Monsters & Memories - An Old School Indie MMO

[TheIrateTurk]

Further to my post a few weeks back, I just finished playing a monk on the two day playtest.

I am continually blown over by how good this game is. I cannot state how enjoyable it was to play a new game where things were unknown and there was little to no hand holding. We had to figure things out for ourselves, and it was a great social and gaming experience.

M&M completely captures the spirit of EQ from the P1999 era, while updating some systems in a way which seems sensible and does not detract the authenticity of the classic MMO experience.

Changes
Monk has more buttons to press. We have a jab on a short cooldown which interrupts casting, and AOE stun which is on a 150s CD which also interrupts casting. A celestial punch which gave a buff which increased regen

Combat seems faster, there are many mobs in a zone and they have a short respawn time. We're talking 5-7 minutes. Regen is faster. Named mobs in dungeons seem to be a big deal relative to their placeholders and surrounding mobs. Yes, the Orc Trainer is higher level and harder to kill, but he is effectively just another Crushbone mob. The named ghosts which were level 8-10 in Wyrmsbane Tomb could heal, gate etc.

Corpse Runs are harder. Casters need their spellbooks to mem their spells and without this they are unable to cast anything. I heard the devs talking about buying a second spellbook and keeping it in your bank, or asking a rogue to drag the corpses for you. We were quite deep in Wyrmsbane Tomb and I was having to flop my way while dragging four corpses on a macro, and mending the damage I'd taken. Took about 30 minutes.

They have added a campfire system which from what I could tell, gave the group breeze as well as being a large light source. This is a profession of sorts, so any class could gather wood and build a campfire which gives the group vision and also MP5. There will probably be better campfires which provide different buffs etc.

Vision is really important. It's dark in the dungeons. Torches and candles and firebeetle eyes all have fuel which expires, so you have to use them sparingly.

NPCs do not give you quest breadcrumbs [like this]. They speak without square brackets, and you have to figure out what they want you to say if you want to progress a quest. There is a quest Journal which seems to capture any important conversations so you can remember what you have to do.

My initial thoughts of vendors who won't indiscriminately buy your gear was that it could be bad, but having played with the system for a bit, it really was not a problem at all. You quickly figure out who the Rusty Weapon merchant is and everyone was close together.

There is a navigation trainer/ skill but this was not working AFAIK so not sure what the system would involve.

All in all, this game is shaping up to be something special which I know fans of P99 would love.

[magnetaress]

WoW Titan pantheon themed Star Pegasus mount grossed more revenue than Star Craft 2 lol.

I may even have one also.

[One Tin Soldier]

I've tried to play in the last four tests and most of the time I can't even get into the game. The one time I did get in the lag was so bad I couldn't do anything. Admittedly I'm trying to run it on older PCs (two different ones). A friend of mine has had a similar experience.

Given the low end graphics (which I like so don't take that the wrong way) it seems like you shouldn't need a brand new, high end PC to play it.

I know it's still very early in the testing phase but it seems like something they might want to think about.

It may not matter for me in the long run though. If they stick to making the game as described in their FAQ I will be willing to buy a new PC just for this game. But not yet. After years of disappointment I have developed this nasty suspicious part of my mind that I can't quash entirely and it makes me worry that they might pull some kind of bait and switch trick. They seem like regular, down to earth guys so probably not but that suspicion still lurks in my mind.

Still, the more people who can run the game the more potential customers so, again, it might make sense to think about that.

[maxtorps]

I tried it fro a few hours over the weekend and thought it was great! To me, it really captures the essence of a game with no hand holding. Even dying was a delight as I floated above my cold, dead corpse before hitting the loading screen!

It was good to see a quest journal, interesting there's no compass so you rely on the position of the sun and moon for directions. There's also other clues like "North Gate" for example as well as various signposts in the city, but it's not simple to navigate. It's just the right amount of awkward vs obvious.

Spells, gems, casting and abilities are very similar so you can get started right away. I spent about an hour killing rats and could afford three new L1 spells, once I'd found a shady peddlar that buys literally anything but at knockdown prices. Other merchants specialise and give you more of a reward. (Thanks to the player Bardarossa who led me to them).

Overall, I found it an enjoyable experience and will feature it more in my podcast as more access is given. On that note, my Twitch channel has some clips if you want to see, there's also an excellent channel run by one of the devs "ALovingRobot", definately worth a follow.

On saying all of that, P99 is still my current fave...

[wycca]

Originally Posted by One Tin Soldier [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I've tried to play in the last four tests and most of the time I can't even get into the game. The one time I did get in the lag was so bad I couldn't do anything. Admittedly I'm trying to run it on older PCs (two different ones). A friend of mine has had a similar experience.

Given the low end graphics (which I like so don't take that the wrong way) it seems like you shouldn't need a brand new, high end PC to play it.

I know it's still very early in the testing phase but it seems like something they might want to think about.

It may not matter for me in the long run though. If they stick to making the game as described in their FAQ I will be willing to buy a new PC just for this game. But not yet. After years of disappointment I have developed this nasty suspicious part of my mind that I can't quash entirely and it makes me worry that they might pull some kind of bait and switch trick. They seem like regular, down to earth guys so probably not but that suspicion still lurks in my mind.

Still, the more people who can run the game the more potential customers so, again, it might make sense to think about that.

I agree and performance is on our mind for sure.

It is low poly - yes. Model poly counts range from around P99 EQ up to actually pretty similar to WoW Vanilla. Most of our player models come in at around 800-900ish as a base, with attachments like ears, hair, belt, cloak, pouches, shoulders, backpack, held items, etc pushing them up to around 1100-1400ish, just depending on the mix/items. I think our npc models range from 60 (the wisp) to a special one (dragon) that's around 9000ish (they average closer to player models).

Despite all of that low poly stuff, there's some more modern things going on under the hood. Our textures are mostly authored at 2k (we display at 512). Our player gear visuals and mixing of them is handled on the models by shaders (pushing the limit of the api in fact). Much of the stuff behind the low poly & hand-painted textures is fairly advanced though in terms of lighting/shadows, water, etc. We have pretty much infinite draw distances - which looks great with some of our huge zones and we give you peeks at neighboring zones in our facades - such as a castle on a mountain that is 4 zone lines away. We have technical challenges few games face with some things - 100 lights in a scene may be a ton for many games - we've got to think about 1000 lights. Old EQ zones could handle 200-400 npcs roughly if I recall (depending on expansion in early EQ) - we have around 2500 and counting in a zone. Networking for player counts of a MMO-size is also not something many games have to deal with. Obviously that one is a particular focus right now. So low poly - yes. Low tech everywhere else - not necessarily like many might expect based on the poly count.

Some of the inspiration for our graphical mix described above can be found in some threads on this forum. Starting with some older render images (/wave toddfx), continuing through the various HQ texture packs and now all of those cool Unreal/Unity EQ takes. The team liked the feel of those sort of mixes, and we think it really brings to life the fantastic realism (our term) art style we're trying to capture.

So back to PC specs. Currently, the game is playable on both my ~2017-era laptop with an i5 (7th gen kaby lake) running at like ~3ghz boosted and a Geforce 1060 (75watts) at 1080p. I get around 20-55fps in an empty Night Harbor right now, depending where at in the city. I actually used it during this last weekend to help monitor CSR stuff on one server (I was logged in on multiple servers on different machines). I get 20-35fps on my M1 Macbook Air testbed laptop running the game via Crossover. All fairly low-spec nowadays and playable for a slower MMO. I have also dropped the resolution majorly on my i7 (12th gen) in my other laptop when I test run it on integrated graphics - its decently playable at a lower resolution at around 15-25fps in NH. GPU vram is around 2.6gb for our performance option vs about 3.1gb for our recommended option. Those with 3gb vram on cards are going to see a big drop in performance if they run above 1080p/performance for example.

There's some tweaks you can do to help improve fps right now - I put together a list which I have/can share via our discord. It depends a bit on your system, but basically on older machines, some of the easiest things are a couple of our settings, hiding corpses, watching what is eating cpu in the background, then adjusting resolution, etc. Longer-term, we hope to have more graphics options to help turn some stuff down, but it just isn't a major focus yet as we focus on building the game. We hope to eventually run better on integrated graphics, and even various handhelds (including Android).

[One Tin Soldier]

Originally Posted by wycca [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

There's some tweaks you can do to help improve fps right now - I put together a list which I have/can share via our discord. It depends a bit on your system, but basically on older machines, some of the easiest things are a couple of our settings, hiding corpses, watching what is eating cpu in the background, then adjusting resolution, etc.

I saw that list on discord and adjusted the settings. As for the hardware side of things I will freely admit that I'm a dumbass with this stuff. In my day to day life it's not necessary for me to know about it. Like I said I'll probably buy a new computer when MnM gets closer to release. It's just that it's been ages since I had any reason to care about this sort of thing.

Anyway, good luck to you guys.

[Topgunben]

Originally Posted by One Tin Soldier [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I saw that list on discord and adjusted the settings. As for the hardware side of things I will freely admit that I'm a dumbass with this stuff. In my day to day life it's not necessary for me to know about it. Like I said I'll probably buy a new computer when MnM gets closer to release. It's just that it's been ages since I had any reason to care about this sort of thing.

Anyway, good luck to you guys.

Hopefully by 2026 they have optimized a little better and computer performance / cost is more favorable.

I’m currently running a ryzen 5 5600 cpu with a xfx 6700xt video card and it seemed to run flawlessly. My machine isn’t any where close to top of the line - for gaming desktops I’d say it’s middle of the road.

But I’ll tell you, the older I get, the harder it is for me to get on my desktop to play (maybe it’s because I’m sitting at a desk for work 8 hours a day already). I’d prefer a laptop where I can play for an hour at night before I go to bed. Like I said above, hopefully laptops in 2026 are much cheaper and more powerful.

As a side note, One thing I’m impressed with after all these years is how well WOW was optimized in its early days.

[wycca]

Originally Posted by Topgunben [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Hopefully by 2026 they have optimized a little better and computer performance / cost is more favorable.

I’m currently running a ryzen 5 5600 cpu with a xfx 6700xt video card and it seemed to run flawlessly. My machine isn’t any where close to top of the line - for gaming desktops I’d say it’s middle of the road.

But I’ll tell you, the older I get, the harder it is for me to get on my desktop to play (maybe it’s because I’m sitting at a desk for work 8 hours a day already). I’d prefer a laptop where I can play for an hour at night before I go to bed. Like I said above, hopefully laptops in 2026 are much cheaper and more powerful.

As a side note, One thing I’m impressed with after all these years is how well WOW was optimized in its early days.

There's a ton about WoW technically that is impressive as hell. If you want to know how something is able to be done efficiently/well in terms of tech in a MMO, it's hard to go wrong with looking at how WoW addressed the problem, even today.

Gaming laptops are pretty great honestly - I just found I need a lap pad to use them when not on a solid surface usually. They tend to stay warm even with the dgpu shut off. AMD came out with a pretty nice apu this year that is actually pretty solid at 1080p gaming. It's been super popular - it's in all of those windows handhelds that have launched pretty much. The next few years should see more releases and competition from intel with their arc-based APUs. So...that should be pretty nice IMO. Alternatively, ARM might be viable in the near future - already is IMO if you're on Mac, we'll see about Qualcomm.

[GardylooGubbins]

Played for a few hours this weekend. Looks quite promising. Interesting Zones, no hand holding, and actual player interaction as people were trying to figure things out. Played a beastlord, and it was fun. Made some money, got my spells/abilities, and slowly figured out where stuff was.

Night blindness was no joke though.

[Topgunben]

Originally Posted by GardylooGubbins [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Played for a few hours this weekend. Looks quite promising. Interesting Zones, no hand holding, and actual player interaction as people were trying to figure things out. Played a beastlord, and it was fun. Made some money, got my spells/abilities, and slowly figured out where stuff was.

Night blindness was no joke though.

Ya I noticed there was a lot of player interaction as well. I really like feeling like all of my answers to questions can be found in game, either through personal exploration or asking someone.

TBH the P99 wiki is a little immersion breaking because I don’t even need to ask people in game how or where or what something is.

Oh last thing. I made a necro in M&M and got my ass kicked by a beetle that was an even con. Strangely, It’s a good feeling to get ragdolled like that.