Fantastic Pixel Castle is reflecting on their recent Innovation Week. No, their upcoming MMO, currently known as Ghost, isn’t quite ready for its Milestone 2 prototype, but they seem to be keeping the dev team nimble in some creative ways.
In the new devblog, they highlight their new tradition and let their developers pitch all sorts of projects related to the development of the game, but not urgent and not expected to be core. During these exercises, the team puts their regular work aside to work on whatever they're pitching during this particular week. Then, everyone presents what they worked on to the rest of the staff the following Monday
This is similar to RuneScape’s periodic game jams, where the team can begin to pitch improvements, updates, and features that might come to fruition.
So what did FPC get from this most recent week?
Project Loadscreens used concept art to put it into the prototype by way of concept art loading screens, including some screen tips. Team Voxels experimented with interactive environmental changes, and what it might mean if you're doing this in game and affecting the world. Project Metaballs made a tool designed to enhance procedural terrain.
Another team attempted to sketch out a model Blue Zone, one of the dynamic zones that is set to be a core feature of what Ghost is set to be. Team Radical Tanking decided to examine how tanking in an MMO could change, improve, and what it could look like in this game versus other games.
Finally, a team known as Team Traversal was looking at challenges on how players will get from point A to point B in an interesting and engaging way. “Everything from zip lines and cannon towers to a first look at what mounts might be like,” were covered.
The load screen stuff is already in the early game, so we can expect more of that. In announcing this, they shared some new concept art. There are also various ways to Traverse terrain included in the weekly play test build. Project Metaballs resulted in some more flexible thinking on how to create topographical landmarks and changes, particularly in Blue Zones. Team Voxels left the team “excited for the player implications of our experiment here” and it looks like this will appear in some form, allowing more player control.
For the rest of the teams, FPC is still examining lessons they can take forth into the game. the full in-depth reflections on the exercise is worth your time if you’ve been following Ghost or you just like the nuts and bolts of design.
