Sunday 17 May 2009

Goshdarnit, Fallen Earth!

It's slow going at Apocalypso towers at the moment. The artist says he has drawings, the gameplay guy says he has skill trees, me, I've been learning Blender for no good reason, and reading about C++ without actually trying to code in it. Love theory, hate practice.

And I've been doing something I can't talk about for reasons I can't tell you. An NDA is an NDA. So let's talk instead about how Fallen Earth has cut the rug from under us.

Our scenario: it is 2161 and civilisation on Earth has collapsed following a deadly pandemic and a nuclear war. A hundred years on, small tribes and factions are fighting for survival in a harsh environment &c &c.

Fallen Earth's scenario: it is 2156 and civilisation on Earth has collapsed following a deadly pandemic and a nuclear war. A hundred years on, small tribes and factions... yeah, you get the picture.

We knew we were leaning a little too heavily on Fallout , that given the demand for a Fallout MMO and current social concerns we probably wouldn't be the only ones in an apocalyptic frame of mind, and that our story wasn't shatteringly original. I'm glad this happened at the drawing board stage, but it's still a little... irksome.

I've been turning over ways to differentiate our world further from Fallen Earth. We have a different setting (ours is in Britain), and different gameplay (no levelling, less FPS-y combat), and some rogue elements such as the Spires that are, I hope, not much like anything else. But it's not enough. /sigh