Mythology Unbound, new game in development

Business and Project Management Discussions
#1

Hello everyone, please allow me to introduce the game I have been working on.

Mythology Unbound is a blend of MMORPG, Augmented Reality, and Social game. Like a MMORPG, it will provide a persistent shared experience for the players. Unlike a MMORPG it does not create a new world but will instead overlay itself atop the real world. Using geo-location it will populate in-game objects to GPS coordinates.

The theme behind the game is one that has been around a long time but has become very popular in recent years. In addition to the mundane, ordinary world that we all know there is also a secret world of magic and sorcery. The players take on the roles of wizards and witches who can see and interact with the magical realm. Much of the game content and lore will be based in various world mythologies.

To interact with this magical world, the players can control avatars, command familiars, and cast spells through the use of a game client. The goal is to have many different clients allowing access to the game world. The most used will likely be on GPS-enabled devices and smartphones, allowing the players to receive updates based on their location. Currently there is a working reference client programmed in Java that runs under Windows/Mac/Linux. The messaging subsystem can also be logged into with any XMPP-compliant IM program, allowing you to send messages even when not completely active.

Development work has been progressing through various sub-systems, the target for open beta is December, 2012.

We are always looking and open for assistance of any kind.

I myself am a professional software developer with over a decade of experience in the field, much of that time spent working on very large, complex systems. In my spare time I had played around with game development for many years, but this is the one I think has a real chance of becoming a success. I’ve spent the last year and a half developing the underlying architecture and fleshing out the game concepts.

There is a teaser site located at www.mythologyunbound.com

There is also a private trac-wiki development site which contains, among other things, the current client installers. Accounts can be created on it as needed.

For more information, you can send me an email or contact me on AIM at KiwiTrinsic

#2

Nice idea - I’m still pondering the full possibilities of that… You mean people have to go to certain real-world locations in order to access in-game stuff? Neat!
The site’s a bit bare - what are you thinking of doing for graphics? 2D? 3D?
It’s a big project - I’m thinking your timescale of December 2012 is a bit close - and hey, even if you make it the world will end just after and you’ll have wasted your time! ;D

BTW What sort of assistance were you looking for?

#3

Yes, there are a lot of great possibilities on merging gameplay in with real world locations and activities ;D Visiting specific locations is a big part of that. Of course, so people don’t actually have to travel all over the world to visit various sites, they can also teleport their avatars to remote locations to interact with the other players there; players that may be there physically or virtually.

The website is a bit plain so far as I have been concentrating most of my attention on getting various game subsystems up and running. I will probably get more information posted there soon, at least detailing the same information in my post above.

As this is mostly an augmented reality game, most of the graphics are 2D icons (SVG format), allowing you to manage your inventory & skills on the client. There are future plans for 3D character models to allow people to customize the looks of their avatars and to view those of other players. The current client also uses 3D to display nearby people and objects on a globe.

Dec 2012 does seem closer every day! I’ve been working on this a while though and have been making good progress. The 2012 date is also just for a first public beta release, so I’m sure there will still be plenty to do afterwards.

I am glad to have any sort of assistance people are able to provide. Besides myself, there are several alpha testers, a 2D artist, and a sys admin helping out. Additional programmers would be a great help, as would 2D or 3D artists, musicians, web programmers, and mobile app developers. ;D

#4

Nice idea!
Regarding this GPS AR stuff I am waiting for a good cooperative AR Ghost Busters game :D.

#5

This sounds pretty interesting. I’m interested to see how it turns out :slight_smile:

#6

MMORPG and Geocaching - sounds like a really cool idea :slight_smile:

I’m wondering how you are going to ensure, that those locations aren’t inaccesible (or even dangerous). Are you planning to use fixed locations? I guess then you’ll need the help of many people around the world …

Anyways, looking forward to see this one coming to live :slight_smile:

#7

Thanks!
As for the inaccessibility of some locations, while the default location for an avatar will be at the players current location, the players can always send their avatars to places where they cannot easily or safely reach. This will allow them to interact with players and things on the other side of the world without the need for actually traveling there.

Ha, don’t cross the streams! ;D

#8

Did you evaluate ways of cheating? I think it should be possible to fake GPS-Data by cracking the apk.

#9

Yes, I have been considering various ways that people could cheat. Faking GPS data is not really a problem, as they are allowed to attempt to teleport their avatars to any earthly location they like. However, to prevent “search spamming”, that is having their avatar rapidly teleport from location to location to search for hidden locations, a small magic point cost has been associated with avatar movement. The cost is low enough so that it should be no concern to a normal player but it will prevent bot-controlled searches from rapidly searching large areas.