We are Phosphor Games in Chicago, creators of UE4 Project Awakened, make your dream video game character

No question for you guys, just a message for Reddit:

These guys are some of the hardest working devs in the business. They're great people who make great games. So please, help them make this game!

http://kck.st/14A0QEY

Some of us don't work that hard. I've seen people take lunches.

That gives me an idea for a super power! Conjure Sandwich!

that would be like a distraction? like if a Homer Simpson guard was covering a door, you throw a 'conjure a sandwich', then sneak right by him ...

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We are looking to the community to tell us how they want their content to be distributed. We see a game like DOTA2 and we love how people who put up very high quality content are being compensated for their work. At the same time we also love the free modding that goes on in games like Skyrim and GTA. Overall, we want to leave it up to the people who create the content to decide.

We plan on having an open world hub that will be a total sandbox environment as well as linear branches where the player will have to use their abilities to creatively solve challenges we put in their way.

While cars will not be in there for the beta, we know that this is something that is a big part of a lot of characters people want to make and are absolutely open to adding them if the community feels very strongly about them.

When we first opened we had a starter mocap studio that we used for our animation needs. We have since upgraded to the professional grade Vicon system so that we can get a larger capture volume as well as higher quality data. It is very easy to acquire a mocap system but you would have to have the money, space, and knowledge of the software in order to put it all together.

When we worked back at Midway Games we worked on a project called Hero, which shared many of the same core ideas as Project Awakened. During that time we learned a lot about the process of making a similar game. From tech requirements, to time spent by a single artist to make create a player assets, to design lessons on what does and doesn't work, we had a lot of valuable lessons that have given us the confidence to have a much better understanding of what it will take to make this game. Since opening Phosphor we started on the Awakened project and found that it was indeed a lot smoother sailing when it came to developing the game. With all of that in mind, we put out the Beta release date of August 2014. We know that the date seems far out but we would rather surprise backers with an early release than by missing our date.

Please answer #1... and if the answer is yes, give us a comparison to other existing games with mt's that your game will model.

What do you exactly mean by microtransaction? Are you talking about 'Play To Win"? because we aren't planning on doing anything like that.

How are you going to structure the single-player experience so it isn't just a boiler plate, one-size-fits-all story that any hero/villain/player can fit into?

The narrative will center around the various conflicts and tensions caused by the existence of augmentation technology and the struggles this tech causes between various factions (governments, corporations, vigilantes, private militias, dissidents, etc.) We think it makes sense to have some branching and different endings based on the faction the player decides to ally himself with or the choices he makes in the game.

Will factions have inter-conflict rather than two factions that will only conflict with each other?

Yes factions aren't quite so binary black and white. There is especially inner conflict when you mind control one of them.

One of the cooler things though is making factions fight each other when they aren't. Situations are tense, and getting out there and causes a firefight to break when there was a standstill then sneaking away while they all kill each other is pretty cool to see unfold.

Did they officially state that you play as a "hero"? Would be awesome to have the choice to be a villain!

there are evil-ish powers that people are afraid of

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Send your resume our way and we'd be happy to hold onto it should the need arise!

http://www.phosphorgames.com/jobs/

If (and I hope its not the case) your don't make your kickstarter goal, will this still go forward as a game concept, or will you drop it completely?

I absolutely love the idea, and just yesterday bumped up my kickstarter donation to the $100 tier.

It will take much longer to release our beta if we dont complete our kickstarter.

You hear that people? get to kickstarter

If one person would just contribute at the 500k level, we could be done already. It is pretty simple, really.

Love the game concept, seems extremely ambitious and I hope you can pull it off. My question is, with the level of customization you're doing with powers and stuff, how do you craft a campaign that's dynamic enough for a player to play through their way with their character as opposed to everything being the exact same except I shoot lightning and the other dude shoots fire. Will the campaign/npcs react and adjust to the way I'm playing and the powers I have?

The AI will absolutely adjust to the way you play. AI something that we know will be key to realizing the create a player aspect of the game. With that in mind the AI will be able to recognize what type of abilities the player is using and respond accordingly. From running away from the bomb type moves like tornado, to blind firing in your last direction if you go invisible in front of them, we plan on making sure that AI will be just as reactive as you would expect from such an in depth create a player.

Also to add- there are many ways to play the game- some players will be 'tanks', some will play stealthy, some will play using stuff like mind powers, etc

I understand the concept of a "build your own superhero" that you are shooting for, but will the game have RPG elements in it? What sort of progression will we undergo as a character throughout the game?

We will have a progression system that will allow your abilities to grow as you play the single player campaign. Beyond simple number tweaks abilities may also gain additional properties. An example would be the seismic rift ability we showed in our ability video. Level 1 of that ability might be a small AOE that simply does damage. As you gain levels, the AOE will expand, damage will increase, and it can also throw enemies up into the air and stun them.

The main question that held me up for a long time from supporting your kickstarter, and I'm sure many others have similar questions, is what makes you so different from every other developer who claims to be able to to finish such an ambitious project?

Overly-ambitious kickstarters (which I would definitely qualify this game as) don't have a great track record. Open world games claiming to offer the maximum in customization options have a similar track record - they either disappear into vaporware or are released with severely limiting factors.

So what can you say that would compel me to put money down on a project like this?

the kickstarter is the for the beta release. The game will be similar to other live beta PC titles that the first version we share won't be the this highly polished finished work, it will be something we will be using the community to help us expand on. It will grow into that final vision by the community feeding into it what are the priorities

We feel confident we can get the beta release out in time to share with the players.

This is not a satisfactory answer, just so you know. How are beta users going to help you make such a massive project? Also, you seem to have highlighted your priorities already. If you achieve those, you will be doing better than most games that exist currently. Most companies have grand goals like this and only end up including a shadow of the content that they promised. A good case in point would be Spore.

Sorry- the point we are trying to make is that the game will be released as a live beta, and when we first share it, it won't be better than every game ever released. We will use the community to guide what gets developed further, like Minecraft. We aren't going to make the best most competitive multiplayer if we find out the community doesn't even care for it- they'd rather have better mod support or campaign or something else.

Like Minecraft model, as we ship the beta and people are liking it, we are hoping more people purchase the game and we develop those features out that people are asking for.

If I may add my 2 cents -

What I would like to hear from Phosphor Games personally is a pledge to stand your ground. That is to say, Phosphor Games, are you willing to put in for the long haul on this thing? So many devs that have created or thought up concepts like this one end up backing down when the going gets tough. They either cut corners and end up with a drastically different product, or they give up entirely. Are you as a dev team willing to put the quality of your product, and your desire for it to be the best it can be, before your desire to make a quick and dirty release just to make some money when things seem bleak? This is NOT intended at all as an attack on your character, but rather how I feel so many people think about this project. It seems so daunting. In short, what does Phosphor Games have that sets it apart, and will make this game so much better and different from all those before that have failed?

Personally I support Project Awakened. It may just come down to how you look at the glass: is it half full, or half empty?

The one reason Project Awakened keeps going is our passion to it. Even now, all our guys are working around the clock on kickstarter, not because we force them to, but because they love the idea and want it to happen

If we weren't super passionate about making this game happen, it would have died a long time ago. It would have died early in Midway greenlight committees. It would have died in executive reviews. It would have died when Midway shut down. We just keep forcing the idea to live because we see so much potential in it.

If the kickstarter doesn't happen, we will still find a way to make it live. It will just take more time.

Again, this game has many features, and we want to expose all of them on first beta release. Worst case scenario and Phosphor gets hit by a stray Russian meteorite after the kickstarter release, the game could easily continue through modders growing it to be whatever.

I don't know who you guys are, I've never heard of you. But I am in Chicago, and after watching that AWESOME kickstarter video, you have my pledge!!! THIS IS AWESOME! HELL YES

Thank you very much for your support!!

Will there be any abilities like shape shifting? Like.... can the character turn into a cat?

Even if that is not included I have been a backer since day 1, I hope I get to make some fire tornadoes soon!

shapeshifting is a cool ability that we will think about how we can add.

Not sure about the cat on initial beta release, but if the community wants it ...

Support for anthropomorphic animals would definitely draw a large furry fanbase, for better or worse.

The 'furry lobby' is a indeed powerful one and we will make sure we support whatever they need

What range of, for lack of a better term, power levels will the game allow for? I understand that the goal for the game is to be able to make any hero the user wants, but most of the demos seem to be a character that's in the FPS hero/Batman/low end superhero range. Will it be possible to make a Superman-level character and still have a balanced game there, or will that be something that's only allowed in the "casual" mode I've seen mentioned a couple of times?

I was really happy to see y'all name check City of Heroes as a source of inspiration. I've always said that if someone made an action game with a CoH-like level of character customization, both in powers and appearance, I'd be there day one to buy it. I'm really happy to contribute to this Kickstarter.

City of Heroes was a huge original inspiration to our Create-A-Player system- we too looked at it and said "that would be awesome for an action game!" the problem with some of their skills in action game is that they don't play well in classic video game character intricate situations- like they have a lot of skills that involve moving over large distances, when most action videogame are about closer situations. Like even the super speed we have, doesn't feel as a good as blink or teleport in closer environments. Super jump in small hallways is not fun either. We found that you either make a game optimized for characters that move very far or you optimize for more intricate detailed scenarios.

That said, we create lots of skills, and on beta release we can just put many of these skills in the game even if they break some stuff, so people that want to have fun with it can try it out . You can check out our youtube ability video where we show stuff like jetpacks and hover that we plan to support no matter what.

I have one question and one request.

• Will there be a multiplayer mode similar to Garry's Mod, where it is neither co-op or competitive and friends can spawn in vehicles and items to create a scene that they can mess around in?

• And could you add a melee weapon that is a drill similar to the one the Big Daddy has?

The multiplayer that will be in the initial day one beta release will be "unsupported", meaning it won;t have leaderboards or matchmaking- very much something that you can open up and mess around with

We really want to always make sure the game is open to people wanting to try stuff out and mess around- we view Project Awakened as not just a game but a kit to have fun.

Could you explain a little further on the multiplayer I'm not sure I get it. Will I be able to host a game or are you in charge of servers?

And despite it not having matchmaking will other players still be able to join in the same game on beta release?

Is there any plan to making something like Neverwinter Nights did with the aurora toolset?

People will be able to manually connect to each other in the initial beta instead of through fully supported lobbies. (assuming the stretch goal isn't hit)

This would mean that while it wouldn't be the most elegant form of multiplayer (in the initial beta) you would still be able to play with your friends!

The aurora toolset is similar to something we hope to build towards so that you don't have to be an expert in modding to be able to create content for people to play.

Outside of this AMA, how do you plan on keeping things moving to hit $500K by 3/6?

As a backer, I am starting to get worried, as the fund raising is definitely off pace.

I think a lot of the issues were due to inexperience with gaining PR. Big kickstarters show up on IGN and get eyes either before or during day 1. I'd even suggest trying kickstarter again if this one fails.

Please get the word out! We are better game makers than marketeers. We need fans to spread the word!

Are you guys attempting to market anywhere though? Talk to big youtubers, gaming sites, etc. I haven't seen anything yet. Try harder!

we have spent a lot of effort! If you have suggestions or ways to reach people let us know!

I would try contacting TotalBiscuit and ask him to do a WTF is Project Awakened.

we have reached out to him already. The fans at this point must demand it

I'm a heavily experienced gamer with too little knowledge about how shit actually works. I like to think this is the majority of gamers, but I digress.

Anywho, Question 1:

When you say sandbox, do you mean in the sense of GTA or do you mean I'm going to have to get to work using your modification tools to create what I desire? A bit of both? Or am I completely misinterpreting the term sandbox?

Question 2:

What about the story? Are we going to see a heavy focus on the players, mini quests, powers, combat etc. probably causing a slight neglect of the story? Are we going to see a heavy focus on the interactivity of the player, and no main driven story? Or are you implimenting a main story? Though that seems undoable since you don't want to limit the player. The way I understand it, you don't want to force the player into anything, but to me that seems WAY too good to be true, you must force us into something. Or am I completely off? If so, please enlightmen me.

Question 3:

In the event that the kickstarter reaches it's actual goal, do you have ANY indication of a release date. When I say indication, I mean what year, I understand month would be too specific.

Question 4:

What I hate to miss out in on kickstarter is seeing what my money is being spent on. I'm usually not too careful with donating since I don't donate huge amounts, but I would definitely donate a bigger amount to the game if I could see what the money is being spent on. So, is it possible to keep donaters updated with your expenditure? See some budget plans?

I am very excited about the project, but trying not to get my hopes up. My advice, however irrelevant it is, is not to overpromise. Rather promise what you know, and if something unexpected and awesome comes out, EPIC SURPRISE. Ammiright? Good luck.

Question 1. We actually mean both. Our single player mode will allow you to take your created character and use your specific abilities to overcome challenges the way your character should. On the one hand you could choose a non lethal character who relied on stealth and sneak past a roadblock that was set up by creating a distraction to lure guards away. On the other hand you could also build a katana weilding character who would just run up and use your melee ability to take out the entire roadblock itself.

On the mod sides of things we are a sandbox because we also want to foster a community where players can add and share content with each other to extend the life of the game past what we can provide you. We love what the community has done with games when given the ability to mod them and the thought of people creating their own worlds, character pieces, special abilities, and animation makes us really excited!

Question 2. We take story extremely seriously and often argue about it just as intensely as we do about gameplay! We will absolutely have a fully fleshed out main story in which you will be shown a road and we will give you branches to go down. This will allow you to not only create the character that you want but to also play him the way you feel he should act.

Question 3. We are hoping for an August 2014 release. We realize that this is longer than most projects but we are very sensitive to the amount of trust that people are placing in us with this kickstarter and would rather be early with our beta release than late.

Question 4. We have been so excited with how active the community has been thus far. We really want to open the development process up to backers and show you what your money is going towards! From bi-weekly chats with the development team where we answer questions live, to in depth development diaries, to votes on what the next ability should be! We want to show you that we do not take your trust lightly and will do everything we can do be as open as possible to show people where their hard earned money is going.

Thank you for the great questions!

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The campaign has you contained in a city like space. But within that space there will be forested areas, expansive field like spaces, etc.

And yeah, with modding stretchgoals it could be anything- castles, spaceships, caves, etc.

Do you find it hard to structure the world given the multitude of powers that are available?

For instance, are there special gameplay considerations that you need to address when you added the teleport power so that the player can't skip events, or otherwise break the game? How do you approach those in terms of balancing it with the other powers?

Do you anticipate having OP powers that screw up the general balance and lead to repetitive button mashing? How do you avoid repetition?

Thanks for doing this! I'm glad to have helped you on Kickstarter! :)

Yes- in the HUB players can sorta break missions, same way in Assassins Creed or GTA you can wander away and fail

In the more intricate design spokes we just have to play the game many times and see how they work. This is actually one of the more fun things we do on the job. many of us worked on psi-Ops where we had to do similar things in playing the level- we are always aware of where the player can go in these situations, so every surface they can get to or go around needs to work with the situation at hand.

Also for Beta Release we may end up with some skills that are "unsupported" that could break things, but players can try them out and have fun, and make suggestions how to improve them

Will this make it to next gen consoles once they come out?

You need a publisher to be on next gen consoles and we don't know about modding or how much freedom they will give that a game like Project Awakened requires. We are all console players so obviously we would love it

How long do you plan the single-player campaign to be? When are you guys planning to release it?

The first beta release we estimate would be a 10ish hour campaign mission for a single play through, which means you'd miss a lot of content if you only played it with a single character with a set group of skills.

If the community prioritizes more campaign content over other features, we'd make this longer.

as a side we guessed Horn was a 5 hour game and it ended up being 15 hours.

Hey guys! Hero was pretty much my dream game so I'm incredibly excited that you're making Project Awakened.

So, on to the question: You say that the power system is "modular" as opposed to skill or class-based. How exactly do you get and equip powers? If you could elaborate on the powers system, that would be awesome.

Also, you guys should totally have telekinesis powers that pull or push things into a specific formation. So, for example, if you want to line up a bunch of enemies and take them out with a penetrating blast, you have a line-type TK power that pulls everything towards the line. This could be really cool for combining powers.

Thanks!

First off thank you for the very kind words!

When you create your character will have access to a number of different tools that will allow you to outfit your character with abilities of your choosing. I hope you do not mind but I am going to throw out one of our updates that is a huge in depth write up into the character creation process just because I think this is a great question but one that would also cause the entire page to be taken up by an explanation. :) http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1312036782/project-awakened/posts/406394

I think that is a very cool idea for TK! I can totally see that working in conjunction with not only other abilities but also for melee.

Hey Phosphor games!

Me and my friends have been massive fans of yours back since the early development of the game 'hero'. We are so glad to see you back! We also created http://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectAwakened/ to keep track of this game as it unfolds and progresses. We really are psyched for this and wish you all the best!

We're also wondering when will backers gain access to your exclusive forum?

once the kickstarter gets cleared, we'll open up those forums!

Can you tell us about any new powers that you haven't talked about or shown in the videos yet?

Freeze and enemy in place and if he is low enough health, smash him to pieces. Geyser will erupt water from underneath an area and do damage as well as launch players (can be used on yourself too!). Fog of war creates a mist that temporarily lowers vision for people in the area. We will also have a variety of melee abilities like scythe, martial artist, and axe.

(This is just to name a few)

With all the awesomeness of each possible play style, how do you think you can achieve a balanced multiplayer?

Balanced Multiplayer is not a goal of the beta release. But ...

There are few ways to balance multiplayer.

One- we spend a lot of time making sure skills aren't over-powered.

Two- maybe matches have a type of wager mechanic, so even if a skill is over powered, so player can agree to 'if you are going to have that skill, I want better odds" or something so their win will be greater. So some balance is somewhat corwdsourced- players won't play against skills they think aren't fair.

Three- we can make a highly competitive tier that bans certain skills the community feels are overpowered.

Do you guys think people will abuse the game and just create thngs like orgies etc?

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Project Awakened can take the abuse. We really see it as not just a game but a kit to have fun

Hi Phosphor games, I had two questions

1. How did you guys come up with this idea?
2. Is there any way that the community can help to push this project along?

Number 2 is a great question. I, and I'm sure many many others, would love to do whatever we could to help get this fully funded

Go to every site / personality you know that isn't reporting on the game and bother them to talk about it!

We were inspired by a lot of MMOs and their ability to allow players to really create characters that were their own. We love character creation but we wanted to be able to use our custom creations in an action game environment. It was from that basic idea that we came up with the idea 6 years ago where we worked on a game called Hero. After Midway Games went bankrupt, we took those principals to Phosphor where we still feel strongly that we had something special and have been trying to make that game ever since.

I think a solid number of people are going to want to make their character look like themselves. Is there an existing character creator you can compare yours to? For example, Skyrim or Saints Row 3?

Basically, I want to make me as a superhero. Will your game let me do that?

Something we could support after beta release is a "facegen" type thing where you can put your photo over a mesh and use your actual face in the game.

What are some other games members of the dev team cite as their favorites and/or biggest influences? In other words, what other video game experiences do you hold in the highest esteem?

I'm a backer. All the best of luck to you on your campaign.

We have a pretty diverse group of guys and we all like to draw on different parts from different games. We love the melee combat in games like DMC3 and Bayonetta, the sandbox elements of games like Dishonored, the multiplayer balance of games like DOTA2, and the story elements from games like Bioshock. Also, thanks for backing!

Didn't know you guys were in Chicago. Beer sometime?

we do those industry night drinking things - do you go?

Hey guys, I'm a writer for 4Player Network. I was backer #21 on your project and I am incredibly excited for what your guys have been slowly putting together these past couple of years.

I have a litany of questions for you all.

• Can you give us an outline of just what the game's story will be about? Who are the antagonists? What is the tone of the world when anybody can gain the powers of a comic book superhero/villain?
• You've outlined character clothing customization but I wonder: how deep does the CAP go? Speech patterns? Tattooing and face customization?
• How would you compare your current in-game editor to that of ones used by other companies (Hammer, UnrealED, etc.) and how user-friendly do you imagine the final product to be?
• The game looks perfectly great as a UE3 project. Why go UE4 when the tech really hasn't been demonstrated properly outside of Epic yet?
• Finally, are you planning to do a media blitz anytime soon? I'm sure our readers would love to see where the game is going and hear your thoughts on Awakened.

Thanks again, guys, and I can't wait to play!

hey we'd love to do a full-length interview- send us an email at contactATphosphorgamesDOTcom

This game looks awesome, a few questions though.

Will you guys use steam as a deployment platform? If so seeing as the unreal series has always been friendly to linux, will there be a linux version?

Epic chooses what platforms they support. If they go with Linux for UE4, we will definitely be there.

Edit: We are absolutely supporting steam! In fact, you can vote for us on Steam Greenlight!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=126109020

Do you guys even lift?

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Well, DYEL?

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I can confirm that he does indeed lift.

Source: I work in the same room as him.

Is the city going to be modeled on Chicago?

It won't be exactly Chicago but when you live in the city it is hard to not use it for inspiration :)

Do you/will you have any actual UE4 footage to show off during the kickstarter?

Yes! We plan on sh owing off some UE4 character creation soon to give a glimpse into the visual fidelity people people will see in the new engine!

Will you allow user created content for power effects or character customization? For example, support for steam workshop or creating a similar platform to buy and sell with real money?

We will allow you to customize your character with your own abilities, art, and animation. As for the workshop we are going to play a little bit of wait and see. We love how high quality the content is on games like TF2 and DOTA2 are and if the modders making the content want to charge for it, we are open to that!

What is your opinion of the game dev scene in Chicago right now?

Chicago is awesome. Whenever a studio gets knocked down, two more spring up in their place. It is funny that Chicago was all arcade, then it was all console, now it is slowly PC and mobile. Times change and the scene evolves ...

Ninjas?

Yes

Will there be a character power relating to mind control/possession of NPC's? Just something I would like to see.

yes it is is some of our videos- we have a mind jacking skill

I love this idea! I can't wait to get it in my hands, and I really hope you all reach your goal.

My questions revolve around concepts, I guess. Do you have any Time manipulation powers? Time travel itself might be difficult, but how about aging enemies to debuff them, aging bullets to defend against them, making them slow, making yourself fast, that sort of thing.

As well, the concept video looks great, but I wonder about the faces. A lot of them seem to be using the same default face, can we expect more? Thanks!

One more follow-up: Will we see powers that allow us to metamorph into something else? As an example, stretching, growing or shrinking, or abilities like power rangers which immediately change costumes into a separate costume with better strength, better defenses and better weapons? A Power-Up, if you will?

quite a few of our guys worked on Stranglehold, so we love time dilation!

It can have issues in MP but singleplayer can be very cool ....

I'm looking at your proof photo and i see maybe one woman in there. Is this just another dudebro studio making dudebro games for dudebros? If so, why? If not, could you give some examples of how and why it's not?

I don't think this comment could be any more hostile if you tried.

It could be. I could have asked why they hate women. I was going for a humorous spin on a serious question, but interpret it however you want dude, bro. Many comics and games have been under fire recently for being anywhere from exclusionary to downright hostile towards women in both content and their corporate cultures. Since their project is an intersection of those arenas, I'd like to know how they feel about that and how they do or don't fit into the bigger picture.

we just don't have enough females applying for open positions- seriously like 75 males apply per 1 female. . They need to send in resumes!