D&D General The Future is Now! 3D AI-run VTT on Kickstarter

[Rigged Dice Games]

Hi I am İhsan, creator of Make Dungeons and I am happy to hear all your feedbacks. Let me tell you a little bit about myself and the project to ease your minds. I love playing DND with my friends. In our games, I want to explore lore and history behind the adventure. I try to see and unlock every part of the adventure. I wanted to feel like I was in that fantasy world, and that takes a lot of time. Time is mostly spent on setting up features, looking up lots of info to see where we are and making tons of calculations in battles. Large battles are generally out of question because they take a lot of time. I thought I could automate those and make things prettier to increase immersion. So, I can really feel like I am living in this world. It is a mix between video game and tabletop. For most beautiful adventures, there is no video game. This project would allow lots of adventures of small publishers to make a video game about their adventures. This is the main idea behind the project. For the people saying this is first project of a small company, let me tell a little bit about myself. I worked as a Lieutenant in the Police Force for 6 years. During this time, I made an interactive crime hotspot maps and crime analysis and reporting aplications during this time. Then, I worked with a medical company. I made 3D plastic cast app, bolus app (Bolus is put on radiotherapy patients to focus radiation to desired area. App creates a 3D shape to be printed and put on patient.) and a VR training app for radiotherapy workers, when I was working there. I am currently 34 years old and I put my bachelor's degree and some videos of my previous projects to the below. Thank you.

Plasticast - 3D model by ihsan07
Flatback bolus - 3D model by ihsan07
Uniform thickness bolus - 3D model by ihsan07

 

[Rigged Dice Games]

Total goal of $10k. Makes me say, 'ok, this makes sense if they are close to having a completed program and just need to buy some art assets or polish things up.' But they are not. And just keep in mind most good software developers can get jobs that pay well, so if this is going to be more than a hobby, I suspect this should pay them well too (which is fine). But means that $10k is only about 3 man-months of develoepr time, or less. Read on.

As long as I don't go hungry during development process, I am fine. My brother has a job and the idea was "if we make enough to make a living for two families, he will come and work full time". Now, he works on the project part time. Plus, in my job in the police force, I started suffering from PTSD. That is why I am not keen on finding a remote job. The reason we lowered our goal is we have little money to make a proper marketing campaign. You need a capital for these things and if I had one, I would just work on the project.

Virtual DM. This is talking about an AI. Or are they talking about something as linear as Never Winter Nights? Either is interesting, but their is a huge difference between the two and they don't clarify.

In Virtual DM, you play it as a normal video game. Instead of DM asking "what do you want to do?", you will interact with objects directly and use your skills on them.

They say several times "many adventures are built in". But it's not clear which ones, plus there are some concerning response in the comments (see below).

They are my own adventures, plus what the community will share freely. Two of them are pre-written, other ones I will add after I make the game.

The details on DM Assistant or Virtual DM implies that the system will know every rule. Which seems implausible for digital logic to be able to know and adjudicate every rule. We certainly can't decide on interpretations of dozens of rules here on ENWorld and they are going to program a computer to do it? It's ok, to me, if it doesn't, but how do the players intervene? How do houserules and rulings get incorporated? That's something that should be mentioned somewhere.

There is an example on the page how a rule is implemented on Kickstarter page. Same is done for all the rules. I have implemented 5e in a modifyable way, so people can build on it.

Map generator. OK, these things already exists, but they all have severe limitations. And they talk about templates, but how many templates? And can you make your own or buy more or have a community marketplace for such? They don't say, which makes me think they don't have a plan. You do not need a solution before you launch a kickstarter, but you should have a plan.

That is correct. There are rules how 3D models should be put inside the selected area. Same patterns can repeat themself. It is useful when you want a generic room in variant sizes. It gives it to you instantly. Currently, there are three templates for creating a room. Final number will always increase as the time progresses and I have no chance to know them beforehand.

First person concerns me because since they say this is a server-client architecture, are the clients rendering the first person perspectives? Or is the server doing that for all 6 players? What type of computer and bandwidth (regardless of answer) is this going to require? The computing power for this is not trivial, it can be done (look at all the FPS MMOs) but where do they talk about having the knowledge, experience or technology needed to do that?

You have wrong knowledge on the subject. In most 3D first person games rendering is done in their own computer. In the host, generally variables, hit boxes, NPC AI etc. are run.

 

[Hussar]

I'd like to say thank you to @Rigged Dice Games for coming in and answering questions. I'll admit that the issues raised are somewhat troubling.

 

[Stormonu]

Thanks for dropping by to clear some things up @Rigged Dice Games.

I really like the concept behind this, and hope this works out for you, but the Kickstarter could use a lot more solid details about this project. Heck, there's not even a list of what monster (assets) will be included in the base game (something to consider for an KS update).

 

[Rigged Dice Games]

Thanks for dropping by to clear some things up @Rigged Dice Games.

I really like the concept behind this, and hope this works out for you, but the Kickstarter could use a lot more solid details about this project. Heck, there's not even a list of what monster (assets) will be included in the base game (something to consider for an KS update).

Currently, we are using unity assets like this one. I will add more to the list as we have a capital to add more monsters.

 

[Reynard]

You know, I'd kill for a VTT that was built around implementing tools that made the experience ever more like running the game in person with a dry erase board and some pennies for tokens than I would for this strange desire to turn D&D into a co-op video game with a map editor and DM mode. Those already exist.

 

[Zaukrie]

You know, I'd kill for a VTT that was built around implementing tools that made the experience ever more like running the game in person with a dry erase board and some pennies for tokens than I would for this strange desire to turn D&D into a co-op video game with a map editor and DM mode. Those already exist.

Not sure why you feel the need to post this here, where the designers are. Seems rude, and not helpful at all. How did this post make the world better?