Welcome to Project: Gorgon!


Project: Gorgon is a 3D fantasy MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) that features an immersive experience that allows the player to forge their own path through exploration and discovery. We won't be guiding you through a world on rails, and as a result there are many hidden secrets awaiting discovery. Project: Gorgon also features an ambitious skill based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.

The Project: Gorgon development team is led by industry veteran Eric Heimburg. Eric has over a decade of experience working as a Senior and Lead Engineer, Developer, Designer and Producer on successful games such as Asheron’s Call 1 and 2, Star Trek Online and other successful Massively Multiplayer Online Games.



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  1. #11
    Junior Member Northuunal's Avatar
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    First, awesome changes and I'm really looking forward to it. Second, let me know if any of the following ideas have already been put in place or mentioned.

    To spread some of the players out from Serbule, you could put in a poetry podium in Serbule Hills and Eltibule. Add in some trainers for the different skills (blacksmithing, leatherworking, tanning to name a few) to both Serbule Hills and Eltibule. Add bookcases to each zone, and allow players to manage items in zones adjacent to their current zone from a bookcase, maybe at a small cost? Lastly, move some services around in Eltibule. Move some of the trainers out of Hogan's Keep and into or closer to Eltibule Keep, and make another garden area near Hogan's Keep.

    Anyway, keep up the amazing work you guys are doing.

  2. #12
    Junior Member Futan's Avatar
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    Great read Citan, thank you.

    New player here, was pining for my lug tactician and wound up here.

    Looking forward to all the updates.

  3. #13
    Junior Member awol_lsd's Avatar
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    i would like to say first that if nerfs are coming i would rather you go the route of all at once instead of a little at a time...

    all at once we'll more quickly see where you're wanting to take things, a little at a time we'll always be wondering "how much will it drop next time"

    that said.....

    are the numbers (with the except of a few skills) really that big? i mean yeah i agree and i see time to kill on higher lvl mobs is somewhat short but also have to take into account people are over geared for this mobs/zones already.... you don't design the zones for people all geared with augmented/transmuted yellow sets... and you shouldn't.... i mean you've said it before several years back we was talking about things being too easy and needing harder content and you stated these exact thigns i'm saying now... so a bit confused how this same thign can warrant an across the board nerf?

    now that said there is 100% a few builds that are insane right now. and them need adressed ASAP many of us have sent reports about them so hope you get to them sooner rather than later

  4. #14
    Junior Member twincannon's Avatar
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    Wrote this up with the intention of it being a new thread, but I suppose this is the better place for it

    Thoughts on optimization blog post

    I just read the optimization blog and it brought up some questions and thoughts. I'm really enjoying the game, but I'm also having a hard time recommending it to friends due to a lot of the problems stated in the blogpost, so this is a pretty important topic to me -- even though most of these optimizations wouldn't affect me playing the game personally (though, it'd be nice! :P).

    Also, please don't take any of this to heart or it as being accusatory, this is all just speculation and guesswork on my behalf in effort to try and help the game.


    Animation overhead and it's relation to the UI lag/hitching

    As mentioned in the blog, we all know disabling animations helps with lag a lot. One really interesting thing I noticed is that it also results in placing the interaction boxes at NPCs and players feet as a small "uninitialized" box. This makes me think that these boxes are recalculated every frame (or, every few frames with "Slow Boxes" being active), and needs the data from the mesh/animation/collision to do so. If this is the case, I feel like there's some easy gains to be had here. For most NPCs that just stand still or even walk around you could probably just calculate it once and use cached data -- there's no reason to constantly update this. Mesh size relative to screensize is one reason of course (you walk closer to an NPC, he occupies more pixel screen space, and thus the box needs to be larger), but you could still just use cached bounds of the character and only actively update his position. And even on moving and animating NPCs/mobs I'd say this data would only ever have to be cached every once in a while - either once every X updates, or maybe once at the start of every animation?

    Another thing to note here (and this is just a shot in the dark guess) is that if all of the on-screen interactable objects are being checked every frame, there's probably some quadtree style stuff to be done, i.e. only check interactables that are near the cursor.

    Speaking of "Slow Boxes", why does it also slow down stuff like damage numbers and item names? Even though these are placed at the top of items/NPCs heads, surely they shouldn't be as expensive? If they are, this is also probably a place for easy gains using cached data (a single vector for the relative position of the top of the mesh + the object's location, projected to screen)

    Also, a slider for the UI pop-up distance would probably be nice. I see damage numbers from things extremely far away from me... if these are expensive, this should probably be an option (edit: derp! this already exists, nice!)

    One last final note here, and I have no idea if this is something Unity is even capable of, but I recall past MMOs like Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online playing animations at a slower framerate in the distance. Could be worth looking into, it'd be a lot better than simply turning animations off and having broken interaction and T-posing going on.


    Character meshes

    At first I couldn't believe Unity not being able to handle 100 animating players. However then I thought about the fact that each character is not just a single mesh: it's the body meshes (which seem to be at least body and head here), and then all the armor/weapon meshes. So a potential upwards of 9 meshes per character. I noticed there's already a default humanoid LOD that gets loaded at a certain distance (at least for the cultists in Eltibule), which is good. Not much to say here aside double checking that the armor meshes aren't being used in any calculations such as the UI boxes -- the base body mesh should be all you need for stuff like that


    Distance culling and server packets?

    One thing I noticed is Gorgon lets you set the object draw distance super high, possibly even zone-wide? This is really cool and I can't think of any MMO that has had such a large potential draw distance, but I also noticed that setting it from low to high instantly shows distant entities on your screen -- this leads me to believe (total assumption!) the client is being sent data from every entity in their zone, constantly? Seems like an easy server-side improvement here to send data based on some radius, if so


    Sky/weather

    This one confused me from the blog post. Firstly, there not being a "disable sky" or "simple sky" option in graphics settings is surprising, in a game full of such drastic optimizations -- having an expensive sky, this seems like a pretty standard option that even major titles have had in the past. Secondly, why would weather impact the client if it were disabled? Would it not be zone-wide and then just a simple packet sent every now and then saying "hey weather is on/off now" and your client handling the rest (i.e. easily disabled clientside)? Not that important since the feature doesn't even exist yet, but I think it's a good thing to think about.


    Serbule player vendors

    This is really just a straight up suggestion, but what if the Serbule player vendor area was just in a basement or something, i.e. a different zone from the main city? Though this area seems to be occluded, it could still help Serbule with network traffic if nothing else?


    Well that's everything, again this is in no way shape or form meant to be condescending or accusatory or anything like that -- just trying to help offer any gamedev experience I have (unfortunately very little of it which is in Unity)! And I have no idea what you guys are dealing with on the plugin side of things and such (but with some of the UE4 plugins I deal with at my job, I can only imagine...). Gamedev is anything but a clean and straightforward operation, so again these are just guesses at best. I will say though that I feel like these should really take priority over just about everything else if at all possible, but that's just my opinion as a newbie. Really excited to see where Gorgon goes in any case!
    Last edited by twincannon; 05-06-2018 at 08:22 PM.

  5. #15
    Junior Member Justarius's Avatar
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    I really enjoy these Dev blogs. I don't really have any commentary, but it's nice to see feedback on what is being worked on and the developer's thoughts as to the state of the game, problems, issues coming up, etc.

    I'm nowhere near skilled or geared enough (after almost 200 hours... heh!) to comment on the nerfs coming, but it was interesting to read about what issues are lurking and what fixes are in the pipeline.

  6. #16
    Junior Member Rhawkas's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by awol_lsd View Post
    i would like to say first that if nerfs are coming i would rather you go the route of all at once instead of a little at a time...

    all at once we'll more quickly see where you're wanting to take things, a little at a time we'll always be wondering "how much will it drop next time"
    Yep, just like pulling off a bandaid or getting a shot. Just do it all at once and get it over with instead of prolonging the pain. XD

  7. #17
    Member PezOfDoom's Avatar
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    I'm not sure how other high level players feel, but I too am in the boat of "hit us hard and fast with the nerf," but only if you really know where you want to go with it.

    I appreciate that your sentiment is to not reduce the number of viable combinations; rather to balance and scale them better. Are there any design talks around creating new mods for any existing skills or are you pretty happy with what you have currently?

    I also recall many moons ago there was talk of removing or completely redoing battle chemist because it was too diverse/powerful in its current state. Is that still on the horizon for happening?
    This is Monger.

  8. #18
    Member Rick Sanchez's Avatar
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    Ugh I know Unity has her issues. I happen to know a thing or two about Unity and if you have specifics I'd be happy to take a peek.
    And that's why I always say, 'Shumshumschilpiddydah!

  9. #19
    Junior Member Xarduvik's Avatar
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    Love the update, well said! Yank off the bandage. Let the blood flow. Yeah, I'm one of those guys who are just slobbering over the promised Vampirism. I want to bite necks! Elven necks, human necks, furry necks, all the same juicy stuff! (Okay, I know that sounded rather sick.)

    You've got a lot of work to do, I won't smite your frontal lobe with ideas or suggest something creepy (beyond neck biting) that can't be feasibly done. Keep at it, have fun, I'll be playing, waiting on the day I can use a toothbrush file to sharpen my fangs!

  10. #20
    Member MorKazim's Avatar
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    thank you for the Update Citan.

    in your blog you say that we need to spread out. we need to leave Serbule and move to other areas. that is good and we try to do that. but. you have installed in Serbule so many amenities that there are no ware else. lets say the vendors. or the order signs (they are local and most players use the Serbule one)

    in order to spread the people you need to do something with the vendors. perhaps instead of real vendors add in more places a global vendor that links to all.
    (add a global market).

    I for instance try to go to Serbule only for 5min per game time for selling all that cant be sold elseware and leave. I would like to not going there at all as my rig is not new - good and I experience low FPS and lag

    thank you.



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