Summary

The Lays of Althas: Sundered Order is a single-player, medieval-low-fantasy RPG being developed by Epoch Games, utilizing Epic Game's Unreal Engine 4, for Windows PCs. The game will feature an expansive, living world that will evolve and grow by itself, instead of revolving around the player’s actions.
The game is currently planned to be released Chapter by Chapter, with each bringing new regional content and gameplay features.

The World of Althas

As old orders crumble and new powers rise, it is time for you to forge your destiny.
Ever since it's early history, Althas has been a land shaken by conflicts. In the early days, these conflicts pitted the Anointed Kingdoms of Men against dark and demonic forces that threatened them. However, with the passage of time, the world has changed: the Anointed order is eroding away and new powers are rising. Another war looms on the horizon, a war of personal and political motivation. Thenodar, a burgeoning new kingdom in the North, and Anorthile, one of the last of the three remaining Anointed Kingdoms, now prepare for a war that will shake all of Althas. Old demons and new enemies gather in the shadows of both lands as each sets their sights on the ruined wilderness known as the Feralands.


Gameplay Mechanics

There are many features we aim for in The Lays of Althas: SO. The game is in the early stages of development, so many of the features listed below are subject to change:
    • Open World: Adventure on the continent of Althas. A large, open-world awaits the player with full freedom to explore. Regions will be released via Chapters.

    • Deep Lore: The world of Althas has a rich history which is represented throughout the game. Interact with environments, NPCs, and as well as read through in-game books to learn more about the world.

    • Dynamic and Active World: Instead of a world that revolves around the player, we are creating a world where the player must learn to revolve around it. This approach will allow for date-based events to occur in Althas, even if you aren’t around to see them.

    • Adaptive Skill-based Combat: The game aims for a skill-based, first-person, system. Giving the player full control over melee swings and stabs, as well as engaging ranged combat and stealth.

    • Magic: Magic is a rare ability that the player will have to work hard to unlock in the Sundered Order period of Althas. When utilized correctly, it possesses a myriad of usages that can be extremely beneficial.

    • Dynamic Factions and Wars: Factions will make decisions and go to war with each other. Battles happen dynamically, according to the timeline and based on causes-and-effects within the game.


Epoch Games

The Lays of Althas: Sundered Order is being developed by Epoch Games, an all-online, global, volunteer development team. We are dedicated to making this game as great as possible, and to make Althas a truly epic RPG experience. Being volunteers, we’re doing this for free - our motivation comes from our desire to create great games. Members of Epoch Games hail from all over the world; we are an international group, with members from The Americas, Europe, and Asia, all working together online to bring you the best game experience we can. Visit our Team's IndieDB page.
For more news and discussion, please visit our Official Forums. If you're interested in joining the Epoch Games team, please see our Jobs link here.
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RSS Articles

Hello there, everyone! I know that it has been a while since we have sent out any updates, but we are back! We have all been hard at work and are looking forward to sharing more details throughout the upcoming year. While there is a long road ahead of us in order to build the world that The Lays of Althas: Sundered Order takes place in. The team looks forward to showing you the progress we make as we step closer to achieving our shared vision of this game!

image

The update that we have for today is the Tools Update. Tools are one of the key indicators as to how a society functions since they are used for mining, agriculture, cooking, smelting, and may other occupations that are essential. These tools that we are showing up are also an indication as to the pride of the craftsmen who create these tools. These are not the tools of a society in complete squalor, but rather one who takes pride in even the smallest things in life. They are able to make great tools and maintain them for long periods of time despite the hardships that they may be facing when we meet them in the game. How the events of the game might change things, well you will have to find out when the time comes!

image 1

I would like to thank everyone for supporting our project! We will have many interesting updates coming to you throughout this year as we inch closer and closer to the finish line. If there are any questions that you might have about The Lays of Althas: Sundered Order, feel free to leave them in the comments and we will answer them to the best of our ability! Have a wonderful day!

Houdini Procedural Tunnel Tool

Houdini Procedural Tunnel Tool

News 2 comments

Recently we had a conversation with Ben Kelly one of our “Level Designer” who created this awesome tunnel creation tool to help ease workflow. Let’s...

A Look at our UI

A Look at our UI

News 2 comments

We wanted to show some of the in-game menus that will be used in game.

1st Look at our Caves

1st Look at our Caves

News 2 comments

A Showing of natural cave system that has been around for centuries, with only mild human modification and tunneling done in that time.

Landscape Texture Improvements

Landscape Texture Improvements

News 5 comments

Talking to our “Environment Artist” Kevin Eriksen about the new created shaders for the game.

RSS Files
The Hawk and the Stone: Chapter 1

The Hawk and the Stone: Chapter 1

Other

This is the first chapter of "The Hawk and the Stone" in a .pdf file. Download and you can open it with e-reader apps like the Kindle app and of course...

The Hawk and the Stone - Chapter 2

The Hawk and the Stone - Chapter 2

Other 2 comments

This is the second chapter of the story Hawk and the Stone. The file is a PDF format. Illustrations by: Joan Maldonado, Owen Yulefield, and Ruo Yo Chen

Post comment Comments  (0 - 10 of 459)
nyrs
nyrs

Some thing to consider:

With the Unity engine drama over big shareholder companies owning game engines, and your history with what happened with WB and MERP..

Links:

( Pcgamer.com )

( Gameworldobserver.com )

( Gamingonlinux.com )

Have you considered moving from Epic's Unreal Engine 4 to an open world engine like Open3d?. Open3d is a Free and Open Source (FOSS) fork of CryEngine which Amazon bought into Lumberyard, and then sold to the Linux Foundation after Amazon's attempt at anti-competitively tying the engine to AWS failed.

( En.wikipedia.org )

( Open3d.org )

Remember that the original CryEngine is what the photorealistic medieval Kingdom Come Deliverance RPG used in 2018, and the improved Lumberyard is what Amazon's recent open world MMO New World uses. The engine is eminently capable of AAA open world games.

Kingdom Come Deliverance on older Cry Engine, released on PC, consoles, even Nintendo Switch:

( Youtube.com )

The heavily modded RTX videos with latest GPUs you see for these types of games look almost like a real life video:

( Youtube.com )

( Youtube.com )

Open3d is cross-platform on PC, supporting Mac and Linux.

Open3d is under the permissive Apache 2.0 license. So you don't have to share back engine changes you make for your game, if you don't want to. You can do what ever you want, although if you make massive amount of sales you may want to hire or support engine coders, or give back engine changes. Your project can be fully or partially closed source. It's also free, which would be a useful thing for a volunteer indie team establishing itself. As a bonus, you retain full control of the source code, forever.

There's no company holding anything over you with a FOSS engine, which you might appreciate after the fiasco with WB and MERP. The downside is that CryEngine/Lumberyard/Open3d tools might be a bit less user friendly?? than Unreal Engine, although it is free and will give more budget later.

===

Aside:

If anything can be learned from the behaviour of big companies owned by stock exchange or private investors, whether it's WB or Unity, is that it's the people in the game industry that lose in the long run.

If you look at Bethesda even, there's the latest fiasco with Starfield, which is rated at only 38% positive in the last month on Steam. With paid mods incoming. But Bethesda made 750 million in 24 hours after launch of Fallout 4, not counting pre-orders.

( Forbes.com )

That's enough to make Fallout 4, and make a 600+ million game, let alone Starfield.

Skyrim made 1 billion in 30 days waaay back in 2011.

( Tweaktown.com )

Can you imagine how much Bethesda made over the years, with no other competition for the Fallouts and Skyrims?

Yet Bethesda leave Fallout and Skyrim a buggy mess with bad mod tools, animations, voice acting, story lines. In fact Fallout 76 was full of bugs that weren't fixed from the previous game. Guess where the money went? Stock holders. This is money from players that would have funded creators to push open world genres forward through engines and content. In the long run gaming loses.

Just some info you may want to consider. Good Luck:)

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Guest
Guest

With the acquisition of several LOTR licenses, including video games, by Embracer, would there ever be a chance of returning to development on MERP. In whatever way, shape, or form!

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Guest
Guest

Its possible, I came here because there was a job opening for a 3d artist posted (although its volunteer)

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The_Grey_Wizard
The_Grey_Wizard

Hey mate, the odds of picking MERP back up for Skyrim are relatively minuscule. Most of the team has moved on in their careers and life. I personally am working on an indie game called The Old Forest with strong influences from that chapter and maybe someday if we can get a license, I would really like to create an open world RPG in Unreal set in the first age in Beleriand, but that's a pipe dream in all honesty.

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Guest
Guest

Hi The_Grey_Wizard,

Same Guest as this post and the one below (I really should make an account!).

That's sad to hear a return to MERP is unlikely, I am working on some LOTR inspired skyrim mods at the moment, and would love to see a big project attempt this again. Maybe with the new owner of the rights this might be possible.
The Old Forest looks great and definitely inspired by The Hobbit.

Thanks for your reply

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Guest
Guest

Is this still in development? It's been almost a year since the last update!

- from an old MERP fan (again)

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The_Grey_Wizard
The_Grey_Wizard

Hey mate, this game is still in development. I spoke with leadership a few months ago and the team is undergoing some transition with the release of UE5 and a new framework that they are working with. But I can promise you that it is going to be worth the wait. I can't divulge any more details than that though.

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Guest
Guest

Is there any word on a release date yet?

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names_are_useless Creator
names_are_useless

Not yet, you'll have to wait and see.

Reply Good karma+2 votes
Guest
Guest

Game looks neat. It reminds me of my D&D maps.
I came here because I checked after several years the MERP (I'm still so angry at WB for doing that).
I wish you the best of luck! The game looks really good.
Greeting from Argentina.

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