Cult Engine 3 (internal codename: TaleSpire)

[icycalm]

[icycalm]

The cutest, coziest inn in all of gaming: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2968680047



Go give that guy a like.

























And an assortment of new pics to maintain your hype:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2894776698



https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2766625216



https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2878616474



https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2787973789



https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2907230959



https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 2795342247

[icycalm]

Lots of things have been happening at Cult Games Norway with Cult Engine 3 that I haven't been posting about because I've been busy overseeing these guys. Above all, the Ships update was released, and it is stunning.



As incredible as the outside of the ships looks, the inside is even better.





Don't tell me you wouldn't want to live in there while travelling back and forth across Golarion's high seas in search of action and adventure. If Atlas is first-person Pirates, this is roleplaying Pirates and it's the cutting-edge of 21st-century gaming.

Istallri has updated his Owl Island with the new assets, and the new version looks unreal.



I for my part have not seen a cuter, more lovingly-crafted scene in all my decades of gaming: that's what you can achieve when you kick the programmers out of the design room. And it's only playable in Alex Kierkegaard's Battlegrounds of course, because no one else has my design skills to make this playable. I mean just look at this scene:



Zoom into it and really look at it.

Have you ever seen a more detailed scene in any game? Every item on that boat is interactable thanks to my coding prowess: every barrel, length of rope, head of cabbage. Every lantern or piece of fruit. Atlas scenes look poor in comparison. THAT's how you load your boat in Alex Kierkegaard's Battlegrounds: piece by piece in ultimate interactivity. And you better do a good job at it because my game must be one-lifed and pulls no punches.



And if a simple ship's boat is so interactable, how do you think a siege will feel with that level of interactivity?



Keep in mind the above video shows a crap castle with no terrain, and practically no soldiers. Try to imagine it with a kickass castle set in kickass terrain and thousands of soldiers. But you can't imagine that because it defies imagination. I can't imagine it either. We'll have to wait until we see it fully formed on our (hopefully 4K, or why not even 8K) massive TVs and projectors to believe it.

It will be the Age of Battlegrounds, or should I say the Age of Icycalm?

In other Cult Engine 3 news, we now have a system in beta wherein you load webpages among other things inside the engine! This means you can have the overworld inside the game! And not only the overworld, but any number of books/rules references etc.

Symbiotes are now in Beta!
https://steamcommunity.com/games/720620 ... 2831541800



There are also basic character sheets, a handout manager, and what looks like a first-person picture-in-picture feature.







In short, Cult Engine 3 is finally ready to use, and I would be putting it in service right now if I didn't have a couple of other things I want to get out of the door first. It's definitely coming this summer though. Depending on my level of energy and inspiration and my management of my plans, it may even come in July. Plus I have more news on this score that I am keeping under wraps for now. Suffice it to say, the end result will be even better than I have said it will be. You won't believe how great it will be. I scarcely believe it myself.

And I will leave you with a trailer that showcases above all the level of cinematicness that can only be achieved with Cult Engine 3's free camera. This is a hugely underappreciated aspect of Cult Engine 3 because you need to see it in action to appreciate it, and no one has seen Cult Engine 3 in action yet besides me. You've never seen such camerawork in an isometric CRPG. You've scarcely even seen it in a first-person game.

Ship Collection - [Trailer]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkyUQs- ... XVyolQO3wj




P.S. Do not watch Istallri trailers that I haven't linked for you because they're full of spoilers.

[icycalm]

This isn't a particularly good set, I certainly won't be using it, but it's good to illustrate the verticality that Cult Engine 3 makes possible. You have never seen this kind of height in a CRPG, certainly not in an isometric one. To get an idea of the magnitude, look at the squares at the forest floor. That's how tiny a character would be if placed in the set (the builder should have included one for scale). If you place one under a tree, no one at the top would even be able to see him. So when you're at the top, you're keenly aware of how precarious your position is, and that if you get pushed off, it's certain death, unless you can fly or something. Imagine how exciting a fight at the top with the appropriate music playing would be. What's hard to imagine though is that the camera will be spinning around and repositioning itself with every move for maximum effect (if you have a good enough GM/cameraman that is). No programmer would ever allow any of this to happen in a traditional videogame. They'd rather quit the project than let something this cool be made. That's what it means to be a homo.



In other news, two of the best Cult Games set builders, GENGUS and PsiaBaba, have collaborated to give us the biggest ship yet: a 50-gun imperial man-of-war. Look how many freakin sails it has. Imagine this thing coming out of the mist against you, flanked by a couple dozen galleons. What do you do?

"I HOLD MY BREATH AND DIVE"

We now have a complete set of naval vehicles from tiny dinghies all the way up to this monster. We also have a very cool flying ship I haven't shown you yet PLUS a complete set of Spelljammer ships. The Spelljammer ones DO look cool given the limited assets, but I won't be using them. We'll wait until specialized Spelljammer assets are released. I asked the builder and he said he's willing to remake the entire fleet when he gets the specialized assets. We're not in a hurry to get this stuff anyway.

You'll see the entire collection of naval vehicles at the same time as I release the entire city-building section of Battlegrounds. All that will be hosted on akbattlegrounds.net and it will be the most complex city-building assets you've ever seen. It makes the latest Anno look like a Game Boy game. Look out also for a complete equestrian set (with carts, carriages, etc.) and general animal catalogue. Also tent catalogue for entire traveling camps/armies/festivals etc.

[icycalm]

Cult Engine 3 Update - Focus and Effect
https://steamcommunity.com/games/720620 ... 9075256212

GMs can now right-click on rulers made by other players and turn them into AOEs.

Cult Games Norway still hard at work refining Cult Engine 3 for its coming soonTM launch, at which point the industry will start asking "you baldur's wot mate?"

[icycalm]

Show me one other CRPG, or videogame in general, than can do this.

Coming soonTM, only on Alex Kierkegaard's Battlegrounds.

Powered by Cult Engine 3.

baldur's what?

[icycalm]

Early Access Content Pack 26: Guns, Glass, and Gas
https://bouncyrock.com/news/articles/ea ... ss-and-gas



It's official, Alex Kierkegaard's Battlegrounds has fully interactive weapon and armor racks before Star Citizen. That's why I employ dozens of studios and tens of thousands of people while Chris Roberts only 5 studios and just above 1,000 people.



Also full kitchen appliances whereas SC still only has a coffee maker:



And some extra building pieces for sci-fi structures:

[icycalm]

More Cult Engine 3 screens coming out of Cult Games Norway. We're going full steam ahead for the January 1 launch of Kingslayer [ > ] (though these aren't Kingslayer screens, so no spoilers here). Remember, no other game/studio will ever use this engine, because I will decline to license it out. They can use Game Maker or whatever. It's not like their players will be able to tell the difference anyway.

[icycalm]

Cult Engine 3 dungeons just leveled up! And just in time for the new dungeon-building mechanics! Oh yeah! Look for details SOONtm.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/720620 ... 3997529455

Early Access Content Pack 27: MegaDungeon

FOOLISH HEROS! You have stumbled into a diabolical dungeon, an 'orrible oubliette, a maddening maze!

This is the MegaDungeon tile set, and with it, you can build boards the likes of which Cult Engine 3 has never seen before.

Seriously! This is the first pack where we are experimenting with diagonal and circular walls. We'd love to hear your feedback on these. We are already thinking about how to improve the tools to make working more fluent with these pieces.

The MegaDungeon release features the following:

• 58 unique tiles

• 5 Doors, including a large double door

• 2 new creatures (Grick and Otyugh)

• 1 large hooded statue prop and an animated spike trap

This is just the beginning for curved and diagonal walls. Once we see how they fare in your hands, we will bring them to new and existing sets. In fact, we intend for the next chunky pack to be MegaSector, the sci-fi companion to the MegaDungeon.

Until then, however, you had better try and find your way out!

45 DEGREE HALLWAYS WITH OCTAGONAL ROOMS!!!! YEAH BAYBEE!!!

I'm so happy because we finally have curves to work with, and I'm so sad because now I NEED to update all my ongoing projects with these amazing pieces.

Hell yes. This is literally something I was assuming I was going to have to kitbash together. Thank you.

I love how so many people looked at this and thought castle lol. Great job making more pieces and great overall improvements. I still think music will need some more work (custom?) and possibly more integration and options with character sheets, lore documents, custom items. It would also be great if you could at the press of a button, have multiple events happen. 10 monsters remove stealth and move in, part of a wall gets removed and rocks get added bellow to represent debris. idk it could also make great cutscenes.

Mega Dungeon? more like Mega Castle, ammIright?! :-D This set looks amazing! Fantastic color variations and super versatile, beautifully generic walls. I use that word lovingly; this will be so useful for so many settings!

Dustdown is top 10 builder. The Imperial Palace and Imperial Throne Room are his, among many others. We'll be seeing much cool shit with this stuff, plus upgrades to existing stuff, I am sure. Can't wait! I fucking refresh the latest builds page 10 times a day now.

[icycalm]

The MEGADUNGEON Update in Cult Engine 3!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jrGbkUSeUc



If you can't get enough of Cult Engine 3 (and who can blame you), here's a video Istallri put together of the assets in the last couple of updates. Towards the end you also get a little preview of the advanced camera movement features I've been gushing about. Only a little preview, mind you.

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What if I told you that this is Cult Engine 3?









And also this, which is an exact replica of the moon based on accurate morphology?

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Would you enter?

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"Come my friend, let's sit by the fire and discuss the dispute like reasonable gentlement."



"Would you please bring out a couple bowls of your hot porridge dear, our new friends are famished!"



"I go down the well."



"As you hold your breath and dive into the cool water, you realize this isn't a well but a flooded basement whose trapdoor is missing from its hinges."





"Your majesty, the architect from Irrisen has prepared a diorama of one of their assembly halls. Those northerners certainly have a style of their own, don't they? Should I order him to begin construction?"


NEXT-LEVEL INTERACTIVITY ONLY ON ALEX KIERKEGAARD'S BATTLEGROUNDS, POWERED BY CULT ENGINE 3.

[icycalm]

Imagine the possibilities in a scene like that, both tactical and roleplaying.

Now imagine them with 100 characters in the scene instead of the dozen or so the programmers give you.

The mere screenshots coming out of my Battlegrounds every week will soon give more pleasure to people than playing even the best programmer games. That's how far videogames have advanced past the capacity of programmers and midwits to appreciate them.

And btw, the map doesn't end at the edges of the image. This is merely one corner of an entire city.

The same scene from ground level, meanwhile, looks like a different scene!



You'd hardly know it's the same scene from another angle if I didn't tell you, which is why I keep gushing about the camera, because with deft camerawork you'll be seeing these angle transitions as you play with a view to maximizing the dramatic impact of every scene. It's a whole new job for the poor GM to master—or a dedicated cameraman. You won't believe the difference this makes to the game, and you'll wonder why the programmers insist on fixing the camera in game after game after game (because they have no dramatic sense).

And you're not even seeing the scene with miniatures! Or with weather and magic effects!

Some more gems to feast your eyes on:



Surreal effect.



Cutest moathouse ever. BUT he makes the mistake of showing the "carpet" around the edges of the set. When I am running the game, the players will NEVER be able to see the edges of the set, and the same goes for screenshots. The entire illusion is destroyed when you can see the edges.



Oops wrong folder, sorry about that. It can't possibly be something that's coming soon, there's just no way.

[icycalm]

InfiniConstruction™ technology, unique to Cult Engine 3.

Programmers said it can't be done. They said it is impossible for mankind, it is beyond human ken, buildings HAVE to appear out of nowhere in videogames, there's no way to make them be built plank by plank.

And yet icycalm did it with just a bit of coding on the side.

This is what uberprogramming looks like. This is uberman technology.

[icycalm]

Quick update on how work on Cult Engine 3 is coming along, and there will be a more extensive one in a few days.

We recently launched the creature mod tools, and we have HUNDREDS of new ones in a mere few weeks. Pictured are merely SOME of the NEW ones. As you can see, the scale and variety on offer is unmatched, and if you could picture these armies in the actual sets and terrains, you would be dazzled by the sight.

On top of everything else, VERSUS ARENA FIGHTS are coming to Battlegrounds, in arenas unlocked via the roleplaying and/or adventure-strategy layers. We have over a dozen different arenas already, and we're creating more, and you'll be able to play these fights practically any day of the week, with the results feeding back into your roleplaying and/or adventure-strategy layer efforts. There will be specialized arena soundtracks, effects, and more, and even storylines to unlock as you get further and further in the ranking!

More soon.

[icycalm]

I have some incredible news today that will fly right over the heads of practically every gamer.

PsiaBaba is making a castle.

Who is PsiaBaba?

He's the guy who made the coolest-looking and most complex small town in gaming ever that will be one of the starting locations in Alex Kierkegaard's Kingslayer. And now that guy is making a "massive castle build"!!! This he announced in the comments section of his latest addition to his town, the "Shepherd's Hut": https://talestavern.com/slab/shepherds-hut

I wanted to get something smaller out as the massive castle build is really tedious, and for once I managed to fit the build in the 30kb slab :)

Imagine a "massive castle" with this level of detail and taste!

Now we already have a bunch of great castles in Cult Engine 3, and in fact we got a couple more by GENGUS recently: an extremely unique fortress suspended over a ravine, and a titanic castle perched on the edge of a huge cliff.





Added to all the previous castles, these two new ones pretty much complete the list of all the castles we need to fully render, not only the Stolen Lands, but the entire River Kingdoms. We're pretty much where we need to be in terms of everything, including fortresses.

So PsiaBaba's masterpiece is coming ON TOP of all that. In fact, if it's anywhere near as beautiful as I expect it to be, it kinda... doesn't fit in the River Kingdoms, because they're supposed to be a collection of ramshackle domains with populations numbering "a few thousands souls" each. So I think the best way to use PsiaBaba's castle is to NOT put it in the River Kingdoms but rather in the city-building list, either the Urban Era or perhaps even the Imperial Era as a structure a player or player-team can build (or buy with ca$hmoney lol) once they have captured one or more kingdoms, or built their own. In this case, I would be able to show off the castle immediately on release by placing it on the list (and btw these lists will be moved to fancy pages on akbattlegrounds.net right before we begin play, which I am still aiming to be in 2024 so I can grab GOTY).

So we'll see what PsiaBaba comes up with, I can't wait to see the finished work. I don't think people understand how massive this is for videogames. This isn't just another 3D castle model that you run through while rolling on the floor for a couple dozen hours, and whose design makes fuck-all sense because it wasn't made to be used as a castle. This is a REAL FUNCTIONAL castle design built brick by brick and totally destructible and customizable ON TOP of being the most complex and coolest-looking castle ever. Even Star Citizen with its gorgeous environment design will never have anything like this. Everything in SC is plasticky: invincible and uncustomizable, and you will NEVER roleplay anything in its environments: you'll just run around killing stuff and collecting stuff. Which is fine for what it is, but PsiaBaba will give you a castle you can build and customize brick-by-brick and in which you can play a real monarch role of essentially infinite complexity. PsiaBaba's castle is the cutting-edge of gaming and game design, and the flavor-of-the-month Steam minigames that the programmers and journalists are peddling to you can't compare.

That was my little lecture for today, because I was sure the significance of this build would be lost to everyone unless I explained it. It's a massive event in videogame history, and it will only be properly utilized in my game.

[icycalm]

GENGUS has made the Emperor's Plaza from Warhammer 40,000!





Believe it or not, we will need this. And note you can probably rip all the models from Owlcat's 40k game just as you can rip their Pathfinder models.

40k players themselves, in all their decades of playing the game, still don't have a model of this plaza. Even if they had it, they couldn't use it since 40k is a small-scale tactics game; they don't even have rules for what happens if you have thousands of units. Traditional videogames aren't helpful here either. Hell, they give you even fewer units than the tabletop games. Except the Total War ones, but which are borderline non-interactive.

[icycalm]

First screens of PsiaBaba's castle are out!

I got them from the Cult Engine 3 Discord. We have a channel where builders post previews of their work (off-limits to players, of course).

All screens are 4K! And I also lifted PsiaBaba's comments.

I've spent way too much time on this... The good thing is that after 4 design changes I've set on a style and finished the outside of the castle. Now I only have to finish furnishing the rest 70 out of ~90 rooms :)

Judging by how quickly I'm doing this room I may be able to finish by the end of the year...

You don't understand the scale of this thing until you realize where the party is. Find the party in this screen, and you'll grasp the scale.

Cult Engine 3 is built with 100-inch 8K TVs in mind.

Cult Engine 4, of course, is built for VR.

The castle looks cool but... weird. Very different to Istallri's which was practically lifted out of architecture textbooks, or DAP0L0's which is typical fantasy fare. It's not what I had expected, but I like it. And it's cool to hear he's planning to finish before the end of the year.

It does throw a spanner in my plans though. Because he is attaching it to the town that I would have used as a starter town, and that's supposed to be neighboring the Stolen Lands. I am not sure if there's supposed to be a castle right on the border of the Stolen Lands... So maybe I won't use this as a starter town after all.

But fret not, I have tons of other towns to use, or I could just go with Kingmaker's normal start at a trading outpost. I was planning to offer multiple starting points because we might have multiple parties. I'll have to think a bit more about this, but it's not a big deal.

This also means we won't have to wait until he finishes it before we can start. And once his town is done it will be reachable by some exploration in a neighboring kingdom.

[icycalm]

In this post I just want to showcase some of the custom minis that the hundreds of modelers I've hired to work on Cult Engine 3 have been creating recently. These are imported with the CultWeaver plugin that we're currently testing in beta.

First off, you might wonder whether all these hundreds of amateurs and semi-amateurs I hired are any good. Judge for yourselves:



Of course there are average and bad ones, but I simply don't use their work. I only use the very best. So here are some examples of their recent work.



Unique armies of realistic size (i.e. not calling 12 characters an "army" like CRPGs, and especially SRPGs do).



Each player's/faction's troops can be colored exactly as they want them to stand out from the others—both enemies and allies—on Battlegrounds' packed battlefields. My fav is the red at the far-right.









Fantastically-detailed huge monsters.



Stylized paper standees, meaning you can import any JPEG and make it look pretty good. The Sandpoint Crew should recognize one of the characters :)





Ghost pack/spooky creatures. There are lots of packs like this with different themes, I just picked one to showcase.



A fantastic Lady of Pain from Planescape.



Odin the All-father reading a book in the halls of Asgard (Huginn and Muninn included).







Over 70 nobles to populate all those castles.



Complex farm life.



Tachikoma from Ghost in the Shell.



Fallout.



Stargate.



Star Wars.





40K.



Pretty much all the alien types now exist and quite a few Colonial Marines, which gives me hope that we might be able to colony-build in Cult Engine 3 some day in the not-too-distant future. Note also the explosions, of which I'll talk in the next post.



TMNT.



Biohazard.





Metal Gear.



RoboCop.



Some "indie" game. Point is, it doesn't look like Cult Engine 3, does it? But it is.



All the above is ON TOP of Hero Forge, which just released official kitbashing tools by the way. And this is the absolute best stuff, if you can get it from the best creators. But unlike most anything else I've showcased, this has to be paid, and the best of the best isn't cheap. You often have to negotiate with the creators to get the HF link, and then pay HF on top of that. It can get expensive but it's worth it and I'll invest as much as I can in it. You'll see the difference in the game.







...and more coming soon to The Game To End All Games™: Alex Kierkegaard's Battlegrounds!

[icycalm]

Cult Engine 3 Dev Log 457
https://bouncyrock.com/news/articles/ta ... ev-log-457

Greetings all!

I’m still working to get my footing after a year away, but starting to find my stride once more. I’ve been working on the Shogun Palace on and off since it was announced and pushed up a version for testing before the weekend. We’re nearly there, but after some feedback, we realized it still needs more props and some tweaks to feel complete. Dwarf has taken up doing some more props and I’ll be joining him as well to fill in the rest making this a fairly massive set, allowing for some new interesting adventures both in Fantasy and in Modern settings.

We’ve been working with Istallri on various things, and he was kind enough to build out an area and give us some feedback.

Here are some screenshots from the aforementioned build:







We’re close to having something shipped and will let everyone know once it is imminent.

These assets, paired with asian-themed minis and music, will be sublime. I see us using them with Season of Ghosts [ > ], which remember, is set 100 years before Rise of the Runelords, which means we can run it at any time that a team is free and wants to play it. I am sure we won't be able to use these assets for all scenes—there's just too much stuff in this 400-page campaign to adapt all of it—but maybe if there's a central town or castle the protagonists are based in, we could get that done, or base-building after the end.

I am also looking forward to what the cyberpunk builders will do with these assets. It will get us one step closer to a full Cult Engine 3 Night City.

[icycalm]

Can you imagine the tactical possibilities in here? That's what programmers have been keeping from us.

[icycalm]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 3265981505



I think this looks better than people's painted armies. Way better.

[icycalm]

If you think this looks atmospheric now, wait until you see it with music, armies, particle effects, and camera swinging wildly all around.



All the stuff GMRPGs have been simulating for decades and CRPGs never will, now with CRPG-beating graphics.



Real-scale city-building, not the kids' version programmers give you.



And also this.

Powered by Alex Kierkegaard's Cult Engine 3 (not even 4, this is all still merely 3).

[icycalm]

Cult Engine 3, now with mechas.