UPDATE: Epic Inventor is being worked on once again! At the moment the project is known simply as Epic Inventor 2 and while I am not working on it this time around, you can learn more about the project via epicinventor.com.
Previously…
So yea, Epic Inventor. Many of you have seen me mention it here or there, but I wanted to take a minute and explain what this thing is that I have been plugging in case you were curious. I really haven’t shared much except a link to the Facebook page (toss us a “Like” if you go there!), or a hint of some kind of game and I figured it was time to share a bit more for those interested.
If you don’t care to hear how we came to create Epic Inventor, just scroll down to the “Epic Inventor” heading below.
Otherwise, begin the brief history here…
Minecraft
This game blew me away when I first came to understand what it was about (and play it). I even found ways to bring it into this D&D world from time to time. Many of you have played it, but for those that haven’t it essentially drops you into a world that has been randomly generated… a HUGE world, one you can explore both above, and below ground. You can dig all the way down until you hit lava, swim across oceans, and literally craft everything you need to survive. Did I mention monsters come out at night?
I was thoroughly sucked in. The idea that you could do whatever you wanted, create what you wanted and explore areas unseen by anyone else really appealed to me – much like D&D has for years.
Terraria
When Terraria came out, I was again enthralled. This game took the elements I loved about Minecraft, but brought some of the focus more towards combat – killing monsters, getting loot, challenging bosses, etc. It was also a side-scroller which appealed to me in that “let’s play Mario Brothers again” kind of way. The possibilities were endless, but there were also goals (crafting better gear to take on harder bosses, etc).
The downside was that once you hit the end game and kind of “got it”, it was very easy to repeat that success and there simply wasn’t anything else to do. Right now, many people are finding themselves waiting for content before playing again, having attained everything they can…
…that’s where Epic Inventor comes in.
Epic Inventor
We wanted something more.
In playing Terraria, a friend of mine (who is also a co-worker) had mentioned he thought he could program a similar game. It wasn’t said in a “this would be easy” tone, but rather a “this could be fun to try”. Before long, we had pulled in another friend (and former co-worker) who was also a programmer, and I was working up what the game would be.
We liked Terraria so much, we knew this would be a side-scroller and that there would be things to fight, but that was it initially.
After a few weeks (and a few ideas chosen and later discarded) I came up with the story for Epic Inventor. It’s still a work in progress, so I won’t go into that yet (and it could change a bit anyway), but the concept of the game is as follows…
You are an Inventor, and a newcomer to this world. Like Terraria, you will gather materials and craft them into items. There will be monsters to kill, caves to explore and more. But here’s where it gets interesting (we think)…
There will be RTS elements to the game. In this case what that means is that you not only will be creating standard items for yourself to use (armor, weapons, etc) but you will be building “placeable” items and structures that will benefit you much like various building types do in an RTS. For example, in Terraria you can place decorations (torches, tables, etc) but in Epic Inventor you will also place things like…
- a Lumber Mill that will generate Wood for you (so eventually, you won’t need to go gather wood)
- a Steam Engine that acts as a source of power for other structures
- an Auto-Crossbow Turret to… you know… kill things that approach
- …and many more! *salesman voice*
You will also be able to advance along a “Tech” tree, deciding in which areas you wish to specialize. Benefits from some of these “techs” could include increasing the production from a lumber mill, or decreasing the time it takes to craft certain items.
One of the key differences between Epic Inventor and Terraria is that there will not be any digging of dirt, or chipping away at stone. Resource materials (such as stone, wood, and various metals) will be visibly different than the ground blocks you walk upon. There are a number of reasons for doing this, the primary of which is that it presents us with some great opportunities in other areas (that I can’t yet go into).
Anyway, that’s the very basic run-down of Epic Inventor, but at this point it represents the most we have said about the game to date. We just put out the very first build allowing us to run around in a generated world. We could only walk around (and jump/fall), but it was amazing to see for the first time. I have a few screenshots on the Facebook page, though remember these are all very early stage ideas and screenshots. We still have much to do and many things are bound to change.
With that said, I do want to clarify that comparison to Terraria is simply from an inspirational standpoint. We do not expect to be as successful. We’re not attempting to go toe to toe with them or with Minecraft. We love both of those games, and this one is simply inspired by them! If we complete it and can get a handful of people to enjoy it, we would be very happy.
Wanna help support us?
– Follow us on Twitter @EpicInventor
– “Like” us on Facebook (so we can grab that custom url!)
– We also have a website up, but there’s not much to see yet
Thanks for stopping in!
– Weem
It sounds interesting, but my fear is that it would devolve into a 2D tower defense game. By restricting gameplay to above the surface, you place a limit on the resources that can be gathered and the means taken to gather those resources and that may shape the game into a smaller niche.
Here’s my reasoning: if resource gathering is done largely by automatic generators, then the only incentive to leave one’s established base is to gather the resources needed to build these generators. Once they are established as part of your base, you have less reason to leave it (and, in fact, little reason to even pay attention to the window at all). This necessitates that aggressive monsters seek out your base, and in order to make them a credible threat from there, they must be able to destroy your buildings. By building defenses to automatically take care of them, the game emphasis shifts to protecting your resource generators by building defenses — thus more tower defense than RTS.
I know tower defense games must appeal to someone (personally I tend to find them very dull, unoriginal and poorly balanced), but even that aside, I don’t feel like this would be a positive alteration to the genre. What makes Terraria (and ostensibly Minecraft, though I’ve never played that) so fun is its sandbox gameplay. If my suspicions played out, I feel like much of the incentive to go out, explore and play around could be lost.
Of course, despite my oracle’s foresight and betazoid telepathy, I can’t glean from your mind precisely how you envision this playing out, so I can hardly criticize a concept. Just pointing out some gameplay facets to which you will need to be mindful. :p
Great points, though there is much I left out that answers some of these issues.
*Looks around*
Ok, so, to share a little more…
1) You will be able to explore underground (see the screenshots on the Facebook page). There will be complex caves AND even dungeons!
2) Because of the tech tree, you will constantly be building new (better) power sources to replace the old ones. You won’t upgrade these structures, but rather you will build new ones… with new materials, etc. Hopefully you can imagine the possibilities from there… ever advancing…
3) Real estate management will be a big deal as you are limited in “town” space. So, you will be looking for more areas to build (you can only build in specific areas). To share another special detail… you will not start in the middle of the map, but rather on one side… and things will get progressively more difficult as you explore “into” the world.
Essentially, you will need to always be out gathering and exploring so you can continue advancing your technology. To what end? Well, that remains a secret for now, hehe.
*Nods* So long as you keep in mind the potential repercussions of each step along the path and keep your mind open for tweaks during the testing process, it has plenty of potential.
I’d be happy to try it out (beta testing or otherwise) — the fact that you’re going about this with a goal-oriented perspective, aiming not simply to make your mark in the genre but to address problems you see in it and thus enrich the genre itself, is very promising.
I keep falling down holes and cant get out 🙁 it would be nice to have an ability to stand on your robot!
You can get IN him! Stand in front of him and hit “E” – you will ride in him. He jumps much higher than you can, and he’s faster too!
i actuly have the game it is out now and it is reely good you get a robot and by pressing E you can get in your robot and jump higher and move faster but u can not attack things while it your robot.other than that i think that it is a great game but could do with more rare recorses.
yes i know dimonds in minecraft are rere but you can still mine EVERY THING els around u (exept obsidian)
but ye more matirials man and maybe something like the crafting table you get in minecraft where you can drag and drop things in to make stuff
any ways i sill fink the game is awsome
ceep it acomin
some guy 🙂
I’ve played minecraft for a long time. The best thing about Epic inventer is its a little harder to gather resources which is good and makes it seem more like a multiplayer game.[Minecraft you get wood. then stone, iron. after iron a few random items,diamonds,obsidian
and last get the nether portal and sooner or later will get the end]This one is more than survivng its staregy and i LOVE strategy!And unlike what samual said it takes ten minutes to make suplies inside your base!
how do you tame animals i mean i looked 100 times on the internet for how to and all that popped up was minecraft