City of Steam, new steampunk arrives

[CoS_Ethan]

Hey guys, I come from an indie developer, now we are crafting a steampunk style browser MMMORPG under the name City of Steam. Now we are at the stage of pre-alpha testing, so feedback and player inputs are vital for us currently. Here are some info about it:

It's a browser-based, free-to play online RPG set in an industrial world poised to rediscover the mythic forces that shaped its history. Clockworks, steamworks, combustion, and alchemical principles suffuse the nations and people of the World Machine, pushing heroes and villains alike toward a dangerous secret that could change everything.

We started up our Developer Journal recently. Get an inside look into the development of the game and what we're up to. We're posting screenshots, videos and other news. Check it out, comment and ask us any follow-up questions!

First class combat trailer available:


Game screenshots

We do want to listen any suggestions or ideas, and we just want to tall with gamers and get the word out.

 

[BloodOmen]

Looks quite good for a browser game tbh.

 

[CoS_Ethan]

Looks quite good for a browser game tbh.

Thanks dude, we try to push the game and make it look really cool.

 

[old.Osy]

LE: Nevermind my trolling, it looks good. Might be flash behaviour, but did i notice some stuttering in the video?

 

[CoS_Ethan]

LE: Nevermind my trolling, it looks good. Might be flash behaviour, but did i notice some stuttering in the video?

I think you can choose 720p, that will make it awesome.

 

[CoS_Ethan]

LE: Nevermind my trolling, it looks good. Might be flash behaviour, but did i notice some stuttering in the video?

We are looking at the possibility of publishing it on Steam.

 

[Keitanz]

Looks quite good for a browser game tbh.

Looks like it may be Unity to me.... not really sure but would explain it since Unity is awesome

 

[Keitanz]

Can't edit, but yeah, it's Unity.... the future of browser games

 

[CoS_Ethan]

Can't edit, but yeah, it's Unity.... the future of browser games

Yeah, the game engine is Unity, the good news is Unity officially supports flash now.

 

[Madmaxx]

that does look good, I wanna play a game like this or diablo3

 

[Keitanz]

Yeah, the game engine is Unity, the good news is Unity officially supports flash now.

that's pretty good :O time to learn how to use it I guess

 

[CoS_Ethan]

that does look good, I wanna play a game like this or diablo3

Great! Truly speaking, Diablo 3 is gigantic, we really try to show off some cool stuff by creating a clientless game.

 

[CoS_Ethan]

that's pretty good :O time to learn how to use it I guess

Haha, Unity is friendly to developers, especially INDIEs, now it has that many users.

 

[Gwadien]

Looks interesting dude, but... my biggest problem with these 'F2P' games are that sure, they're F2P, but you're going get absolutely face raped if you don't pay some kind of premium, is this going to be the case?

Or is there any premium option at all?

 

[Keitanz]

I'd love it if F2P games had a limit on how much you can spend a week..for example £40.. would make it much more fair for people who can't pay vs people with a lot of cash to splash

 

[Gwadien]

I'd love it if F2P games had a limit on how much you can spend a week..for example £40.. would make it much more fair for people who can't pay vs people with a lot of cash to splash

Precisely!

Player 1: 'I just spent a few days farming this sword so I can finally own in PVP'
Player 2: 'Brb'
*5 mins later*
Player 2: 'I just spent 5 minutes giving my CC details to the company so I could buy it! - how cool!'

F2P games actually attract people who have more money to splash - oh, the irony

 

[Keitanz]

Well yeah but they also attract the kind of people who don't want to buy games / don't have the money.. I'm more than happy with F2P games if the only things you can buy with real life money are things like..

100% XP Boost.. 300% XP Boost..
50% coin boost
100% coin boost

That would be pretty fair then, you still have to work for your crap if you decide to spend etc.

 

[Gwadien]

Well yeah but they also attract the kind of people who don't want to buy games / don't have the money.. I'm more than happy with F2P games if the only things you can buy with real life money are things like..

100% XP Boost.. 300% XP Boost..
50% coin boost
100% coin boost

That would be pretty fair then, you still have to work for your crap if you decide to spend etc.

uhm yeah, sure, just don't make stuff stupidly hard to obtain, if you're also gonna make the same gear buyable for example, also, don't exclude people from tombs/dungeons - like AoC does, that did my nut in, - WE'RE F2P, but wait, you can't do this, and this, and this.

Take note Ethan my kind sir

 

[Keitanz]

Yeah I don't think you should be able to have access to a dungeon just because you pay etc...

 

[CoS_Ethan]

Looks interesting dude, but... my biggest problem with these 'F2P' games are that sure, they're F2P, but you're going get absolutely face raped if you don't pay some kind of premium, is this going to be the case?

Or is there any premium option at all?

Honestly, we don't want to be another "cash shop" kind of Asian producer, what we want to emphasize is fairness to every game player. Microtransactions will typically provide only convenience features (larger stash, reduced travel time, early access to certain items, etc). We will never put character races or classes behind a pay wall. We are currently debating whether or not bosses and quests can offer our premium currency, Electrum, to be spent in-game. Because paid features will be released in Beta, not Alpha, we have a lot of implementation left to do there, and are very open to suggestions. Electrum has some very cool fiction behind it in the game world, so it isn't just some arbitrary "other" money what happens to co-exist alongside shillings. We want it to be something people can talk about in-character.

 

[CoS_Ethan]

I'd love it if F2P games had a limit on how much you can spend a week..for example £40.. would make it much more fair for people who can't pay vs people with a lot of cash to splash

Indeed, what F2P games are capable of doing is you can make a choice when regarding payment, we do think F2P games can be awesome too, and we spent lots of time to balance everything and improve our combat system, also, a large open world can be expected. And what we are really proud of is such vast 3D levels are just packaged into a 1-3M downloads.

 

[CoS_Ethan]

Yeah I don't think you should be able to have access to a dungeon just because you pay etc...

That's not gonna happen in City of Steam,we want to transplant its playability to every game player, "fairness" is the word that we often talk about when we were making this game. You can also go to our community to talk and discuss, we have various topics there, you can what you want there in details, and our developers are question-lovers.

 

[CoS_Ethan]

uhm yeah, sure, just don't make stuff stupidly hard to obtain, if you're also gonna make the same gear buyable for example, also, don't exclude people from tombs/dungeons - like AoC does, that did my nut in, - WE'RE F2P, but wait, you can't do this, and this, and this.

Take note Ethan my kind sir

Absolutely, we really take balance into consideration during the development, maybe you can find more from our Developer Journal, our developers just want to share "what they did" and "what they are doing" with game players. We're not gonna take any advantage of "F2P", including kinds of terrible limits, we hate this too.What we really want to do is make a cool game and hope that people will like it. BTW, you can also talk with our developers by jumping to our official City of Steam forum.

 

[Keitanz]

Is there going to be a closed beta any time soon? if so it would be nice if you could chuck a few keys FH's way

 

[Madmaxx]

hah keitanz took the words from my mouth xD

 

[CoS_Ethan]

Is there going to be a closed beta any time soon? if so it would be nice if you could chuck a few keys FH's way

Yeah, we will, first, we're gonna launch the alpha testing in February, 2012, what's more, you will have priority on alpha keys and other development if you can subscriber our newsletter and become the early subscribers.

 

[CoS_Ethan]

hah keitanz took the words from my mouth xD

Haha, we will prepare some keys and please follow updates from our website and forum.

 

[CoS_Shirley]

Hello, this is Shirley from Mechanist Games. My colleague CoS_Ethan has introduced our game to you days ago. You may refer to his post on this forum.Now we're excited to announce the sneak peek alpha test!

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City of Steam - A 3D light-weight browser-based full featured industrial age fantasy MMORPG.

Hi everyone, Mechanist Games is excited to announce that City of Steam will have a sneak peek alpha test at the end of next month. There will be limited places so sign-up early to get priority to receive a key.

Enter City of Steam, make your mark in a world failing against its own illustrious history, and explore the bellowing depths beneath Ebonwax or storm enormous towers to great heights where reward awaits those prepared to fight for it. Marvel at the architecture of forgotten pasts, merging ages dating back to the time of the god-like Paragons whose presence lingers long after their reign.

Already years in development, our first title, City of Steam, is approaching completion. It will be an interesting time and important milestone for us, as a small indie game developer. We’d really appreciate participation and the following feedback as we want to make a game, players will enjoy. We take feedback seriously; all you need to do is check our official forum to see the active participation and response to questions and suggestions

We’ll be giving out alpha keys in a priority order, next month so please sign-up to our newsletter to receive your key and additional information as the time approaches. You can also follow this thread, news on our website and forum.

To learn more about City of Steam, please visit our official website. Also you can refer to the other thread we’ve posted on this forum regarding our game.

Thank you for your time and see you in Sneak Peek Alpha Test!

 

[Deebs]

Interesting, shall follow this and see how it performs in a browser. What are the minimum requirements to play this?

 

[CoS_Shirley]

This isn't set in stone and we are actually going through a load of testing at the moment. The requirements are not very high as we operate with very average computers in our company with average video cards. The one major point is that we have developed this to be a web-game and so it works well as one. This wasn't ported from a client game. Player's will be able to adjust camera culling, shadows and other effects to work for even the oldest of computers. When I know an exact "minimum" I shall send it.