About me:
Back in last October 2023 I initiated a move in some forums and discords to see the reaction of the community in a new Helbreath 3D project, here's the link if you want to check it out, but haven't got too much response to be honest.
Due to some changing life situations I had to disappear for sometime, but I'm back at it with a lot of strength and energy!
My name's Emanuel and used to played Helbreath back in 2004 up to 2008, where vanilla HB was still a thing. Currently I work as a backend developer for an important digital bank App, also have experience in Android development and Unity.
One of the reasons I became a developer was because of Helbreath, I started learning basic coding when I was a kid thanks to playing around with servers sources files and got hooked to it since then.
What's this project?
It's a project where I'll be recreating Helbreath in 3D basically in a new engine, which it's Unity's engine.
Recreating a game of this magnitude requires a lot of time, dedication and patience.
The idea is to start from a vanilla Helbreath with brand new features and QoL from today's MMOs. Maintain the good things that we had, improve the things that fall behind and add new ones.
From there, evolve.
Helbreath: Reigns of Middleland
Open world map, same structure and being more direct by having less useless maps such as farms and used maps.
What made Helbreath addicted was the open world PvP, open world hunting and fast phased gameplay.
Features
- Bosses mechanics
Looking for group system
Builds armory
Auction House
Event Store
Mounts & pets
Simple quests for learning the game & Achievements system
- Crusades can't be missed!
- Stake challenges, chance to challenge and duel another player by betting and item or items.
- 3v3 arena with seasons and ranking system
- Deathmatch, weekly event, last survivor wins (the reward is only event points to trade in the event store for cosmetics, dyes etc.)
- Infinite towers, fighting waves of monsters in an arena (the reward is only event points to trade in the event store for cosmetics, dyes etc.)
- Instantiated dungeons from 4 to 8 players (nightmare mode compared to open world)
- Magics, remember when a warrior can only attack and the animation was the same thing over and over and had a lot of disadvantage against mages. That's over.
The way to learn magic skills is going to be through a five point star node, where each main node corresponds to a player attribute. Magics can be learned by spending attribute points in their respective nodes.
- Manufacturing, Crafting, Alchemy, Fishing, Mining, Farming
- These things became useless overtime, bringing it back with sense. We're going to have only Crafting where we can create weapons, armors, necklaces, rings & potions such as temporary or single use, like experience potions, increased movement speed etc.
- We can upgrade items from the crafting system
- Extracting a secondary stat from an item will be possible and adding it to another item.
- Fishing, mining and farming will be useful and necessary since we need materials for all the described before.
- Weapon's skills were also dead overtime and didn't had any utility in any server, so we're going to give it a twist as Weapon specializations.
and more... that you can check out in the discord.
Who's involved?
This won't be a solo project, I'll have the backup of my wife who is a graphic & UX/UI designer and a friend who's also graphic & 3d designer. They will help me through this process.
I'm open to hear anyone who wants to help in any kind or get involved on the project, but to be honest I'm going to be selective.
For ideas and suggestions you have the discord link below where you can share anything and we can have a chat!
I want to clarify that I don't have any priority on gaining profits from this project. I don't need money, I already have my job and speaking in other words I'll lose money because of investing in it, but I don't care this is my hobby my passion.
How is the project going to be approached?
- [Communication is first. Community first, I want what they want, what they suggest. If something doesn't work, let's change it together.
- Studying today's MMOs and projects that tried to recreate Helbreath, learn from the good and bad approaches.
- Investing in assets to save time and facilitate the project's roadmap, here's an interesting related article if you wanna check it out and here's an example of assets that are going to be invested or have been invested already:
~Top down caves~
~Top down graveyard~
~Top down dungeons~
~Top down dungeons 2~
~Top down desert~
~RPG Mechanim Animations pack~
~Fantasy creatures Ultimate pack~
- Investing in marketing to improve the project visibility
- Investing in freelance services from platforms such as Fiverr
- Professionalism and well cared identity
- Recreating from zero 3D models of iconic weapons, armors, monsters and props.
- Well organized project and agile development. Sprints of 2 weeks.
Where is the project starting from?
As I said before, there's a lot of time that can be saved by using assets like buildings, weapons, armors, etc.
Recreating the game doesn't mean to be exactly the same, there has to be a new fresh air, similarly to what we had but the core has to be the same.
So not everything in terms of graphics is going to be the same, but imagine that it's Helbreath 2.
In terms of development, here's a list of where we starting from, the base of an MMO, this is all done:
- [Networking] Login, Character Selection & Creation
- [Networking] Gameplay Core, connecting, interacting etc.
- [Networking] Simple Chat system
- [Networking] Database system
- [Mechanic] Simple Level system
- [Feature] Simple Party system
- [Feature] Simple Guild system
- [Mechanic] Simple Monsters movement & behaviour
- [Mechanic] Simple Magic system
- [Mechanic] Player movement
- [Mechanic] Simple Item system
- [Mechanic] Simple Equipment system
- [Feature] Simple Quest system
- [Feature] Simple Crafting System
- [Events] PvE - Simple Instanced dungeons system
- [Mechanic] Simple Combat system
- [Feature] Simple Pets & mounts system
- [Feature] Simple NPC System
- a couple more...
https://gyazo.com/095b24525107a31c15be94881e2c74a7
Last words
Happy to share this and learning from the process. Projects of this magnitude tend to fail... but here's a famous quote that if I'm not wrong it's from Abraham Lincoln.
Join me in this adventure, you can find more detailed information on:Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm
Discord