Worlds Adrift - spankgrrrl
Earlier this week, some of our team took part in an AMA on Reddit. What’s an AMA? It’s basically an open forum where you can ask whatever you like, and the team try to answer as many as they can. You can read the post in its entirety right here, but here are a few highlights, just for you. If you'd like to join the Worlds Adrift subreddit, it's here.
The questions were answered by:
Herb Liu (Producer)
Luke Williams (Designer)
Tom Jackson (Developer)
Jack Good (Lead Artist)
These questions were compiled by Strite, one of our voluntary forum moderators. THANK YOU!
Q: Asked by Reddit user Aytex – Will there be a community Steam Workshop for World Adrift?
A: Luke Williams – We already have the Island Creator using Workshop with plans to expand that feature. Going ahead it’s definitely something we want in the full game.
Q: Asked by Reddit user swagduck69 – When is Worlds Adrift coming out? I can’t wait :D.
A: Luke Williams – This year, once it’s all good and ready.
Q: Asked by Reddit user trams87 – Can we expect to see some wildlife in Worlds Adrift and can we keep them as pets?
A: Luke Williams – Lots of wildlife to come, our first 2 creatures are pretty much ready to go in, maybe not pets just yet.
A: Jack Good – No plans for pets at the moment but we already have a few species in game. We’ve got crustacean-like beetles that eat vegetation and fruit, and manta-ray like predators which feed on the beetles.
Here’s a post showing off more of the creature stuff.
Q: Asked by Reddit user pthorstorm – Will it be possible to tie several ships together, at least temporarily with ropes?
A: Luke Williams – A big feature we’re looking forward to implementing are harpoon guns, so yes!
A: Tom Jackson – We have a harpoon attachment planned for the ships. Connecting such large and heavy physics objects together will require some careful piloting to avoid snapping the tethers, but hopefully it’ll still be somewhat possible
Q: Asked by Reddit user Darkhog – When will be Alpha 4 and when I’ll be able to buy WA? I mean dates up to a week of a month.
A: Herb Liu – There are a bunch of new features that are making it into alpha 4, so we’re working on getting it all cleaned up – it should be announced Soon(TM).
Q: Asked by Reddit user RedOmega83 – Will we be able to ride the sky whales?
A: Jack Good – Yep although it’ll probably be more along the lines of clinging on for dear life with your grappling hook.
Q: Asked by Reddit user captinjackharkness – I have a few questions about Worlds Adrift, can the air ships explode? Are land vehicles in the game, and finally will the game have any pvp elements?
A: Jack Good – We already have jury-rigged bombs in-game so if you’re sneaky enough you can climb aboard another players ship and blow it to pieces. We don’t have any plans for land vehicles no. The whole game is completely pvp in terms of being able to cause damage to other players.
Q: Asked by Reddit user Strite - When can we expect to hear more about the melee combat? It’s one of my most anticipated gameplay mechanics
A: Herb Liu – The first iteration is going to be implemented soon, and it’s going to be loads of fun. beat people with objects, short circuit their multitool, knock them around, really satisfying. Down the line we have a much crazier design, because luke hates the coders.
Q: Asked by Reddit user skalibran – Many great online games suffer from bad population today…How do you plan to keep the community busy a few months after release?
A: Luke Williams – It’s much more of a sandbox game, so the players and community will be shaping the world as they see fit.
We’ll also be releasing content updates on a frequent basis. Another difference with Worlds Adrift is we actually want player encounters to be quite low, so the game is still entirely playable even if the population is low (here’s hoping it won’t be of course!)
Q: Asked by Reddit user Polish_Potato – In one of your answers, you mentioned “reputation and deeds”, how exactly are you planning to implement this? Will there be factions?
A: Luke Williams – Reputation and deeds don’t require systems in a game like this, if you and your Alliance take over a region of the sky, or become a feared pirate band then you’ll be known for that since you will all share the world with everyone else.
There are no factions, at least no systems to support it but you can form an Alliance which is essentially a guild.
A: Jack Good – We have alliances and we have crews which can be seen a bit like factions and parties from traditional MMOs. Reputation and deeds will all be player created as in your reputation is based on what other players know or think of you, we don’t have any systems to keep track of this.
Q: Asked by Reddit user Heartless000 – At any point did your team consider making Worlds Adrift into a full MMORPG? If given unlimited money, what feature would you add to the game before release?
A: Tom Jackson – Worlds was never planned to be a ‘full’ RPG and we still stay clear of using that part of the acronym, we are an mmo in terms of world size, but have always wanted our gameplay to be more skill based rather than traditional rpg style investment/ability based.
As for the second infinite money part of the question, that’s a good one I’d say infinite money could buy a lot of artist time With any huge scale world, you need a lot of unique assets to keep it fresh and interesting wherever you go.
Q: Asked by Reddit user koppeh – One word: Modding?
A: Tom Jackson – No plans for modding as such. We have a persistent single universe as a core feature so running local deployments for modding isn’t something we have planned for.
However within that universe we are allowing players to shape it in a lot of (very permanent) ways. Island creations can make it into the world from our already released island creator, and every ship will be unique based on what the players design in game.
Q: Asked by Reddit user SimplyStars – Is there/will there be permanent base building on islands? What, if any forms of weaponry will be ranged? Will the game model be free-to-play or buy-to-play? The Island Creator runs like a snail on my PC, will the final game have graphics settings? Any chance of console releases? And lastly, have you considered cloud computing for the game? As like Crackdown 3 is doing?
A: Luke Williams – No real permanent base building so to speak, but technically if you crash a ship and use it as a makeshift building it will last forever.
There will be a mix of ranged and melee weapons, such as pistols and cutlasses. Buy to play with microtransaction shop for cosmetics.
Game optimisation is very early on, which is why the island creator can be a resource hog, expect the island creator and game to run much better as time goes on!
The technology we’re using is actually very similar to what Crackdown 3 is doing, hence why we have a permanent physical world with 1000s of players that is 1000s of kilometres in size.
Q: Asked by Reddit user Novatham – Will there be any microtransactions?
A: Jack Good – There will be a shop but only for cosmetic, and quality of life items.
Q: Asked by Reddit user JackKerras – Hi folks!
I have a techie question; how do you plan on running server-side checks for vehicles/physics and having it feel nice and smooth to the end user? I’m generally a huge proponent of secure physics operations, but at the end of the day I also don’t like to watch airships scud around looking like a jerky slideshow even when my FPS is sterling, and this is very often what you get especially with MMO or MMO-like serverside physics.
There’s always the answer of some kind of hybrid server/client interaction, but things like The Division (and all the issues they’ve had) fall squarely in the ‘don’t trust your client’ camp. Still, it feels better and less jerky/laggy to play than things which require constant server check-ins, so… how do you balance that out, especially at MMO scales?
Thanks! Love the look so far, and the island creator is really neat.
A: Tom Jackson – We are running all physics for every non player object server side. As for making it smooth, we are using every trick in the book in one place or another As for vehicles, we are lucky in that our vehicles are air ships and not motorbikes, you are essentially controlling a vehicle that is ‘expected’ to have a delay in the control input. The helm visually updates immediately so you know you’re steering your ship and your inputs are registered, but the result will be delayed because of the round trip to the server. It’s not a long delay of course, and with an airship you really don’t feel it at all.
A: Herb Liu – From my perspective as a non-coder, it feels like this issue is more about practicality than philosophy; more about the devil in the details than the grand vision.
some things you put on the client and verify on the server, some things you put on the server and deal with/mask the delay with animations or VFX, and some things you have to just leave on the client. it’s about what feels good and finding a balance, and iterating, iterating, and iterating.
and then you ban hackers.
Q: Asked by Reddit user ace117115 – Will there be ship customisation?
I want to build a super ship with tiny scout ships attached via harpoon.
A: Jack Good – There will be quite a bit of ship customisation yes.
The frame is completely customisable although the size will be limited by how good your shipyard is. This means you can create almost any shape as a framework.
This then gets covered in panels and floors to create a shell, which you can then attach wings, engines and cannons (which will be created from procedurally generated schematics). All in all we hope to see some pretty unique ships from the players.
Q: Asked by Reddit user Critic210 – How will combat be encouraged in Worlds Adrift? Will there be rare resource rich islands for people to fight over? Will there be rare components easily seen on opposing players ships?
A: Jack Good – Since players don’t progress with levels like traditional MMOs success in combat will largely come down to the experience/skill of the players involved and the equipment they have found. Entering combat will most likely come down to risk vs reward. Why risk your well equipped ship attacking a newbie when he might have a bag full of bombs hidden on him and be waiting to spring an ambush.
Areas of our world hidden behind sandstorms and other weather types will contain different types of resources from regular regions and will only be accessible by players with more advanced ships or highly skilled pilots. Because of this you will naturally get areas with better equipped players coming together and quite possibly a lot more pvp.
Q: Asked by Reddit user pearshapedscorpion – Looking at the grappler, is it more Bionic Commando or Inspector Gadget (mechanical arm), Just Cause (mechanical device), more like Spider-man (the biological version), or something else?
A: Luke Williams – Mechanical device that’s strapped to the arm.
Q: Asked by Reddit user PiggiePutz – Do you consider making the game more social like Second Life was? For instance, having more freedom by customising a lot of the game parts itself gameplay wise. I remember the game being a lot of fun because players created what they’d like and it attracted more players and more social experience was created.
A: Jack Good – There will be all the social elements of teaming up and creating crews and alliances. Also we want players to have a lot of outlets for creativity within our world, and so you’ll be able to customise your ships your characters and even create islands that can become part of the world.
Q: Asked by Reddit user jimykurtax – What specific kind of rules and details are you looking for in community submitted islands in the island creator? What would be some of your selection terms for including islands in the final game?
A: Luke Williams – We’re pretty open to cool ideas, already some of the islands have been like nothing we’d imagined. Also remember it’s not just us deciding what islands are chosen, the community is also playing a big part in what the most popular ones are.
A: Jack Good – I’m personally looking for really nice use of the assets to create subtle natural features. Most of my favourite islands have just real nice subtle material blending on the ground and nice naturalistic placements of bushes and grasses to make areas interesting. One of my favourites is just called Natural Island and has some great examples of this.
I feel once an island looks like this it’s easy to add ruins and more unique features to them but this is a perfect foundation for that.
Q: Asked by Reddit user Sawlstone – Hi guys, Does Worlds Adrift offer First Person controls?
A: Jack Good – Your character in Worlds Adrift is very athletic and some of mechanics like the glider and grappling hook really work much better in 3rd person. We do however have a dynamic camera that switches into 1st person for things such as flying the ship and aiming the cannon.
If you’d like to chat about anything you’ve read here, make sure that you leave a comment, or talk to us in our official forums.
Have a great weekend!
The Worlds Adrift Team
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