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Your own personalized home city

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andyosiris
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Your own personalized home city

I don't know much about the technicalities of game development, so I don't know how realistic this idea is to ever implement. But it's something I'd love to see created for a superhero online game.

When playing DCUO and CO I'm turned off by the monotony of events going on in the city, and the fact that a particular group of villains are ALWAYS in the same spot in a particular city robbing the bank or tearing up downtown, ect. The crisis is always happening in certain places because they're common missions and part of the leveling process for everybody. I'm also annoyed by the over-abundance of other players who (call me anti-social if you want) get in my way, jump in and finish off the bad guy I've been wailing on for several minutes, grab the orb or whatever that I was about to grab for a mission, and generally ruin the fantasy aspect of it because they just don't belong there in the scenario for me. (It's like being a kid and being forced to play with your mom's friend's kid who wants his superhero to be called Rainbow Bright when you're pretending to be Batman). I understand these games are social in nature and that's good sometimes, but sometimes you just want to chill and dwell in your own world for a while.

So here's the idea-- individual, randomly generated cities for paid subscribers. IF it were possible, imagine it working like this. You have one big central capitol city (Titan City we'll say). Everybody has access to it, including free playing members. Just like COH. You have missions, events, common enemies, all of that.

But if you pay a certain amount each month, you can have your own city. There could be characteristics that you could pre-select:

*Style of the city-- Modern (like Metropolis), Dark (like Gotham), Asian, Fantasy World (think Thor). set in the future, set in the 1930's (golden age themed), another planet, ect.

This would affect the way the buildings look, the way the pedestrians look, and the weapons the bad guys use, vehicles.

*Geography of the city-- coast city, mid-America, island, desert, other planet, ect.

*The kinds of threats the city faces-- sci-fi, fantasy, horror movie (like occasional zombie risings), realistic (like just terrorists and drug people). Or maybe you could use sliders to mix it up so it could have everything, but have a low likelihood for certain kinds of threats so they happen only once in a while. (a rare giant lizard attack might be fun, but have it be so rare that it's shocking when it happens)

Other things that have no effect on game play besides imagination could be completely customizable-- The name and look of your contact person (like Commissioner Gordon who tells you what's going on, but it could be some type of person and relationship you dream up). The name of the city, of course. The name of the city newspaper that tells you what's going on. The name and look of the mayor. Names of places, (like the prison all the bad guys go to, the hospital, ect). You could also pick a location in your city for your base, which would be customizable just like on COH.

You would also implement a nemesis system just like CO has to create your own rogues gallery of villains, and those could be the bad guys doing all the damage in the city, along with more generic baddies pre-placed into the game. Every so often your rogues would escape and you'd have to find them and put them back in jail, while also dealing with events like fires, bank robberies, muggings, mass shootings, ect.

If you had this, then events would have more meaning too, because you could have consequences. For instance, if terrorists get a mini-nuke and you fail in stopping them from setting it off, a part of your city could be a ground zero crater for a month or two before it rebuilds. Or lets say the sky suddenly turns red. You need to find out why before the next step in whoever's master plan is taken. Or maybe you see people sick in the street. if you don't find out the source of the bio weapon and contain it, soon a pandemic rises and all the pedestrians are laying the streets sick like the black plague. (28 days later your city is a zombie nightmare haha)

It seems if you had sets of buildings for each look a person could pick, the computer could randomly throw them up in the air and place them to make a new city, just like the game civilization does when it generates new worlds every time you start a new game. There could be common interiors for the missions, and some stuff (like the surface materials of certain buildings) the player could monkey around with and customize to his or her liking.

Finally, this could be social in the sense that once you make friends with someone online, you could give them a "key" to the city, and allow them to enter whenever they want, (provided you're online). So you could have team ups. So if my friend who has a Thor like character over in Asgard needs help, she can call me in my dingy Gotham City type place where I'm fighting drug dealers, and I can take off for a while to slay some trolls in her land. And vice-versa. it would be like the Justice League, where Superman sometimes comes to Gotham and so forth. All of the characters you create on your account would have access to your city too.

I'd be interested to hear what others think of this.

TheMightyPaladin
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Select a few parameters and

Select a few parameters and let the city grow on it's own.
Come back and adventure when it's done.
Or build it bit by bit like Simcity.
Maybe even have the game hooked up to Google Earth or Google maps
then it could bring any city in the world to life for you.
Paladin could hang out in Birmingham Alabama where he belongs.
Awesome!

Unfortunately I'm afraid the answer is likely to be:
Come back in 20 years when the technology exists
or maybe 40 years when we can afford it.

Izzy
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Alla SimCity?

Alla SimCity?

Not there yet.. but I too.. would like this to become part of UGC someday. 20 years? just kidding. ;)

Lutan
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I could imagine such a game

I could imagine such a game would be possible to make right now. But also very time consuming and costly. I think. I am however not an expert on this, not even close.

The concept is really good, though.

whiteperegrine
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while I believe this could be

while I believe this could be done, I imagine the resources (programming/funding/servers/etc) would be immense to say the least. you would possibly have literally thousands of instances happening at the same time...

I like the idea...but I don't see anything happening along these lines for the next 5 years at least. although interestingly enough, CoT "appears" to have something kinda similar in the works if the server software is part of the game. while you may not be able to tailor make the city...you would have it to yourself and/or the select folks you allow in.

Fireheart
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This sounds a lot like a

This sounds a lot like a genre-shifted Neverwinter Nights 2, rather than an MMO. Or, perhaps like an expansion of CoH's Architect system. Invite players to your private world and throw 'adventures' at them.

I'm not saying that it's a bad idea! It would just require a shift in the focus of online gamers.

Be Well!
Fireheart

Nyktos
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I like the idea but I really

I like the idea but I really doubt it would work efficiently in an MMO atleast with the technology we have currently....

Formerly known as Bleddyn

Do you want to be a hero?

My characters

andyosiris
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I got thinking about this

I got thinking about this more. Obviously this is far off thinking for a game that's still in gestation as an MMO, but just to plant the seed...

Imagine, once the game is established and Titan City lives on the Internet, the company manufactures CDs that could be sold at Best Buy and Wal-Mart, ect, which you could buy for fifty bucks and download onto your computer. (Or maybe just download the program from the net after you pay...doesn't matter). Once you install this game It will have pre-made cities like the ones I described in the first post with different themes, or randomly generated ones based on the player's preferences if that's possible. You name the city whatever you want. You either play on your computer and create your character like a typical PC game or if you you hook up to the Internet your COT character is available on this game, (so you create your character on your own game and upload it to COT, or create it on COT and download it to your PC. Either-or.) When you're playing on your computer, you're playing with YOUR city, and your characters, and your villains, and the whole comic is based around your group of characters. Just like Civilization, since it's happening on your computer and not on the server, this would take care of the strain on the server from the zillions of people doing the same thing at the same time. This would also provide more freedom for villain customization, as well as customization-- and the existence of-- sidekicks, damsels (like Lois Lane type), key characters...because, again, all the info for this would be stored on your computer. With the exception of potentially the villains (because it's cool to share your villains with your friends if possible) none of that customized stuff would need to come into play when your character comes to Titan City (on the Internet)...superhero capitol of the world.

Think of Batman-- he's got his own world there in Gotham City with Commissioner Gordon, numerous love interests, Robin, Alfred, ect and all that happens in his own comic, generally isolated from Superman and the rest (usually), but when he's with the Justice League the stories focus around that and his interaction with the other heroes. While occasionally his villains play into Justice League stories, generally his team ups with the Justice League revolve around bigger, cosmic threats like Darkside.

Titan City could be the tie-in for everyone, and the place where you can trade stuff with other heroes and socialize like with the nightclub on COH (so you would want to keep coming back) but having a city available on your own computer to dwell within your own creations would make it more appealing to EVERYBODY. It would also make more money for COT because people would be subscribing to COT on the net as well as buying these CDs (or downloads). Think like the Sims with expansions too. For instance you could have a Washington DC expansion CD and protect the capitol and the president whenever you feel like it. Or you could have new threats and such to download to your city. If we resurrected the mission architect, people could create missions and upload them, and then other community members could read the plots and decide if they want to download them to their city. Once they do, the plot lines could be available for people to use with their characters (villains, sidekicks, ect) filling the appropriate roles in those plots.

The social minded people might at first say this will discourage socialization, but remember that there would be things you need to go to Titan City for to make your character better able to fight the threats on their PC, and the potential for sharing stories with a mission architect. Plus I think folks would still want to help the "Justice League" of the Titan City world.

Your thoughts...

Lutan
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This does sound more like a

This does sound more like a separate game. Maybe something that cane be done when City of Titans is out and does well.

Lin Chiao Feng
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Andy, you're basically

Andy, you're basically talking about using CoT as an engine and framework for alternate universes. Reskinning, custom maps, all-new mobs... that's basically a fully modded game running on a private server at that point! Kind of like what people did to Doom and Unreal in the first place, so many years ago.

First thing I'd look at is if the Unreal Engine 4 license allows such things. Even if it does, there will be limits that you'll have to stay within.

But the main thing is going to be that you are the one that will need to populate all of that city. Characters, writing, maps, all of it. Good luck!

As for interaction with Titan City, that's probably unlikely. Otherwise folks will have their new characters "leave" for their home city, and then shortly thereafter return to Titan City as demigods. But wait, what if MWM had control over what could be done out there? Well, you've just reinvented User-Generated Content, except it's a series of missions and a cityscape to play them in, not just a mission chain. That'll depend on if they can make a City Editor...

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

Izzy
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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Well, you've just reinvented User-Generated Content, except it's a series of missions and a cityscape to play them in, not just a mission chain. That'll depend on if they can make a City Editor...

Lets call it a City BUILDER. ;)

And anyways... it'be only a number of Blocks.. not the WHOLE City! Like some of the Instanced Mission Maps (like the Demon Farm with the streets and buildings). ;D

Lin Chiao Feng
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You'll want to edit the parts

You'll want to edit the parts of the city beyond the fence, too. And the stuff in the distance. The size of the map is the easy part.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

Lutan
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Somehow I see some sort of

Somehow I see some sort of city simulator like sim city, where you have to build superhero training centers, magic academies and extradimensional portals to attract heroes, so they can protect your city now. Making your town as attractive to them as possible so it is well guarded and can deal with giant monster attacks, alien invasions and so on.

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I think this is a fantastic

I think this is a fantastic idea! (Mainly because I've thought of almost exactly the same thing myself :) ) But I do see it as a completely separate single player type game. It really has a lot of potential. Put in a very deep character creator, a semi-organic city builder system, offer a mission editor and release it for a AAA premium box price. Then every few months you get DLC that includes new story arcs with new villains and NPCs, new costume pieces, power sets, etc. This is really the game I want, but I occasionally enjoy the social aspect of teaming in an MMO and showing off some of the creativity that a game like this allows.

A down side is that it becomes competition for the MMO. I know that all the pure soloists out there would clutch a game like this to their bosom, and we'd never see them in an MMO.

Izzy
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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

, a semi-organic city builder system, offer a mission editor and release it for a AAA premium box price.

+1

WarBird wrote:

A down side is that it becomes competition for the MMO. I know that all the pure soloists out there would clutch a game like this to their bosom, and we'd never see them in an MMO.

Well, part of making something nice is having other players see it. Sooo, they Will have to come up for air... eventually. ;)

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It's a really cool idea! I

It's a really cool idea! I could even see it being an expansion of this game in the future or a separate game that's directly compatible with COT. It could easily use a similar system as the player made mission creator and costume creator to make NPCs and stuff. if the map is stored on the player's home pc and you could open it up to friends, other players, or just use it to solo I could see this giving the game never ending content with the devs having to do less work. If this were to happen the game would easily explode with players building their own cities.

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Lutan wrote:
Lutan wrote:

I could imagine such a game would be possible to make right now. But also very time consuming and costly. I think. I am however not an expert on this, not even close.
The concept is really good, though.

It is not as hard as you think.
Elite (especially in its newest incarnation Elite Dangerous) has raised the art of pseudo-random generated universes to a new level entirely.
They have developed system, governed by random numbers that create believable star systems and believable planets (and can with some careful tweaking of the number produce 'known' start systems, or at least a close approximation of them).

Developing a way to 'grow' a city out of various seed values is not impossibly hard.

The bigger question is why you would want this, as it will produce, as you already pointed out, a series of single player game that happen to be played onlline but have otherwise no relation to each other. That is much better suited to a single player game where the replay gets better if it is not identical to the first run through. For a multiplayer game, though, it doesn't make much sense (a multi player game with only one player?)

More fundamentally, you are applying a preconceived solution to a problem without trying to figure out what the problem really is and if your solution really is such a good fit to solve it.
I'm inclined to argue that the act of turning a mutliplayer game into a single player one to combat the staleness of 'reset to status quo' that all MMOs, of necessity, have suffered from. After all, once the engine is up and running content creation is by far the most expensive and time consuming aspect of making a game.
There are however games that have solved this issue in part or in whole, in different ways. Lord of the Rings online pioneered (as far as I know) the concept of content layers, where the world you see is affected by your actions. They never got far with it (for content creation reasons) but the system could easily be used to make it so that if you safe the town, the town then, in your layer, is and remains saved. Another threat to it may pop up but that's a different thing. Note that enemies are also found in layers so that enemies may appear that exist only to you and your group, kind of an open world instancing.
Eve online has a starter zone that is essentially just a low risk training room, where resources (both for crafting and for combat) pop up endlessly, but the game funnels you into the free for all zero-sec 99 percent of the game where everything that happens is because players created it and fought over it (the planets and stars aren't moving of course, but it is the player made structures that create the content in those areas).
Everquest Next aims at having tens of thousands of years of planned history and players making it happen through their actions, meaning that each instance will diverge from the starting point and any player action will have long lasting effect (the example they gave was orcs liking to set up near roads that have plenty of potential victims. If they players band together the orcs will wander until they find a less inhospitable place that meets their requirements. you can never entirely get rid of the orcs, but you can chase them away. Which in particular means that the leveling ecosystem is always in flux as 'farming' any enemy group will make them move shop).
Redlynne mentioned another approach pioneered by Tabula Rasa that also created dynamic (albeit brief) content, with the strongholds system where you can conquer an enemy base and then have to defend it against ever increasing attempts to reclaim it, but while you control it you have access to nice amenities in that base.