Oceanarium

[Farvus]

Just random ideas for characters. I try incorporating some biopunk motifs. Things like enhancements, body sculpting and biological accessories.

[ZombieChinchilla]

Hey, man, your progress on this is looking great so far. Have you made any progress in how this game will be played? It would be awesome to see it developed into a card-style RPG, like Magic the Gathering, or maybe a video game.

Loving the work so far, though, can't wait to see where it goes.

[EduardoGaray]

Yeah i can see the influence from Blame! here, i also love the new approach to the world design.
Vertical design fits this setting much more, specially if its for a pen and paper rpg you could even go and design the full world as a massive dungeon.
Or like ZombieChinchilla says, it would also make for a great metroidvania/souls game.

[Farvus]

Thanks for all the feedback. I really appreciate it.

Unfortunately I have strong doubts about this project lately. While idea seems good in general the setting is still not open ended enough for a good Pen&Paper RPG. It doesn't feel liberating enough for both game master and player just like some mainstream games. In sci-fi RPGs like Shadowrun, Cyberpunk 2020, Eclipse Phase you can create any character you want. As game master you can create adventure in any mood and theme you want. Oceanarium RPG seems to be too alien and narrowed down to just different tunnels and biologically enhanced divers plus a little bit of life in confined space. The whole idea seems more suitable for computer game, movie, comic book or even just art book to be honest. 

I'll still develop this idea but I'm not sure where it's going for now.

[Farvus]

This idea might change. I want to give players the possibility to experience the world they know well. This also could be good motivator to explore the lower levels of the Nest.

If you go deeper into the Nest you can enter Underworld. On this level the place most sought after is Halls of memories. It is said that after entering them you can witness physical manifestation of places that people remembered from destroyed Earth. Nobody knows how it's possible. Maybe it's some powerful mechanism within structure that reads minds and has ability to form matter. Some explorers go to such places to obtain objects that normally wouldn't be possible get on the planet. However Halls of memories are dangerous. The underwater creatures learned that it's a good place to lure people into traps.

[Hugh]

Oceanarium RPG would really work out if The Nest were in 4-5 ft of ocean waters rather than making the point of a world ocean!

I'd assist under these changes

[Farvus]

Hugh - I've read your post at least 10 times but still I don't understand what do you mean. I also don't get your overpaint. Looks like room filled with lava.

Short news. I recently discovered Fungus which is open source tool working with Unity that allows for making interactive fiction/visual novel. I might make something short set in this world. Fungus doesn't require any coding knowledge. It's just creating narrative tree from small blocks. The only thing this engine doesn't support yet is save/load menu. Still even if I will have all the assets and writing done it's going to be easy to convert it to some other engine if Fungus won't work out.
I always wanted to try that out beacause it combines my favourite things - storytelling, cinematic shots, exploration. I also have some experience with creating adventures for tabletop RPGs and it should be easy to convert that to visual novel.

[Hugh]

Shallow salt water

[Amit Dutta]

Farvus, that Fungus looks neat. I've been thinking about doing something interactive fictiony using unity for a while. Thanks for the share!! Keep rocking on Oceanarium, I definitely like to see your updates and watch this develop :)

[Farvus]

Hey. It has been long time. I just wanted to let you know that I haven't abandoned the project. It just seems to have long incubation time. I keep thinking about it once in a while and I'm looking into some underwater sci-fi novels to get more inspiration. Maybe it's perfectionist in my but I just want to get it right.

Also I found some easier to learn visual novel engine which is called TyranoBuilder.

I'll probably throw in some quick line drawing sketches just to explore the visual side more.

[Farvus]

Hey. The Oceanarium project is still in progress although slower one. I was kind of at the dead end when it comes to new ideas as the world was too alien so it would be hard to relate to it. Eventually though I realised I could change the place to Earth after some kind of catastrophy.

The role of "aliens" would take humans who merged with AI and became so different from rest of humanity that they would be considered some different civilisation. While the Earth was destroyed by some unkown disease or climate changes, they isolated themselves and created their own paradise (called the Oceanarium) in the middle of the ocean with preserved aquatic animals. They even learned how to produce oxygen on mass scale without using plants. Then something happened and they disappeared. Left Earth or maybe died (I haven't figured it out yet).
Now the rest of humanity tries to live under water beacause of diseases and the only place where they can get oxygen is Oceanarium. It's a lot of fight for resources and territory.
Beacause it's Earth I can actually use what's left of it as an inspiration for new ideas. Some exoplanet wouldn't really give me that. Also I find the new direction slightly more interesting.

That's it for now. Thanks for all the faith in my project. It takes a lot of time but it's all for the better (I hope).