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Design your own robots with upcoming MMO Panzer Pets
If you've been desperately hoping for a Pokémon MMO all these years but have been disappointed by Nintendo's unwillingness to release one or let anyone else develop one, you might be interested in upcoming MMO Panzer Pets. Panzer Pets is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which robots have taken over, but robot builders have found a way to build their own pets to fight back. In Panzer Pets, rather than capture creatures, you'll hunt for robot parts and design your own customisable 3-D pet robots. The game focuses on the exploration opportunities that a post-apocalyptic setting delivers, with a world filled with randomly generated zones, dungeons and towns to explore, and robot parts to collect. Players will be able to trade parts with each other, challenge other players to battles, form guilds, and embark on quests together. As it uses the Unity 3-D engine, the game will be released on iOS, Android, and both PC and Mac web browsers. New studio Gamundo has been working on Panzer Pets for free so far but now needs support to work on the game full-time and complete it. If you're interested in exploring a post-apocalyptic world with a customised pet robot in tow, you can help Gamundo finish the game by pledging money to its Kickstarter campaign, which launched last night. The estimated date for completion of the game is October 2012, and the team needs to raise $85,000 to make it that far without giving a publisher or investor a controlling interest in the game.
One Shots: The glow of Love
When it comes to looking for new gaming ideas, there's no denying Eskil Steenberg's procedurally-generated art-house MMO, Love stands out. Now in beta, Eskil has been working hard at improving the game since the last time we looked at it. Today, we have a gorgeous One Shots from the beta to share with you. This came in with a report in from the front lines, courtesy of GamingLove's iamacyborg, who writes: This is a screenshot of a player settlement in Eskil Steenberg's game, Love, on the UK1 server. We had the base set up on top of a few pillars, over a lake, with a force-field (that pink ball) protecting the important tokens. Here's a video someone took of the settlement a little while after the screenshot was taken, once we'd set up a perimeter defence with some blaster turrets. Are you playing something we haven't seen before - or only see rarely? If so, why not take a moment and send some screenshots in? Just mail them to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the name of the game, and a quick description. We'll post it out here and give you the credit. %Gallery-9798%
A first look at the Love alpha
Ever since I first heard about Love at GDC, I've been hoping to get a chance to check it out. The graphical style floats somewhere between impressionist and Abstract, with only the suggestions of people and things. Gone are the "customize your character heavily" moments of an MMO. You simply log in and your character is immediately created - an amorphous entity ready to take part in all that Love has to offer. If you like to explore, Love has that. If you want to help build a mighty settlement, you can do that too. Alternately, if you want to run around blowing NPCs (and their settlements) off the map, that's also an option. While it is a paid alpha - something some may balk at, and others find quite reasonable considering Steenberg is developing Love solo - the game offers an interesting twist on MMOs as we know them. It's a little bit adventure game, a little bit cooperative civilization building, and a little bit FPS. How you get through the game - through fending for yourself or working with others - is entirely up to you. At 3 EUR per 30 days of paid time (approximately $4.50 US) it's worth checking out if you're curious. If, however, you're just interested in looking in on Love from afar, we have two videos full of our very own beautiful alpha Love exploration footage behind the break.
The Daily Grind: Procedurally-generated MMOs
With the way MMOs keep changing and growing, there's some very exciting things on the horizon for players wanting something more than what's currently out there. For example, Eskil Steenberg is working on a unique procedurally-generated MMO - you could call it an art-house MMO - named Love. What we've seen of it has been utterly fascinating so far, and the fact that he's developing it solo ensures it will hopefully come out precisely as he wants it. Outside of that, a friend of mine named Jason tossed out a post this morning about another procedurally-generated engine - the CityEngine - that can generate enormous cities completely on the fly. As he mentioned, can you imagine using it to create a horror MMO where you can essentially wander for huge distances, in and out of buildings before you find another player? Completely open and playable building interiors? Zombies? In a sandbox? We'd be happy to just play there as a seriously spooky fragfest. But before we get ahead of ourselves, we wanted to ask you - what do you think of the idea of procedurally-generated content? Do you think this is really the only logical choice in terms of building enormous open-ended sandbox MMO worlds for the future, or do you think the tightly designed and scripted worlds we have now are the only way to go? Can you see procedurally-generated games becoming a part of the mainstream, or is the tech too open ended for us? Are we ready to break free and tell our own stories?
Two new videos bring the Love
Since we've heard about Eskil Steenberg's concept for a procedurally generated MMO, we've been craving a close look at Love. Luckily for those of us who have only heard about it through news sources, he's decided to publish a video presentation showing off just what gameplay is like in Love, very similar to what our very own Shawn Schuster saw at GDC. For those of you who are interested in just what a procedurally-generated MMO looks like, or who are curious for more information on this art-house feel MMO, check behind the break for a couple of videos showing off the splendour of Love. As an added bonus, there's a video showing the tools involved in the making of this intriguing one-man generated title. Technical and art geeks alike should find something interesting in this pair of previews!
LOVE creator Eskil Steenberg on how his game differs from other MMOs
It would be an understatement to say we're excited about the upcoming massively multiplayer online game titled LOVE, and we've certainly given the title some mention here in the past. It's an MMO being developed by one person, Eskil Steenberg, featuring a rather unique art style and some interesting gameplay elements. We're always looking out for more info about the title and came across an interview with Steenberg conducted by Phill Cameron from Gamasutra, just before the LOVE creator's Independent Games Summit lecture at GDC 2009. Steenberg discusses his choice to adopt procedural generation for LOVE, which was actually the only way forward on this project. "Working alone, you simply just can't build a massive world all by yourself, so you need to do something smarter," he says. "Given that I am forced to solve this problem, I get some added bonuses like being able to constantly generate new content while the game is running." Steenberg points out another benefit to this type of game design."As it turns out I think this could be the key to gaming in the future, as the game is able to develop and change in response to the player's actions," he says. "Rather then having a few binary plot choices, the world becomes far more dynamic and responsive to your actions."
GDC 09: Eskil Steenberg on bringing the Love
We're always on the lookout for innovation in the MMO genre, so that's why Love has caught our eye. Developed by one man, Eskil Steenberg, Love is a procedurally-generated game, which essentially means that the entire world - including almost watercolor-looking graphics, different locations, etc. - are created randomly as you adventure through the world. Currently set to support 200 people per shard, Love is an interesting take on the massive genre. Within the world of Love, users will be treated to a completely free-form adventure that will involve complex chains of missions. According to Steenberg, "You want to have cool adventures with cool things, but part of the fun is just to adventure; to just explore it. [Love] is the ultimate in player-versus-environment. The idea is that there are ways to control and manipulate things in the world - cities are like networks of interesting stuff rather than just static cities - which makes it more of a puzzle than a regular MMO. You can figure out your own ways to hack your environment, if you will; find your own way of doing different things to make it your own story." Steenberg's talk at GDC about creating a game like Love, and the tools involved will be held later today at 4:45 Pacific, which promises to be a very interesting discussion. Of course, if you're not able to make it to the Game Developer's Conference, but are curious about Love and just how the project has proceeded with just one person working on it, Steenberg has been so kind as to post the long version of his presentation on his blog for us to enjoy. So if Love seems like an interesting game to you, be sure to check out the main site for more information and procedurally-generated graphics from the current alpha. We'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one as it progresses.
First trailer of Love is absolutely breathtaking
What does it say about our industry when one man and a laptop can create a game arguably more artistically ambitious and breathtaking than anything to come out of SOE, Mythic, Funcom, Turbine, Cryptic, or Blizzard? We were left to ponder that question after watching the first trailer for Love, an MMO with a one-man development team.We were first introduced to the game at GDC, where we first witnessed its gorgeous impressionist art style and learned about its procedurally generated narrative and creativity-driven social gameplay. Trailer host Rock, Paper Shotgun says this new trailer is the first moving image of the game seen by the public, but we actually included an off-screen video in our impressions of creator Eskil Steenberg's one-on-one presentation. That said, this video is much more impressive. It's simply stunning. We're not able to embed it, so head over to RPS to watch.%Gallery-16906%
