Project Aron is a first-person fighting game which employs a tactical use of elemental magic in a competitive multiplayer environment.

Report RSS Gameplay Video, Character Model & Recruitment

Featuring character model and concept progress, closed testing videos, team updates and some upcoming stuff.

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Today's topics:
01. Character model and concept
02. Closed testing
03. Team members and recruitment update
04. Soon in a future near you

01. Character model and concept
There's been some progress on the first playable character model, with the concepts and initial brush work for it. We have also created concepts for the style of our third faction, which you can see a concept of a male and female below.

First character model concepts
First character model WIP
WIP03 - Character concepts

02. Closed testing
For Project Aron we've decided to throw away all of the original movement and physic handeling from the default UDK, and reworked everything from the ground up.The first closed testing build has been sent out to our followers, and the initial feedback seems really positive!

These were the implemented features of that build:

  • New friction
  • New air-control
  • Walking
  • Crouching
  • Sprinting
  • Sliding
  • Jumping
  • Crouch-jumping
  • Wall-running
  • Wall-jumping

If you've recieved a invitation to the closed testing, but haven't yet tried it or filled out our survey, please take a moment of your time to try it out and give us some feedback. The more you tell us, the better we'll be able to tweak the game to perfection.

Below you can see a comparision video of the physics from UDK and Aron, aswell as a speedrun of the closed testing level. Please note, everything you see in these videos are placeholder art and shouldn't be considered part of our final style or quality.

UDK vs Aron physic comparison


Closed Testing 01 - Speedrun


If you want to participate in our closed testing, be sure to track the game and follow us here on Moddb/Indiedb.

03. Team members and recruitment update
We've had some restructuring in the team, with some members leaving us for other ventures, and some people having to ramp down their activity on the team. This have had a positive effect as we're able to predict more clearly what we'll be able to create for each milestone.

The drawback is that the scope for our first release have been scaled down to only feature player movement and the time trial mode. We'll continue working to implement the melee and spell combat after that.

Core team:

  • (Project Lead) Tobias 'Dopefish' Lundmark - Linkedin
  • (Lead Programmer) Firtina 'toxicFork' Ozbalikci - Linkedin
  • (Lead Sound Designer) Seann 'Big Dirty' Maria - Portfolio
  • (Sound Designer) Hrishikesh 'Rishi' Dani - Portfolio
  • (Environment Artist) Jonathan Armstrong - Portfolio
  • (Level Designer) Matt 'MJL' Lefevere - Portfolio
  • (Character Concept Artist) Patryk 'CZERW' Reczko - Portfolio
  • (Character Modeler) Matthew 'Lapis' Tan - Portfolio
  • (Writer) Andrew Dobbs - Resume

Additional help:

  • (Composer) Ryan 'Morphed Productions' Olson - Resume
  • (Voice Acting) Ricky Grove - Site
  • (Technical Artist) David 'leviatan1001' Miranda - Portfolio
  • (Cascade Magician) Steve 'Elude' Bryan - Video

We're still mainly looking for additional coders, animators and a environment concept artist. Of course we're still open for all applications, so if you're interested in joining us write an application to: zombiraptor@gmail.com

Every application should have a short description of your previous experience, and come with a sample of your work or portfolio.

04. Soon in a future near you
As mentioned previously, we'll have to scale down our initial release to be a time trial only version of the game, but with that goal we hope to present a open testing build sometime around June/July.

Here's a list of some of the upcoming features that we hope to implement before June:

  • Ledging/Climbing
  • Dodging
  • Vaulting
  • Auto-stepup in mid-air (so you can jump in staircases)
  • Updating air control with acceleration and deacceleration
  • Proper slope behaviour
  • Proper fall damage
  • Landing roll

We also hope to have a story animatic ready for your viewing pleasure by then, featuring voice work from the ever so talented Ricky Grove, and a original theme by Ryan Olson.

Post comment Comments
KeyPath
KeyPath

keep an eye on this,,,,

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TRiBLy
TRiBLy

Looks awesome! :)

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Anddos
Anddos

mirrors edge much

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Darthlex
Darthlex

Unconstructive and pointless comment, much?

Oh well, just a troll anyways..

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MyDopefish Author
MyDopefish

It's true though. One of our references is Mirror's Edge, but we use it as a reference for both good and bad things.

Mirror's Edge is much more animation driven, while Aron is much more dynamic. It's hard to tell the difference from videos alone, and you'd have to sit down and play Aron :)

Although, the whole idea about acquiring flow and chaining moves to keep momentum is one of the things we liked about the game.

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SPYFF
SPYFF

Good job!

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JK4ever
JK4ever

Looks really awesome!

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Darthlex
Darthlex

Personally, I think that you should just *focus* on the whole 'frantic free-running' aspect of your game/gameplay, as that certainly seems to be the stronger aspect of your concept.

I worry that your concept will get muddy from wanting both frantic Free-running, Magic and Melee in the game, to the point where it might not be enjoyable.

How about trying what you can achieve with this free-running system in a more excessive and full-blown environment? How about putting us on the top of skyscrabers and spires in LA/NY-style, to see how much you can push the feeling of the free-running?

Long story short; Focus on the free-running aspect, as it has much potential.

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AntonQ
AntonQ

My opinion is Mirrors Edge already did that free running really well. If you're gonna put magic and melee in the game that might make it interesting. If you focus on free running only you'll end up with a inferior Mirror's Edge. You're indie, do something interesting studios can't or havn't done already.

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Darthlex
Darthlex

Mirror's Edge, however, was completely linear, although an incredible gameplay experience.

I do see your point, but experience shows that perfecting a single area is often better than spreading yourself very thin and create a bunch of flawed features.

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TRiBLy
TRiBLy

But well: If they have perfected the free-running part, they still can do the magic and melee part. Why should they just do the one part? There is Mirror's Edge, if you wanna play a pure free-running game. Magic and melee will differentiate Aron from Mirror's Edge, and so far, the guys are making a good job, even if there is no magic+melee+free-running video online.

But let's see. If the combination of these 3 parts ends up being somewhat crappy, they still can focus on 1 part more than the others.

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MyDopefish Author
MyDopefish

Thank you guys for sharing your thoughts. It's always enjoyable to see how people are passionate about things. We intend to give every aspect of the game as much love as we're giving the movement, but since we're such a small team, we're focusing on one thing at the time.

As AntonQ suggests, we're also interested in experimenting. Rather try something new and fail miserably, than to do something that's already been done to death. Worst case scenario, we learn something and walk away wiser, best case scenario, it will be as awesome as we intends it to be :)

Darthalex advice is solid though, as it's easy to get muddled with features with none of them being ace and the scope becoming unmanageable for the game.

TRiBLy, we actually designed Aron in such a way that if things go south, we would always be able to rely on one of the three parts to hold the game up. But at the moment it's more a matter of time to implement everything :)

We hope to share some more information about the other aspects closer to June. Then you'll also get to see that our art style is quite different from contemporary NYC ;)

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Krej
Krej

trackin

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RagnarokSky
RagnarokSky

this looks freaking Awesome TRACKIN!

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DillonBarba
DillonBarba

its like mirrors edge (obviously) but with almost no restrictions to movement, which is the way it should have been honestly.
I'm hoping you will add animated arms in the first person view correct?

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MyDopefish Author
MyDopefish

Correct. Hence why we're recruiting animators :]

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Aleon
Aleon

Damn I have to get my new comp ASAP. I missed the test download cuz I can't run it :(

Still, awesome work here, looks pretty. I really like the art direction, I just hope that the gameplay will reflect the same kind of mood. I'm really curious about all the magic stuff too. I wonder if the magic will have use only in combat or will it allow other stuff like walking on walls, whatsoever...

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