Photon Productions shares more information on the rebuilt version of Forsaken Fortress. This time we get a video, and details about the revamped combat system.

The following video shows base defence and some interior close quarter squad combat. Teamwork, tactics, equipment and morale (Affected by many factors such as hunger) play important roles in FF and that is our goal when designing the combat gameplay. 

Different types of weapon also matters. For example, pistols are great at short range for they aim faster and bolt-action rifles are better at long range because they are accurate and powerful. Grenades are very useful when you need to breach a room. Most of the time grenades will not instantly kill the enemy, but blind them or scare them away, creating a chaos which gains you the upper hand.

Photon Productions shares information on the rebuilt version of Forsaken Fortress. You may remember the developer ran into a few problems, and released the game early. 

We know many people love FF, and we also know the latest release isn't the perfect. We've reviewed many feedback for the past few months. Every our backer's suggestion is extremely valuable for us. 

We are still working on this project. we took 3 months to tear down the entire game to rubble and bricks, and rebuild it from ground up. Our team has been reduced to only two people so we can keep it up with the current financial level. We are trying our best to bring our original idea back. At the end of this month we will have another member to work with us for several months so the progress could be faster. We are working at home and in different cities, but in March we will gather around and utilize all our resources to make a big push before next beta.

Thanks to forum member you I have news that Photon Productions has resumed development of Forsaken Fortress after releasing the game in a bad state.

Development Resumed. Back to the original concept!

Hi all atomic squirrels,

We are gradually getting back on our feet from the recent financial apocalypse! We survived and things are moving now.

We are now spending a lot of time on "Fixing" the game(actually, re-making the game), and trying to follow the original concept we all liked.

Photon Productions has a new post on the kickstarter page for Forsaken Fortress that talks about the games recent release problems, and shares answers for backers.

Some answers

Thank you guys for your understanding and advises, we will keep doing what we can do. And since some people are interested in how the project look different from the original video, as the chief developer, I will explain it in detail.

It is a long story. First of all, it didn't happen in one night, the game went through almost one year and a half of development and changing. As you see the game is an experimental one which means both technical approach and designing approach are not matured. During the development, we experienced coming up with a new idea, implementing it, testing it and abandoning it almost everyday. This is not the best approach, a dangerous one, but our only choice which I believe gradually led the game off track. Another note is that the we did make a demo prototype during the kickstarter campaign.

That demo was only for the purpose of recording videos so it has absolutely no game mechanism in it whatsoever. What I can do in that demo is, I can walk, shoot and drive and of course we made the graphic look as good as possible(It is very easy to make the graphic look good if you don't have to worry about performance). And combined with video editing we made the original video look like the game that we are going to produce. However, we later found that we are unable to make the real game look like the video, especially in terms of graphics. Here is an example why.

In the demo version, there is no dynamic daylight cycle and weather system, so we used the baked global illumination lighting which has much better performance and rendering quality. However in the real game, we have to use dynamic lighting for the daylight/weather system(sunrise, nightfall, raining...) which is much slower and has worse graphical looking than baked global illumination(this is probably why open world games(skyrim) often have worse graphics than level based games(battlefield 3)). This could be one of the many reasons why you feel the game looks different now, the technical approach in reality doesn't match that in prototype. This is especially likely to happen on experimental projects which the technology has not been established yet.

How we spent our 121k? Brief breakdown,

60% for hiring(all staff, including composer fees)

20% for renting and equipment (We move to China for cheap labor cost so we have to get some whole new sets of equipment and an office)

15% preserved for rewards.

5% preserved for emergency. (such as legal actions)

The only reason why we could last this long is probably because we were in China, much cheaper labor rate and rent than NYC. And man, I didn't enjoy the polluted air in Beijing.

I agree that please don't stop supporting experimental indie projects just because one or two failed. Without that trying and failure there shall be no success whatsoever. And we indie developers are the pioneers who want to take the challenge. Your $15 bucks is much more than getting a product, it is supporting the progress of the gaming industry.

And a fun fact, at the end of the day no matter how bad your game is, there will still be people who enjoys it. So there is no good reason to stop making games:D

Photon Productions has a new forum post with information Forsaken Fortress has been released for backers, and will be available later for non-backers.

NEWS ABOUT THE RELEASE !!!!!! Fresh update !!!!!!!

These words are directly quoted from the Chief Dev Haoran, (i did not include all the stuff about him almost dying because of lack of sleep and food) :P

"I am uploading v1.0 right now, it will take 5 hours so tomorrow morning it will be up there. This release is only for backers. And all backers will receive a link via email they registered, just like how they received their betas.

Linux and mac will come about a week after windows release. And all the rewards will be sent later, which is our next focus, digital and physical rewards.

I have already included at least half of the digital reward in this build, including most customizable backer characters....future digital rewards will be included in patches."

UPDATE!!!!!!!

Everybody will get their download-link, backers first today, then all others today or tomorrow........ You can also check out the new kickstarter-update for backers only, right here : www.kickstarter.com/projects/1317934609/forsaken-fortress/posts/817033

We were sent a few more beta videos from the forum-manager of Forsaken Fortress.

We were sent another beta video for Forsaken Fortress. The clip gives us a glimpse of the new the chopper in flight, and the developer admits it still needs work.

New Clip from Forsaken Fortress, A Post-apocalyptic Survival RPG, Testing out the Chopper, First attempt to land on homebase, didn´t quite nail it. ;)

The lead-tester and forum-manager for Forsaken Fortress set us a few more videos from the games Beta, and invites anyone with questions to visit the games forums.

We are getting closer to release by the day, It´s the 20th of April, so if your interested but not quite convinced yet, come see us at our forums and feed us any questions or thoughts you might have about the game.

Here´s a few more of the latest beta-clips......

[video] http://youtu.be/YL4MYEbGB6o

[video] http://youtu.be/2jMmSVv7zjA 

[video] http://youtu.be/6Sn-_THJ8TI

See you there !

I was sent a few beta videos from the lead-tester, and forum-manager for Forsaken Fortress to help anyone who has doubts about the game.

Well, as there seem to be some doubt among those that haven´t played the Forsaken Fortress beta, i´m providing a couple of clips from the latest beta here, right now.

I´ll throw in an old alpha-clip of a certain vehicle that is being prepared and ready on release also(not the best quality though).

Hopefully it´ll saturate your appetites for now....and maybe í´ll even make it a habit of coming back here posting updates just to get you to the "dark side" in the end. ;)

[video] http://youtu.be/5jvZMMDMO1Q

[video] http://youtu.be/pyj8LrCK44c

[video] http://youtu.be/nfj0uVqoWWM

So does this help anyone with their doubts?

The lead-tester and forum-manager for Forsaken Fortress has sent us an update on the games status. The game was delayed for testing, and fixing last month.

Hi ! I´m the lead-tester and forum-manager of the game Forsaken Fortress, and i thought that maybe you wanted an update aswell, not just the forum members.

Well...it´s time for a little update on the progress of the game....The game is on schedule, the release date remains the same, the 20th of April.

We are doing some final debugging on the 4.5 beta that we have been working on for some time now. There is no more beta-releases in the works now, as we focus our aim on the release of the finished game.

The finished game will be released on the homepage and for everyone who already bought it, you´ll get the link on release-day.

He even sent a few more screenshots.

Providing some pics from latest beta down below.....

http://i57.tinypic.com/1412ud5.jpg
http://i60.tinypic.com/dpz877.jpg
http://i58.tinypic.com/2vt9sw4.jpg
http://i62.tinypic.com/amy2ol.jpg
http://i60.tinypic.com/2dj6gye.jpg

Photon Productions has posted a new combat video and development update in the latest post-funding update for Forsaken Fortress.

It also confirms the news of the delay we mentioned a few days back.

Some important features for the next build:

1. AI can do proper pathfinding outside of the base.

2. If your companion got lost(for instance, you left him too far behind), he would return base.

3. Certain attachment can be mounted on certain weapon(for instance, a sniper scope can be attached to most rifles)

4. You can spend the extra money on some bonus cards. for instance you can buy a reinforcement card for 5000. And what it does is basically calling 5 militia men to fight for you. This feature is not that important to the overall gameplay, it just brings a bit more fun and balance.

Known Issue,

The previous issue was the pathfinding and it was solved. Now we have had some reports on crashes and saving problem. The crash is the tricky one, since it could be caused by so many factors. We are working with several testers to solve this problem and hopefully the system will be more stable in the next build.

What's next

The game mechanism is pretty much what it is right now. There could be a lot more features to be polished and added in. But we think that if the game is more balanced and without bugs, it will be playable. So debugging and balancing is what we are focusing on right now.

1. Adding music and sound effects

2. Add a large vehicle to carry more people(we only have two small buggy cars at the moment). It makes life easier if you want to lead a large team to expedition.

3. Adding backer customized items(customized characters, item designing, location name, etc) We are sending out surveys to collect these information.

4. Debugging, Debugging, Debugging....

Estimated Release Date 4/20

We have been informed that the release date of Forsaken Fortress has been pushed back from the scheduled release in this month. In asking the developers for a reply they responded with: "Right now there are bugs in the current beta build. Some serious bugs and we don't feel like releasing anything full of bugs."

As a result the game will be delayed a few weeks, but taking their reply into account: "The release date has been pushed back, simply because we need more time to polish", this might also mean it's going to be released when it is done, which would be a good position to take I guess.

Photon Productions has two more gameplay videos for Forsaken Fortress from a new kickstarter update. Here are the details from the update.

Updated Gameplay

Hey folks,

Here is a brief instruction of base management. We will record a combat instruction video for the next update.

1. You can build wooden and stone houses

2. AI can find cover in a fire fight. It was difficult to achieve for an open-world game because it needs a locators placed in the map for the AI to recognize. 

3. You companion may flee from battle if morale is too low.

4. All locations are finished and tested.

5. Most bugs from the last build are fixed.

What's next?

We will keep doing the debugging and optimization. At this point, we are not adding any more features. We are polishing what we have right now.

Technical Difficulty

Pathfinding: It is hard for an open world game to incorporate fantastic pathfinding. Because of the massive scale of the map and the large amount of objects in the scene, it is impossible for a traditional A* pathfinding method to run effectively, and it takes forever for navigation mesh to bake. Other than these two approches, we also tried some other methods but none of them really worked. So right now the only place where you can get true pathfinding is your base. As soon as AI left the base, they could get stuck easily. We know there must be a way around but we haven't found it yet. So if you had any insight on this, please don't hesitate to share it.

Photon Productions has a new post on the comment section of Forsaken Fortress with details on the games targeted release date.

Hi, We will release another Beta and the end of this month. And release the final game in March! As for Linux, the progress was delayed because of a unsolved database issue, which we just solved a couple of days ago. Mac has that issue too but we solved it as well.

Forsaken Fortress is a successfull kickstarter RPG developed by a small studio called Photon Productions. Their game is described as the following.

Unlike many other existing post-apocalyptic RPGs, Forsaken Fortress emphasizes simulation features such as base building, character personality/interaction, and resource collection. You will need to lead a group of survivors to construct your base and maintain its basic functions, such as electricity generation or food storage. Meanwhile, you will ensure the base's security by building defenses and setting traps. You will also need to lead your expedition team to the wasteland to gather supplies and to work on missions, balancing their professional skills in order to maximize their effectiveness. Characters in Forsaken Fortress are highly dynamic in their behavior. They have needs, goals and personalities which will influence their daily life and decision making. Some of them may fall in love and some of them may not get along, but all them bring life to the devastated, forsaken world.

In the meantime here is a video, and following the link they have a few more.

If you find yourself interested after all that you can still pledge on paypal.

Forsaken Fortress hit their funding goal over the last day or so - as I write, there's a mere 9 hours left in their Kickstarter campaign. They currently have $116k of 100k on the board and the first two stretch goals are down:

Stretch goals

• 105,000: Atomic Squirrel Race officially added.(not a joke)Achieved!
• 110,000: Free play mode(no story, no ending, no limit)Achieved!
• 120,000: Scenario modes(Defense mode, capture the flag mode, search and destroy mode...)

With three days to run and $81k of $100k on the board, Forsaken Fortress has kicked up a new pre-Alpha gameplay video:

I thought it time we catch up with Forsaken Fortress - the "survival RPG" campaign on Kickstarter. Currently they are at $59k / $100 with 8 days to go.

Yesterday they posted some race concept arts and previous updates include transportation and combat:

Bob and Jonah both write in to highlight the Kickstarter campaign for Forsaken Fortress, which is described as a "survival RPG". With 23 days to go, they have $14k of their $100k goal:

A special RPG in which you build your base, defenses,assemble your team, collect resources and survive in a post apocalyptic world.

What is Forsaken Fortress?

Unlike many other existing post-apocalyptic RPG, Forsaken Fortress emphasize on simulation features such as base building, character personality, interaction and resource collection.  In the game you need to lead a group of survivors to build your base and maintain its basic functionality such as electricity generation or food storage and at the same time you need to ensure its security by building defenses or setting traps. You will also need to lead your expedition team to the wasteland to gather supplies and to work on missions. You need to assemble and maintain a specialized team which is made up of unique and individual characters and to utilize their professional skills in order to achieve optimized team functionality. Characters in Forsaken Fortress are highly dynamic in their behavior. They have needs, goals and personalities which will influence their daily life and decision making. Some of them may fall in love, some of them may not get along and all these bring life to the devastated forsaken world.