Roleplaying

[icycalm]

Menyr: Next-gen next-level VTT
https://www.patreon.com/posts/70345040

Menyr is THE DARK SOULS OF VTTS!!!

Also something I didn't mention in the article, straight from the developers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xrl1q- ... dQA6pcN3Gv

VR is coming a little after release

[icycalm]

2023 GOTY RIGHT HERE
https://www.patreon.com/posts/70907765

Just watch this friggin' video, future of gaming right there. Don't say icycalm didn't warn you years in advance.

[icycalm]

Immersive Storytelling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJsiP9Z0B90



New video that's crazier than anything else I've posted.

Note the bases can be removed entirely, and you can walk around normally. In some of the videos, that's how they show it.

[icycalm]

Weather Control - sneak peek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMmSzuL2wW4



The rain, snow, and time of day are cool, but what really blew me away is the wind. Watch how the trees bend, dust is kicked up, leaves flying everywhere. You don't get this stuff even in most traditional videogames, only in a handful of huge-budget games.

Note also no bases anywhere, just smoothly animated normal videogame models.

[icycalm]

https://twitter.com/MenyrNetwork/status ... 7790508033

System requirements so far is a 1080Ti or higher

lolwhat

[icycalm]

MOST WANTED: Menyr (provisional 2023 GOTY)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/71274710

The Menyr Kickstarter is live, and I pledged at the €49 level, my first crowdfunding pledge ever.

[icycalm]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/no ... r/comments



Nothing much to see here, just icycalm starting a war, as on any given day.

[icycalm]

The KS is doing good, but...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/no ... Q1Mg%3D%3D

I am worried about the program being free. This means that, once the KS is over, you won't have a way of raising funds until the marketplace is live. I hope you've thought this through...

[icycalm]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/no ... kyMQ%3D%3D

The GM has full control over his world, including the NPCs. At any given time you can take control of an NPC that you have drag & droped into the map. If you use the function, you can even talk as the character and your players will hear the sound with it's location, thanks to spatialized sound.

They're saying all the right things. GMed Cyberpunk 2077 isn't far away. And the market is responding well so far, as they've reached €156k now. That said, the TaleSpire KS reached €350k, so they have a ways to go to catch up. They still have 17 days though, and the word is getting out. They might well get there.

Three new trailers are out, and they're incredible. The level of fidelity is easily near the level of LiF, Atlas, and Rust, and it will surely rise with cutting-edge assets. It's Unreal 5 after all.

Material technology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbMWCOrZx08



House Generator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h274V_wFdjY



In-game Gameplay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLQ_0-81ax4



Watching these videos makes me miss Pathfinder terribly. We'll get back on that horse soon, guys, and with a ton of new bells and whistles.

[icycalm]

Menyr Lets You Build A Whole Damn World For Your RPG Campaigns
https://kotaku.com/ttrpg-rpg-d-d-dungeo ... 1849555946

Kotaku linked Menyr and their KS jumped to nearly a quarter of a million. They never mentioned TaleSpire because it's isometric, not really animated, etc.

[icycalm]

Village Generator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhahIZv0S58



Hotdamn. And this is all garbage procgen alpha.

[icycalm]

Guild Artillerist | Beneos Animated D&D Tokens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOBIr9gJC1s



New model by Beneos. Check out how high-quality it is. I think it is comparable to what's seen in Baldur's Gate III. That's the kind of quality we can expect to see in Menyr. Whole armies of them, and moving in real-time, at least during exploration phase.

If some AI can be added to the program, it could have massive ramifications for real-time tactics as well. So far I have been talking about a revolution in TURN-BASED tactics with TaleSpire, but Menyr has the potential to upend real-time tactics as well.

Which reminds me of Robomoo by the way lol. He is working on a Tiny Metal clone right now, and I told him that he doesn't even know the good tactics games, so how can he expect to make a good one? Because Tiny Metal isn't good. It sure looks good, but it isn't good. The best tactics game is... Pathfinder. So if he wanted to make a good one, he'd have to make a new RPG system. That's why I am not making a tactics game: we already have the best, and I can't make a better one, so there's no use trying. It's a waste of time. What I am doing instead is inserting the best tactics system into the best MMORPG and overworld system, which is my Ultimate Edition and Battlegrounds. And what Menyr can potentially bring to this table besides first-person and high-fidelity graphics is REAL-TIME play, specifically real-time exploration and, hopefully some day with some AI added, real-time tactics.

Real-time action a la Cyberpunk 2077, on the other hand, is coming too, but probably not with Menyr.

[icycalm]

The Crusader | Beneos Tokens Animated Dnd Tokens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1oOwbMlrDo



Sharakhul, The Flayed Dragon | Beneos Animated Dnd Tokens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYtsdNRp5L8



Beneos has been knocking it out of the park lately with more and more Baldur's Gate 3-level models for Foundry. This is the level of detail we'll be playing with in Menyr within the next two years. Note that both Menyr and Beneos use Unreal Engine, so it'll be a cinch to transfer his work to the Menyr marketplace, which is supposed to hit as early as March. But I expect it will take at least a year beyond that until there's enough material available to run a full campaign. So maybe two years overall, is a safe bet; plenty of time to finish at least one TaleSpire campaign by then.

The question is whether there will be any place for TaleSpire after Menyr takes over. Keep in mind that TaleSpire will probably retain superiority in terms of the Minecrafty building mechanics, plus it looks cute as hell, so ideally I would like both VTTs to thrive and grow, and keep using both of them depending on the kind of campaign we're running. We'll see how it goes.

[icycalm]

Via Kickstarter email:

Hello everyone!

We wanted to get back to you with some news on what's going on at NOG Studio. Since we last talked a few weeks ago, the team took some well deserved rest and is now hard at work.

As promised, the Feature Request webpage is up and running, and the VIP Discord channel is live for Archivists and up. We are already using your feedback on both places to refine our roadmap and complete feature list that we will share with you later on. It makes it really clear that the engine will not be the same without your input so we hope you'll continue to get involved as we'll rely on you going forward.



We just put out a little recap video (thank you Manu!) of the Octogône Convention where we did the final countdown for the Kickstarter campaign. For those who missed it or want to update their pledge, the Backer Kit Pledge manager and Late Backer shop will be coming this week!

In other news, we attended the Game Connection in Paris a few days ago. For context, it is on the professional side of the Paris Games Week, one of the biggest game convention in the world. We met a lot of important people that will work with us on Menyr in the future and help us push the boundaries of what we could do on our own. From editors to QA, content creators, localization, AI specialists and many more, it was an important convention for NOG and Menyr.

We are welcoming a couple recruits, focusing on integrating them into the team as we speak. Our main task now is to clean the actual alpha version so that we can build the program as stable as possible while allowing great flexibility when we need to expand in the future. This is a rather "quiet" time where there is not much we can "show" while arguably the most important one as core decisions about the engine are being made and will affect Menyr for the years to come.

Stay tuned for more, don't hesitate to join the Discord where most of the conversation is happening, and have a great day.

The Menyr Team


ps: NOG can finally revealed the EA project we've been working on for the past 9+ months, Need for Speed : Unbound! Can't wait to play this one :) Check our freshly made Artstation for more NOG productions ;)

If you check their ArtStation, you'll see they've worked on a bunch of big-budget games, and they're still working on titles. I asked specifically about this on their KS, and they said that even if Menyr funding stalls, they still have money coming in from their contractor work. So on top of the fact their KS made more than TaleSpire's, they also have this income to iron out cashflow issues. TaleSpire is being made by two full-time devs plus a couple of freelancers, but NOG is already a dozen people and they're hiring more.

Also note, no diversity. Though that is likely to change if they attract enough attention.

[icycalm]

Videogame Art Marches Forward
https://www.patreon.com/posts/74435538

Another year, another GOTY that no one will acknowledge except me, since the industry lost the plot a couple of years ago with the explosive growth of VTTs that no one even realizes are full-blown videogames now, and even the best of them.

[icycalm]

Beneos Tokens Welcome Video + Setup Guide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAapK-iZpeo



Great video by Beneos that showcases his growing army of "tokens" as he calls them. If you want to see the kind of model fidelity we'll be playing with in Menyr next year, don't miss this video.

I also posted a comment:

Great video, but... maybe it's time to stop using the word "tokens"? We'll soon be able to use your stunning models in VR in Menyr. Tables and tops are dead.

[icycalm]

Tomb of Nhek Aachariya | Jungle Ruin and Tomb | Beneos Animated DnD Assets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU8y7eliXYE



With this environment, Beneos achieved photorealism. I cannot tell the difference between this and National Geographic, even though I am running it on a mere 1080p resolution and at a huge 42 inches right in front of my face.

Don't miss this video. This is what playing in Menyr will be like. And it will be fully interactive.

[icycalm]

A Look Back at 2022: How Far We've Come and What's to Come
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/no ... ered_users

Dude Menyr's art direction is out of this world. It crushes every CRPG ever including the rolling on the floor games as far as I am concerned. Utterly unbelievable.







This thing looks better than the D&D movie lmao.

Check this PDF for more: https://menyr.nogstudio.com/wp-content/ ... ewards.pdf

GOTY 2023, and we'll be playing the first side-missions in this before the end of next year.

In VR.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/no ... g2Mw%3D%3D

Your art direction is out of this world, as I reported here: https://culture.vg/forum/topic?p=36392#p36392

Beauty and intelligence are related. Whoever leads this project has impeccable taste, which means he is a genius.