Veridian Forge was born on March 4th, 2022. Although we started working together in January we discovered that naming things is hard!
We had narrowed down a list of over 100 company names, and made the final choice with a “Sweet 16” style tournament with a set of “impartial” judges. Baker even made tournament brackets and everything.
Don't get us even started on the process of creating a logo. If you want to hear about that, no problem, but that's another 20 blog posts atleast. :)
Even before settling on a name (or a logo), there is a lot to do to get a company started, and we have two members that are a 1,711 mile drive from each other, so an infrastructure that allows us to work together is critical. We came up with a remote work setup that allows us to plan and work efficiently… we’ll write more about that in an upcoming post.
We evaluated several game engines, and decided Unreal Engine 4 was the way to go for us. We both have prior experience with it, their tools are flexible and deep, their marketplace set us up with great prototyping content, and their royalty model is very generous.
We had a game idea coming in, it was part of the discussion when deciding to form the company. A first prototype was up and running quickly, with a single protagonist running around in a world that served as a mockup for our visual style.
The second prototype was created to start working through the C++ underpinnings that our final project would have, and it also incorporated many of the original ideas, loosely a squad based strategy game. At this stage we made the choice that it was going to be a multiplayer game, as we decided playing together was a core feature. Our experience tells us that making a multiplayer game means doing so from day one. Testing this prototype was purely internal.
We took our notes from the second prototype and started making the third in May, utilizing the newly released Unreal Engine 5. We modified the core concept to be more active but kept some of the strategic elements. We added several testing maps, projectile weapons, melee attacks, unique unit special abilities, day/night cycles, pausing and time manipulation, an interaction system, destruction, power-ups, multiple enemy types, a boss fight, win/loss conditions, and a basic Epic Online Services integration for matchmaking.
This last prototype was used in external testing with friends, many of whom are industry veterans, and we got a lot of valuable feedback. Testing took place in August and September, and with our new-found knowledge we conducted a brief pre-production sequence where we firmed up the planning and generated some lore to drive the game mechanics and content decisions.
We’re excited to share more about our first game… but we need to have a name for it first!
Moving forward we’ll post about what we are doing, and how we are doing it. Brad will talk through all things design and art, and Baker will focus on the technology behind our game and company setup.
But for now... Meet Chuck!
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