doing media buildup going into the launch.
Disciples Of The Storm is a spirtualy inspired reboot of gameplay style of the old Netstorm islands at war but under a new IP and game world, but using the fast paced gameplay mechanics of bridging, island capturing and offering up your enemies to the gods.
For further information we invite any one interested to drop by our FB community group for sneak peeks of units and things we will be unveiling as we launch the kickstarter.
Shloobe I hope you will help us spread the word the more people we can get helping to recommend and spread word about the project the more it will help us reach our funding goal..
btw following launch we will start to release the first looks at designs for
Rain faction Ice Golem Shrine / replacement of the old outpost model Altar: new altar design.
I'd be careful using that swirly thingy as your O. Heroes has the same thing. I don't know if Blizzard would get all poopy about it but I'd make sure you don't step on any toes.
I don't understand why you decided to brand it a way that it's so similar to HOTS
On June 09 2015 13:55 Psyonic_Reaver wrote: I'd be careful using that swirly thingy as your O. Heroes has the same thing. I don't know if Blizzard would get all poopy about it but I'd make sure you don't step on any toes.
When we had switched to DOTS it was before HOTS was announced. We chose disciples of the storm due to the game being focused heavily around warring priests disciples of the gods, also the old game our gameplay was inspired by was Net Storm which all units in the game are focused around the powers founds in a storm, wind, rain, thunder ect so we picked Disciples of the storm was chosen as best way to give homage to the old game as we were creating a new game world.
That is one of the reasons for the kickstarter is for getting the funds needed for content production and terrain adjustment terrain textures and shaders and world deco meshes to spice the world map up and make it more full of life.
The kickstarter currently has raised 1k in backing so far.
And still the KS is missing so much.... Why is there no release schedule? Judging from what is shown, you are very far from release. How are your plans for monetization? What release prize segment are we looking at? Subscription required? Minitransactions? What are your plans with the game past the release? How many persons are working in your studio. If less then 5, why are they not properly introduced, including their past experience. You mostly mention your "supporters", but who is really doing the work? Any of those are working full time on it? I doubt it, considering you said it was unpaid. Will this change, if the KS gets funded? Also what progress has been really made? From what is shown, it is difficult to spot major differences between what you showed 5 years ago, what you showed last year, and what you are presenting now. I'm sure there is progress, but the general state of the game seems to be the same.
With all those points, how are 100k (50k from the KS + 50k from your insider) are gonna change that? How far is it gonna get you? What exactly is it used for? External contract work? Pay for some full time coder, who is only doing it part time for now?
As much as I would love a netstorm successor... This KS fails to convince me, and I supported other KS of small selfmade devteams before, but they gave out way more relevant information and explained well, who they were at what ppl are donating for.
Last year we had no faction designs of our own to show or models or concepts, we only had one basic wind temple concept sketch Morgan Ogburn had done up and not even a finished model of that temple that we showed at the time along with glimpses of our older test build of NS2 we showed brief glimpses of..
Since the last kickstarter we got together a little funding out of my own pocket and a little backing and managed to get a number of the rain faction units done up in both concept and model form and in-game with the following units that we wanted to show in both concept and model form and some of the world decoration meshes done.
ice cannon rain generator ice tower block acid barricade rain spawn pool for rain faction air drifter wind temple Rain workshop
To be shown on kickstarter in following days Shrine Altar Rain golem
The modelling team from Polywick studios who has been working with us on the concept work and modeling as listed on the kickstarter is an independent art studio that has been working being paid out of my own pocket, the coder who runs Longshot Studios that has been working with us again being paid out of my pocket on developing the core system for DOTS has between last year while our content production on the art concepts and assets was going was working on Torment: Tides of Numenera over at inXile Entertainment has on the side been doing code cleanup and bug fixes and he is handling the updating of the code base to unity5 for DOTS.
How far is dots to a playable build?
We have a working core system, we are not starting from scratch trying to code everything from the ground we also have networking and multiplayer joining and hosting for people to join in games in our test server implemented but currently the lobby is very sparse and there are some bugs we are working out on the lobby, we also still only have temp art for the battle ring and mp lobby at moment which the kickstarter will be covering the cost of the new art for the guis in the online lobby.
systems that have been implemented and working in-game at moment
Resource system: collection of resources from mana pools and drop off at temple or nearest shrine
Power system: and ranges power classes for generators and their ranges
Bridge placement system and handle of bridge section and bridge erosion overtime, bridge cracking and breakaway from power generator meltdowns.
Priest capture and carry ability for resource collectors
Unit pathing and navigation integrated also into the bridge system.
Priest Sacrifice: altar sacrifice now working with ritual for each spot of altar.
Building placement and construction
Last year we got a number of comments from people on sites that we went into to much talk and detail about people on the team and did not show any content to show art direction and how it would be moving towards, we tried to give the teams coverage in the team inspiration and vision section while not having things turn into a wall of text. also we had gotten comments that the video last year was to long so we tried this time to keep it shorter and showed off the art concept and direction of the rain faction..
one kickstarter expert we consulted with told us it was better to keep it short and answer questions and comments as people posted them.
If you look at the priest we had in our build last year he looked like this
This is what our two priests look like now
Second wind priest style
Both of these priest styles are setup to use the planned clothing system for the priest customization in MP to allow players to buy new outfits and hats and styles for their priest to wear.
The 50k we are attempting to raise will be put towards the production of finalizing of the remaining factions buildings and units for Rain, Thunder, Wind, Sun and production of the new gui art for in-game, we have posted some samples of on the kickstarter of some of the new gui and lobby elements that will be done by Polywick that already has some concepts that we have been working on but we are waiting on the funds to start production on those assets, Polywick has a team of 8 artists.. Longshot Studios at that point will be working on getting the new gui elements and models implemented and readying for release on steam so people can start testing in MP in a working lobby as we outlined our aim is to get initial release with working MP and lobby system so people can start testing and playing, but the priest customization and single player elements would not be in initial releases..
We are currently readying to do an update on the kickstarter to start to showcase the following new assets.
Shrine: newly models and finished replacement of the finished Altar: the new Altar design and its model Rain Golem: the new rain faction Ice golem resource collector.
In regards to monitory side we are aiming to get the initial stable playable build up on steam so we can start to get a trickle of income from sales to continue improving on DOTS, while the game is free to play after initial purchase while one does not have to buy outfits for ones priest to play the game its more a vanity option, we see the priest customization and styles option as a away to generate further income on the side from players that want to make their priest look how they want instead of the generic priest styles that will ship with the game. we don't like pay to play or pay to win games but we see the ability have priests look how you want them look as a reasonable go between of supporting the game and continue to have income coming in to continue expanding the game.