Daikatana II Feedback - What we have So Far...

[コービン]

Hello again everybody...
I'm here to once again gather supporters for Daikatana II, and to show everybody that we have been working on what we've been promising.
First of all, before you go haywire, let's get this straight: Chaos Software is producing the game and First-Person Interactive is developing it. We have no publisher.
Second, there are two games to this. Shadowcaster is the First-Person Shooter game that's about a man who was sent to a futuristic prison. He knows that there's a conspiracy going on in his home world. Sent to a dimension, named Hades, where cyborgs run rampant without a form of government, he must escape and uncover the conspiracy of a corporation. The game, being a true FPS, will not have many RPG elements, except for maybe offering a machine a cup of oil to battle on your side. We want it to be what the first Daikatana game was, sans RPG. That means that most of the weapons are back, all of the old tricks and doohickeys of the first game will be present in Shadowcaster.
Third, Soul Edge is the other sequel to Daikatana. It takes place on a fantasy world inhabited by many creatures. You play as Kyra, a girl out on a quest for revenge. Teamed up with her dragon friend Zael and her brother Scion, the three must battle their ways through a large-scale world where the weirdest things are bound to happen. In this game, we've introduced new Battle Systems, like the Elemental System, where Fire, Earth, Wind, and Water play a serious part in the way battles are fought. Along with this, we have the standard Magic/Experience system made popular with Diablo and a standard Kung-Fu Fighting system. These systems and more are bound to make this one RPG/FPS that's gauranteed to make you go "i've never seen anything like this before".
Fourth, the game is being powered by the Smooth Engine under contract to Alex Ngai (theprogrammer). While not yet available, in the Summer of this year, the technology will be with us so we can start development. The decision to go with this technology eliminated the constraints of using the Quake engines, and allowed us to go straight to the bone. This technology is comparable to at least Far Cry in terms of graphics and rendering systems. All Daikatana games herein will be powered by Smooth Engine.
Fifth, I have come bearing some screenshots, mostly preliminary Smooth Engine screenshots. Since I thought you guys were tired of seeing Artwork, I figured that the best thing would be hard evidence of the creation.
Sixth, if you've ever put Daikatana II into a search engine, you'll notice that we're making Sega Dreamcast-specific version(s). More information on this later.
While much discussion of this has gone down at our own boards or at the Sega boards, we have now decided we have enough proof of concept that we can now post it here.
http://www.fpinteractive.info/SmoothEd.JPG
That's a screenshot, a prelim of the editor. Keep in mind that this shot is inferior compared to what Alex has done now.
By request, he has asked me not to show any old in-game footage, so he will be personally posting the newest screenshots here soon.
Any more questions can now be asked. If it's a common question, reffer to the FPI boards for the answer.
I'll post more DK2-specific stuff here if you want to see more.

[nuckles87]

Well, here goes nothing. I'm new here, but I've been working on enemy designs with FPI for a few months now.

In addition to DK2, we are looking into doing several small side projects, mostly for Dreamcast. These games will be produced and directed by FPI, but developed by homebrew Dreamcast developers.  Currently, the project is still in the planning stages. We are first going to see if the DC community has any ideas, and if they don't we will work on our own.

Project Saber will be the first in a line of small DC projects from FPI developed using the KallistOS dev kit (created by the good folks at Cryptic Allusions), that will be released commercially via the GOAT store, or if not them some other source.

DK2  is also planned to be downgraded and ported to DC, provided we can get the license to use the Katana dev kit (which will be quite difficult).

By the way, with me being the main enemy developing guy, don't expect to many mosquitoes. Maybe an Aura or two, and perhaps a chimera, but no blood suckers (although I am told we are going to use frogs for nostalgias sake).

[they_live]

Good to know that your getting it all together, it sounds pretty cool so far. Also, glad that you have a female main character for one of the games, that's something I don't see all that often, at least when you look at all the games out there, in comparison.

Also, Alex looks like he has done a really good job with creating the engine. I like the way the user interface looks, not cluttered at all.

Best of luck with your games.

[nuckles87]

Yeah, we don't have to many main characters as female in games these days.  And she won't be a stereo typical female either.

[Rizimar]

Nice to see how people working on the game are voting it as "Not Vaporware"

[nuckles87]

Of course.

[コービン]

DK2  is also planned to be downgraded and ported to DC, provided we can get the license to use the Katana dev kit (which will be quite difficult).

This will most likely change to use KallistOS. If people are supportive we'll invest in it, but there's no gaurantee.
@Rizimar: How else are we going to possibly win this?  

[nuckles87]

Corb, KOS is mostly a 2D dev kit. It can hardly produce the stuff for DK2, unless you are going to downgrade it to a great looking 2D RPG and a shoot em up.

[Holly Grimmer]

Hello everybody, I am the Assistant Designer to Daikatana II:ShadowCaster and I am here to explain to you a few things. First off the game is not fake due to the fact I have direct contact with all the people working on this game, and we have been working on the background arts, the foreground arts, and the characters. Our team has been working under a lot of pressure trying to see what needs to be done, and how it needs to be done. We are working on getting the game engine ready for this summer. Which in that time we will be finishing art design, character design, and most of all the design document has been under serious construction.

Some of the plans I have being the Assistant designer and doing concept art, I am in the process of drawing very neat backgrounds and keep going by the designdocument. I have been working strenuously to get the art done so we can concentrate more on the development of this game. Everything will be done by this summer, so this game can make it's way across America. The art and more are in heavy development like I said.  
At this point we are in a crunch on time. But I promise to all Daikatana II supporters it will be done this summer

[コービン]

I can't vouch to say it'll be done by Summer, maybe Smooth Engine, but not actually Shadowcaster. However, we're going to try our hardest nonetheless.

[nuckles87]

Well, other then what Corbin posted, there is precious little we can reveal to convince you. But for those who do beleive, and are interested, I will post some details on one my most popular bad guys over at FPI: The aura.

Aura: These small, butterfly like creatures are made entirely out of light energy. When they sense magic, they will immediately start swarming around the source like nats. They feed off of magic and life force from other living creatures. The bigger and stronger the creature, the more of a meal it offers. Auras “feed” off life forces by flying through the chest of the victim. Every time a aura does this, one HP is zapped from the victim’s health. In the case of magical victim, two MPs are also zapped.  Auras almost always fly in groups, and are capable of many defensive attacks, depending on the size of it’s group. They can attack as a tornado (In which they will fly around in a vortex, tossing the victim into the air and into wall or chasm), they can impale (the entire group pierces through the victim’s chest in one spike shaped form), and can take the form of various enemies. Being made of light, they cannot be harmed by elemental or physical attacks. Only magical attack can hurt them. Armor can also be equipped to the chest to lessen the effect of the attacks.

[Holly Grimmer]

The enemies in ShadowCaster are mostly machines, but you can reprogram these machines or just simply offer them a small cup of oil, so they'll fight on your side. It's astounding. The storyline offers a broken down world, that is absolutely torn to shreds.  The game offers a variety of fighting and shooting, of course. In the beginning one of the characters was once a part of a world called "bioverse", and she was adopted in a world where Terrorism took over the land, by then she was sentenced to a terrible dimension. The world was not just a prison, cities inhabit the planet, as with many deserts and some lower cities that used to exist. The world is full of corruption and it basically has no real control over what happens. In the game there is a world that must be controlled by Atomospheric Processors, because of the terrible air quality.  There is a world that existed with that of the dimension Hades , the material plane was split into several dimensions, which in this case caused dimension Hades to form. Dimension Hades is a world where people are sent after being convicted of some sort of heineous crime. Such as being part of a Terrorist group, and the UCCATO found something such as this out people were sent to dimension Hades. The UCCATO found out that the character was part of a terrorist group who was happing dimensions and killing people, they sent her to Hades.  
The UCCATO develops the "smart" machines that you can reprogram or give them a cup of oil so they will fight on your side. The machines do what they want when they want.    

There's an out look of what is to come.

[Rizimar]

@Rizimar: How else are we going to possibly win this?  

Let the poll be taken by the public?

[コービン]

Good Idea , but they voted on it not really knowing that it was more of a "community decision", so I said what the hell and voted too.
Besides, I'm half expecting opinions to be in the posts, not on the vote.

[Chubz]

I've seen several screenshots of it, and although I'm not yet doing much work on the project itself "directly", I shall remain a strong supporter.