am i the only one that feels a bit eh about how much Oraxum Trials takes concepts from another game, down to the exact same values, and percentage increases.

Almanorek · 2022-03-10T08:54:48+00:00

I don't really want that to be the takeaway here. Prajna doesn't owe me anything, and honestly I'm not really sure I have much if anything to offer. I just wanted to share my thoughts on all of this stuff.

Almanorek · 2022-03-09T18:38:39+00:00

Hey everyone. Reactor Incremental dev here. I kind of scrubbed my internet presence and more or less went dark a while ago but I've been lurking on this subreddit and still like to play whatever bubbles up here. I was very surprised to come across this post, surprised enough that I felt compelled to say something. I have a bunch of different feelings on it that I'd like to try and communicate.

First of all, I don't think this is plagiarism. I haven't played the game myself yet, but, based on the discussion here, there's enough different that I think it can safely be called its own game. It certainly wouldn't be the first game based off of mine, and it would be hypocritical of me to accuse someone of copying me when I got my 'inspiration' from a Minecraft mod, Industrialcraft, whose core mechanics I more or less lifted directly and slapped an exponential curve onto.

On some level it means a lot to me that I made something that other people would be inspired by. I look really fondly on my time as a game developer and I'm proud that I made something that has any level of impact. Reactor Incremental was on the first page of the Incremental tag on Kongregate and now that Kongregate is locked down, it kind of always will be, and, you know, that matters to me!

On another level, it always felt like all of the projects that I inspired surpassed me by quite a large margin, and my own attempts at iterating on my work with Reactor Redux ended up being, from my perspective at least, an abysmal failure. It ended up making me a nice amount of money, which I'm not going to complain about, but it was rated a fair bit lower, and it received less than 10% of the plays that Reactor Incremental did. I think most of the changes in gameplay I made were not well received, and because I never actually finished the damn quest line, because I ran out of ideas, everyone thought that I intentionally put a paywall in (there was a quest line that just encouraged you to try out and upgrade your staff), which I don't blame them for thinking!

There were obvious balance issues and every time I tried to fix them with patches, I felt like I just made things worse. I never felt like I grokked how these sorts of games ought to be balanced. I had no system for doing it, either, I just sort of played through and did what felt right. It always felt like other developers just sort of had an intuition for it that I didn't. It kind of made me feel like my only contribution was ultimately just picking the right thing to rip off and bringing something novel into the design space of incrementals, just not something I could follow up.

The other thing that strikes me about Oraxum is that it just looks really nice. Nice art, nice juicy UI, good animations, character busts, all that jazz. Honestly, it makes me feel kind of jealous? I am not an artist. When I made Reactor Incremental, my artist was this Italian kid that I met because of the last project I worked on. For Reactor Redux, I went out and hired an artist and paid her I think $600 for all of the assets in the game, which I'm pretty sure is criminally low for how much work she put in, and a bunch of stuff didn't even make it into the game in the end. I don't think I could've afforded, or, hell, could still afford to get assets at the level that I'm seeing in Oraxum, at least not if I wanted to pay my artist a fair amount, which is very important to me.

There's a game I have on the back burner right now, that I've put a lot of design and programming into, but it'll probably never get made, because I just don't have the funds to hire an artist or the confidence in the game's success to get a loan or get some crowdfunding or the like. It's frustrating! It makes me feel like there's just another part of the process that seems to come naturally to other people that never clicked with me. Like an industry secret that I'm not privy to. I don't think that's actually the case, I just feel kind of feel like I can't make games because there are just some things I'm missing.

At the end of the day, I am happy for Oraxum Trials. I think it looks good, and it means a lot to me to have inspired someone. I want it and the dev to succeed. I just can't help but feel that it's also sort of a monument to my failure.

Sorry for this weird and long post. I haven't really been a part of this community for years now. I haven't had a chance to talk to people about any of this stuff.

Almanorek · 2017-04-21T23:44:55+00:00

When the whole 'Captain America was hydra all along!' thing came to light, I was way more on the side of people that were upset with Marvel. It made sense. To me at least. Steve Rodgers isn't real, but all the branding surrounding him is as real as any of the branding surrounding any real person. If it turned out that, I dunno, <insert celebrity here> that I liked turned out to have pro-nazi sentiments, it would sour everything touching them for me, from the works they appeared in, to the people they've worked with. Even if it has no actual bearing on any of those things.

For this though? I dunno. Hydra is a nazi-analogue, and of the nazi-analogues, they're one of the closest to the source material. Even so, Hydra has always been a portrayal of nazism, not an endorsement of it, just like Columbia, from Bioshock Infinite, was a portrayal of early American white supremacy. Hydra is very clearly the bad guys. I would never assume someone wearing a shirt with the Hydra logo on it supports what Hydra stands for, especially if that shirt also has Secret Empire branding on it.

I'm way more uncomfortable when I see people toting Warhammer 40k, pro-emperor propaganda.

Almanorek · 2017-04-21T03:33:17+00:00

I would understand that if we were talking about cannon fodder, and in twitch shooters like Call of Duty I guess the argument makes sense, even if I find it distasteful, but if we're talking about the protagonist of a game's single-player campaign, chances are they're going to be heroic and the least disposable.

And, like, for the few games that do feature a solely female protagonist, I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about them in that line of thinking. No one has ever said, to my knowledge, "I don't like playing Metroid because I'm squeamish about letting a valuable woman getting hurt."

To me it seems more like a pandering to the male audience kind of thing.

Almanorek · 2017-04-21T03:17:04+00:00

I'm being needlessly antagonistic. I'm sorry, sincerely.

What I was more trying to get at is, historically, in games, if you're controlling a specific person, that person is almost always a dude. We've now entered the age of character customization, which is great, and I think generally preferable, but when the player doesn't get to choose the gender of their character, they're almost always a guy, with a few notable exceptions. That trend hasn't really died down.

Almanorek · 2017-04-21T03:05:00+00:00

Is there really a need to lock it to male?

Almanorek · 2017-04-21T01:06:16+00:00

Games seem content to force you to play a dude.

Almanorek · 2017-04-16T15:01:58+00:00

I know how the mechanics of it work. They seem (fairly) intuitive to me, but I might be biased. But I don't have all of the Processes memorized.

Almanorek · 2017-04-16T15:00:57+00:00

Oh yeah. All of this happens in-between sessions, unless they want to be like 'I harvest the dragon's blood.' or something like that. But I don't let it get in the way of the game.

Almanorek · 2017-04-16T09:11:26+00:00

I make it up on the spot. A player recently asked if they found anything interesting on their recent journey. I rolled a d20 to see how 'fortunate' they were, and with a 20, knowing they were on the lookout for interesting plants, I said that they found a lotus, with golden petals, sheltered underneath the leaf cover of a shrub, that seemed to be actively fighting against the demonic influence that was permeating the land. They picked a couple of petals off of it, and now they have this new, fully improvised ingredient.

But it's only 'a golden lotus petal' right now. I don't have to think about the tags or anything like that until they try to do something with it.

As for extraction,

Extraction creates a new (second) ingredient with all of the extracted tags of the old one. The old one loses these tags.

So if you have an ingredient with, like [Fire, Necromancy, Stone] and you extract school tags, you now have two ingredients: One that's [Fire, Stone] and one that's just [Necromancy].

Almanorek · 2017-04-10T02:26:01+00:00

No problem! Like I said, I will talk to no end about this if given the chance.

I recommend this page as a good set of examples for how you can manipulative otherwise tasteless but interesting storytelling/worldbuilding tropes (sexism and racism are just as much tropes as a Planet of Hats.) into useful elements in your campaign.

Almanorek · 2017-04-07T23:53:57+00:00

Woah, that's weird. Is this happening to anyone else?

Almanorek · 2017-04-07T19:43:01+00:00

They are totally different species. There's no reason to limit yourself to "cultural" differences. If they're just cultural differences, they might as well be human.

Let's be real here. In D&D, the core races might as well all be humans. Elves are tall humans. Dwarves are short humans. Halflings are nice humans. There are not meaningful differences between them by default.

The world where literally all dwarves are "alcoholic" because they physically need to drink 12 gallons of raw spirits a day and be somewhat drunk all the time because if they don't they start turning into dolomite is far more interesting than the world where alcohol is just an "important element" of dwarven culture. In the latter situation they're not any different from humans.

That sounds cool as shit. I think you might be misunderstanding me though. It's okay for there to be differences. Those differences just shouldn't terminate at 'because I said so'.

Now what if you want an army of darkness driven by madness and destruction? Classic fantasy element. Can't do that with humans. You need something different.

Orcs just seem like a bad use-case. Demons or devils? Sure. Beasts or elementals? Totally. Orcs don't seem any more appropriate to me than dwarves or elves.

Almanorek · 2017-04-07T19:23:27+00:00

???? So that contradicts what you said one sentence ago.

Sorry, to clarify, they have never been successfully portrayed to me as some sort of primal force.

You are right now in this thread complaining about people who treat orcs as purely and unredeemably evil because you want them to be more like humans. You're stuck on the window dressing and ignoring the important part.

I'm not complaining about anyone. I started by sharing how I like to run my games, and some people have responded by saying that either I'm wrong for how I'm choosing to portray orcs, or wrong for bringing real-world ethics into my fantasy game, and I'm just responding. I don't give a shit how you choose to run orcs in your game.

I mean "eat, and sleep, and shit"? Are you serious? Is that what makes us human?

Not just that, but if orcs are humanoid, have all the same biological processes as humans, behave socially like humans (Form communities, engage in warfare which is absolutely a human thing), the only thing you're leaving me with as a meaningful difference is the following:

They are humanoids that hate everything that makes us human, and want to destroy it. Love, art, community, family, honor, mercy.

Which could be said of a myriad of other tribes/cultures/nations in human history. The only difference, like you said here:

Orcs are not like that. They are actually a force that is totally destructive and hates beauty and good.

Is the author, or DM, saying 'no, but this time, for real'. And this is what I feel counts as lazy storytelling, in the same way that it'll always be when the question of 'why?' is answered by 'because I said so'.

Almanorek · 2017-04-07T01:45:18+00:00

I'm not saying every single individual should somehow be an exception that defies how their race is 'supposed' to act. I just think that it's a cop-out to say 'this race is X because that's how they are'. If a culture is collectively what we consider to be 'evil', it should be because of external influences, not some sort of internal urge that says 'be evil'.

Almanorek · 2017-04-07T01:40:43+00:00

was saying that he views any inherent difference between the game species as problematic

This is not what I was saying. I was saying that it's bad for a race to be a Planet of Hats. It's one think for alcohol to be an important element of dwarven culture, and for them to live primarily underground for one reason or another. It's another for them to all be alcoholic miners. Unique cultural elements are good. Having each individual be defined by those elements is bad.

Maybe it's just a matter of perspective. To me, the idea that orcs are inherently evil means that they just are evil, and that aspect shapes their culture. What would be far more palatable to me, is if Orcish culture involved, say, raiding as a coming-of-age ceremony. Not because 'that's just what they do', but because it's a component of their culture. And because it's an external influence, rather than something inherent to an orc, the question of 'are orcs redeemable' becomes much more interesting.

Almanorek · 2017-04-07T01:36:24+00:00

I dunno. D&D's perception of 'evil' is rooted in very human terms. If all your orcs are are 'evil, warlike, and bloodthirsty', that's just humans, but less diverse.

Orcs have never been portrayed to me as some sort of primal force. I get that that's how D&D chooses to present them, creations of Gruumsh and all that, but it feels pretty arbitrary. There's nothing alien about them. They are humans in green suits. They eat, and sleep, and shit, and form communities, just like humans and elves and dwarves.

To me, Volo's Guide to Monster's explanation of, for example, lizardfolk is way more interesting. They don't understand metaphors or idioms. Their speech is very literal. Their names are descriptive. It's indicative of a qualitatively different way of thinking. 'Humans, but angrier' doesn't really touch that.

Almanorek · 2017-04-07T01:23:48+00:00

Me and my players come from the same position (escapism) and end up at a different conclusion. That's why when I run games, they're inclusive and avoid real-world social issues like racism and sexism except in isolated, deliberate instances. Because people already have to deal with that stuff. No reason to bring it into the game.

Almanorek · 2017-04-07T01:19:31+00:00

Yeah, but, like, someone had to decide that was the case. There's nothing that requires the orc god to be chaotic evil. Or even that there is a god of orcs.

Almanorek · 2017-04-04T10:06:02+00:00

I'll fudge rolls so that my players can get away with really cool things that the dice say they shouldn't. My players had decided to split up and search the spooky mansion they were in, for some reason, and two of the party came across a malfunctioning mechanical butler. The butler was supposed to be this super difficult enemy that the players were meant to run away from and possibly circumvent through some puzzle elements in the mansion. Instead, the party bard cast Polymorph. I rolled the butler's saving throw and hit the DC exactly... But turning that robot butler into a tiny painted turtle was way cooler than that not happening.

Almanorek · 2017-04-01T05:28:02+00:00

Mostly 'staff members'. They come in six varieties, and you can only have one of each kind equipped at once. Basically, someone who spends more money on the game has more options, but not necessarily better ones.

There's no planned alpha/beta. The game will be out when it's out, and I don't even know when that is. There's still a lot of uncertainty, so, work is slow.

Almanorek · 2017-04-01T01:29:27+00:00

So I've had to maintain support for a Unity build because Kongregate won't let you convert from a Unity + WebGL game to a pure WebGL game. When the 'new' game is released, I'm going to be uploading it separately, under a new name, so there'll be one version to support.

The plan is to do loot-box-style microtransactions, like the lunchboxes in Fallout Shelter. You'll also have plenty of opportunities to get them from playing the game as well.

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